Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Hollywood Labor News

Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg has sued his own union to attempt to reverse the recent action by their national board in which Executive Director Doug Allen was fired and the negotiating committee was replaced. Rosenberg's application for a temporary restraining order was denied today but he says he will try again.

What seems to be going on here is that Mr. Rosenberg woke up one morning and realized that there might be some aspect of S.A.G. that wasn't divided and dysfunctional, and he filed his lawsuit to try and correct that oversight.

Really. I admire Rosenberg's devotion to his guild and I even think he set out on the current negotiation with all the right goals and values. But things have gone horribly wrong and right now, S.A.G. needs to get out of its current bargaining position while its members still have their underwear, and they need to begin healing and rebuilding and dialing down the anger. This is a time for the guy in charge (still) to be uniting his union, not filing lawsuits against it.

• Posted at 8:50 PM · LINK

More on Branded

Quite a few folks wrote to remind me that in its second season, Branded took an odd twist, undermining its own premise. Jason McCord was suddenly functioning as a special secret-secret government agent, investigating for and reporting to President Ulysses S. Grant. The opening with him getting kicked out of the army stayed the same but once you got into the episodes, things were different. How did I not recall that? Because I stopped watching the show when they made that switchover. Apparently, a lot of people did.

Several folks also told me that that DVD set contains trimmed (for syndication) prints and not especially good ones. So be wary.

• Posted at 6:18 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Today, class, we're going to look at the opening to Branded, a series that ran two seasons on NBC ('65 and '66) and starred Chuck Connors. He played Jason McCord, a West Point graduate who was unceremoniously drummed out of the Army back in the days of the Wild West. McCord was the sole survivor of an infamous massacre which occurred at someplace called Bitter Creek, and the working assumption was that he'd fled in a moment of cowardice instead of doing the manly deed and dying along with the rest of his buddies.

We, of course, knew he'd done no such thing. I mean, come on. He was Chuck Connors. But each week, we'd see this opening of him having his sword broken...a very long vamp when you consider it was only a half-hour show. Then he'd set out to find the proof that would clear his name and prove he wasn't a yellow-bellied, lily-livered deserter. Invariably in his quest, he'd run into someone who'd lost a loved one at Bitter Creek who would hate him and throw things at him because he hadn't also died there.

Nevertheless, he'd get involved in this person's problems. He'd save the day and prove his bravery...but the proof of his non-cravenness at Bitter Creek would remain elusive. So at the end, the person who'd previously hated him would say, "I believe you're a man and I wish I could help you" and McCord would wander off to the next village and the next person who would hate him because they'd lost a loved one at Bitter Creek. It was all rather joyous in its repetition.

Another fun part of the show is that at some point in each episode, there'd be some cowboy with a few lines of dialogue who clearly lacked the skill to deliver them. You'd hear this terrible reading and you'd know, "That's the Dodger!" Earlier in his life, Chuck Connors had been a pro baseball player and I guess he still palled around with them. Whatever the reason, Los Angeles Dodgers were always popping up in little cameo roles and committing acting errors. But maybe it was good luck because the team won the pennant both years that Branded was on the air.

Both of those seasons are out on DVD — here's a link if you want to order Volume 1 — and they aren't bad if you don't watch more than one in a row. The series was produced by the game show company, Goodson-Todman, probably as a result of some old NBC contract where they renegotiated the terms for one of their quiz programs and received as a bonus, a committment to produce something in a different genre for prime time. (One of my first TV writing jobs was on a sitcom produced by Monty Hall's company — a committment Monty got in exchange for another season of Let's Make a Deal. Or maybe NBC traded it for Door Number Three...)

Here's the opening of Branded and I ask you: Does that man look like a coward?

• Posted at 12:51 AM · LINK