Category: Nepotism

HBO’s “Girls” Still Play with “Tiny Furniture” – Part IV: What’s the Big Deal?


Tumblr_m2899wSXn01qzpqd1o1_1280Continued from the Previous Post

So, why "Girls" are lauded as unique, original, ballsy, even revolutionary?

Is the writing that astonishingly good? Well, for me good writing means story and character development; the more layers, the better. And as hard as I tried, I have not seen any of that in "Tiny Furniture" or in "Girls." In fact, the most fitting description of the situational comedy that came off Lena Dunham's printer so far would be sketches, sticky notes transplanted from a mac-book onto the proverbial silver screen. I've seen 90-second student movies with more story substance. Yet, what else can we expect from someone who experiences "a joy of writing." Let me give you a quote from Thomas Mann: "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." But, of course, the great Noble Prize laureate was talking about REAL WRITING.

Is it the recognizable dialogue plucked straight from today's conversations? The use of the momentary phraseology that is on everyone's lips today and completely forgotten tomorrow? But I thought Diablo Cody has already been improbably celebrated and rewarded with an Oscar for that.

Is it the fantastic directing skills? Seriously? Some of the shot choices make me dizzy. Acting? Ms. Dunham's acting is limited to changing her real-life masks (you know, cheerful buddy one minute, snooty bitch – another), but acting out a scripted emotion – so far it comes off wooden. The whole hire-who-you-know method didn't work too well for the rest of the cast either, except for maybe Jemima Kirke, who is a natural.

Is it because the creator is 26? Well, we've been blessed by young filmmakers before. The brilliant and defiant Harmony Korine was 22 when he wrote astonishingly raw "Kids," 24 when he wrote and directed "Gummo," and 26 when his heart-breaking "Julien Donkey-Boy" came out.

Is it because the creator of the show is naked a lot? Apparently Ms. Dunham thinks it's groundbreaking – she talked about it in many interviews. But let me tell you: every cultured kid from New York, regardless whether her/his parents are artists or financial execs, have been exposed to truly revolutionary artists who used their naked bodies as artistic media: Matthew Barney and Marina Abramovic come to mind first and foremost. These people already broke the ground and the young creators who've seen them have stepped over the naked barrier.

Is it sex? Oh, excuse me, the awkward sex? Common, the show is on the cable channel that brought us Real Sex series.

And who can seriously claim that it's edgy, when we have "Homeland" and "Nurse Jackie" on Showtime?

So, you see, there is nothing special or unique about it. It's just a carefully designed media campaign. But it works, it always does. It managed to create the hype, to convince viewers that Lena Dunham, through her personal experiences, represents the entire generation. 3.8 million people watched the first three episode.

In reality, Lena Dunham's personal experience and power of imagination are so limited that every time the situtation goes outside of her immediate surroundings, she needs a co-writer. But it doesn't matter. That three-episode viewing statistic was enough for HBO to renew the show for the second season even before the 4-th episode aired. As Hannah's boyfriend says in that crucial third episode, "We are only as blind as we want to be."

To be Concluded

HBO’s “Girls” Still Play with “Tiny Furniture” – Part III: This Is How It’s Done


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Lena Dunham is unabashedly bold about her position in the world. She provides a straightforward example of how it's done in "Tiny Furniture": you have a friend with an art-dealing father who cannot say no and puts up your horrible, stupid video in his gallery.

In the sixth episode of "Girls" Ms. Dunham throws hapless Hannah Horvath's mask away (who cares about the inconsistent characterization?), fixes a bewildered look on a Michigan girl with a plan to go to Hollywood, and asks if this person has connections, people who can arrange auditions, ways to get in. Because in Ms. Dunham's mind, the only people who have rights to be in the entertainment world are people like her, the ones supported by a network of contacts.

And why would she think differently? Life comes with very specific benefits when your mother's photos are displayed at the Met, the MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney, among other places.  Did Laurie Simmons ventured into making a musical short starring Meryl Streep in 2006 for the pure purpose of getting her foot into the filmmaking business?  The same year she produces Lena's first short "Dealing," which somehow gets accepted at Slamdance, while thousands of much stronger films from all around the world are rejected. 

Three years later Lena graduates from college and now it's time for things to start really happening.  I can just picture Ms. Simmons telling the curators at Guggenheim, "Did you see my daughter's web series Delusional Downtown Divas'?  It's all about the art phonies!  It's hilarious!" And before you know it, Lena is commissioned by the museum to produce another 10 episodes of tedious sketches, set in a plethora of Tribeca wealth, to be projected at the first annual Art Awards.  She is also invited to host the event.  Isn't it awesome to have that on your bio and resume? 

Still, I don't understand how "Creative Nonfiction" got accepted at 2009 SXSW.  I've seen much better movies with real stories and characters, written, directed, and shot by young aspiring filmmakers, who sent their work in and got "sorry, you were rejected" emails.  Then again, it's very possible that Lena Dunham's first feature got sent directly to Janet Pierson (head of the festival).  After all, when written in four days "Tiny Furniture" was finished, the writer/director/star managed to get a post-deadline waiver, enter in January 2010 and win 2010 SXSW Best Narrative Feature Award in early March.     

