TV WATCH 2007
CHUCK Pilot

“Why me? I’m nobody. I’m the supervisor of a Nerd Herd at a Buy More. Maybe one day, I’ll be Assistant Store Manager, and I don’t even know if I want that job.”
-- Chuck Bartowski

Chuck (Zachary Levi, from Less Than Perfect) is working an 11$ an hour job at the local Buy More. He’s got a sister, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster, from What About Brian and Everwood) who’s forever pushing him in the way of the nearest live, breathing girl, and a best friend in the person of fellow nerd Morgan (Joshua Gomez, from the sadly cancelled Invasion and Without A Trace).
On his birthday, he gets a surprise email from Bryce Larkin (Matthew Bomer, from Traveler and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning), his roommate back in Stanford, who apparently stole Chuck’s girl and got him kicked out of university; an email that contains all of the information the NSA and the CIA have, encoded in a program equipped with pattern recognition.
All that gets stuck in Chuck’s head in one massive infodump, and makes him the target of both intelligence agencies, kicking off the engaging and entertaining hi-jinx of Chuck.

Brought to us by Josh Schwartz and McG (who also teamed-up for The O.C.), Chuck is fun and loads of funny, as Schwartz once again places geekdom front and center and introduces us to Chuck Bartowski, a nerd whose love life is well and truly dead following the trauma of losing the mythical Jill to Bryce back at Stanford. Then, just when he thinks he’s scored after Sarah (spellcheck nemesis Yvonne Strzechowski) comes up to the Nerd Herd counter, this whole agent/spy thing comes crashing through his door.
Schwartz takes one of any average kid’s dreams (for some, it was to be a secret agent, for others—like myself—it was to be a superhero) and gives it to a geek (which, on some levels, is really just a kid who never completely grew up), mining the conceit for all its comedic and action potential: Chuck is Alias if Alias were a comedy and Sidney Bristow were a nerd.

The action set pieces are cool, the first—as with Casino Royale’s opening—proudly displaying the fact that mainstream productions have learned a little something from Yamikazi. There’s a car chase, and a Mexican stand-off atop a skyscraper.
While on the comedy front, though much of Chuck’s humour is found in the smart dialogue courtesy of Schwartz, there is one particular moment of broad, slapstick humour that I wish had been downplayed. (I’m not very big on slapstick.)
There is also some alarming sitcomesque humour (as with Ellie’s boyfriend, “Captain Awesome,” played by Living With Fran’s Ryan McPartlin) that I hope gets refined as the season unfolds.

But, above and beyond the action and the humour, what seals the deal with Chuck are the long-term plot threads that are planted in the Pilot that hopefully, the series will fully explore in future episodes. The one I’m most interested in is why did Bryce send the email to Chuck? They hadn’t spoken in five years, and they apparently parted under less than happy circumstances. Why Chuck?
I realize this isn’t Lost, but I do hope we see more of what went down at Stanford, which will perhaps give us an inkling as to what was going on in Bryce’s head when he decided to send the email to Chuck.

Minor flaws notwithstanding, Chuck opens solidly, and as the lead-in to NBC’s phenomenal Heroes, stands to attract a huge audience. And I can guarantee Chuck is a fantastic way to spend an hour as you’re waiting for your weekly Heroes fix.

Parting shot: As an aside, it’s interesting to note that three individuals once involved with Superman are on Chuck: McG, who came this close to directing the fifth Superman film; Matthew Bomer, who was Brett Ratner’s choice to play the Man of Steel; and Ryan McPartlin, who auditioned but was reportedly rejected by the studio.

Parting shot 2: Also in the cast is Dexter’s C.S. Lee as Buy More co-worker Harry Tang.

(Images courtesy of Chuck Bartowski’s photos at flickr.com.)

ENTOURAGE
Season 3 Episode 19
“The Prince’s Bride”

Drama gets a call from Brett Ratner’s people. They want to offer him a part in Rush Hour 3.
Stoked, Drama gets to Brett’s digs (which look like the Playboy Mansion on a more modest budget), but there’s been a mistake. Someone misread the Five Towns credits, and they actually wanted to offer the part to the kid who plays Drama’s younger brother.
But Drama’s already bragged like he’s got the part in the bag, so he refuses to leave till he gets a part—any part—in the movie.
Which he does. Kind’a.

Turtle gets his first date with Kelly, but an afternoon alone goes bust when Rufus, Mrs. Rufus, and Kelly’s brothers get back early.
Rufus goes down somewhere during Are We There Yet? and Mrs. Rufus tells Turtle to take Kelly and have a nice time.
They have lunch, and Kelly gets Turtle to take off his cap. (“I must really like you a lot,” he muses.)

