Dear Zach:
OK, you’ve got the hit movie in “The Hangover.”
You got the New York Times Magazine profile.
You got the cult following as a stand-up comedian of prodigious and unpredictable talent.
Now don’t blow it by letting some agent or manager try to turn you into a comedy commodity.
It happens regularly: A comedy performer has an unexpected hit and his flavor-of-the-month-ness attracts the “suits” (as Billy Walsh called them on “Entourage”) – the facilitator types who latch on to new talent like a remora on a shark to try to guide them to bigger, fatter feeding grounds.
Invariably, it leads the comedian to abandon his instincts – or compromise his vision – in pursuit of a massive payday. Or it leads the comic to believe that, in fact, his flatulence is vanilla-scented – and that every idea that comes to his mind or bursts from his lips is pure genius, deserving of the aforementioned buttload of cash.
Neither is ever more than occasionally true. (More…)
Give “Nurse Jackie” a couple of episodes and you’ll find it every bit as hilarious and nerve-wracking as “Weeds,” its lead-in show. They make a nicely matched pair on Showtime on Monday nights, starting tonight.
And it’s not just about the drugs, though that’s an easy hook for both. Drugs are just one layer in a pair of half-hour shows about intriguingly multi-layered women who are at their best when they’re under pressure.
The newcomer show is “Nurse Jackie,” which stars Edie Falco as a New York emergency room nurse who seems to be one of the few sane people at her hospital. The first episode is a little like that first episode of “Mad Men,” plunging you directly into her world, revealing her secrets (including a taste for snorting painkillers to keep her keel even). Her drug problem is not using drugs, but obtaining them. A quick toot of those tiny little spheres inside a time-release capsule and she’s humming all day.
(More…)
As I watched writer-creator Vince Gilligan bring his series, “Breaking Bad,” to the stunning, shattering conclusion of its second season Sunday night on AMC, I was awash in conflicting emotions.
On the one hand, as a rapt audience member caught in the thrall of this ineffably edgy and intense show since it first went on the air last year, well, to put it at its most basic, I wanted to see what happened next.
On the other hand, I knew that, once Gilligan solved the mystery that hovered over the season – the stuffed animal and its detached googly-eye floating in the swimming pool, the bodybags in the driveway next to protagonist Walter White’s shattered Pontiac Aztek (perhaps the ugliest SUV ever created and the perfect symbol of the choices Walter has made in his life) – it would be over. Sure, we’d get a glimpse of what the future holds for Walter in his ongoing journey down the slippery slope of moral relativism. But there would be no more new episodes for longer than I care to think about. (More…)
