WBEZ | tv

TV and movie crews spending more time filming in Chicago

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:26:00 -0500

The number of days movies and TV shows spent filming in Chicago is up 45 percent compared to 2011, according to the Chicago Film Office.

The office’s director, Rich Moskal, said the city saw a record increase in the number of production days: 1,808 days in 2012 compared to 1,235 the year before.

Although the number of productions themselves held largely steady, Moskal said the production day figure gives a fuller picture of the amount of activity here. TV series could spend as many as 150 days filming, compared to the production of a commercial, which only has a presence for 2 to 3 days.

“Each day a production is filming translates into days of employment for local crew, additional days of business with local vendors, hotel nights, etc,” he said. “The more days a production is here, the more they spend locally.”

In 2012, Film Office data shows, local film and TV industry spending hit a high of $170 million. That’s up from $160 million in 2010 and $154 million in 2011.

Last year’s increase is mainly due to four TV shows: Chicago Fire (NBC), Boss (Starz), Underemployed (MTV) and Mob Doctor (Fox), Moskal said, adding that 17 independent movies also were filmed in the city. So were several reality shows including Mob Wives Chicago, Chicagolicious and Hardcore Pawn: Chicago.

“Chicago looks great on film, it’s a great place to tell a story creatively, but it also has great depth of talent and resources to outfit the productions when they are here,” Moskal said.

He said a 30 percent tax credit also helped bring in the film business: “The tax incentive has done a tremendous job in terms of attracting production and keeping (it) here in Chicago, not just for Hollywood productions, but locally produced productions as well.”

Although two of last year’s TV shows were cancelled, and the fate of a third looks uncertain, Moskal said that’s just part of the gamble.

“You never know if it’s going to last or not,” he said, adding that this year, the city will have four other pilots filming and three Hollywood films including Transformers Four.

Bruce Sheridan, who chairs the Film and Video Department at Columbia College Chicago, said he’s already seeing an increase in the film industry this year.

“We have six features that we are putting out students interns onto this coming summer, which is much higher than last year or the year before,” Sheridan said. “So, we think the trend is continuing.”

By way of introduction: What TV series' opening credits say about architecture and place

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 05:00:00 -0600

I had a fascinating, but all-too-brief, chat earlier last week with a Texas architecture professor who uses the opening credits of television programs to teach her students about architecture and cities.

She's on to something. Architecture, history and place are often captured and contextualized — and quite well, too — in seconds'-long intros. The professor's picks included the famous Mary Tyler Moore Show intro, but also that of Frank's Place, the short-lived, but still sorely-missed 1987 CBS comedy featuring Tim Reid as a Boston college professor who inherits his father's New Orleans restaurant:

A few weeks ago in my assessment of the now-canceled Boss, I mentioned the program's opening credits. But others come to mind now, such as the intro to All in the Family, with its shots of working-class Queens. Or the above intro to the 1970s comedy Good Times showing a grimy Chicago as it was then, not to mention the long-gone broadcast antenna atop Marina City and the now-bulldozed Cabrini Green housing projects.

Buildings and place are featured prominently in the BBC Sherlock series:

And dig the Brutalist campus a brooding Gary Collins strolls through in the early 1970s show The Sixth Sense:

Got any examples of architecture-rich TV intros you'd like to share? Email them to me at lbey@wbez.org, along with a few lines explaining your selection. If I get enough responses, I'll do a follow-up here.

The problem with pregnant women today is that their placentas don’t taste good

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:10:00 -0500

Last night I reviewed the TV show Pregnant in Heels for the A.V. Club. As I mention in my review, there was a woman on the show who revealed a plan to eat her placenta after she gave birth to her baby.

I believe that it’s been well-established by this point that eating your placenta is standard practice. January Jones did it; New York magazine did an article on it; Christine on Pregnant In Heels did it. So, basically, it's de rigueur at this point. If you have to ask why, I just feel embarrassed for you.

