This Writer Wrote

This astonishing admission came at a tribute to him put on by the Museum of Television and Radio as part of their annual William S. Paley Television Festival, which is in full swing for the first two weeks of March in Los Angeles.

PaleyFest is one of my favorite times of the year and I try to go to as many events as time and work commitments will allow. The museum was founded in New York in 1975 by William S. Paley, the man behind CBS who took a group of local stations and created a network empire, which allowed them to collectively pay for better talent and programming than individual stations could afford. Starting in radio, Paley was one of major pioneers in the brand new television medium. With his love of entertainment and advertising, he wished to see the best of radio and television preserved and celebrated. If you go to the Museum in New York or Los Angeles, you can watch episodes of shows from the early years of TV all the way to today.

So in conjunction with that mission of preservation and celebration, the museum has, for the last 24 years, been hosting a two-week celebration of the best and most innovative series of the current year as well as a peek back into yesterday. They bring together in a theater the cast and creative teams of these selected series with the audience who watches their shows. It’s always an interesting mix of fans, many from the entertainment industry itself and the rest from the general public. In previous years, I’ve gotten to meet and hear the creative teams and casts of Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Supernatural, Star Trek, MacGyver, New York Undercover, The Practice, and too many more to name. And I was able to be there when a show I worked on, Joan of Arcadia, was honored.

In addition, they set aside an evening or two to honor the individuals who have made lasting contributions to entertainment. In previous years, people like William Shatner, Garry Shandling, and Carol Burnett sat on that hot seat. This year was a special treat to be honoring George Lucas, who came dressed casually in black jacket, plaid shirt, and jeans.

First, your appetite is whetted by an excerpt in the same or similar genre, taken from the museum’s archives. Tonight’s offering was from Saturday Night Live: a spoof of the 20-year anniversary of the original Star Wars screen tests/auditions. Anyone who has seen this segment on SNL knows how hilarious it is. You have Kevin Spacey pretending to be Christopher Walken auditioning for Han Solo, Walter Matthau auditioning for Obi Wan and Jack Lemmon auditioning for Chewbacca. You have Darrell Hammond pretending to be Richard Dreyfus screen-testing for C3P0, Norm MacDonald as Burt Reynolds for Darth Vader, and Ana Gasteyer as Barbra Streisand for Leia. My favorite line was Walken’s Lemmon as Chewbacca, “You had me come all the way from Beverly Hills to play a f’king space ape?”

The Museum’s president, Pat Mitchell, introduced George Lucas to a standing ovation. Then came what shouldn’t have been the biggest surprise of the night to me, but was: she said that since they were the Museum of Television and Radio, they were going to discuss The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. This made a lot of sense, but it isn’t what I think of when I think of George Lucas.

The next part of the program is usually screening an episode. However, in this case, we watched excerpts from 11 of the 44 episodes of this Emmy-award winning series (12 Emmys in total). Lucas described his series as “fanciful encounters with historical figures”, where the hero, Indy, “could not be a key player” for that would affect history. He could become friends with the historical figures and have conversations, but ultimately he had to be the proverbial “fly on the wall” when the significant events happened. Still, Lucas took pride in making the historical encounters as accurate as possible.

Through the eyes of Indy, we got to know such notables as TH Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Woodrow Wilson, Prince Faisal, George Gershwin, and Lenin. It reminded me of the brilliant 1977 TV series, Meeting of Minds, done by the late Steve Allen and his wife Jayne Meadows, except that instead of sitting around the table talking, we’re taken to exotic locations with lots of special effects. My favorite excerpt was the one on the Mexican revolution. Indy tries to explain to a peasant who has had his chickens taken by the army for food that the army is there to help him, to free him, to make his life better. But all the peasant can see is that the soldiers stole his chickens, as every army before them have done. The more Indy tries to defend the army he’s traveling with, the less the peasant buys it, saying, “They all steal your chickens. Only the name of the man who steals your chickens changes.”

Because Lucas chose to represent two time periods in young Indiana’s life — 10 years old and the 16-20 years — he felt it filled in the blanks for film Indy’s background. He is planning to put the series out on DVD with two episodes combined together for 90-minute specials which will have added documentary commentaries about the real historical people portrayed in the episodes. To this end, he admits that he is spending more money on enhancing the original 16mm film than he did on producing the series.

He talked extensively about the writing and the producing of the series, but for space restraints here, I’ll save that for my more industry-related blog, CAT Scratchings, which you can access at http://www.dannygirlpaceyjack.blogspot.com/ if you wish. The post should be up shortly.

“It’s never how good you are,” Lucas reminded us, “it’s how good you are under circumstances. There are always circumstances.” Because he shot on locations throughout the world, those circumstances included shooting through earthquakes, around a car blowing up, and under the protection of the Turkish army. They had a boat capsize in a river with alligators and had to deal with the frightful moments of having their star, Sean Patrick Flannery, surrounded by alligators. They also could hear the near-by bombing of the Gulf War. But perseverance is the key to everything.

And now for the answer you’ve been waiting for… why George Lucas said he likes doing TV more than films. There’s enormous stress in doing movies… only 10% break even and only 1% of them make money, he said. “You are staking everything on it – three years of your life. Whereas in television, if one show doesn’t work, you go on to the next one – it’s a week later.”

Of course, he also acknowledged that he loves doing TV under the conditions he has: which is no interference. That is something most of us would point out only comes to a man of his stature.

On the horizon is bringing Star Wars to TV. He is working on an animated series on the Clone Wars, the viability of which he tested in five-minute segments on the Cartoon Network. He said the best thing about doing episodic animation is that he doesn’t need to do the Skywalker story – there were many other things going on during the Clone Wars. For example, he has one episode that only has storm troopers in it.

Lucas also has a live action series planned, but it is still a few years away. He was vague on the details, saying that a show would split into four stories – one for each character, but he doesn’t know yet which characters that would be.

It was a great evening which ended in fans rushing the stage to get their programs autographed. The DGA theater is not really set up for that, so people were crushing each other in the small space between stage and first seats, but George was gracious enough to sign as many items as he could reach. At events where the whole cast and creative team are present, fans often get a moment to talk to their favorites, but with only George there, the best he could do was sign as many programs as he could. This, of course, is not part of the event, so it is an added treat when the guest is willing to do it.

My next PaleyFest adventure will be the Heroes panel on March 10th. I wish I could do all of them, but my work commitments won’t allow it this year. I’m hoping that this write-up will inspire others to share their experiences with the other series panels because they are all worthwhile shows and I watch many of them.