What follows are some posts sent privately and now thrown out to the wide-world of SCREEN-L and H-FILM for whatever use they may be. cal ======================================================================== 27 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 94 14:36:53 EST From: Cal <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: MTV's The Real World To: Pam Wilson <[log in to unmask]> In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 20 Feb 1994 07:22:00 CDT Wish I had something smart to say about THE REAL WORLD. My slight exposure to the show itself and the hype about the show tell me that it is an extension of the fundamental approach of AMERICAN FAMILY. When he was producing FAMILY, Craig Gilbert knew what he wanted and interviewed 250 families before casting the Louds. The Louds interest was that they would "be on television" as a way of making it in the great big world of show biz. THE REAL WORLD was cast in the same way, the only difference is that they were a constructed "family." THE BRADY BUNCH and the MONKEES don't seem to fit that paradigm, except to the extent that any show takes on the characteristics of a family. While writing the previous sentence, the thought occurred that many other continuing groupings (department faculty??) take on the characteristics of a family with people taking on comfortable roles of father, mother, older brother, younger sister, etc. I don't know what this all means; it's been a long time since I thought I was a sociologist. best wishes, cal ======================================================================== 40 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 94 14:45:08 EST From: Cal <[log in to unmask]> Subject: THE REAL WORLD, take 2 To: Pam Wilson <[log in to unmask]> In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 20 Feb 1994 07:22:00 CDT As I punched the send key I was reminded of Louis Marcorelles, LIVING CINEMA (New York: Praeger, 1973; originally published in French, 1970). He deals with the then-still-sort-of-new film phenomenon of Direct Cinema, extending the original Drew-Leacock-Pennebaker-Rouch views into the possibility of constructing a "direct cinema environment" (my phrase) where people would be cast in terms of their experiences responding to their world as they would. The key point, as I remember it, was that the crew would be responding to the "constructed" world as they would in actuality. The crew would have no a priori knowledge of what was happening or would come. The point about FAMILY and REAL WORLD (and certainly BRADY and MONKEES) is that the people creating the work, knew where it was going. Ideas like "actor's intentions" enter here. Actors are very nervous when they don't know how it's all going to turn out. They need some sense of where their acting partners are going so that they can shade their own performances. On this topic, during the shooting of CASABLANCA, Ingrid Bergman, who had a vast understanding of technique kept asking "who is my character going to leave with?" Of course, there was no answer since the script was being written while they were shooting. Pages would be distributed daily. When they came to shoot the final sequence, no decision had yet been made. As a superb technican, Bergman was able to nuance her performance throughout to make her peformance credible no matter how it turned out. In this world there are few performers with Bergman's technical control. (It was said that even during repeated takes, she would blink, for instance, on the same syllable.) You certainly won't find such skills among a bunch of kids put together for something like REAL WORLD. cal ======================================================================== 26 Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 14:23:33 EST From: Cal <[log in to unmask]> Subject: REAL WORLD: more random thoughts To: [log in to unmask] One thing about having a short attention span is that occasionally the oddiments I do pick up come to some kind of focus. In particular today: Mike Bailey's post re: Altman's insisting that his players in McCABE take on their roles even off-screen reminded me of living history reenactors who get together at various types of encampments where they often take on a historical personna which they play out in first person, that is, they attempt to reenact a particular person, or at least a class of people. They take this task very seriously; "out of period" representations are discouraged. What is happening at these encampments is similar to the apocryuphal tale of Von Stroheim insisting the extras in a 'twenties extraganza set in the Viennese court be costumed in silk undergarments. The reenactors, some reenactors make the same demand; others settle for outerwear verisimilitude. Does this have anything to do with REAL PEOPLE? I don't know; that's why I'm sending these thoughts directly to you rather than engage with the folks who would otherwise read them on H-FILM or SCREEN-L. cal ------------------------------------------------------------------- Cal Pryluck, Radio-Television-Film, Temple University, Philadelphia <[log in to unmask]> <PRYLUCK@TEMPLEVM>