Attention Deficit: The TV Set (2006)

Attention Deficit is a feature highlighting films, books, or TV shows that, for one reason or another, never got the audience they deserved.

Last year, while reading the excellent book And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers About Their Craft by Mike Sacks, I kept noticing a theme. Every other comedy writer, with the slightest of prompts, would launch into a tirade about how utterly useless and asinine the notes they got from execs were, and how their interference inevitably loused up a perfectly good project. And I also noticed while reading the (not nearly as good) The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, there was wide agreement among the interview subjects that one of the things that made The Simpsons one of the best shows of all time was securing the right to ignore exec notes early on in the show’s contract. Are entertainment industry heads really that awful?

Jake Kasdan’s 2006 film The TV Set provides an entertaining 88 minute answer to that question, and not surprisingly, it’s a giant “YES”, scrawled out in the torment and bitterness of the protagonist’s struggles with executive inanity.

Though the film is rich in characterization and detail, the plot is easy to summarize. David Duchovny stars as Mike Klein, writer/creator of The Wexler Chronicles, a tragicomic, loosely autobiographical TV show about a guy who returns to his hometown after his brother commits suicide. The movie begins with him casting the newly greenlit project with the exec’s supervision, and it is here his troubles begin. In a brilliant stroke of casting, Sigourney Weaver plays the ruthless network president Lenny, and she wastes no time in chopping away at every bit of originality and nuance in Mike’s vision until the final product barely resembles the original pitch. Mike has an advocate in Richard, a British exec who shares Mike’s reluctance to dumb down the show. But he has own hide to protect and his own agendas to pursue, and even if that weren’t the case, he’d be little match against the Sigourney steamroller. Mike considers quitting rather than sacrifice his work on the alter of lowest common denominator pandering, but with a baby on the way, he realizes that’s not really an option. He fights, he concedes, he fights, he concedes: this pattern continues until the show has become everything he hates about television.

Mike: (referring to a terrible actor in an audition) To me, he’s a…bit broad.
Lenny: I LIKE broad.
Other Exec: To me, the broad is the funny.

The film is neither wacky farce nor scathing satire, but more a low-key examination of exactly how artistic intentions are compromised at each step of the production process. Kasdan lays out the details like a lawyer making his case; confident and thorough, but free from histrionics. This naturalistic style confused critics, who were largely indifferent to the effort, but it’s exactly what drew me to the movie. Unlike most comedies, which seem to desperately need your laughs, The TV Set plays it relatively straight, trusting the audience to pick up on the humor of the character’s situation.

Alice: They loved it!
Mike: They called to say they loved it?
Alice: Yes. And they had some questions.
Mike: Questions?
Alice: There’s just some…concern at the network.

Satires of Hollywood rarely connect with audiences or critics. The audience apathy for these productions is usually attributed to their inside-baseball nature, their creators taken to task by reviewers for assuming John Q. Public (their cornball terminology, not mine) doesn’t care a whit for their trials and troubles. I’m not buying it. If that were true, entertainment shows and magazines wouldn’t have the massive audience they do, and Hollywood trade gossip wouldn’t be the lucrative currency it is. Nor would studios bother creating behind the scenes featurettes, commentaries, and the like. No, audiences ignore these films for the same reason critics slam them. Most of them just aren’t any good. State and Main, For Your Consideration, What Just Happened, Full Frontal, Hurly Burly, Swimming with Sharks, The Big Picture: the list of lame movies-about-movies is long and depressing. But most of those would be unwatchable regardless of the subject matter.

Of course, all the movies listed probably had bigger box office than the one I’m reviewing, so what do I know? Trying to make a halfway decent work that speaks to real human problems and connects to a mass audience is an exercise in futility by way of artistic flagellation. I’m sure the irony of that wasn’t lost on Jake Kasdan. He’s clearly learned how the industry begs, bullies, and buys concessions from artists. It’s not in one fell swoop, but in a little soul-selling every day. What could one more itsy-bitsy sacrifice to the God of Ratings hurt? After all, it’s not show art, it’s (stop me if you’ve heard this more than six million times) show business, right?

Anyway, you should check out The TV Set and tell me what you think. It’s not everyone’s thing – which is kinda the point – but I hope you like it.

Extracurricular Studies: Season 2 of Ricky Gervais’s Extras deals with a similar theme of compromised success.