Holiday Alternatives – Movies on TV

Today Televised Revolution continues its look at alternative viewing during this holiday period with no new programs on the air for the next couple of weeks.

Up the street from where you live there is a struggling business. It’s called a video store. With the low cost of buying DVD’s, so many movie options on pay television, and direct downloads, your local video store isn’t faring so well. Within the past year I have seen countless stores either close or halve their floor space. This holiday season, take a walk down to your local store. Not only do they have countless TV box sets to rent out, but you’ll be sure to find quite a number of films ABOUT television.

But, what to rent? Well, here’s a few worthy options:

The TV Set
Jake Kasden, the director of a bunch of episodes of Freaks & Geeks, wrote and directed this film which takes a look at the behind the scenes process of making a television pilot. And by process, I mean its from the viewpoint of the writer who has crafted a show that comes from the heart, then compromises again and again with the network until the show ceases to be anything like the its initial vision.

David Duchovny stars as the TV writer, of which is a fairly clear analogue for Freaks & Geeks producer Judd Apatow. Sigourney Weaver stars as the TV executive. And then there’s the excellent supporting cast made up of familiar faces like Justine Bateman, Judy Greer, Ioan Gruffudd, Lucy Davis, and Simon Helberg.

Unless you’re a massive TV nerd, you likely won’t get too much out of it, but its an entertainingly cynical look at the television pilot season.

The Late Shift
The Late Night television wars were massive in the US in the early 90′s. Columns upon columns of newspaper articles were devoted to Jay Leno and David Letterman as both sought to take over hosting The Tonight Show, followed by the subsequent launch of The Late Show with David Letterman after Leno scored Carsons old gig.

This HBO film, directed by Betty Thomas (based on the book by TV Critic Bill Carter), takes a dramatised look at what happened from just prior to Carsons retirement through to the launch of The Late Show. The film takes a very definite stance oin being pro-Letterman in many respects, but Leno comes out of the film in a fairly favorable light.

While the film is certainly worth a look, it is of significant relevance right now with NBC’s decision not to retire Leno after giving the reigns of The Tonight Show to Conan O’Brien, but instead have opted to give Leno the 10pm slot each and every night. It’s a move that has its very motivations planted in the events that took place during the initial Carson/Leno succession bungle. The fallout is signaling the end of US broadcast television as one knows it.

The Truman Show
Before the term Reality Television, there was The Truman Show. When launched, Ridley Scotts film about a television station that was dedicated purely to following a single man around in a life constructed for him seemed unlikely and out of the realm of what we knew television to be. Ten years after its release, the only thing baffling about the conceit of the movie is that the constructed world is a quaint anywhere USA without an assortment of bitches and ho’s.

While the film certainly feels slightly more quaint today, the film is still excellent in its portrayal of a man trying to find meaning in a world that doesn’t quite make sense to him, eventually embarking on a quest where he meets his maker. Brilliant stuff.

Pleasantville
Tobey Maguire is a lonely TV nerd who loves an old black and white sitcom called Pleasantville. After getting in a fight over the TV remote control with his ‘cool’ sister, Renee Witherspoon, both find themselves zapped into the world of Pleasantville (a pastiche of every American 50′s show like Leave It To Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, etc). After spending a few weeks in the fictional realm of 1950′s US television, the modern day protagonists of the film do the unthinkable: they introduce colour into the lives of the residents of Pleasantville.

Once you get past the beyond-silly conceit of the film, you are left with a film that examines the way one finds purpose in life after being exposed to something enriching (be it intellectual, artistic, or otherwise). The film portrays all of the silly and spiritually bankrupt aspects of what the television format as previously depicted as everyday American life and twists it by giving the characters the same desires as those existing outside the world of the cathode ray tube.