HBO announces the Clinton / Trump miniseries we all expected and kind of dreaded. The team behind ‘Game Change’ will produce with Jay Roach directing.
We knew it was coming. Jay Roach even talked to Megan McLachlan about it. We just didn’t expect that outcome. HBO announced today Jay Roach under Tom Hanks’s Playtone production company will bring the whole show to the small screen. The Clinton / Trump miniseries will be based on an unpublished book by Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Roach’s 2012 film Game Change won five Emmys including Outstanding Miniseries or Movie.
Honestly, I’m not even sure I can stomach it.
HBO’s Press Release
NEW YORK, March 9, 2017 – HBO has announced plans for a miniseries that tells the story of Donald Trump’s dramatic, improbable victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and has enlisted Jay Roach to direct and executive produce and Playtone’s Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman as executive producers. The miniseries will be based on Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s upcoming third installment of the “Game Change” series, which will be published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House (PRH), and cover the most stunning political upset of all time.
Based on the 2010 New York Times No. 1 bestseller by Halperin and Heilemann, HBO Films’ “Game Change” was executive produced by Goetzman and Hanks, directed and executive produced by Roach, and starred Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson and Ed Harris. Debuting in 2012 on HBO, it went on to win five Emmy® Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries or Movie, three Golden Globes, including Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, and a Peabody Award.
Halperin and Heilemann’s book “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime” was widely hailed as the definitive account of the historic 2008 presidential election, and was followed four years later by the New York Times bestselling sequel “Double Down: Game Change 2012.”
Len Amato, president, HBO Films, says, “We are thrilled to continue our relationship with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, whose work on their bestselling book ‘Game Change’ set the bar for political reporting and storytelling inside a presidential campaign. Reuniting ‘Game Change’ director and executive producer Jay Roach and Playtone producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman with Mark and John for a project based on their upcoming book promises to vividly capture the most unique and impactful event in modern American politics.”
Game of Thrones Season 7 premiere date announced through a prolonged Facebook Live stunt. Guess what? A bunch of people watched it too.
HBO held a Facebook Live publicity stunt today at 2pm ET for Game of Thrones Season 7. Sure, I love the show as much as anyone. However, I’d have called you damned foot if you’d told me yesterday that I’d be watching a block of ice melt today. For the announcement of a date. A date that I could peg with my eyes closed most likely. And, yet, there I was.
The event started in a stone room decorated in the Game of Thrones style. A block of ice sat on a small platform surrounded by those fire-bearing urns – the kind that Daenerys was so fond of knocking over. A blowtorch appeared just off the screen. Encased in the ice was the date no one knew we really needed all that badly. HBO instructed viewers to type “FIRE” to urge the fire along. Over the course of an hour, the event faded in and out. Many speculated that the production team freaked out over the duration of time. Who knew it would take that long to melt ice?
Cast members appeared and gave additional instructions. I left and rejoined, amazed at how long it took to actually melt ice. Amazed at the fact I was watching someone melt ice on Facebook Live. With cries of “DRACARYS,” another torch emerged, hopefully speeding the effect. All in all, it took around 1 hour 15 minutes to reveal the date: July 16, 2017.
You have to hand it to HBO, though. They know how to stoke publicity for their shows. At one point, 150,000 people were simultaneously watching, chanting, laughing, and bemoaning their lost time. Still, they watched, and so did I.
Here’s the official Game of Thrones Season 7 teaser courtesy of HBO via Facebook.
Review stars Andy Daly as Forrest MacNeil, a critic who reviews life situations on a 1-to-5 star basis. In Seasons 1 and 2, his commitment to this project destroys his life. If you haven’t watched the first two seasons, Forrest’s wife Susanne (played by Jessica St. Clair from Playing House) recaps it all perfectly in this Final Season promo trailer.
Let’s see if Forrest can turn it all around in Season 3 (by the looks of it, that’s gonna be a no. . .1 star).
