Elton John accompanies le enfant terrible at the Grammy Awards
Photo courtesy of Grammy.com
Index image of Judy Garland courtesy of Judy Garland Database
"Marshall Mathers" lyrics copyright: Eminem
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Media Whore
Old broads, mediating queens and tragic divas. It's the queerest February sweeps ever!
Hey, it's February sweeps time on television, one of two annual time periods during which network executives turn programming into a bloodsport in hopes of racking up serious share points in the Nielsen derby. Thus "super-size" Friends episodes are pitted against Survivor installments sporting fresh kills! Thus ABC's pitiable The Mole wraps tonight with a feature-length finale. If viewers think one hour of The Mole is silly and boring, they'll love the second hour! (In the interest of disclosure, I think Anderson Cooper is sexy in a I'm Gloria Vanderbilt's son. What am I doing hosting this dumb show? kind of way.) This is the time of year when networks roll out their big gun "television events," a moniker that has lost some steam since the producers of ER have taken to unapologetically hyping every new episode of their drama as an event.
There have been several legitimate television events this month, and they've left me scratching my head over their unflinching queer appeal. These Old Broads? That shameless, panic-induced 43rd Annual Grammy Awards stunt with Eminem and Elton John?Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows? Is there a paradigm shift afoot? Are advertisers waking up to the idea that a middle-aged gay man probably has more disposable income than the average18- to 35-year old male? Has the much ballyhooed "Gay Agenda" finally reached a fever pitch? Is the homosexual renaissance afoot? Er, I doubt it, but I'm being thoroughly entertained nevertheless.
Let us begin by recounting the highs and lowest of lows of These Old Broads, ABC's good-natured but ultimately ill-advised dame reunion. The four broads in question are very sporting to have agreed to this venture, a film that has them laughing at their own facelifts and pulling each other's wigs off for two-hours of cheap and breezy laughs. But the script is incredibly weak. That this project was initially conceived as a feature film is surprising. That it was written by Carrie Fisher, she of the brilliantly funny Postcards From the Edge, is alarming. Fisher, it seems, is much more effective at telling her own story than at fictionalizing the lives of her mother's brood.
The bright spot in These Old Broads is Debbie Reynolds. That I am willing to admit this delights John, my erstwhile fuck buddy whom you may remember from a certain trip to Las Vegas last month. Since John was denied the peculiar pleasure of attending Debbie's live show in Vegas, I invited him over for my viewing of These Old Broads. His presence may have swayed my feelings for her a tiny bit, but I don't believe I was unduly influenced. Her performance is altogether charming and sharp-witted, aided and abetted by daughter Fisher who gave her all the best lines. When agent Beryl Mason (Liz Taylor) asks, "You do everything your mother tells you?" Reynolds deadpans, "Less now that she's dead." It's welcome comic relief in a scene that is otherwise painful to watch.
Taylor is undeniably feeble, and Reynolds barely manages to mask her disbelief as she trades dialogue with the once great actress. Taylor slips in and out of an accent that is equal parts New Yorker and eccentric bag lady. Anyone who caught her presentation gig at the 58th Golden Globe Awards witnessed a preview of this car accident waiting to happen. It would have been far kinder of everyone involved to let her retire, and let us all remember her as Maggie the Cat--or even as the spokesperson for White Diamonds--and resist the eternal temptation to unseat our idols and smash them to bits.
The plot in brief: Kate Westbourne (Shirley MacLaine), Addie Holden (Joan Collins), and Piper Grayson (Reynolds) starred together in a '60s film called Boy Crazy which has since become a cult hit. A sleazy producer wants to stage a televised reunion of the gals, convinced that it will add some polish to his falling star. Enter Wesley Westbourne (Jonathan Silverman), son of Kate and fledgling documentary filmmaker. Wesley gets cajoled into convincing the three sniping women (who have vowed never to work together again) to agree to the special. He in turn seeks the assistance of their collective agent, the now bedridden boozer Beryl Mason (Taylor). After negotiating with the ladies at length, Mason emerges with their terms and the whole thing is a go.
"So, wait, their refusal to work together was about money?" John muses.
"I don't think so. Westbourne is doing road company shows of Mame, but the others seem to be in fine financial shape. I think it's about men," I answer.
"Yeah, well, isn't it always?'
"It's also about Wesley. They're spending way too much time on his character if there isn't something else going on there," I assert.
"Bet he's gay," John pronounces.
"He supposedly has a girlfriend."
"And when has that ever mattered?"
