TV: Jason Schwartzman in HBO’s Bored to Death / Tim Roth in Fox’s Lie to Me
Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, Spun, Coconut Records) will play an aging Brooklynite/alcoholic writer who experiences a nasty breakup and finds himself in the position of a Philip Marlowe-ish gumshoe in the new HBO series Bored to Death. Written by former New York Press columnist and novelist, Jonathan Ames, the half-hour comedy will go into production this September. Seth Gordon, director of The King of Kong, will work as a consultant on the show.
Schwartzman’s character “takes out an ad pretending to be a private detective and starts taking cases — solving some and making others worse.” You may remember that back in 2004 Schwartzman starred in the failed Fox sitcom, Cracking Up, from writer Mike White (The School of Rock). Ames also began developing a semi-autobiographical pilot for Showtime the same year, but it was never picked up. Based on the logline, it’s easy to picture Schwartzman making the role and premise into an irreverent hit.
HBO also has the series, Hung, in development from creator/director Alexander Payne and weeks ago I took a look at the pilot script for Cocaine Cowboys, the rumored series for HBO from Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay.
via Hollywood Reporter / Buzz Sugar
The iffier logline belongs to Lie to Me, a one-hour drama for Fox starring Tim Roth as a “scientist/human lie detector, skilled at reading the human face, body and voice to uncover the truth in criminal and private investigations.” Shades of House: the character’s talent/gift makes it difficult for him to maintain personal relationships.
As long as Lie to Me isn’t peppered with computer-generated eyeball schematics of various suspects in the vein of Robocop, we’ll check it out. Variety reports that the material is inspired by the real life science and life long studies of psychologist/deception specialist Dr. Paul Eckman. Brian Grazer is exec-producing the show, which has been picked up for 13 eps, and begins shooting in August.
Fear Itself: Family Man
Nope, this isn’t Eureka, and that isn’t the friendly Sheriff Carter up there. But it is Eureka’s Colin Ferguson, and with Clifton Collins Jr. he has created a truly chilling installment in NBC’s increasingly “must see” horror anthology Fear Itself. Well, much of the credit to the success of this episode belongs at the feet of Dan Knauf, who proved himself an absolute master of the macabre with his darkly brilliant HBO series Carnivále. He’s also been a writer for Supernatural, so this stuff is clearly old hat for him.
And I’m pleased to say that the “old pro” really came through with “Family Man.” Easily the best episode of the young season so far and one of the best stand-alone hours of any anthology series I think I’ve ever seen. Ferguson, who we’ve come to know and love for playing the nice guy really shines here. And due to the complexity of the story, both he and Collins get a real chance to flex their acting muscles to brilliant effect. From the chilling scenes at home to the overwhelming drama in the prison, each moment propelled the story forward. The only thing that blows me away is that director Ronny Yu, who does wonderfully here, has Freddy vs. Jason and Bride of Chucky as his horror directing pedigree.
I’ll admit there have been times in my life that I’ve wondered what it must be like to be falsely accused of something you had nothing to do with and wind up in prison or worse. Let’s face it, it really does happen to people. And as a family man myself, the thought of being ripped away from my wife and son and forced to face the unimaginable is a real, if highly unlikely, fear. Knauf takes this notion and mixes it with a healthy dose of Freaky Friday minus the Lohan and Curtis (or Foster and Harris if you’d rather). The result is a tour de force of not supernatural horror, though it was the catalyst, but an internal and psychological terror.
Knauf proved himself a veritable genius when it comes to complex relationships and emotional turmoil with the expanded cast of Carnivale. (Note to HBO: I still haven’t forgiven you for cutting Knauf’s vision short there.) (Note to Knauf: Go back to your idea of finishing the story in comic book format. Tons of other shows are doing it (*cough*Buffy/Angel*cough*) and your story deserves proper closure!). And here he is with one hour, minus commercials, fleshing out these two mix-n-matched guys so completely that you feel the frustration of Dennis Mahoney (Ferguson), and the horror he feels when he realizes that the serial killer whose body he inhabits, Richard Brautigan (Collins) is alive, free and well and living his life with his family in his body.
What I didn’t expect was the struggle that Knauf would build into the character of Richard Brautigan. After he inhabits Dennis Mahoney’s body and starts to try and live his life, he finds it difficult to give up his homicidal compulsions. It would have been so easy to just have him be a psychopath through and through, but it seemed as if he was genuinely thinking that maybe this was a new chance for him to stop being a murderer. To get away scot-free with all his killings and move on to a new chapter in his life. But it just wasn’t as easy as all of that.