Meanwhile, the Aquamansion’s been sold and E and Vince need someone to finance Medellin, so Ari finds Prince Yair and his ex-Ukrainian soap star wife, Nika.
And though Yair wants Sly Stallone to play Pablo Escobar’s father in the film, he’s also willing to pony up $60 mil. But Vince’s Spidey sense kicks in and he knows Nika wants in his pants. Ari and E don’t see it, but Vinnie’s convinced.
And it turns out he’s on the money, and Yair just wants to keep his wife happy, even if it’s to pay a hot Hollywood actor $60 mil to sleep with her…

(Images courtesy of hbo.com.)

ON THE LOT
Auditions Round 2

So we are witness to the continued clash of egos and styles in two particular groups, which invariably ends in the elimination of one director from each group: Jeff Siebenick (the big guy who kept on getting in the face of the smaller guy, Marty Martin), and Hannah Sink (who, along with fellow director Jessica Brillhart, bumped heads with Kenny “I’m so proud I never went to film school” Luby).

With guest judge Jon Avnet in tow, Carrie Fisher and Brett Ratner run through the 12 short films, heaping praise on “Wilted” (by Jarrett Conaway, Jason Epperson, and Tamela D’Amico; watch it on the website) and “Time Out” (by fx wiz Zach Lipovsky, Sam Friedlander, and Adam Stein; though we get to see portions of it on the episode, you really should see the entire film too).
And though I love “Wilted,” “Time Out” really does rachet up the stakes, as these guys had the balls to go with an idea that pretty much relied on special effects, and actually pulled it off in the insanely constrictive time limit.
So right now, in my books, these are 6 directors I’m keeping my eye on.

Now, as for the show itself, I’m enjoying it, but my chief complaint is that there’s too much going on, so much so that we really don’t get to see a lot, and you’re forced to go on-line just to see what the judges sometimes refer to.
The thing is, when I watch a television show, I don’t want to have to be forced to go elsewhere for everything to make sense to me. I feel that the TV show itself should be able to stand alone and give me all I need to enjoy the On The Lot viewing experience.
I mean, it’s not like these were particularly long short films. They were 2 and a half minutes each, so that comes to 30 minutes total. Would it have hurt Fox to have had a second 1-hour long episode, just so the audience could see all 12 films, instead of the snippets we saw in this episode?
Hopefully, when the field gets whittled down further, then On The Lot can settle down to actually showing us both the directors, as well as their work, in greater detail.

So we left the 24 remaining directors with a new challenge: with 30 minutes of prep time, they’re tasked to direct and shoot a 1-page script in 1 hour. The shorts resulting from this challenge will determine which 18 will go on to next week’s first “Film Premiere” episode. Running 2 hours, it’ll showcase the short films the remaining 18 directors initially submitted, that got them into that field of 50 we saw in the first episode.
(Now, how we get from the 24 of episode 2 to the 18 of episode 3, I’m not entirely sure, but I can only assume we’ll see the 6 eliminations in the initial part of next week’s 2-hour show.)
That’s followed by a “Box Office” results show the following day, where we learn the results of the voting, and who gets sent home.

The remaining 24 directors, as of the end of episode 2:

Adam Stein, 29, freelance film editor, born in Miami, FL, currently living in Los Angeles
Andrew Hunt, 31, promo producer from Minneapolis, MN, raised in Pittsburgh, PA
Brent M., 34, freelancer producer, born and raised in Dallas, TX
Carolina Z., 36, commercial director, originally from Santander, Spain, currently living in Los Angeles, CA
Claudia L., 28, painter and graphic artist, born in Bagheria, Sicily, Italy, currently lives in Miami, FL
David M., 23, admissions counselor living in Santa Ana, CA, but grew up in Aurora, CO
Dean L., 36, writer/director, living in Los Angeles , CA , originally from New York City
Hilari S., 40, independent filmmaker living in Los Angeles, CA, raised in Chicago, Atlanta and NYC
Hilary G., 37, stay-at-home wife and mom who lives in Francestown, NH, and raised in Chelmsford, MA
Jarrett Conaway, 24, graduate student living in Los Angeles, originally from Virginia Beach, VA
Jason Epperson, 30, owner of film production company, born and raised in Winchester, KY
Jessica Brillhart, 22, computer specialist, grew up in York, PA, currently living in Brooklyn, NY
Justin L., 24, digital post-production engineer, born and raised in Orange County, CA
Kenny Luby, 28, freelance director and painter, born and raised in Owego, NY
Marty Martin, 26, creative director of a multimedia company, born and raised in Seattle , WA
Mateen K., 41, teacher, currently living in Los Angeles, CA, raised in the Bronx, NY
Phil H., 22, born and raised in Manchester, England, works as a freelance director
Sam Friedlander, 28, web producer, living in Santa Monica, CA, raised in Westchester, NY
Shalini K., 30, freelance director, raised in Hartford, CT, currently living in Brooklyn, NY
Shira-Lee S., 38, acting teacher, born in Johannesburg, South Africa, now living in New York
Tamela D’Amico, 27, singer, actress and filmmaker living in Los Angeles, raised in Deer Park, NY
Trever J. 24, film editor, currently living in Los Angeles, CA, and raised in Great Falls, MT
Will Bigham, 31, film editor, originally from Canyon, TX, currently living in Glendale, CA
Zach Lipovsky, 23, special effects editor from Vancouver, BC, Canada