Review final season starts on Thursday, March 16 at 10 p.m. EST on Comedy Central.
NBC Universal hosted an Emmy lunch featuring their top players in the 2017 Emmy season. AwardsDaily TV’s Jazz Tangcay covered the event.
NBC Universal made a start with their Emmy campaign this week with a luncheon at Ysabel’s in Hollywood. In attendance was a who’s who of TV, Jennifer Lopez sat in on corner representing her NBC show, Shades of Blue. Ben Feldman and America Ferrera sat in another talking about their comedy Superstore. Derek Hough dazzled talking about Hairspray Live. Milo Ventimiglia, Justin Hartley, Chris Sullivan and Ron Cephas Jones from This is Us also attended.
This is Us emerged as the surprise breakout hit of the season and the number one show at NBC. It’s an emotional and compelling drama and a huge hit with viewers as well as critics. Sullivan and Ventimiglia didn’t divulge any spoilers about the show. Both praised fans on social media for keeping silent on the show when it airs, only expressing surprise or grief as reactions to what happens in an episode. Both actors also said they were enjoying their break during filming, joking about how they were looking forward to having tacos and discussed their favorite local taco spots. Ventimiglia’s arm was in a cast and will be back in action when the show starts filming Season 2 later this year.
I caught up with Tituss Burgess from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a favorite of the AwardsDaily TV gang. I also had a chat with Carol Kane who revealed her character will have a new boyfriend when Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt returns on May 19. She didn’t divulge much more than that, so we’ll just have to wait until the new season premieres.
Writer Michael Schur was at another table with the cast of The Good Place, Ted Danson and Kristen Bell. Schur and all were thrilled that the viewer never quite knows what’s going to happen from one episode to the next. That’s just how he likes it. If you haven’t seen the Season 1 finale, you’re in for quite the surprise with what happens. He is already back writing the next season, due to start shooting in April.
I sat down with Jennifer Lopez, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas and Jack Orman who were there representing Shades of Blue which premiered Season 2 on Sunday night. It won the time slot for NBC, and that was something everyone was delighted about. Goldsmith-Thomas discussed the tweet party Lopez held at her house on Sunday night to celebrate the new episode airing inviting cast, crew and friends for a viewing and tweeting party. Thomas pointed out how the crew, “Protects each other. They love each other. They shoot two episodes at once. It’s hard.”
Lopez added, “Everyone’s in it to win it. Me and them (Thomas and Orman) set the tone that we’re doing work that is important to us and that we’re proud of. Everybody takes a great sense of pride in the show that we’re making.”
Thomas mentioned that she came to TV because “the best writing is on TV and we’re making 13 little movies a year.”
The cast of Shades of Blue makes for phenomenal Sunday night viewing and includes Lopez, Ray Liotta, Drea De Matteo as the crooked NYPD cops all working on the anti-corruption Task Force. Warren Kole plays the FBI agent assigned to the task force and challenges their loyalty. I joked that after watching the premiere I wanted to punch him. Lopez replied, “He gets better and better every episode. I loved him from the beginning when he came in to audition and watching him create this character and get so comfortable in it, and really push the envelope, it’s so impressive.” Orman added jokingly, “My son said to me, “You found a new way to make him more creepy.”
Lopez and Thomas both said it’s an exciting time to be at NBC and on TV. “Jennifer is fearless and wanted to dive into it because it’s a great role.” Lopez has already started thinking about Season 3. Aside from Shades of Blue, Lopez is in the second year of her Vegas residency at Planet Hollywood. She’s also developing World of Dance, a dance competition series for NBC, and at the end of the year will star and produce the live TV production of Bye Bye Birdie. I asked if she was up for directing an episode of the show, she said, “We talk about it. Maybe. It might be time. It has to be at a time when I’m not doing anything else.”
