Todd Haynes has directed several films with women as protagonists, and his latest is “Carol,” which stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara; MADtv debuted 20 years ago and managed to stay on the air for 14 seasons; a club owner considers L.A. nightlife after the Paris attacks.
A club owner considers LA nightlife after the Paris attacks
The owners of The Bataclan concert hall in Paris have vowed to re-open the venue in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, in New York, at a Billboard Magazine conference on touring in the music industry, there was a session about safety and security that included representatives from the Department of Homeland Security.
Safety is clearly — and understandably — on the minds of business owners of all sorts. In Southern California, that includes the owners of the many music venues — large and small — who operate clubs and concert halls.
Mitch Edelson and his father operate several venues in Los Angeles, including El Cid and Club Los Globos in Silver Lake. He spoke with The Frame's Oscar Garza about how his venues will respond to concert venue security after the Paris attacks.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
You and your family own a few venues in L.A. In fact, you just bought another — the former Jewel's Catch One in Mid-City. What kind of conversations has your family had about security at your venue since last Friday?
Safety has always been our number one concern — next to providing a good experience to our customers, but a safe experience as well. We're trying to be more vigilant than ever. All of our security are well trained. A lot of them are people who work at the Staples Center, so they do have very good training. We do metal detecting sometimes, bag checks all the time, just some kind of profiling. You know, if someone's coming in in the middle of June and it's 90 degrees and they're wearing a big coat, that raises a red flag.
Do you contract to private firms for security?
No, it's all an in-house crew.
Was last Friday sort of an Oh my God moment that will change everything?
Something that hit really close to home was that Jesse [Hughes] from Eagles of Death Metal, his band, Boots Electric, has played Los Globos. It's an L.A. band. We know a lot of the same people. So it hits really close to home when you hear that this is a band that you know whose concert is being attacked.
Did it make you rethink at all what you're currently doing at your venues in terms of security?
In a way, I guess. It does bring the reality to the front of your mind that this is something that can happen. That venue, The Bataclan, is in a neighborhood very much like Silver Lake, like Los Globos. It's very much like the corner of Sunset and Silver Lake. My family is Jewish. I know they targeted that night club because it was formerly owned by Jewish people and they had pro-Zionist events there. So it's definitely something that we think about.
Do you think that heightening concert security is even a necessary response to what happened last week? It sounds like you have a pretty solid plan in place at your venues, but do you expect that other club owners are rethinking what they do?
Terrorist attacks have happened in nightclubs in the past. This is not something that just happened this year. It's happened in London, Bali and Israel. I think that terrorists look at nightclubs as a hedonistic den for their enemies, and I think it makes it a target for them. So I think that is a part of owning a nightclub, and there is inherent danger in nightclubs when you add liquor, people coming together and a crowd mentality. But it's an ongoing conversation and it's something we try to keep our eye on.
The origin story of SNL's edgy rival, MADtv (part 2)
Almost every year that it was on the air, MADtv was on the verge of cancellation. But somehow it kept trucking for 14 seasons, until Fox finally chose not to renew it in 2009. Some new blood arrived in season three that gave the show a lot of its personality over the years, including a 22-year-old aspiring actor from Canada named Will Sasso.
“I wanted to be on 'Saturday Night Live' when I was a kid,” Sasso says. “It was kind of like growing up playing a sport, wanting to be drafted by your favorite team. And ending up on 'MADtv'... to me, it’s the absolute equivalent. Yeah, it was my 'Saturday Night Live' — which will be the name of my autobiography: My 'Saturday Night Live.' Just me in pastels with my chin on my fist.”
Sasso brought a barrage of original characters and impressions to the show, including wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bill Clinton.
Another season three hire was Alex Borstein, a Chicago native who was doing improv in L.A. “The first three years were, you know, honeymoon, incredible,” she says. “It raises your game. You’re working with all these other smart, creative people. You’re surrounded by it.
"It feels like a college kind of atmosphere. It was never competitive like I heard about it was at SNL. It didn’t feel pitted against each other. They also tried to be very even-handed about seeing who had [ideas] every week, and making sure people had [opportunities].”
Borstein is best known today for her role on another irreverent Fox show, "Family Guy," as the voice of Lois Griffin. As a matter of fact, Seth MacFarlane’s hit animated series almost began as a segment on "MADtv" — the way "The Simpsons" started out on "The Tracey Ullman Show."
“I think 'MADtv' was perfectly suited to Fox when it was developed,” Borstein says. “I think Fox wanted that demographic, too — that kind of young, urban, popular culture, hip demographic.”
Borstein’s most popular character from "MADtv" was Ms. Swan, whose voice she modeled after her Hungarian grandmother.
Michael McDonald auditioned for "MADtv" in 1997 within days of auditioning for "Saturday Night Live" (along with Jimmy Fallon and Chris Parnell). At 34, he was the oldest cast member — and he became the longest running, staying through the second-to-the-last season.
