Series creator Kurt Sutter is disappointed but not bitter about the cancellation of "The Bastard Executioner"; it's been 20 years since MADtv set out to be the west coast version of "Saturday Night Live"; "The Hunting Ground" examines sexual assaults on college campuses.
The origin story of SNL's edgy rival, MADtv (part 1)
In 1995, "Saturday Night Live" was celebrating its 20th anniversary. But the show was flailing. Most of the cast who made it such a boom comedy economy during the late ’80s and early ’90s had moved on or been fired. New York Magazine ran a hit piece in March of that year, titled: “Comedy Isn’t Funny: How the Show that Transformed TV Became a Grim Joke.”
Meanwhile, on the other coast, Quincy Jones and David Salzman — whose production company was behind "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" — had just purchased the rights to Mad Magazine. They saw an opportunity in the 40-year-old publication, with its irreverent satire and pop culture parodies, to compete with NBC’s ailing sketch comedy king.
"We wanted to bring them down," says Fax Bahr, who had been a staff writer for the first two seasons on Keenan Wayans’ sketch series, "In Living Color." "I think it was described as they were the wounded zebra, and we were like the young lion that was gonna try and take them down."
Bahr and his writing partner, Adam Small, were hired as show-runners for this new series called "MADtv."
"Our approach was — like the magazine — an amalgam of different artists who were doing their own little short bits," Bahr explains. "So we would do short sketches and, like in 'Mad Magazine,' movie parodies. We wanted to be topical. Definitely wanted it to be edgy. We really worked hard to find a diverse cast of people who were great actors — really versatile, solid actors."
The first person they cast was Debra Wilson. She created dozens of characters and impressions during her eight years on the show, the most popular being Oprah Winfrey.
"I walked into the room," Wilson remembers of her audition, "and there were over 20 Fox executives, with Quincy Jones, David Saltzman, Fax Bahr and Adam Small. You’d go in and you’d do a couple of your characters. You had to do impersonations or impressions. So for me, I felt like they were in my playground. And instead of just doing my characters, I’m talking to people as my characters."
The rest of the cast was mostly made up of people with stand-up, improv and comedic writing backgrounds — including Phil LaMarr and Artie Lange. And then there was Nicole Sullivan.
"They had a lot of really seasoned Groundlings people and seasoned stand-up people," Sullivan says. "Later, Fax and Adam told me [I was] clearly the least seasoned in this world. But [they] also wanted people that the audience would like to have dinner with. But I will say I was the least talented person who was cast, and I was very much learning, like baptism by fire."
With their diverse cast in place, Bahr and Small shot a pilot. Fox loved it and ordered 12 episodes, then eventually a full season. The first episode of "MADtv" premiered on Oct. 14, 1995.
Fox had established a brand as a home for edgy, envelope-pushing comedy. But Bahr says that didn’t mean the MADtv crew could get away with everything.
"[Fox] had so much difficulty with 'Married with Children,' I think they were getting a lot of feedback on 'The Simpsons,' and so forth," Bahr says. "They employed these very strict guys who would come in and veto a lot of things that we did. So we would just write the most vicious, nasty sketches that we could, knowing they’d be killed, so that we could continue to push the envelope. That was our war of attrition. We allowed them to kill a few things, and then we’d get what we wanted."
The show’s initial 12 writers were mostly young stand-up comics and people with sketch comedy backgrounds. The first writer they hired was a young stand-up named Patton Oswalt, along with his writing partner, Blaine Capatch.
"People like Blaine and I were way ... trying to recreate the anarchy side of 'Mad Magazine' from the ’50s and ’60s," says Oswalt, "when they really were trying to rip into society."
The show wasn’t live, but it was taped in front of an audience. This gave it some of the same energy as "SNL," but the cast could also improvise and do multiple takes. There were also lots of pre-taped sketches and movie parodies that were shot on location with big budgets—like "Gump Fiction" from season one, written by Oswalt:
Each episode was a mix of original characters, impressions, parodies and cast monologues. The first season even had animated bits from the magazine’s "Spy vs Spy" cartoon. The shadow of "SNL" always loomed large over "MADtv," which aired on Saturday nights at the same time.