However, looking at Christine’s face as she choked down her placenta smoothie, I was struck by a problem that afflicts way too many pregnant women: We are growing gross-tasting placentas.

To address this problem, I have carefully developed a diet plan that will result in a tasty placenta that you will enjoy eating after you give birth. It goes a little something like this:

Candy all day long
Occasional cake and cookie supplements
Pie for dessert
Ice cream snacks
Milkshakes for hydration
Fruit chew vitamins

Now if you’re wondering whether this diet is approved by doctors, the answer is a resounding yes!! Just trust me on this though and don’t be uncool and go asking a doctor to back this up. She’s busy! Leave her alone.

If you stick to this plan, after you give birth, your placenta will come out looking something like this. Meanwhile, your baby will look adorable, like this. Best of all, everyone will want a piece of your nutritious, healthful placenta, so not only will the father of your child adore you for bringing new life into the world, he’ll appreciate you “baking” him a tasty treat! (The placenta, not the baby. )

Hey TV networks: Keep it clean

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:18:50 -0500

The advent of cable and satellite options changed everything with regards to TV censorship. Cable and satellite TV did not use the public spectrum and therefore were not under the purview of the Federal Communications Commission. Cable and satellite TV are subscription services, and so two basic axioms of capitalism applied:

(1) “If it is not specifically forbidden, it is allowed!” Hence nudity, vulgarity and violence were fair game.
(2) Caveat emptor, “Let the buyer beware!” Hence the motto, warning and promise of one premier cable channel: “It’s not TV. It’s HBO.”

For a while it seemed like the networks, which must still comply with FCC guidelines, were the last bastion of civility on TV. But that’s changing, too. A number of recent studies have suggested that the broadcast networks are trying to compete with cable by pushing the language envelope. Popular shows like The Office, 30 Rock, Two and a Half Men, American Dad, Mike and Molly, Family Guy, Grey’s Anatomy and 2 Broke Girls have been dancing on the edge of censorship rules by regularly referencing genitalia in their comedy skits and joke lines. In other words, in an attempt to draw attention to their shows, in an attempt to be edgy and hip, they are pushing the boundaries of family-friendly language and good taste.

I, for one, agree with Marty Kaplan, media professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, that: “Words that you hear in many 10^th grade biology classrooms are probably the most benign end of the spectrum (regarding sexual titillation).” Like Kaplan, I don’t think there’s a danger of children growing up philosophically and psychologically malformed by learning these words.

My problem is much more basic. I don’t think the gratuitous mention of genetalia is as much profane or a threat to cultural standards as it is vulgar and not at all funny! Like children, the script writers are using “potty talk” and “naughty words” for shock value. Instead of trying to write something clever, something funny – their shows offer jokes that are more titillating than they are humorous. Frankly, I’m not offended as much as I am bored. Continuously mentioning body parts and toilet references is simply not funny!

Now I know I sound like an old curmudgeon, which I am, but there is a whole history of comedy on television that was funny without being rude, lewd or sexually suggestive. Parts of The Office, 2 Broke Girls, and especially 30 Rock are brilliantly funny; but when push comes to shove, I’ll take Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar or Jackie Gleason any day of the week!

My advice to the networks is, let’s keep “potty talk” in the “potty.” Get to work on developing better comedy scripts and funnier gag lines.

Cell phones, cell phones, cell phones: Americans now outnumbered by their electronic devices

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:00:00 -0600

New statistics show that America now contains more cell phones than it does actual people.

Maybe I’m just feeling nostalgic, but I think there’s something peculiar about the fact that we, as a nation, are outnumbered by our electronic gagets:

Al Gini is a professor of business ethics and chair of the department of management at Loyola University Chicago. He is also the co-founder and associate editor of Business Ethics Quarterly,and the author of several books, including My Job, My Self and Seeking the Truth of Things: Confessions of a (catholic) Philosopher.