Here is a challenge for my readers: how many independent film festival's winners get to have multiple gala-premiers in places such as Brooklyn Academy of Music and MoMa?  I found only one – the one that stars a famous artist, "Tiny Furniture."

And then, of course, there are publicists (check out ID Public Relations). For all we know, Lena has been their client since nursery school (both Dunham and Jemima Kirke were featured in Vogue as preteens). Let me explain for the uninitiated.  If you can afford to pay steep PR fees, publicists will be the ones responsible for putting together smart websites for all your opuses, writing press releases and bios, contacting publications, etc. 

They will get you on 25 Independent Filmmakers list (Ms. Dunham was featured in 2009, right after "Creative Nonfiction").  They will make sure you are featured on one or another talk show.  Through their personal connections (again!) with writers and editors, they will get you a NY Times profile (03/19/2010) and a movie review (11/11/2010) after your big win at SXSW.  No publicist?  You are shit outta luck.  Robbie Pickering won the Best Narrative Feature this year. The Gray Lady completely ignored his existence. 

It just a fact of my life that I came to know someone who worked in the entertainment PR and explained this to me, but for those who want a second opinion I recommend to watch "Nurse Jackie," episode 2.3.

We may never know how exactly the mechanics of personal connections worked for Lena Dunham, but we do know for a fact that thirty-something Jenni Konner, who's been working on various TV projects since 2001 and now happily serves as an executive producer on "Girls," was outfitted with a box of "Tiny Furniture" DVDs she pushed into hands of every single person she knew in Hollywood, including her "Undeclared" boss Judd Apatow.

The uber-successful Hollywood tsar of awkward comedy seems to be on a mission to show the world that life sucks for everyone, but everything going to be Ok at the end. A privileged girl having an unhappy moment in a huge Tribeca loft – how could he possibly resist?  Keep in mind, the man does have two pre-teen daughters, whose acting "talents" he promotes in his own movies. He simply had to offer Lena Dunham millions of dollars to plow her shallow-themed field on television.

To Be Continued


HBO’s “Girls” Still Play with “Tiny Furniture” – Part II: Psychological Nepotism


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Continued from the Previous Post

But Lena Dunham is not a "regular" person. Far from it. Her parents have enveloped her entire being into nepotistic shroud of cultural connections. More importantly, however, they bestowed upon her, what I call, the psychological nepotism – a phenomenon specific to wealthy families with no worries for the children's material wellbeing in the future. The ability to provide for their children far beyond their own graves turns these parents into blind believers that whatever their daughters and sons poop out are unmatchable manifestations of incredible talents.

Let me give you an example.  I remember many years ago Alec Baldwin telling David Letterman how him and his then-wife Kim Basinger were playing tennis and their three-year-old daughter touched a racquet. Kim started talking incessantly about the child's "being drawn" to the sport and a possibility of John McEnroe "taking a look." Are you catching my drift?

I believe that Ms. Dunham herself is somewhat aware of impact the psychological nepotism has on privileged children. In the third episode of "Girls," when Jessa is introduced to her babysitting charges by their mom, a filmmaker, we learn that the little girls (I think 6 and 9) have several "incredible" projects in the making: painting a toy animal, a mosaic project, a novel that requires editing…

My readers may think I am a "material" bitch stifling "normal" children's creative aspirations. That's laughably far from the truth. I firmly believe that real talents should be encouraged to go the distance no matter how hard the road ahead is. However, my standards are pretty high. On the other hand, "connected" parents turn everything into a tightly managed "artistic" output and treat every piece of a mediocre crap as a fucking masterpiece. 

Judd Apatow keeps saying in different interviews that for him writing is an extension of his struggle for self-esteem, while Lena just goes and enjoys herself, merrily banging at the keyboard. And it makes perfect sense: no matter how much success he will achieve, Judd will always need to prove his worth to himself, while Lena Dunham was born with the idea that everything she does – every nursery school drawing, every little story for the English class, every small part she had in a school play, is absolutely, indisputably precious. As it frequently happens, when nepotism is at play, the quality is irrelevant – the products get pushed through all available channels anyway.

To Be Continued

HBO’s “Girls” Still Play with “Tiny Furniture” – Part I: The Predicament


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I frequently talk about the hopelessness of life prospects for most people in their twenties. In my post Futurenomics of Higher Education, I wrote about practical uselessness of college degrees for the majority of these kids. Anyone with half a brain can see that a staggering number of recent grads will never be able to buy houses in the same neighborhoods their parents did, enjoy nice vacations, pay for their children's education or elderly care.

And it's unfair, because on average the generation in question stands on much higher ethical grounds than, us – their parents: they are more open-minded, more accepting of diversity, more environmentally aware. At least the kids in their twenties that I personally know deserve a better future than we've set up for them. For years now, I've been like, "Hello! These young college grads have nowhere to go! Can we start talking about this issue?"