I also had a brief sit down with my friends over at Gold Derby, Tom O’Neil and Marcus Dixon, who were with the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt cast, joined by Jane Krakowski. O’Neil was explaining how the Oscar and Emmy voting systems work much to everyone’s fascination. Krakowski and Kane had no shortage of questions for O’ Neil.
As much as Clarence would have liked me to, sadly, I didn’t get the opportunity to talk to Kerry Ehrin who was there talking about Bates Motel. So, I couldn’t find anything out about the new and final season.
HBO’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s ‘Sharp Objects’ casts its second Oscar nominee as Emmy buzz builds. Should we just crown Adams and Clarkson now?
The upcoming HBO adaptation of Sharp Objects cast its second Oscar nominee earlier this week. Patricia Clarkson (next seen in House of Cards Season 5) will join the 8-episode series as Adora Crellin, the queen of the local socialite scene as well as the estranged mother of Amy Adams’ lead character Camille Parker. Adams was cast as the lead in early 2016 and will be performing double duties as star and executive producer.
Gillian Flynn’s debut novel follows Camille Parker, a reporter recently released from a psychiatric hospital. She returns to her hometown to research the murder of two preteen girls. As she covers the murder, Adams’ character begins to put together a psychological puzzle from her past. Flynn has described her debut novel as a thriller with “moist” and “gothic tones.”
Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions, which previously produced the HBO projects The Jinx and The Normal Heart, first optioned the best seller six years ago. Marti Noxon (UnReal) will server as show-runner as well as co-write the series with Flynn. Jean-Marc Vallée (Big Little Lies) will direct all eight episodes.
Since the massive success of 2014’s Gone Girl, audiences have clamored for adaptations of Gillian Flynn’s other novels, and the casting news of Patricia Clarkson only adds to the excitement. Sharp Objects marks the television debut of Amy Adams since becoming a major Hollywood star. As a 5-time Oscar nominee, her rise to Emmy glory seems inevitable. Mixing in a 2-time Emmy winning actress and a director known for his ability to guide actors to award-worthy roles (including the entire cast of Big Little Lies) only adds to growing buzz . With filming reportedly starting this week the only question left to answer is when exactly the show will premiere?
Clarence looks at FX’s critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated drama ‘The Americans’ for the very first time. Is it possible the series could win in 2017?
FX’s critically acclaimed drama The Americans received its first Drama Series Emmy nomination last year. The attention followed years of widespread angst over continued under-appreciation of the series. It didn’t win, of course. Game of Thrones did. However, HBO made a significant decision for the 2017 Emmy cycle: Game of Thrones Season 7 would not premiere within the Emmy eligibility window. For the first time in nearly a decade, we enter Emmy season without a prescribed favorite. Does that put The Americans in a prime spot for a potential Emmy win?
The Experiment
To explore the potential, I finally decided to preview an episode despite not having seen an episode of the series. This scenario feels highly likely as Emmy voters wakened to the series through last year’s nomination. Given it took 4 years to receive that nomination, it’s highly likely that a smaller number of the Television Academy watched the series from scratch. My experiment, as we’ll call it, doesn’t feel that far off the mark.
So, what were my impressions of The Americans Season 5?
First, the buzz is absolutely true – this is a great series. The direction feels cinematic in its attention to detail and character. The writing provides thematic resonance and an eerie sense of melancholy. The performances are across the board great with stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys deserving every ounce of praise they’ve received. That’s the beauty of coming into a show as its earning its Great Show status. The premiere episode of Season 5 simply blew me away.
Admittedly, I’m jumping into The Americans pool at the deep end. I’m not sure I know all the characters yet. I don’t have their history and connections. Still, the episode offered a few entry points. There’s an early great montage about food and agriculture in Russia. Also, the writers dedicate a handful of excellent scenes to Elizabeth (Russell) and Phillip (Rhys) dealing with their daughter Paige’s (Holly Taylor) awareness of their “job.” Finally, the episode ends in a fascinatingly long sequence as a mission eventually goes somewhat wrong.