But Debra Wilson says, "I think it had a different feel than a 'Saturday Night Live,' because it wasn’t theatrically presented. It was multimedia. And it was fast-paced. It had a very L.A. feel to me —although I’ve had a number of fans think that it was actually shot in New York.”
The show’s ethnic and gender diversity alone set it apart from the mostly white boys club over at "SNL." The first season’s eight cast members included three people of color and three women.
"I certainly played, I would have to say, the majority of the racists on the show," Sullivan recalls, laughing. "We wanted to make people look stupid. And so my characters, even though they weren’t real, were just sending them up to make her look like she’s an idiot."
"We were a ton edgier than 'Saturday Night Live,'" she adds. “There were so many black members of our team, it was inevitable that that’s what a lot of stuff was gonna be, you know?"
Debra Wilson thinks they were even too edgy for Fox. “We would go to Fox junkets and parties, and we would be the bad kids in the corner,” she says. “But we liked that reputation. So even though we all had our own different personalities and our own different relationship makeups within the cast, we were the bad f----n’ kids of 'MADtv.' We were the badass kids of the block.”
'The Hunting Ground' documents epidemic of sexual assaults on college campuses
For most young people, going off to college is a time for celebration and excitement, part of The American Dream.
But there’s a dark side to college life. Statistics show that one in five women will experience a sexual assault during her time in college. It’s a controversial topic explored in great detail in “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering. They’re the team behind “The Invisible War,” a documentary about sexual assault in the military.
Some critics have said that “The Hunting Ground” includes some faulty reporting. The online magazine Slate published a story about a purported assailant whose alleged assault is one of four key stories in the film. The accused man was in fact acquitted of all felony charges, though found guilty of a misdemeanor for nonsexual touching. In an op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter, director Kirby Dick maintains the film is “completely accurate.”
Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering stopped by The Frame to talk about the making of their documentary, sexual assault on college campuses, and how they gained the trust of their subjects.
Interview Highlights:
How did you manage to get these young women to open up about their alleged sexual assaults?
Amy Ziering: For each person it was very different. For the most part, people were very eager to talk in a way we haven’t seen before. I think in part that was because of the student movement, which has given ground for people to feel more comfortable speaking out. I also think it was in part due to our former film, “Invisible War,” which kind of opened the door and made it safe for people to feel that coming forward might be a positive and validating experience. Before our film, in our society there was much more fear about blowback and retribution if you talked about a sexual assault in public.
There are two things going on there. One is that they’re giving their names and faces to their stories. But also, they have been silenced. And that’s part of the story as well. By speaking out, they’re trying to change the cycle of how they’re dealt with, especially on college campuses.
Kirby Dick: That’s absolutely true, and it’s not just them. Everybody who participated in our film said, I’m doing this because I don’t want this to happen to someone else. They really wanted to change the issue. And there’s no question that what they’ve done, what students and activists have done, has really changed the debate around this thing. I think our country owes them a great deal of thanks.
When you started on this film, you probably knew broadly what the statistics were. But as journalists who start the actual reporting, what shocked your conscience about what you learned when working on this film? Amy?
Ziering: I was shocked that it was so … retro? What’s the word? I felt like I was back in the 1950s on these campuses. That was completely surprising to me — the attitude of these administrators, the victim-blaming that was uniform across the boards. The sexism and misogyny that was internalized in the culture on the campuses was really strange and mind-blowing to me. It seems that our certain gender norms are much more reified in a way that I didn’t experience in the '70s or '80s. That, for me, was one of the more shocking things.
Dick: And I think also how ubiquitous it was. We were following dozens of stories on dozens of campuses around the country. This was my most ambitious undertaking for a film. It seemed like no school really handled it completely right. And you know, these are incredible women. Their credibility is so high. You just couldn’t understand why schools were reacting to their students this way.
