DOOGIE HOWSER, M.D. (Season 4)

January 28, 2013 by chaplin

DOOGIE HOWSER, M.D. (Season 4)

Neil Patrick Harris / Max Casella / Belinda Montgomery / Lawrence Pressman / Mitchell Anderson / Kathryn Layng / Lisa Dean Ryan / Lucy Boryer / Markus Redmond / James B. Sikking Mitchell Anderson / Theme by Mike Post / Created by Stephen Bochco & David E. Kelley

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With the success of ‘The Big Bang Theory‘, the geek has somehow stepped out of the shadows and almost taken on a sort of ironical cool. Popular culture radiates towards oddball characters, and they don’t come much stranger than Doogie Howser, with his 50’s alien genius forehead, and stoic, monotone computer delivery. Neil Patrick Harris as Doogie Howser projected an almost Magyver-like geeky-cool, as a kid prodigy who is forever struggling with one foot in the adult world, while the other hesitatingly tries to understand his teenage contemporaries. The Doogie persona managed to make an indelible impact on the cultural consciousness, despite being axed by it’s network after only 4 Seasons (a drop in the ocean next to other far less competent shows that sailed through on a wing and a prayer). Child prodigies seem to have cropped up left, right and centre since Doogie Howser shut up shop, from the Tv comedy geekery of ‘Big Bang’, to comic book child superheroes like ‘Kick-ass‘ and the X-Men kids taking to the big screen. Wrapped up in the mutated genius character, Neil Patrick Harris himself has carried the character of Doogie around ever since, appearing in each and every subsequent role as a sort of aged version of the smart kid in the sneakers. His appearance as the genius, ‘head-hunted from high-school’ in ‘Starship Troopers‘ being the clearest ‘what Doogie did next’ addendum.

A genius idea about a genius kid who was so smart he got fast-tracked through High School and became a Doctor by the age of 16. Oddly billed as a comedy-drama, Doogie Howser was never shy in bringing serious issues to a younger, perhaps unsuspecting audience, serving up snappy half-hour takes on such tricky subjects as racism, gang culture, Aids and Homophobia, while rather uniquely blending them with a liberal dollop of teen angst. The format is now a familiar one, thanks to the Show’s creative force, Stephen Bochco, that of an exploration of a serious topic through sympathetic characters, who go on a journey of conscience within the episode, and then tell us what they’ve learnt at the close… a sort of entertaining, warm hearted essay. In this case we have the last word given by Howser in the form of his journal entry, either spoken or scrolling across the screen for us to read. A form that ‘Sex and the City‘ used to clever effect, to structure the episode around it’s literary, narrative origins. This sense of the the ‘narrative’ as a device within the show itself crops up from time to time in other ways, most notably with Doogie’s best friend ‘Vinnie Delpino‘ (Max Casella, who recently appeared alongside Brad Pitt in ‘Killing them Softly‘), who as Howser’s grounding contact with kids his own age, extends the documentary style by repeatedly filming within the scenes with a video camera, ubiquitously delivering Scorsese type lines… ‘Hey! That camera is my life‘!’

The Stephen Bochco magic spawned both Hill Street Blues and LA LAW for the mature audience, but managed to cut as much sway with the younger viewers via Doogie Howser. Later seasons, most notably Season four ran into the all too typical pattern of taking jaunts into surreal dream states to perhaps make up for a lack of plot ideas.. a structure that later American hits like Ally McBeal would make a more fundamental part of their main concept (perhaps even more effectively used in the French film ‘Amelie‘, which clearly took inspiration in part from McBeal’s flair for the surreal moment). Doogie need not feel too upset with his four Season run though.. since, let’s face it, he couldn’t stay a teen Doctor forever, so the Show had an inbuilt flatline, that would eventually collide with it’s star’s advancing maturity. Re-watching Doogie Howser is a delight that I hadn’t quite expected. Like greeting an old geeky, childhood friend, who thanks to good judgement, has retained his youthful vigour for life, and didn’t get any taller.

STILLS & PROMOS

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Doogie Howser Season 4 will be released by

Revelation Films – 28th Jan. 2013

Posted in COMEDY, DRAMA | Tagged Ally McBeal, Data, Doogie Howser, Neil Patrick Harris, Starship Troopers, Stephen Bochco, The Big Bang Theory | 2 Comments »

HOLOCAUST : The Story of the Family Weiss (1978)

January 25, 2013 by chaplin

HOLOCAUST

‘The Story of the Family Weiss’

Meryl Streep / Marius Goring / Joseph Bottoms / Michael Moriarty / Sam Wanamaker / David Warner / James Woods / Tovah Feldshuh / Fritz Weaver / Written by Gerald Green / Music by Morton Gould / Dir. Marvin J. Chomsky

