Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 151

The Deuce 3.3: Love and Money, Pimps and Agents

A good episode 3.3 of The Deuce on Monday, with Candy and Hank being the best part of the story.

I especially liked the way Candy made Hank promise he wouldn't keep offering her money for her movies.  He was ready to put in $150,000, which Candy said would enable her to make her next movie in style.  But love, for her, is more important than money.  And even though Hank made clear that he could easily afford to provide that kind of financial support, Candy not only said no, but told Hank she never wanted to hear that again.

Why?  This gets to the essence of who Candy is, and indeed the essence of the series.  She is a former prostitute - she sold her body.  And it's not that she thinks what she did was immoral.   But she's more than happy to have moved from prostitution to porn.  And she values love. And the receipt of any kind of money from any man that she's starting to love is anathema to her.  Because that money, however well-meaning, dilutes and even contradicts the love that Hank is professing, and Candy is feeling and loving herself, and is beginning to reciprocate.  So she says no to the money, to protect her love.

That scene was a nice piece of work.  Also good, as always, is Lori struggling to make her way as a porn actress in L.A.  As she rightly says, when she demands that her male acting partner use a condom, it's her body.  That was always true but especially significant in this age when AIDS has entered the scene.  And her relationship with her agent is also noteworthy.  Lori has traded her pimp for her agent.  As anyone who has ever had an agent for any reason in the creative arts knows all too well, the two have a lot in common.  But they're not completely the same.  And it was interesting and instructive to see Lori's agent try to do her bidding, to the extent that she can.

See you here next week.

See also The Deuce 3.1: 1985 ... The Deuce 3.2: The First Amendment!

And see also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price ... The Deuce 2.4: The Ad-Lib ... The Deuce 2.6: "Bad Bad Larry Brown" ... The Deuce 2.9: Armand, Southern Accents, and an Ending ... The Deuce Season 2 Finale: The Video Revolution

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Bluff City Law: The Real Deal

Hey, I don't usually review series on network TV, because life's too short to review hour-long series lacerated by commercials and confined by childish FCC restrictions.  But every once in a while, I make an exception.

Jimmy Smits was the reason.  He's been outstanding in just about every role he's played on TV, from LA Law to Sons of Anarchy.  He was his excellent self tonight, portraying an attorney who heads a firm dedicated to fighting rapacious and disease-causing corporations.

Which brings me to the other reason.  My father was an attorney, who spent a lot of time defending people against big insurance companies and other behemoths who run roughshod over anyone gets in their way, i.e., needs to sue them for whatever good reason.  That's the kind of attorney - Elijah Strait - Smits plays, and plays so well.

And then there's his daughter, Sydney, whom Elijah brings back to the firm.  She's sharp, strategic, fiery, and well played by Caitlin McGee, not seen by me before.  She and her father come with a lifetime of family tensions, ruptures, and secrets - in other words, just want you'd want to see in a television drama.  And the firm is staffed up with intriguing characters, including estate attorney Della Bedford, played by Jayne Atkinson, good to see again after 24 and House of Cards.

So count me (and my wife, who also watched and very much enjoyed the the first episode) in as members of the audience for this show.   And, if time permits, and I'm especially moved - as I was tonight - I may even chime in here with another review.

 

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The Affair 5.5: No One Happy

Dominic West remarked in one of the promos on Showtime several months ago for The Affair that no one ends up happy in this final season, a take that was really borne out in tonight's episode 5.5.

In no particular order of importance -

Noah (who doesn't even get a segment) tells Helen (in her segment) that he loves her and wants a second chance.  As we saw in some of the aheads-on-The-Affair this season, she tells him not only no, but that he's had plenty of second chances, and blew them all.Helen thinks she's falling in love with Sasha, but has a rude awakening when she finds out what a bastard and/or cruel dude he really is.Sasha can't be happy, either, given how he plows through people or whatever the best metaphorSierra didn't have a good night, either, though better than most, since she did get the Madam Bovary part, and had a segment all her own.  I'm happy to see her have such a good if not so happy evening - she's having a hard time taking care of her baby - since the heroine of my Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy (see below) is, well, Sierra.And, not to get too meta on this, but I wasn't too happy with this hour, either, since, as you know (because I make this point just about every week), my favorite segment this season has been the Joanie future science fiction segment, of which tonight's episode had ... none. So I'll be saying what I say in just about every review: I wish there was more Joanie and her story.  Especially this week, because, there was none.  But the coming attractions show some very significant Joanie scenes next week, so I live in hope.