His unraveling of concern about his new family, when he unloaded on his “wife” about how easily the kids could be taken from them showed that he really wanted to make this new life work. He was struggling mightily with his internal demons. Ferguson masterfully plays his slow unraveling, and the scenes between him and Collins throughout so beautifully show his slow deterioration. And you can tell in Collins portrayal that he can see the inevitable looming.
I can’t really say enough about the strength of the acting on the part of both actors. They completely sold their various characters and helped creating the escalating terror throughout the hour. And even though, we may have seen the ultimate ending coming, I’ll admit that I hadn’t fully thought through the ultimate result of what could happen to Mahoney even after he does reclaim his own body and life. That was a classic horror ending.
POINTS OF INTEREST (TO ME AT LEAST)
- The show opened with a disclaimer that the following program contains scenes of an intense nature, followed immediately by a shot of a church with the congregation singing “Amazing Grace.” Religion is intense, man!
- I loved seeing Chris Burke (Corky from Life Goes On) but man did he have no real part at all.
- I kept expecting to see Melinda Gordon from Ghost Whisperer during the hospital sequence at the beginning when both Brautigan and Mahoney were wandering around as displaced spirits.
- Are prisoners really as abused as Brautigan was by the guards in prison? I get that he was a murderer of innocent women and children, which doesn’t go over well, but I’m sure such abuses are technically against prisoner policy. It makes sense, for those reasons, why he appeared to be completely isolated from the other inmates.
- Wouldn’t there be a conflict of interest with the officer who’s fiance Brautigan murdered. Surely he wouldn’t really be assigned to guard him. That’d be like hiring a prosecuting attorney who’s daughter he murdered to try his case. Or worse, defend him.
- Do they sing “Amazing Grace” every week at church? There are a lot of songs in most hymnals they could sample from.
- I love the parking lot scene for showing Brautigan that he can’t control everything the way he wants to, and the dinner sequence for showing the climax of his ultimate collapse with such subtlety and tension.
David Schwimmer to helm Little Britain
The former Friends cast member will be heading up the Los Angeles-set parts of the new HBO s comedy show Little Britain.The show is the U.S. counterpart to the BBC sketch show of the same name. The series will focus on the hijinx of British comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams (stars from the BBC show) here stateside. They are currently filming in North Carolina. Schwimmer will be directing the studio segments of the six-part HBO series here in California. Guests for his segments include Rosie O’Donnell and Sting.
This isn’t the first time Schwimmer will be directing or showing his love of all things British. He directed a few episodes of Friends. And this past year, made his feature directorial debut with Run Fat Boy Run The film starred Simon Pegg as a non-committal cad who has a change of heart toward the mother of his child and enters a marathon to prove his love.
Pollack’s Projects Up in the Air
Sydney Pollack left behind one of the great film legacies when he died Monday. He also left behind a pile of unfinished business.
The fate of the Hollywood titan’s myriad projects remains uncertain, with his death following so closely that of his producing partner and fellow Oscar winner Anthony Minghella, who died of a hemorrhage following routine surgery in March.
The duo, considered two of Hollywood’s most esteemed auteurs, had several high-profile productions in the pipeline at their Mirage Enterprises, including an English-language remake of 2007’s Best Foreign Oscar winner, The Lives of Others, for the Weinstein Company and the upcoming HBO series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
Mirage executives are now scrambling to figure out what to do with the slate.
Sources tell the Hollywood Reporter several of the pair’s projects that do not have other producers attached might end up under the purview of Pollack’s agents at Creative Artists Agency and his family. Alternatively, daughter Rebecca, formerly an executive at United Artists, could step in and oversee them.
“We’re all flying a little blind right now,” an insider close to Pollack tells the trade.
In the meantime, Mirage says it plans on moving ahead with the lineup, which includes the following:
- I Don’t Know How She Does It, a feature film adaptation of Allison Pearson’s novel, helmed by David Frankel (Marley & Me)
- The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, a feature adapted by Minghella from a novel by Liz Jensen
- The Silver Linings Playbook, an inspirational drama based on a forthcoming novel
- Bartimaeus Trilogy: The Amulet of Samarkand, based on the children’s fantasy series by Jonathan Stroud
- The Ressurectionists, a film for Miramax based on the novel by Michael Collins, which Minghella planned to direct
- Colombian Gold, a murder mystery to be directed by Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl)
- Liberty, a thriller set in Haiti
- Turbulence, a thriller Mirage was producing for Universal