Final Verdict
The Americans offers a tense, dramatic Season 5 pilot full of resonance beyond its central conceit. To fans of the series, this is nothing new. To new viewers, I’ll tell you that the episode absolutely worked for me. It made me want to go back and start from the beginning – the highest praise given that’s a full four seasons. So, can it win the Emmy next September? Absolutely. It has as much of a shot as The Crown or Stranger Things, two of the hottest new properties gunning for nominations. My advice to the uninitiated – get on board now. I suspect the Television Academy is already doing so as we speak.
The Americans airs Tuesday nights on FX at 10pm ET.
Robin Write looks at Netflix’s latest film, the Sundance hit I don’t feel at home in this world anymore. starring Melanie Lynskey.
You might recognize Macon Blair from Gold, Green Room, and as the lead in Blue Ruin. With Netflix’s release, I don’t feel at home in this world anymore., we get to experience (and cherish) him turning an assured hand at writing and directing a feature film. Tipping over the edge of comic, thrilling, good old fashioned drama, Blair’s debut feels refreshingly brilliant throughout its varied shifts in tone and pace. You understand he feels at home behind both the camera and the typewriter. I don’t feel at home in this world anymore. additionally provides Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood with roles they should arguably have been offered for the last 15-plus years. Winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the movie quickly emerged a crowd favorite.
Melanie Lynskey plays Ruth, an ordinary woman with ample amounts of good nature repressed by an America losing its head and heart. Sound familiar? Ruth struggles socially as the people around her ruin plot points of a book, a patient dies on her, people cut in line at the store, let their dogs shit on her lawn. On top of that, she is burgled. Along with anti-depressants and irreplaceable family silverware, Ruth’s laptop is stolen, which propels her into her own form of justice when a device tracker cell phone app proves more useful than the blasé local law enforcement. Elijah Wood plays Tony, the dog owner who previously experienced run-ins with Ruth a la dog poop, who now seems to be the right fit to her mild vigilante side-kick. His martial-arts enthusiasm and rock music love are only part of his appeal. As the pursuit escalates, so do the consequences, running along frenetically to a climax you did not see coming a mile off.
Final Verdict
Blair’s handling of the film’s eclectic style is a majestic feat, and a truly marvelous treat for its audience. To see it is to experience as well as believe it, rather than luring you in with mentions of the karma displayed via a venomous snake, or the literal direction prompt from Ruth’s departed grandmother. That said, never does the movie spiral off into ridicule or fantasy, rather provide hilarious and absurd stepping stones of compelling story-telling and pure cinematic entertainment (a rightfully grand compliment given its Netflix release). There are violent moments scattered, but surprise you, and the casual, black humor has its appropriate place too. Ruth digging into a cereal box for a toy badge to impersonate a cop is both genuinely funny and character-suited. The avoidance of romance yet subtle chemistry between Ruth and Tony makes for an original on-screen partnership that ticks all the right boxes. Wood is terrific as the flamboyant neighbor who just wants to help, but this is Lynskey’s picture. As the socially awkward woman with a heart for what’s right and fire in her belly, this surely must have been written specifically for her.
I don’t feel at home in this world anymore. is on Netflix now, so once you’ve seen it you can add it to your Best Films of 2017 list.
The Water Cooler Gang welcomes Jazz Tangcay to the podcast to discuss Feud: Bette and Joan, the 2017 Emmys, and other hot topics.
This week at the Water Cooler, we try to put aside our barely contained personal differences. We invite Jazz Tangcay to mediate our discussion of FX and Ryan Murphy’s Feud, a new anthology series which kicks things off with Feud: Bette and Joan. This freshman installment details the long-running feud between Oscar winners Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) in the What Ever Happened to Baby Jane era. We reveal our initial thoughts of the series and discuss how deeply we think Emmy will embrace it.