See also The Affair 5.1: Death, Nobility, and Science Fiction ... The Affair 5.2: Tears and Floods ... The Affair 5.3:  The Raya App ... The Affair 5.4: 2053
And see also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News" ... The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle ... The Affair 4.8:  I Don't Believe It ... The Affair 4.9: Two Alisons ... The Affair Season 4 Finale: Best Scenes
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris

And see also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest
 
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The I-Land: No Lost Opportunity

I was going to entitle this review of The I-Land on Netflix, "Lost Opportunity".  You know, that ABC series Lost, which had an excellent beginning, an absolutely out-of-the-ballpark brilliant third and fourth season, and then took a turn very much for the worse, with one of the worst series finales fiever on television?   Except ...

Well, although I-Land takes place on an island, with a group of disoriented people with various kinds of intriguing and lurid back stories, the slim seven-episode series has a completely different vector: a pretty strong beginning, an obvious middle, and a kick-in-the-gut and socially meaningful finale.  And the story is very different from Lost's.

The people on the I-Land didn't arrive there by crashed plane (as in Lost), but via simulation.  They're all prisoners on a death row in the future, and their simulated existence on the I-Land is a chance to redeem themselves.  Unsurprisingly, very few do.

But the payoff comes in what happens to the central character, who turns out not be guilty of the murder for which she was sentenced, and older than she seems.  And in the real world, outside the prison, we see the changes that global warming has brought the United States, and its struggles with a growing prison population.

So the real subjects of this thriller are climate change and prison change, which is a lot more than you can say about Lost, whose real subject was some metaphysical, quasi-religious nonsense.  In other words, see The I-Land. but don't expect Lost, which, at least as far as the ending, is a very good thing.

 


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The Deuce 3.2: The First Amendment!

Abby easily had the best line in tonight's episode 3.2 of The Deuce, when she explains that if you don't use the First Amendment to protect porn movies, "it's not gonna be there for the ideas".   The geniuses on the Supreme Court didn't get this in 1915, when they decreed in Mutual Film v. Ohio that film was not protected by the First Amendment, since it was a form of entertainment not an expression of ideas.   It wasn't until Burstyn v. Wilson in 1952 that this was overturned.  Good to see that Abby got the full gist of this in 1985.

Otherwise, almost no one, including Abby, is very happy in tonight's episode.  Abby loses her friend.  Lori in California objects to a stalk of corn being used in her porn scene.  Neither Vincent nor Frankie are too thrilled in their separate proceedings, though they do give us a good scene together face-to-face, nice trick photography.

But there is more good news on the fringes.   Looks like Candy may be on the way to finding true love or at least pretty good love with Corey Stoll's character Hank.  And Bobby doesn't have AIDS.  All of which says there's room for at least some happy endings on The Deuce.

Given that this its final season, whatever endings we get this year will be the final words on the series.   I'm hoping that, at very least, both twin brothers are thriving, as are Candy and Lori.  But I'm an optimist, and The Deuce has always been about unvarnished not rose-colored reality.   You know what, I still hope those characters and even a few others survive. 

See also The Deuce 3.1: 1985

And see also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price ... The Deuce 2.4: The Ad-Lib ... The Deuce 2.6: "Bad Bad Larry Brown" ... The Deuce 2.9: Armand, Southern Accents, and an Ending ... The Deuce Season 2 Finale: The Video Revolution

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" .. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Affair 5.4: 2053

A low-key, not terribly eventful episode 5.4 of The Affair tonight, sprinkled with some funny, seedy sad moments, until the very end of the very brief (as usual) Joanie segment, when we find out her father Cole died in 2053.

Big news for two reasons: Cole's dead.  And the time we're seeing in the Joanie segment is 2053 or later.  For some reason, I thought it was a little or more earlier.  Maybe because I don't think of Anna Paquin as in her early 40s, which was what Joanie would be pretty much be in 2053.  On the other hand, the extent of the environmental crisis is consistent with the later date.

Still up in the air is exactly what's going on in Joanie's mind.  Why does she want so little to do with her parents and even Gabriel?   There's clearly a big piece of an emotionally rending story here that we've yet to learn.

The Whitney segment was important to see, in terms of advancing her story.  In the end, she's willing to sacrifice her body for money and professional success.   Her father Noah is also hungry for success, but that's not his crucial weakness.   Her mother Helen is now newly hungry for success, but it's as yet not clear what she's willing to sacrifice to get it.