Fall TV: Nostalgia for the glamorous 1960s needs a tune-up

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:01:00 -0500

Two of this week's most talked-about TV premieres have very similar settings: Pan Am, first airing on Sunday, is about attractive young women working as Pan Am flight attendants in the 1960s. The Playboy Club, which premiered Monday night, is about — well, attractive young women working as Playboy bunnies in the 1960s. Both shows are trying to imitate the success of another show set in the '60s: Mad Men.

(NPR pop-culture blogger Linda Holmes wrote about The Playboy Club when the network introduced the show to critics over the summer, and she weighed in on the revamped pilot episode this week.)

In The Playboy Club, new bunny Maureen has a pretty good setup. She's fresh in from Fort Wayne, Indiana, with a job at the coolest nightspot in town, Chicago's Playboy Club. She gets caught up in some mob action, but when she's told to leave Chicago — for her own good, of course — she wants to stay because being a Playboy Bunny is her dream job.

The opening even features narration (and an implied blessing) from an actor portraying Playboy founder Hugh Hefner himself: "I built a place in the toddlin' town where everything was perfect," he intones. "Fantasies became realities for everyone who walked through the doors."

Male-dominated fantasies, mostly — and for all its nostalgic glamour, NBC's Playboy Club gets stuck between its roots in a pre-liberation era and the reality of women's prominence in modern television. Because we're watching it in 2011, The Playboy Club has female characters argue for bunny work as empowerment; they say it's the best option for an ambitious woman in a troubled world.

"Honey, all I'm saying is that life is always going to be rough out there," explains the one African-American bunny. (She calls herself "chocolate.") "We're in here. We're at the party, and the party just started."

But because this is also about the Playboy life, the women's jobs and successes depend on serving and pleasing men. It's a hard line to walk. The show doesn't even give last names to the bunny characters, including star Amber Heard's troubled Maureen.

Worst of all, because this is network TV, the show commits what's a cardinal sin in Hugh Hefner's hedonistic universe: It isn't sexy. It's hard to believe, but NBC made a show about the Playboy Club that has almost no actual sex in it. It's not much more than a transparent homage to the Mad Men era of Rat Pack songs and sleek suits.

Sex appeal is not a problem for ABC's Pan Am. The airline's stewardesses — again, it's the '60s, so we're not calling them flight attendants yet — emerge as the ultimate symbol of buttoned-down beauty, the cameras lingering on their wide eyes, occasional cleavage and tight skirts. It's a decidedly male vision that at times seems sexier than anything The Playboy Club has to offer.

Here, the nostalgia on tap is for the Jet Age, the first time you could fly a plane anywhere in the world on an hour's notice, with more leg room than you find in today's airport lounges. So what if the only way for a woman to get ahead in this world is by serving drinks in the sky, enduring girdle checks and mandatory weigh-ins before she puts on her sleek stewardess hat?

Both Pan Am and Playboy Club attempt the same balancing act that Mad Men actually pulls off. They want to bask in the sexy glamour of the 1960s while also exploring its oppressive reality. This way, the networks hope to draw male viewers — whom advertisers love — without losing the female viewers who watch TV far more often.

But for these series to work, they need to dig deeper, moving beyond the superficial glitz of a time when too many lives were unfairly limited. Otherwise, The Playboy Club and Pan Am will just be celebrating a time when women had less freedom and less power. That's a history lesson no one needs to learn.

Eric Deggans is the TV critic for the St. Petersburg Times.

Big storms are big business for the weather channel

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:53:00 -0500

It's a little strange hearing a rundown of a television network's big and successful year that talks not only about audience growth, but also about deadly hurricanes, crippling drought, and a major heat wave. The Weather Channel isn't glad anyone is suffering, obviously, but it's been pretty good business for them. They aren't afraid to tell you how well they did during the Groundhog Day winter storm, or during the tornado in Joplin, Missouri. Fifty million people watched The Weather Channel during the week of the Joplin tornado, they'll tell you.