The list is from the On The Lot website, and for some reason, the contestants’ last names appear only as initials. I supplied the last names of the directors I’m aware of at the moment.

(Images courtesy of thecinemasource.com [Spielberg] and cbs.com [Burnett].)

ON THE LOT
Auditions Round 1

Opening with one of those interview montages Oscar loves so much, we get to hear some of the 50 would-be contestants of this reality show, as they talk about why they love movies so much, and this is the sort of effective intro sequence that hooks your audience. As one of them says, everyone loves to watch movies.
So, yeah, seeing the boulder roll after Harrison Ford, that was a Movie Moment, and we’ve all had that, whether it was with Raiders of the Lost Ark, or some other treasured film of our perpetual youth.
Sometimes, it isn’t just the movie that sears itself into your brain; sometimes, it’s the experience too. The anticipation of the night before, the trip to the theatre, the standing in line for the ticket; all this melds into one seamless memory of that movie.
All this is successfully conveyed in On The Lot’s opening, as is the reality that here are 50 dreams, 49 of which will be basically dashed by the end of this season.
And yes, other dreams may emerge over the course of the show, new opportunities present themselves, but let’s face it: 49 of these people taking the Universal tour will not get the dream that is inside their heads at this precise moment in time. But then again, that’s the nature of the beast that is reality television, and On The Lot has the potential to follow in Project Runway’s footsteps, in being that rare reality competition show about creative people where the audience can actually see what the judges are making pronouncements on (as opposed, say, to all those chef shows where someone at home can’t really taste the food, can they?).

And speaking of the judges…
Garry Marshall. Cool. He’s done some funny stuff, but I think more importantly, he seems (like his sister Penny) to be a really funny individual who doesn’t exude an air of Hollywood pretension.
Carrie Fisher. Way cool. I mean, Princess Leia. Come on! And, post-Star Wars, she proved she was an excellent writer (for the printed page and the screen).
And then there’s Brett Ratner. Wha?!
Note that they were introduced as Hollywood “legends” (or something to that effect).
Brett. Ratner.
Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

At any rate, the first episode shows just how insane this show can be: the first challenge, given one of five loglines*, you’re to come up with a pitch for a feature-length film overnight, and present it to the judges the following day.
On very little or no sleep, the 50 finalists (from a field of over 12,000, from 33 countries) go through their pitches, and there are the overconfident ones, the hyperactive ones, the nervous one, the ones who are just all over the map.
14 don’t make it through, and for the 36 left, they’re told to form groups of three for the next challenge: write the script for, shoot, and edit a 2 and a half-minute short film… in 24 hours.
Insane!

And though it’s at that early stage of a reality show where you’re still getting a feel for the contestants** (harder still with shows of this sort where you’re privy to the preliminary elimination rounds, when there are far too many contestants to keep track of), I will say that they interestingly decide to present the second challenge and show us the initial part of it (ego clashes, two crews attempting to shoot at the same location at the same time), before coming to the end of the show, thus leaving the audience with a cliffhanger of sorts.
For a premiere episode, it’s got enough of a hook to make me come back for round 2, and though not as cleverly shot and edited as Project Runway, it kicks off to a promising start.

* Personally, my favorite one was the one where a man is watching television, when on the news, his picture is flashed on the screen, and he is reported to be either missing or wanted.

** There are of course, the ones who were focused on who actually got through the first round: Andrew Hunt (confident pitch) and Will Bigham (pointed out by Ratner as having very commercial ideas). Still too early for me to say whether I’d bet on either of these two guys, though Hunt did have a particularly strong and effective pitch delivery.

(Images courtesy of fromscripttodvd.com [Marshall], schwartzmanpr.com [Fisher], and yahoo.eonline.com [Ratner].)