Noah's story was about the lightest we've seen in The Affair for a long time, replete with his planting of a bra in Sasha's bedroom to get Helen angry at Sasha.   The whole routine, from how he acquired the undergarment to Sasha and Helen's reaction, was a nice comedy of errors.

I don't know what more to say about this episode, except what I seem to be thinking and saying after every episode:  any chance we can get a much longer segment of Joanie?   I'm not holding my breath but I'll keep on watching.

See also The Affair 5.1: Death, Nobility, and Science Fiction ... The Affair 5.2: Tears and Floods ... The Affair 5.3:  The Raya App
And see also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News" ... The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle ... The Affair 4.8:  I Don't Believe It ... The Affair 4.9: Two Alisons ... The Affair Season 4 Finale: Best Scenes
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris

And see also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest
 
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Unbelievable: The All-Too-True Docudrama and its Resonance to Brett Kavanaugh

My wife and I finished watching Unbelievable on Netflix, just as the NY Times story broke about a second sexual misconduct incident involving now Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh in his freshman year at Yale, in addition to the one involving Deborah Ramirez, a second incident that the FBI was informed about but neglected or refused to investigate.

Unbelievable is about a serial rapist, who committed acts more egregious than sexual assault, but the all-too-true story is the same: the callous disregard of women and girls who are victims of sexual assault, combined with psychological bullying by authorities.  In the Unbelievable case, the result was a rapist who went on to rape numerous other woman.  In the Kavanaugh case, the result is a man accused of attempted rape and sexual assault, not adequately investigated, now sitting on the U. S. Supreme Court.

The docudrama was brilliantly acted, and had as happy an ending as could result in these circumstances: the rapist was sent to prison for more than 300 years.  The Kavanaugh hearings, in particular the Republican defense of Kavanaugh, was a shambles, and the result a travesty of justice.

On the brilliantly acted Unbelievable -  Kaitlyn Dever as Marie Adler the first victim, and Merritt Wever as Det. Karen Duvall and Toni Collette as Det. Grace Rasmussen, the detectives whose focused, unrelenting, perceptive work brought the rapist down, all deserve Emmys.  So does the pacing and counterpoint of the story in two different places and times - Washington State and Colorado - and the way they unify in the end.

As for Kavanugh, he deserves not to judge but to be investigated further and judged.  But politics, especially these days, seems to often get in the way of justice, so we'll have to wait and see.

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Third 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate: Winners and Losers

The third 2020 Democratic Presidential debate just concluded in Houston on ABC-TV.  It was longer the first four - nearly three hours - and was just one debate, of the ten leading candidates, rather than the two debates of ten each, one day after the other, which is the way the Democratic debates proceeded in June and July.  I thought tonight's debate was also better.

Joe Biden, in his quiet way,  had a very strong and successful night.  He was excellent on a variety of topics, including health care.  Contrary to Castro's calling out Biden for forgetting that Biden just said that Biden's health care plan required people to "opt in," Biden did say that people who couldn't afford any health care would be automatically enrolled.  (More on Castro below, who owes Biden an apology.)  Biden was also strong on both defending Obama's immigration policy and saying, also, that times have changed - I think that's a fair and accurate appraisal.  Biden was also Presidential in the public appreciation he expressed to Beto about his comforting the survivors of the El Paso shooting. And Biden's closing response about the personal tragedies in his life and how those gave him purpose rang deep and true.

Amy Klobuchar also had a good night.   She consistently was a unifying voice, and was 100% on target in her attack on Mitch McConnell.   It's important but easy enough to say Trump is a disgrace to his office.  But McConnell's freezing of the Senate on everything from gun control to immigration is also a crucial piece of why our country is in such difficult straits.  Beto O'Rourke was especially good on gun control and his insistence on taking away the most dangerous guns that are out there in so many hands.  And Kamala Harris had an effective night, with her blend of social sensitivity and prosecutorial zeal directed at Trump.

Elizabeth Warren was ok, and didn't get enough time.   Cory Booker did a little better than in his previous two debates, but loses points for saying "dagnabbit".   Pete Buttigieg were good but didn't really break any new ground.

And then it went seriously downhill.  Bernie seemed haggard and haranguing, and also said nothing new.   Yang was irrelevant.  And, I truly think Castro talked himself out of Presidential contention with his ill-informed and graceless attack on Biden.

I'll see you back here after the next debate.