Speaking to television critics on Wednesday, the Weather Channel personnel — executive Bob Walker, on-air meteorologists Jim Cantore and Stephanie Abrams, and hurricane expert Dr. Rick Knabb — stressed the expansion of content across platforms and the importance of what they do and everything you hear about from everybody else, but it all comes down to the fact that weather is one of those things where people don't necessarily have the option of losing interest. Walker pointed out late in the session that the channel's data indicates that 90 percent of the U.S. population checks the weather in one way or another every day. Every day.

They walk a fine line, because they don't want to be tagged as irresponsible or exploitative. In fact, Abrams showed a little irritation talking about how she doesn't like to be lumped in with fools (my word, not hers) who, for instance, are trying to get the most dramatic shot by "standing on the seawall in Galveston when there's a storm coming ashore." (Galveston and that sea wall came up again later during a similar disclaiming of bad tactics. One sure does get the feeling that the Weather Channel people were particularly appalled by something that somebody at some network shot there.) At the same time, they know that storm coverage sucks in eyeballs in a way that maps don't; that it has universal appeal.

It's an odd business. It's a mix of the most mundane and utilitarian of content — it's going to rain; bring an umbrella — and the most dramatic and frightening — get in the basement, WE'RE SERIOUS, YOU COULD DIE. They build their reputation, in part, on their ubiquity in the in-between times. Their mobile app has been downloaded 40 million times, and that's not just so people can watch tornado coverage and snowstorm coverage. Ninety percent of the population doesn't watch disaster coverage every day; they check the weather every day.

Every network that comes here has an interest in giving the people what they want, and this one is no different. They openly acknowledge that earthquakes aren't really weather, and tsunamis aren't really weather, but they covered the earthquake in Haiti and prepared for possible tsunamis in Hawaii after the earthquakes in Japan simply because their customers expected them to and believed they were equipped to. They've expanded their definition of the mission to include, in effect, "weather plus other important naturally occurring events."

And — like, it seems, absolutely everybody else on cable — they've got a foot in reality shows. Just today, they announced that they'll be airing Coast Guard: Alaska, a show that seems to be in the great unscripted-TV tradition of Burly Men Doing Important Sweaty Work.

Of course, like everyone, they've got things they really don't want to be part of, and one of those is a discussion of whether humans contribute to climate change, which they were asked about in the first three questions of the day. Yes, the entire panel agreed, the climate is changing. But as to whether any of that has anything to do with human beings, they take no position. There are lots of factors, they say. We're still learning.

Earthquakes? Yes. Tsunamis? They're on it. Hot-button political issues like a yes or no on whether humans are contributing to climate change? No, thanks. And don't ask them about whether we're heading for another Ice Age, either — somebody tried it, and it led to the explanation of something sort of interesting: that is a question for climatologists (who study climate over the very, very long haul), not meteorologists (who study the climate over the next 90 days or so).

You learn something new every day.

Behind the scenes of MythBusters

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 19:42:00 -0600

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are special effects guys, not scientists, but the kind of curiosity and rigor they bring to their TV series MythBusters certainly befits men of science.

Whether they’re blowing up radiators or probing the reality behind everyday myths and urban legends, Savage and Hyneman have a kind of methodical mischievousness that feels both fun and smart. What happens when the poo really hits the fan? Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Or knock someone out of their socks? Could you defy the odds to make a lead balloon that actually floats?

These are questions a legit scientist might deem beneath them (unless they were vying for the Ignoble Prize). But their wacky experiments have earned Savage and Hyneman a dedicated following on the Discovery Channel and beyond (especially among ten-year-old boys). I, for one, am glad to know the truth behind killer quicksand and exploding tattoos.

In the audio posted above, Dynamic Range goes behind the scenes of MythBusters as they divulge the secrets of their experiments. They spoke to a live audience at Chicago’s Harris Theater in 2009, where moderator John Williams asked them to start by describing an experiment gone horribly wrong. (Two words: cannibal mice.)

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified's vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. MythBusters was presented in March of 2009 by Science Chicago and was recorded by Chicago Amplified. Click here to subscribe to the Dynamic Range podcast, and click here for the full MythBusters talk.