“I ended up playing a lot of the politicians 'cause I was the oldest white dude,” McDonald laughs. “And so every senator and every serial killer, I basically knew I was going to be playing that.”
One of McDonald’s fan-favorite characters was the dimwitted, conniving child Stuart:
Stuart’s mother was played by Mo Collins, who also joined the show during its fourth season. She had trained in improv in her home state of Minnesota, but had never been cast in anything for TV.
“I saw that show and I just sort of knew it was a match,” Collins says. “And a lot of that had to do with how much they were letting, or allowing, the women to be funny — the women were so strong. We had Lauren Dombrowski, who was one of our writer/producers, who was just about as tough as they come. And we had a ton of writers that were exceptional at writing for women [who] were men. We had women on the staff as well. And then you have female performers that are bringing stuff in. And so, how can it not be female-strong if all those things are in play?”
Most of the women on the show had hugely popular recurring characters. Borstein’s Ms. Swan appeared in something like 20 sketches over the years.
“I kept hearing at SNL how hard it was for the women to be heard,” Borstein says. “This was before Tiny Fey was there and Amy Poehler. And we were queens, you know. We had no problem getting our material on the air, and doing it in a big way. And Swan ... the first time we did that sketch and they saw that it worked and worked huge, they were like, We want this every week. Another one, another one, another one.”
"MADtv" took on social, political, and racial issues, but usually in a grittier, more scathing way than "Saturday Night Live."
“I think politically, we hit a little harder,” McDonald says. “And we would go after Democrats as much as Republicans. And I think that made us a little different from most of the other places. I really feel like we kind of shot in all directions. I think 'MADtv' was a little bit more rebellious, and a little bit more the kid in the back of the room that is shooting spitballs.”
Everyone who spoke about "MADtv" feels nothing but pride and fond memories about the show. But nearly everyone agreed that Fox let the show down, both in terms of financial support and promotion.
“I mean, they would use us, like, ‘We’re gonna promote "Melrose Place" and whatever tonight,’” Nicole Sullivan recalls. “And they would [have] us do interstitials. But it was to publicize their show. I just think they thought, ‘Oh, [MADtv] lives there, it stays there. It’ll do what it does.’”
Some say the problem was that Fox didn’t own the show — Quincy Jones and David Salzman’s production company did — so the network didn’t treat it like one of its own. Beyond the network, there seemed to be a lack of respect for "MADtv" in the entertainment industry at large.
“We definitely felt like the bastard stepchild,” Sasso says. “We definitely felt like the second option. We definitely felt like we were invisible while we were making the show, as far as the town was concerned, as far as show business was concerned, as far as the ratings were concerned. The ratings were great, especially when you consider how spread thin it is now on TV. And the viewership was really strong.”
"MADtv" did win five Primetime Emmys in 14 years — but they were all for costumes and hairstyling, and one for music. Michael McDonald joked that it was a show for people who wear name tags — blue-collar, everyday folks from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds who found it relatable and cathartic.
That’s in direct contrast to "Saturday Night Live," according to Alex Borstein. “SNL’s pieces and sketches spoke to a very white, suburban world, really,” she says. “Even though it was made in New York, its audiences tended to be kind of vanilla in the old days. And 'MADtv' really filled a different vacuum. I mean, most of the fans were rainbow. And fans of Swan in particular... anybody would feel that she was an immigrant, and it fit everything. People were like, ‘Oh my god, that’s my Greek grandmother.’ ‘Oh my god, that’s my Mexican aunt.’ ‘Oh my god, that’s my Chinese this, that’s my Korean this...’”
If "MADtv" was poorly supported and promoted while it was on the air, it’s been even more poorly preserved. In an age where you can stream nearly every series in the history of TV on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon — or at least find a pricey box set — only a few seasons of "MADtv" have been released on DVD, and some of them are heavily edited collections. You can find a lot of sketches on YouTube, but they’re fan uploads, and usually in terrible quality.
But maybe being perpetually overlooked and dissed helped define the show. “I feel like we got away with murder, comedically, subject-matter wise,” McDonald says. “I thought we got to hit a little harder, and I think that came from the fact that the people in charge at our network ... barely knew that we were on the air. And that’s a great thing. To be overlooked in comedy can be a great thing, ’cause it’s freedom.”
Perhaps "MADtv" was simply ahead of its time. It just missed the boon of the Internet, which has proven to be the perfect carrier for sketch comedy. And it just predated the explosion of quirky, alt-sketch comedy series, both on TV and online — shows like "Portlandia," "Inside Amy Schumer" and "Key and Peele." It’s such a bull market for sketch shows these days that the Television Academy created a new special Emmy category this year.
“Had YouTube been there, we’d all be famous right now," Collins says. “Twitter... all of that. We’d be huge. I mean, shoot, if you can burp on camera for five minutes and get a million followers these days, you gonna tell me that our show wouldn’t have been going nuts?”