How exactly do you make the holocaust into popular entertainment? It’s ever been a hard enough task in the cinema, but American Television has always been hampered by it’s reliance on keeping sponsors happy, and balancing the stocks & shares. To a certain extent this is less of an issue today, with the presence of so many small filmmaking companies willing to invest and convince the larger networks to risk the avant guard.. at least for occasional jaunts into the experimental. Back in 1978 the announcement that a 9hr miniseries about the holocaust was to be played out weekly as a piece of evening entertainment was greeted by shocks and advance criticism. As it turned out the series was rather well made, with a respectable cast, and a not especially exploitative tone. There were the typical criticisms which abound with historical wartime dramas, with nit-picking about inaccuracies of uniform designs, the poetic license taken with time scale.. the shuffling of real life figures with the fictitious protagonists of the story.. but, the principal problem that ‘Holocaust’ ran into was with the subject matter itself, which even in a faultless production, would nevertheless be seen as trivializing the horrors of the Nazi Final Solution for increased viewing figures.

‘Holocaust’s director, Marvin J. Chomsky was quite used to controversy, having only the previous year released a similar style of mini-series ‘Roots’, about the horrors and indignities of the American Slave Trade. ‘Roots’ itself caused much discussion and discomfort among the press and it’s audience, but somehow having a largely black cast in lead roles was seen as a progressive and important advance in television, so any problems with the actual piece itself were deemed of less importance. ‘Holocaust’ coming almost immediately off of the back of ‘Roots’ perhaps seemed to the critics as if the production team had just looking around for another tragedy to exploit. Perhaps if Chomsky had made a series of dramas specifically about WWII, then he would have just been seen as having a particular interest or point to make.. but, switching from Slavery to the holocaust aroused suspicions. Any attempt to release accounts of such sensitive subjects are prone to attack on the grounds of exploitation. There was even some criticism around American publications of The Diary of Anne Frank, which were accused of profiteering, in their bid to increase the Gentile audience for the book by tagging on a preface with a wider appeal, to increase sales with all religious persuasions.

Hollywood itself has tried on numerous occasions to treat the subject respectfully, with ‘Sophie’s Choice’ and ‘Shindler’s List’ being perhaps the most notable successes. That’s not to say that the results are always as safe and acceptable in the Hollywood. ‘The Day the Clown cried’, made by comedian / auteur Jerry Lewis in 1972 caused such abject horror and disbelief with it’s preview audience, that the film was immediately canned and has never seen the light of day since. Circus clowns and concentration camps clearly do not mix well. In an article from Spy magazine Harry Shearer, having seen a rough-cut of the film wrote: ‘With most of these kinds of things, you find that the anticipation, or the concept, is better than the thing itself. But seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. “Oh, my God!” – that’s all you can say.’

Meryl Streep shines as a key focal point in the whole drama, even if she is not present in every scene, it is to her that we radiate, since she has such a magnetic appeal on film. This is though, what we might call the proto-Meryl, since she only had two minor roles under her belt at the time, we experience the development of the now all too familiar impassioned expressions, and wan internal looks, which are soon to propel her to great heights post ‘Holocaust’, with such films as ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978), ‘French Lieutenant’s Woman’ (1981) and of course the remarkable ‘Sophie’s Choice’ (1982). For James Woods too, ‘Holocaust’ was an early role, with comparatively minor film parts up until that time, it took a few years until his screen persona would truly emerge with notable films ‘Videodrome’ (1983), ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984) .. ‘Cop’ (1988). It’s interesting to see the reversal in the Hollywood star system, where rather than stars turning to television after a successful film career has waned, the new Hollywood breed were starting out in Tv, with hopes of a stepping stone to a career in the Movies.. George Clooney, Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis to name but a few.

To play off against the sympathetic performances of Streep & Woods, we have the ever exceptional David Warner, who relishes every nasty nuance of his role as an unflappable Nazi officer. These parts always seem to suit Warner down to the ground, and over the years have helped to establish a particularly British aspect to the traditional Hollywood badguy, that never seems to quite alter or lose popularity in the villain stakes. A far cry from his 60’s New Wave beginnings in films like ‘Morgan: A suitable Case for Treatment’.. mind you, even as Morgan, Warner had a certain maniacal glee about him, so perhaps the screen villainy was bound to emerge. Michael Moriarty gives his best cold indifferent face to proceedings, and Ian Holm adds some acting class, as a creepy Heinrich Himmler.. but it’s not really the acting, nor the plot itself that excels, but rather the shocking truth of the subject matter. Yes, ‘Holocaust’ was released by a popular Tv network, and yes it sought some increased viewing figures through it’s choice of taboo subjects.. but thank heavens it did, since without their pushing of the boundaries and attempts at thought provoking television, we would never have had such modern masterful series as ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘The Sopranos’, ‘Deadwood’, and ‘Boardwalk Empire’. Aside from the boost to the medium itself, surely any discussion of such a terrible and important time in human history is worthwhile, if it ultimately educates and goes the smallest step towards stopping any repetition of such despicable events.