As documentary filmmakers, you’re obviously interested in incredible stories. The more incredible, the more compelling the story. But as humans who are listening to this story, you’ve got to be really anguished by what you’re hearing. So how do you separate what you’re hearing as a filmmaker from what you’re hearing as a human being, and how heartbreaking it is?
Dick: Yeah, well, when you’re hearing these people tell these stories, it causes you to be extremely sad . . . At the same time, we know that if this is affecting us, it will affect audiences. And that kind of impact will help change this, and help put an end to these assaults. And also, if it’s affecting us in this way, it will affect audiences very strongly. So you’re listening to it from the point of view as a person, but also as a filmmaker — simultaneously.
That’s got to be incredibly difficult. Amy, are you listening to it as two different people?
Ziering: Yeah. You are, in a certain way. I think I’m a little less so than Kirby. We do the interviews together. I’m the initial interviewer and then Kirby [follows], for the most part. That takes a bit of the burden off of me, where I don’t have to play the filmmaker role. I absolutely absorb myself in the moment. I’m really there to hear their story as an empathetic listener. It’s hard work but I like to point out: if it’s so hard for us, we can only begin to imagine what the impact is not only on people who experience these crimes, but their loved ones, and everyone they’re in contact with. There’s a ripple domino effect of toxicity. That’s my takeaway from it. That’s where we really take this issue on in a way we haven’t in this culture.
Amy, you’re not just a filmmaker or journalist. You’re the mother of daughters. What is it like when you hear these stories and start imagining the safety of your own children?
Ziering: It’s horrible . . . One question I often ask in interviews is, How did you tell your parents? And if anyone responded that they hadn’t yet, or weren’t going to, it really would break my heart. We have a whole montage of those responses. Those really crushed me . . . And it’s hard for my kids, too. I don’t envy them for having grown up with a mom who’s made two films back-to-back about sexual assault. That’s not exactly fun dinner conversation.
What was the most difficult thing about getting this film made?
Ziering: One of the most difficult things was getting high-level administrators to talk on camera. It was more difficult to do that than it was to get Pentagon officials to talk to us in “Invisible War.”
Dick: Absolutely. And also, we were covering these stories in real time. This is not a documentary looking at something that’s happened in the past. You don’t really have control over this. We were following dozens of stories of sexual assault, and how these survivors responded, and that’s a very delicate thing. We got it right at the beginning. A couple of months after our main subjects started coming out and talking publicly — and these were the subjects who were at the lead of the student movement. We followed it all the way through over the next two years until they were in the White House, helping Senator Gillibrand draft bills. Helping Governor Cuomo of New York draft bills. Everything changed, and we were there following it the entire time.
You have a website that you link to called seeactstop.org at the end of the film. In terms of how you want this film to change things, what would you say your top two or three priorities are?
Dick: First, awareness. Sexual assault, in all societies, is something that’s denied and continually silenced. We want this put in front of people, administrators, faculty, students, alumni, so that this is something they can’t deny. And hopefully, with this awareness they’ll compel these institutions to change. And to the institutions’ credit, there is some movement. That would be one thing.
Ziering: If the film could have our whole culture re-conceive and reframe sexual assaults, that would be a huge win for me. What I mean by that is, all studies show that 92-98 percent of when someone reports a rape, that report is accurate. They’re telling the truth. And yet it’s the only crime in our society where, when it’s reported, it’s met with skepticism. You get challenging questions . . . These are crimes like any other, and we should treat them as such. The second thing would be to believe survivors as a result — that fact that they’re as likely to be credible in what they’re saying as anyone else who’s telling you of a crime being committed. And if we start there with square one, there’d be a transformative ripple effect that would be huge and necessary.
"The Hunting Ground" airs on CNN on Sunday, Nov. 22.