See also First 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 1 of 2: Winners and Losers ...   First 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 2 of 2: Winners and Losers ... Second 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 1 of 2: Winners and Losers ... Second Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 2 of 2: Winners and Losers Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Coming of Age of "Merri Goes Round"

Don Frankel and Robbie Rist = Sundial Symphony recording Merri Goes Round
Ed Fox and I wrote "Merri Goes Round" in the early 1970s - I wrote the lyrics, Ed wrote the music, and I sometimes spelled the title with hyphens, like "Merri-Goes-Round".  Truth is, it was a throwaway, bubblegum song, something we wrote after landing a contract with Buddah Records to release "Ring Around My Rosie," by a group called Protoza, and led by David Fox (no relation to Ed), who also wrote the words and music to Rosie.  You can hear that here.

But Ed and I thought so little of Merri that we didn't even think of including it on Twice Upon a Rhyme.  We did go into a 16-track studio in New York, and recorded a demo that came out so good we realized it was marketable as a finished master record.  We got Bruce Scott, a little known singer, to do the lead.  Our regulars Pete Rosenthal on guitars, Boris Midney on sax, and most of the rest were on the record, and I was wailing in the background with my usual falsetto.  The record sounded good.  But we were still amazed when we sold it to Jimmy Wisner's Wizdom Records, where it was released as a single under the group name Trousers (yep, I came up with that). It was soon forgotten.  You can hear it here.

Many decades passed.  Sometime around 2013, Don Frankel - who, as Donny Frankel, had played all manner of keyboard, including accordion, on Twice Upon a Rhyme - sent me a CD with a recording he and Robbie Rist had made of "Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning)," one of the best-known songs from Twice Upon a Rhyme.  Robbie, in case his name sounds familiar, was on the original Brady Bunch, has had a great career as one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the bus driver in Sharknado (also released in 2013).  Don and Robbie called their group Sundial Symphony, and they gave Sunsets a zestful performance (you can hear that here).  They followed the next year with their power-pop rendition of the lead-off track from Twice Upon a Rhyme, "Today Is Just Like You" (that's here).

And, then, about two years ago, Don surprised me with news that he and Robbie (as Sundial Symphony) were doing a song not on Twice Upon a Rhyme - "Merri Goes Round".  The thing is, I gotta tell you, from the moment I first heard their recording of Merri, I was blown away.  I think it's much better than the original - power pop works better for the song than bubblegum.  Big Stir Records liked it, too, first releasing it as an A-side of a single (with "Looking the Sunsets" as the B-side), and then including both on their Third Wave compilation album, with lots of fine recordings by other power-pop artists.

Here's Sundial Symphony's "Merri Goes Round":


Big Stir Singles: The Third Wave by Sundial Symphony

I don't know about you, but I can't stop listening to it ...

PS - And here, as a bonus, is a just-published interview I did in July, with all kinds of old and new photos, about how I came to write the lyrics to "Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning)". Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Deuce 3.1: 1985

The Deuce was back tonight with its final season on HBO with another step into the future, New Year's Eve 1985, that is, the last day and evening of 1984.  The big villain, at this point, is AIDS.  Bobby's afraid he has it (he likely doesn't, at least yet).  Gene seems set up to get it.   And a lot of people, including Abby on the East Coast and Lori on the West Coast, aren't feeling too well.

Well, Lori's just getting out of rehab, and she's soon on her way to getting back, i.e., hooked on some other substance.  Candy and Harvey seem physically ok, but they're at odds, as always, on the porn business they helped bring into being the previous decade.  Harvey, always concerned about "the p and a," as he says (meaning, what? profits and ass?), wants Candy to be less arty, and she, of course, resists.

The New York City scenes, as always, are gritty and right.  The LA scenes look right, too, but I wasn't out there in the mid-80s so I don't know from first-hand experience. The acting is outstanding.  James Franco has aged his twin parts well.  David Krumholtz, now pretty much the same weight as his character Harvey, is also totally believable in that part,  And the same for Maggie Gyllenhaal as Candy.

I do miss Elvis Costello's opening music from Season 2, but otherwise I'm looking forward to seeing how our surviving characters fare in the brave new technological world of the mid-1980s.  No early Macs or IBM pcs in sight, as yet, but I'm guessing we'll see some of those as this season progresses.  Porn had not yet migrated to the Internet - that would be at least a decade away - but there was lots of book-keeping done on those early computer beasts, and book-keeping was always essential to mob and porn activities.

See you back here next week.

See also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price ... The Deuce 2.4: The Ad-Lib ... The Deuce 2.6: "Bad Bad Larry Brown" ... The Deuce 2.9: Armand, Southern Accents, and an Ending ... The Deuce Season 2 Finale: The Video Revolution

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..


my story "The P & A" in this issue

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music