Be careful what you wish for! Better yet, try to define your wishes more accurately, because it does matter who talks and what they say. There are speakers with trite messages who have access to the channels unavailable to others. They confuse the eager audiences into seeing what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.  When Lena Dunham's movie "Tiny Furniture" was propelled into their view by an inadequately strong PR campaign, they mistook the depiction of someone's feeling momentarily insecure for an introspective statement relevant to the entire generation.

In truth, the movie is nothing more than a photograph (it's ironic that it was shot on an SLR camera) of a bad moment in a life of a privileged girl, whose existence has nothing to do with the reality experienced by the majority of people. As such, it does have some bits of stark vulnerability familiar to many unattractive people. However, as the cinema critic for New York Magazine David Edelstein pointed out "Lena Dunham is so much smaller than life."

In that, she essentially upholds a fine family tradition by following in her mother's (a renown photo-artist Laurie Simmons) footsteps: playing with toys, showing ersatz characters in artificial surroundings, miniaturizing settings and issues to the point of irrelevance. For me, the smallness of the subject matter combined with the repetitiveness of self-pitying incidents turned "Tiny Furniture" into a lack-luster drag. If Lena Dunham were a "regular" person this film would have never been made, won Best Feature at SXSW, and led to the HBO's new series "Girls" bankrolled by Judd Apatow and created by Ms. Dunham, who also stars as a central character.  She also wrote and directed most of the first season's episodes.

To Be Continued

The Bottomless Well of Nepotism and the Issue of Business Survival


My dear readers, I wish I could stop writing about it, but it never ends – there are always more examples to share. I already wrote The Curse of Private Business: Nepotism and then More on Nepotism, but I cannot resist the urge of giving a space to yet another example. And even though it concerns the entertainment industry, it is an important financial issue as well.

You see, in the deteriorating economic environment (and it will continue deteriorating), there is only a handful of industries that have a chance of surviving. Filmmaking is one of them. Not the whole of entertainment, but cinema in particular. People already pretty much stopped reading books, and who knows what's going on with the music industry. Only a small percentage of population can afford to go to the concerts, sporting events, or theater.

But no matter what happens, people will continue seeking an escape from their dreary lives in the darkness of movie theaters or in front of their TV screens. So, whether we like it or not, it is socially important that Hollywood spreads their financial resources wisely and survives. It would be even better if the production funds were also distributed with artistic responsibilities in mind, but that's a subject for another post (or, perhaps, even another blog).

From a strictly financial point of view, I cannot even complain about the stupid Michael Bay's movies – at least they make money. But I have a problem with irrelevant films that get pushed through studios and independent production companies with the help of connections and familial relationships. Some of them are not able to cover even 10% of their budgets. And not because they are complicated intellectual creations (I don't mind money being spent on actual masterpieces), but because they are simply crap. And it is not about the nepotism per se, as I previously wrote. It is about mediocrity and losses caused by nepotism. In any business, not just filmmaking, if nepotism results in success and profits, objectively it can be tolerated.

So, how is it done? The August 29th issue of New York Magazine had a little interview with Zoe Kazan – Zoe Kazan Needs Coffee, conducted by one of my favorite magazine writers, Jada Yuan. It is actually in the theater section, because on top of having her screenplay being made into a movie (He Loves Me), in which she also stars together with her boyfriend Paul Dano, this 28-year-old has a play, commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club, opening this fall in New York (!).

Of course, Ms. Yuan shines the light on the grounds of this first-time screenwriter's ability to penetrate Hollywood's entry barriers. She starts by defining the interviewee as Elia Kazan's granddaughter. Then she goes on to point out the connection between the directors spearheading He Loves Me – Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and the boyfriend (they directed Paul Dano in Little Miss Sunshine). Finally, in her last question she names Zoe Kazan's parents – both screenwriters: Nicholas Kazan (who co-wrote Frances, adapted Alan Dershowitz's Reversal of Fortune, and penned excellent, but underrated Fallen) and Robin Swicord, who has a good knack for adapting highbrow sentimental literature (Little Women, Practical Magic, Memoirs of Geisha, The Jane Austin Book Club).

And again, the nepotism would be okay (after all, we know how lazy people are – nobody wants to work hard and look for new talents), if writing was Ms. Kazan's genuine calling and her ideas were original. But He Loves Me is just another rehashing of the Greek legend of Pygmalion. And here is how she answers Jada Yuan's question, why did she start writing:

"Because when I was first trying to get acting jobs, there would be these huge slots of time, where I wouldn't have work…"

Soooo, she started writing because she had free time? Are you joking me? True writers write because they cannot live any other way. Not, because they need to kill some time or as a form of "self-actualization." The saddest thing is that I happen to know incredibly talented young writers with original ideas, who try and try again, querying agents and production companies just for a chance to get their excellent scripts read. Robert McKee says that one of the main concerns of the screenwriting professors is preventing their best students from killing themselves.

But Ms. Kazan? Whatever she is going to write, will be read by someone with a finger on the green-light button. And then, money and resources will be invested on something that only a small group of people (most of them also connected) will be interested to see.