Kurt Sutter bids a public farewell to 'The Bastard Executioner'
"The Bastard Executioner," FX's show about 14th-century Welsh warriors, has gotten the axe.
Although networks are now more reluctant to cancel poorly performing TV shows, those whose numbers stay low still don't last beyond the first season, at most. Such was the fate for "The Bastard Executioner," which premiered to low ratings and then continued to lose its audience. By episode six, fewer than a million viewers tuned in.
Sadly for writers, canceling TV shows within the first season is par for the network course. What sets "The Bastard Executioner" apart is the gracious farewell that creator Kurt Sutter — who is also the brain behind the more successful "Sons of Anarchy" — posted to cast and crew across a number of publications.
When Kurt Sutter spoke with The Frame, he explained that he wanted to acknowledge how much support he received, and how much talent was involved with the show. Read more below about his thoughts on the cancellation, and what comes next.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
The last time we talked, "The Bastard Executioner" had not come out yet. You were really excited. For people who’ve never been in this world, what does it feel like to have a show not work?
I don’t have TV as a point of reference, but I’ve definitely had movie scripts not work, with different levels of pain. Creatively, it was definitely out of my wheelhouse. But I wanted to flex the muscles. I didn’t want to jump into another urban crime project.
I wanted to do something a little more honorable about going down with the ship when you’ve been on an adventurous voyage, rather than sailing on the same old canal. I think when shows get axed, there’s a sense of evil networks [or] the studio putting the kibosh on creative endeavors because of money. And I really wanted to communicate that the network and studio gave me everything I needed to do this show. At the end of the day, it came down to arithmetic. We couldn’t get the base numbers and the core audience to sustain the show.
When you see those numbers, is it a bit like going through the five stages of grief?
Probably. “Sons [of Anarchy]” also premiered very low. What “Sons” managed to do was sustain that number and slowly tic up. I think it was around episode three [of "The Bastard Executioner"] when we just kept dropping. That’s when I was like, Wow, this is bad news. If this continues, we’ll probably go away. And I really feel like there’s nothing I would have done differently, other than maybe taking a break between “Sons” and “Bastards” so it weren’t quite so physically debilitating.
You would have made the show the same way.
Yeah. The story is the story. I love our cast. I wouldn’t have changed any of that. All the variables for me were in place. It’s all the other variables you have no control over that I think ultimately led to the decision not to move forward.
Typically the network is the one saying, We need to pull the plug, and the show creator pleads for more time. It feels like not only were you in agreement, but you went to an unprecedented step to announce its demise in a public advertisement. How did that decision come about?
Two things. One, I have a really great relationship with John Landgraf...
...who runs FX.
Yes. We’re like an old married couple. We talk all the time. As numbers came in each week, we had a conversation. I knew the writing was on the wall. John basically said, How do you want to tell people? He gave me the opportunity to go out honorably, where I don’t think a lot of networks would ever condone that. What I wanted to do was let people know what a great cast and crew this was. And how, if they ever have the opportunity to employ any of these actors, they should jump on it. Not only are they talented, but their dedication to the work raised the bar for me across the board. So I wanted to shift the paradigm and acknowledge the hard work that everyone had done.
You ran your ad with a font that’s been widely ridiculed in Hollywood as the font of “Avatar” — I think it’s called Papyrus. Did you design your own ad?
I did. I chose the font that would piss people off the most. [laughter]
I think you succeeded there! And for people who do not read Latin, “Uno tempore. Unos amor.” Translate that for us.
I had two sources for my Latin. Every time I ask for a translation, they’re in opposition. [laughter] So my intention was, “One season. One love.” That’s what I wanted to communicate.
So what’s next?
I don’t do well with down time. My deal is with Fox and FX. I love working there. I’m sure there will be something else down the road. I know they’re keen on this ["Sons of Anarchy"] Mayan spinoff. I have to find the right writer for that. There are some feature projects I’d like to get underway. It’s kind of nice to have a little bit of space to decide what to do, rather than jumping from one to the next without any sense of breathing room.