But before that, we kick things off with our weekly TV Tidbits segment. We dish a recent controversial episode of Girls and ask the question, “Does the series matter in its final season?” We then survey the 2017 Emmy landscape, Jazz’s lunch with Emmy-hungry celebs, and Westworld’s place in the Emmy conversation. Finally, we chat about the recently announced future installment of Feud.
We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the television we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.
Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for remembering to rate us on iTunes!
04:14 – TV Tidbits
30:00 – Feud: Bette and Joan
51:24 – Flash Forward
Joey Moser talks to Tickled director David Farrier about his infamous documentary and its follow-up The Tickle King, now showing on HBO.
Many documentaries look at their subjects from afar because events are documented in their footage and their story is complete. With some docs, like 2016’s Tickled, the ordeal is all the more fascinating because the story is still developing. Co-director David Farrier’s odyssey with former disgraced school administrator David D’Amato continues with HBO’s 20 minute follow-up The Tickle King, and it proves that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction.
In case you aren’t familiar with Farrier’s feature, here’s a little backstory. While trying to find something new to write, journalist Farrier casually stumbled upon the unknown world of competitive endurance tickling, but when he reached out to video producer Jane O’Brien Media, he was met with a hostile reception. Upon further investigation, Farrier, along with co-director Dylan Reeve, uncovered that the young men featured in these videos were being continually harassed when they tried to sever ties with the secret tickling world. It’s one of the oddest documentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s ridiculous and silly and unnerving and uncomfortable all at the same time, but there’s more story to tell.
Getting started in the tickle world
When you watch the feature film, you might not be able to look at the innocent act of tickling the same way again. When I asked Farrier if he thinks he could participate in the activity after making the documentary, he was quick to answer.
“No. Richard Ivey tickled me—it’s not in the film—but he strapped me down on a tickling bench and tickled me for 10 minutes. It was such a difficult thing to be tickled by a professional tickler and you can’t get away with your hands and your legs completely locked away. It’s pretty awful. If you’re into tickling, good on you but it’s definitely not for me.”
Up until he dived into this documentary (or documentary series at this point), Farrier had mainly been associated with lighter journalism. At the beginning of the documentary feature, we see him chatting up with a younger Justin Bieber (tickling and the Biebs were both innocent back then) and interviewing some cosplay performers. Tickled thrust him into a world of more expose reporting–something he would be more open to if the right project came along.
(Photo: HBO)
“Dylan and I both found it incredibly satisfying uncovering a story that hasn’t been told before and putting the pieces together. I wasn’t trained as an investigative reporter. I’ve admired the work of investigative reporters in the newsroom that I used to work in. I think Dylan and I both love the internet–we both spend a lot of time online–and I did enjoy the investigation side. If another logical subject fits the topic of a documentary then I’d love to dive straight back in. I do a lot of writing as well. I did an investigation recently about this sort of hidden world of pedophiles on YouTube and how they exploit young YouTubers. That worked as a written piece, and that’s the joy of the world we live in. Investigations can be a written piece of a podcast or a series of small videos or a documentary. If there’s another topic that fits a feature format, I’d love to dive back in.”
The Tickled aftermath
When the feature documentary’s credits begin to roll, a lot of questions remain. David D’Amato has been unmasked and suspicions confirmed, but it’s obvious that this documentary can continue. There’s more to the story, and that’s when things get a little crazy.
“The end of Tickled, things are left in a kind of quiet situation where it’s ongoing but we’re not experiencing the same chaos as when we were making the film. Once the film premiered at Sundance it got pretty crazy again and we started filming again, and we knew that that footage was going to go somewhere. Another film or online or whatever the situation was. But I think HBO premiere is so important for us because it’s going to go out so widely it seemed like a perfect time to make sense of the chaos of last year. We had posted some things on Facebook but I really wanted to use that footage as a timeline so people could understand. With the looming HBO date, it seemed like the most logical time to get it together.”