Why Todd Haynes is compelled to make movies with female leads
Cate Blanchett plays Carol and Rooney Mara plays Therese in "Carol," a 1950s lesbian love story directed by Todd Haynes. He's the filmmaker behind movies like “Far From Heaven” and “Velvet Goldmine,” and the HBO miniseries, “Mildred Pierce.”
The screenplay for “Carol” was written by Phyllis Nage, who adapted it from the 1950’s book, “The Price of Salt.” Patricia Highsmith had written the novel under a pseudonym. Her only prior book was “Strangers On a Train,” which Alfred Hitchcock made into a movie. In the ‘50s, “The Price of Salt” was a notable novel in that it depicted a story rarely told at the time — a romance between two women. Here’s The Frame’s John Horn in conversation with Todd Haynes.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Did this movie come to you as a screenplay or were you familiar with the book?
To the shock and dismay of all of my dearest lesbian friends, I didn’t know this novel. So I received Phyllis’s adaptation, and read the novel in the same couple of days.
This is Phyllis Nage, who wrote the adaptation.
Yeah. And I heard about it, funnily enough, from Sandy Powell, the costume designer . . . and [my friend] Liz Carlson was producing it . . . Liz is like family. And I was like, hmm.
Right around the time "Carol" had its premiere [at the Cannes Film Festival], the Supreme Court came out with its marriage equality ruling — an issue that is really not completely settled. Do you think the film becomes more topical with every month that goes by, even though it’s set in the 1950s?
There’s no way contemporary audiences could watch a film like “Carol” and not think about where we are today. The radical change in public opinion, it’s like those rare times — and I think the civil rights movement was another one — where you watch a society learning. You watch society changing its opinions and its innate prejudices through a kind of pressure, a discourse that surrounds everyone . . . That said, [“Carol”] is about a very specific time that we can’t forget about.
How, as a filmmaker working in an era where there’s marriage equality, do you put yourself in a mindset where there’s not only no such thing, but you can lose your children if you are a gay person?
I lived through and was active in the era of AIDS activism in New York in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, so there have been many permutations to what’s been at stake in the struggles of gay people [during] my life. That was looming over this film and contextualizing it.
But there’s also a discussion that’s not always had, which is about elements of a culture that also get lost as it gets accepted in the mainstream. The ways in which gays and lesbians survived and existed for centuries is through all of these coded means of behavior and communication and creative expression. And that’s a really rich, gorgeous, complicated history.
“Carol” obviously has political appeal. Does it have narrative appeal too? It’s about a female lead, and it’s about people operating outside of what’s considered to be “acceptable behavior,” where they don’t really fit into society at that time. Is that consistent with other things you’re drawn to?
Absolutely. I was interested in it for all of the reasons you just stated. But I was also drawn to it in the purest and simplest sense — of it being an incredibly powerful account of love. And reading that novel, where you’re locked inside the subjectivity of Therese, the Rooney Mara character, and you watch the machinations of the amorous mind . . . It makes it a universal story beyond the sexual orientation of the characters. It was really about that fragile, paranoid, fraught early love that’s rooted in the subjective experience of the lover — usually the one who’s more liable to be hurt if things don’t go well.
There are not a lot of movies made right now that have women in leading roles. You’ve been very aggressive and reliable about doing that. Why do you think the former is true, and are the choices you make in some way a reaction to that void?
It’s always a head-scratcher to me, especially when you look back at incredibly rich periods of Hollywood filmmaking, where films designed around leading, amazing actors who are women were a mainstay. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were making five-to-ten features a year. And it generated a robust audience. Women have always been a part of the mainstream audience, the global market. So when something like "Bridesmaids" does well in the box office, people feel like they’ve learned something new this time around. I never quite understand that perpetual return to the model of the young, male filmgoer as our only audience. It says a great deal about how our culture continues to work around the notion of male identity.
I’ve always been attracted to stories about women. The conditions that women experience in their lives are often stories about domestic constraints. And really, the realities of life that I think we all struggle with. They’re not, by definition, as much about escapism.
You still live and work in Portland, right? Do you think that gives you a different perspective on storytelling and the TV business than if you lived in Los Angeles and were closer to it?
I guess I’ve always felt the need to hide out a bit. I grew up in L.A. That introduced me to all the interests I still carry today. But I needed to leave that place to begin my film career, and go to New York. It happened to be a very rich and fertile time for independent film. For activists and political culture, brought on by things that nobody wished for or asked for, but it ignited the community of gay people, but also of artists. I’m talking about the AIDS crisis. But what’s interesting about the epidemic and the activism is that it followed a lot of criticisms or questions about public financing for the arts in general.
But that motivated and poised a certain community. It was no accident that most of the performance artists whose grants were rescinded by the National Endowment for the Arts [in the early 1990s], were often engaged with gay content in their work. It was a trigger, clearly. And it ignited a newly robust, conservative administration and culture, which we still are experiencing today. That was a time and place that I think was informed by all those things.
"Carol" premieres in theaters on Nov. 20.