Wouldn't you know, Wesley is gay, which is a great excuse to corral the stars in a cavernous gay club and watch them do high leg kicks for the grateful fags. There's also some weird subplot about Wesley being adopted, but he's really Kate's blood child, but it really doesn't matter. After much back biting and narrowly averted catastrophe, the movie ends with the promised television reunion and Beryl exhorting the audience to, "Get off your ASSES for these old broads!"
"That was interesting," John says evenly.
"In a sort of tragic way," I add.
"Indeed."
Moving along, the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards did nothing to unseat my long held belief that the coveted trophy represents nothing so much as a glorified sales award. There are exceptions to this general rule of course. I won't argue that this year's inclusion of a Native American music category is spurred by strong cash receipts--it's a political move to make the Recording Academy look more diverse and hip. But by and large, the heaping of awards on artists like Baha Men, Destiny's Child, Steely Dan, U2, Faith Hill and Eminem amounts to big, sloppy kisses from the industry that reaps startling amounts of money from them.
An industry primer: A CD costs consumers, on average, about $15, while it costs only pennies to make. According to ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), performers collect between 10% and 25% in royalties while authors and/or publishing companies collect flat fees (7.5 cents per song!). Artist royalties are calculated using the retail price minus a 25% packaging fee. Deduct that 25% ($3.75) for packaging and you're left with $11.25. Perform the royalty math on that number and you have anywhere from $1.12 to $2.80 per unit being paid to the artist in question (and it is the rare superstar that collects the full 25% share). Shave another third off the retail price for store profit. Throw the authors and/or publishing companies about a dollar in per-song royalties. Now we're at $8.80, assuming we're dealing with a richly compensated act. Even at the high end of the royalty scale, we've accounted for less than 60% of the retail price of the CD. Given that it is the rare and handsome CD that actually costs $3.75 to package, we're talking about a tidy profit for the record company.
What about advertising costs? Having worked in retail music buying for years I can tell you that the promotion of artists is startlingly uneven. Across the board, record company executives far prefer putting their advertising dollars behind rock solid established money makers than new talent. To be sure, equal promotion of all acts would not be very profitable. But one would at least assume that a record company signs an artist or group for a reason, whether the act in question shows a genuine spark or simply represents a current trend. But artists are routinely snapped up by record companies who are petrified of missing out on the next big thing, even if they don't know what the next big thing is--they sign some acts just to keep other record companies from getting them. When the artist's debut album is released to lukewarm sales (even if it is critically acclaimed), the act is more often than not hung out to dry even while millions of dollars are spent trying to sell more units for artists who already sell exceedingly well. If the record company's hunch proves correct and a new artist's single takes off, the promotional department cranks into high gear. Airplay begets advertising dollars, begetting increased sales, begetting more airplay, begetting more advertising, begetting more sales, and so on.
What this system means to you as a consumer is that, unless you're a very proactive music listener who seeks out college and public radio stations (stations that don't accept kickbacks for promoting one single over another), you'll probably never hear 90% of the mainstream, non-classical music that is produced during any given Grammy season. What you do and do not hear is often decided by corporate radio "suits" who narrow their playlists to songs with the widest possible appeal in the shortest possible rotation. We then get inundated with these songs, such that even the ones we like begin to seem like Chinese water torture by the time they creep into Billboard's Top 40, which sell because they're in heavy rotation, which get into heavier rotation because they're selling so well. If everyone does his or her job correctly, there's a Grammy Award at the end of the journey.
The Recording Academy selects artists to perform during the broadcast who are likely contenders for awards throughout the evening. Thus Faith Hill, U2, Destiny's Child, Shelby Lynne (who was honored to receive her award for Best New Artist, as she noted, 13-years and 6-albums into her career), 'NSync, Moby, Madonna and, yes, Eminem. It came as a shock then, when the venerable Academy came under fire for having asked an angry bigot to perform at their affair. They were only giving their props to one of the many artists who had made their tribal leaders rich that year (especially since Eminem probably collects royalties in the bargain basement 10-15% range). What to do? Well, since the gay groups were screaming the loudest, the wise Academy approached one of the most popular crossover fags in the world to perform with Eminem. Elton John is so popular that some straight people still don't know he's a fag. So if Sir Elton, the most popular fag in the world, were to perform with Eminem, that would prove that Eminem is not a bigot, just misunderstood.
Just prior to the fated performance, Michael Green, the president of the Recording Academy, walks out on the dais to let us know that Eminem's nominations and appearance that night should be viewed as inscrutable evidence that his organization is keepin' it real. He notes that music has always been the voice of rebellion, that our parents' tried to edit out Elvis, the Stones, and the Beatles (I'm not sure which generation's parents he is referring to--my mother loved Elvis), that middle class white kids in the suburbs regard popular music as a lifeline, that rap music is "the CNN of the inner city," and that it is only through dialogue and debate that social discovery and progress can occur. Hmm.