The Tickle King, HBO’s 20 minute follow-up, has some incredible footage. With a lot of exposes, you don’t get to hear from both sides or even see them when they are alive, but David D’Amato pays a lot of attention to Farrier and Reeve’s films. While Farrier was promoting the feature in New York, Reeve was in Los Angeles at a screening, and D’Amato was actually in attendance. Kevin Clarke, a Jane O’Brien Media representative featured a lot in Tickled, is more aggressive towards the filmmakers while D’Amato is oddly calm, shaking Reeve’s hand and willing to witness the theater’s Q&A session. These incidents were reported on in the news when Tickled came out, but it’s another thing entirely to watch it unfold on screen.
(Photo: HBO)
“I was so proud with how Dylan dealt with that situation. It was a really full on thing to be involved with to have the key people who didn’t want the film made watching the film and then getting quite angry. There was a lot of yelling and a lot of threats. I think the other emotion was almost jealousy that I wasn’t there, because I would’ve loved to have been just in that room watching. Or just to feel the atmosphere in that room. I think Dylan did this amazing job of not allowing that situation get out of hand. He had this great idea to give the floor to the main character in the film and give him the mic and let him speak. That was pretty incredible and gave you some insight into how his mind works. We don’t want people lashing out at this person through booing, and we didn’t want to harass these people back. We didn’t want to play by their rules. Dylan just wanted to calm the crowd down. This person bought a ticket to the film, and we should be able to hear what they have to say. It was neat how he shut that down.”
While a tickling empire toppling over sounds utterly ridiculous, Farrier remains calm and collected during the entire interview process. These are people that don’t want to be acknowledged publicly, and they certainly don’t want to be ambushed over involvement in a tickling website. It’s all rather strange and a bit scary, but Farrier manages to keep his calm demeanor even though approaching them was something he feared doing.
“When I was approaching people that didn’t want to be filmed like when I approach the studio where they had the tickling competition. Or when I approached the subject on this, you know, snowy street. Being from New Zealand, my main fear at times was ‘does this person have a gun?’ In America, people seem to like their guns, right? So that was in the back of my head as this fear. Of course, no one pulled a gun out, and I was perfectly safe and fine, but that was always in the back of my head when I was approaching people.”
Since the story is so ongoing, it feels like there could almost be a tickling documentary genre forming, and Farrier will be right there to document it. No matter what medium the story will be presented it in future reportings, one thing is certain: this is no laughing matter.
“I think there probably is more story to tell. I got to the end of The Tickle King and there’s still questions that are raised in that, and I think we will hear from more victims and more people that are involved with this world. The authorities might be pressured to act more now that the story is going much wider now. When audiences watch Tickled, I think there’s a sense of injustice that Dylan and I felt when we were making it. We will monitor things, and film where we can. We will follow the story and figure out what the best venue is to show it whether it’s on HBO or we write about it. Visually has been the best way to tell the story so far, so I’d like to think we’ll keep filming and find a way to put it out there.”
Here’s a sneak preview of Sunday night’s Crashing Episode 3 on HBO. In this episode, Pete crashes at T.J. Miller’s house.
Starring Pete Holmes, the comedy series Crashing draws on Holmes’ own experiences as a comedian, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the unpredictable world of stand-up comedy. Here’s a sneak peek at Crashing Episode 3.
Debut: SUNDAY, MAR. 5 (10:30–11:00 p.m.)
While staying at T.J. Miller’s place, Pete (Pete Holmes) has the unsettling experience of witnessing a comic who can’t “turn it off.” Hearing from his wife, Jessica (Lauren Lapkus), Pete and T.J. travel upstate to her yard sale, where Pete unexpectedly teams up with Jess’ new boyfriend, Leif (George Basil), to get back a prized possession. After Jess voices her true feelings to Pete, the sale comes to a dramatic end. Written by Pete Holmes & Judd Apatow; directed by Chris Kelly.
(T.J. Miller, Pete Holmes. Photo: Macall B. Polay/HBO)(Lauren Lapkus, Pete Holmes. Photo: Macall B. Polay/HBO)