Sir Elton and Eminem then take the stage to perform "Stan," one of the more subdued and self-conscious tracks from The Marshall Mathers LP.
"Stan" doesn't feature any lyrics about killing faggots or raping women; Stan does tie up his girlfriend and put her in the trunk of his car to die along with him when he drives off a bridge, but we understand that Stan is a disturbed young man. Eminem clearly marks the moral center of the song when he sings the last verse as his Slim Shady persona, gradually realizing that this particular fan has become, shall we say, untethered. The song is difficult, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it tackles hard social issues. The chorus is quite pretty, especially as crooned by Sir Elton, proving so infectiously catchy that I haven't been able to get it out of my head since the broadcast. The truth is, Eminem probably is a talented lyricist, but he cloaks himself inside an almost impenetrable shield of anger, aimed not only toward homosexuals but toward just about everyone. We know, however, that the anger is a facade because Eminem lost his poker face Wednesday night. The enfant terrible who asks rhetorically, "You think I give a damn about a Grammy?" not only showed up, performed, and accepted his three Grammys with a modicum of grace, but seemed slightly nervous and awed by it all.
I'm not sure what this performance was supposed to accomplish in terms of "social discovery and progress." My preference would have had Eminem singing "Marshall Mathers," one of the fag-bashing songs in question, to Sir Elton, but as a tender love ballad. Eminem could gaze lovingly into Sir Elton's eyes as he coos:
"And I don't wrestle, I'll knock you fuckin faggots the fuck out
Ask 'em about the club they was at when they snuck out
after they ducked out the back when they saw us and bugged out
(AHHH!) Ducked down and got paintballs shot at they truck, blaow!
Look at y'all runnin your mouth again
when you ain't seen a fuckin Mile Road, South of 10
And I don't need help, from D-12, to beat up two females
in make-up, who may try to scratch me with Lee Nails
"Slim Anus," you damn right, Slim Anus
I don't get fucked in mine like you two little flaming faggots!"
Now that would be social discovery.
OK, now that I've got all that ranting out of my system I can move along to something a lot more pleasant. How wonderful was Judy Davis in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows? She nailed it! The mannerisms, the speaking voice, the lip-synch. She lived those songs, no matter that she wasn't actually singing them. Davis reports that this is by far the most challenging role she has ever undertaken. One half expects both Judys to be dead at the end of the movie.
Kudos to the production team who delivered a television event that actually exceeds expectations. They could have gone with bigger names, but instead they enlisted actors who would conjure the people and events in question. Tammy Blanchard is picture perfect as the young Judy, and her performance--while not as challenging or virtuosic--blends almost seemlessly into Davis's. I've been asked by more than one person where one actor's gig stops and the other's begins. (Blanchard, by the way, has only two other credits to date. I think we'll be seeing a lot more of her.)
It was nice to see Marsha Mason inhabiting the unenviable role of Ethel Gumm, Judy's domineering stage mother. Having watched The Goodbye Girl just the night before, I felt like a time traveler when I spied the now decidedly matronly Mason, but she still has a very distinct spark about her.
Victor Garber is nicely understated as Sid Luft, one of the few straight men in Judy's life. A strong subtext of homosexual men, by turns nurturing and disillusioning, runs throughout Life with Judy. Father Frank Gumm (Aidan Devine) and George Cukor come off as the most sympathetic gay characters, showering Judy with benevolence and understanding, sometimes to their own detriment. Mark Herron (Martin Randez) and Vincente Minelli (Hugh Laurie) are the gay philanderers who break her heart. Queerer is the performance turned in by Dwayne Adams as Mickey Rooney. Did he mean to play Rooney gay? We're going to cut Adams a little slack since this is his first credit, but he may want to douse the flames a bit on his next go round.
Life with Judy accomplishes the near impossible: It makes sense of a life that is as endlessly compicated as it is fascinating. By the time Judy's life has reached an ugly nadir, we fully understand the machinations that propelled her to such desperation. Could her life have turned out differently? Perhaps if she weren't so vulnerable, or so talented, or so divided. But the ugly truth is that we treasure the art that she was so ruthlessly driven to produce. L.B. Mayer was a son of a bitch, but Judy's legacy is richer for his paternalistic influence. And were it not for the people who took advantage of her financially, we wouldn't have Judy Live at Carnegie Hall or 26 precious episodes of The Judy Garland Show. Sad isn't it? In the end, even her fans are torn between the warring demands: "Just leave her alone!" and "More Judy, more!"
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