[s e r e n i t y]

Well, Id think we'd each have to go a thousand times? maybe more

Thats possible yeah, they all have careers and Ian and Charlie and Matt have TV shows to do so yeah, it seems if theres gonna be something itll be a remake and considering how the world is filled with those ranging from Buffy (why?? whyyyy???) to Skins ( again, why?????) and Alias???? Id rather not have a Ya remake

[wolkenfuehlen]

Probably

Originally Posted by s e r e n i t y (View Post) so yeah, it seems if theres gonna be something itll be a remake and considering how the world is filled with those ranging from Buffy (why?? whyyyy???) to Skins ( again, why?????) and Alias???? Id rather not have a Ya remake

I agree completely!! Be original from time to time and come up with your own stories, instead of doing remakes and reboots every five years.

(Btw, I'm ignoring that they're remaking Buffy without Joss Whedon. Just...how?!?! and an Alias remake? Really?! )

[Finnegan]

Originally Posted by wolkenfuehlen (View Post) Would people really go see a YA movie?... and a remake would annoy me.

Anja,

The potential of what can be done with the novel themes and dramatic innovations of Young Americans was not even remotely exhausted by the original drama, and its potential development is not limited to a remake or a sequel.

What is the core that defines YA? In my opinion, the key elements of YA are:

-- Conspicuous disdain for realism, an overarching concern to depict what should be rather than what is, to edify morally, a palpable feeling of being "too good to be true." (This is embodied in the Rawley motto because it is the core element of the drama -- truth is what should be, not what is.)

-- Going back to school to learn to love more truly, reliving youth as it should be.

-- The temporal ambiguity of being old and young at once, which need not be limited to the narrator.

-- A dramatic argument that passion and compassion are complements rather than substitutes, specifically:

-- that passion not only can be but routinely is born of compassion;
-- that we fail to see this because compassion must be expressed and hence masked by passion in order to be effectively compassionate; and
-- that, if we understood this, we might love more truly.

-- A true love "play within the play" that is the core the "lesson" taught by the school, and which retells old tales of true love in new ways.

-- "Love that speaks like silence," relegation of dialogue to a subordinate or even masking role in the true love story, and, more broadly, consistent use of sensual beauty simultaneously to express and mask the dramatic argument just as passion both expresses and masks compassion;

-- Gender deception as a form of the classic "test of true love." (This, plainly, is YA's most original dramatic innovation.)

-- A "true love" story consisting of a straight character engaging in gender deception out of despair of being truly lovable, redeemed by another straight character whose passion is born of compassion and expresses and masks his/her compassion.

-- Rooting the dramatic argument against the Pauline view of sex firmly in other strands of of traditional Western culture, i.e., using tradition to correct and renew tradition -- while offsetting traditional high-culture allusions and borrowings with contemporary pop-culture allusions and borrowings as part of the theme of personal and cultural renewal, of being old and young at once.

In my view, any drama (or novel) that contains all that is "YA." Combine them well, and yes, people will go see it. Combine them very well, and you could make a modern classic.

YA's actuality does not even begin to exhaust its potentiality. Although YA 2000 is wonderful, YA could be better done than it was in 2000 -- much better. Admittedly, care in casting would be needed to match the true-love-story protagonists of 2000. But freedom from the TV episode format, and from playing to a largely teen-aged audience, would free YA from its most obvious flaws: being too subtle for its audience; having insufficient interaction between the "true love" play-within-a-play and the rest of the drama; having a not-true-love story-line that climaxes far too early and is overdeveloped; having too strong an obstacle to love (incest) in the not-true-love story line; and, arguably, having a not-true-love story-line at all, since, if the point is to edify, who needs one?

Whether Antin sees this or not, I don't know - but I rather suspect he must.

[Finnegan]

Joe Voci (filmography here, who was as Executive VP of Mandalay TV was Columbia TriStar's executive producer for Young Americans, and who co-wrote the final episode of YA with StevenAntin, has a website that includes a resumé.

Voci's resumé indicates that he and Antin have also co-written a number of other scripts, that apparently were never brought to the screen. These scripts were for one half-hour-length-episode TV series, two movies (one of them about The Pussycat Dolls burlesque troupe) and six hour-length-episode TV series:

Rescue Me!* Writer/Executive Producer (Pilot) Lions Gate/Lifetime Untitled Island Project* Writer/Executive Producer Fox TV Studios 66* Writer/Executive Producer (Pilot) USA Network The Beach* Writer/Executive Producer (Pilot) Spelling/DiNovi/UPN The Hamptons* Writer/Executive Producer (Pilot) USA Network American Woman* Writer/Executive Producer (Pilot) Imagine/UPN *co-written with Steven Antin

No dates are given for these apparently unsuccessful projects. However, the order of their listing appears, as is normal in resumé format, to be inverse chronological; in that case, all these Antin-Voci scriptwriting collaborations came after Young Americans. For understanding YA, and how it came to be made as it was, Antin's collaboration with Jefery Levy, described previously on this thread, would seem to be more informative.

What the above informations seems chiefly to tell us is that, in making YA, Antin formed a lasting but apparently not very successful professional relationship with Voci. Apparently Antin, in making YA, made a distinctly favorable impression on at least one of the show's two executive producers.

[Finnegan]

Well, I finally watched Burlesque, and I enjoyed it. A cute, charming song and dance film with excellent music and superb choreography. The predictability of the plot didn't bother me, neither did it strike me as "camp."

I had feared that this film would be bad soft porn -- the kind that makes one squirm in one's seat. It's not. There's no reason to be afraid to see it.

The first song in the show states that "nothing is what it seems," and, given what some of the more perceptive reviews have said about its allusions to its antecedents in the song-and-dance musical genre, I can believe that. Sadly, however, I don't know its antecedents, the history of that genre, well enough to explain the film on the second level of meaning that it plainly has. I'm stuck with a naive appreciation until I can find watch and discuss it with someone who knows its genre far better than I. Even so, watching Burlesque was a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half.

One barb, obvious even to me, is that the failing night club, at the film's start, is lip-synching its dance songs, and is saved by really singing them. Antin is accusing someone or something of "just going through the motions," but I'm not sure who or what. The whole genre in recent decades? Perhaps, but I don't know it well enough to say.

My impression, based on very slight knowledge, is that Cabaret (1968) killed the film musical genre by succeeding so massively that it created expectations that can rarely be met. Cabaret, unlike any other film musical I've ever seen, dealt with deadly serious issues -- the Weimar decadence that gave rise to Hitler -- in a way that made every viewer share the moral guilt of facilitating evil. Film musicals can't reach cultural-criticism heights like that very often, and if one expects them to do so, then one will usually be disappointed. Burlesque states at the outset that it will not try to do so. It's first song says: "It's not the end of days, it's just the bump and grind." In other words, it will not try to be another Cabaret, but merely offer a cute love story in which to embed its song-and-dance numbers, as was common before Cabaret. Is Antin suggesting that it's time for the genre to return to pre-Cabaret form and expecations? Perhaps, but again, I don't know enough to say.

So far as I can understand it, the most obvious similarity between Burlesque and YA is that both are wholesome and uplifting. There are no really bad characters in Burlesque; the closest thing to an evil character repents and finds salvation at the end. There's also no more sex in Burlesque than in YA, i.e., none at all, until the very end, when it seems appropriate; the male and female leads share an apartment for months without sleeping together. There is one male nudity scene, but it's comic, cute, and well-executed. As for female nudity, there's not so much as a single bare breast in the whole film. The only gay scene disparages the impersonality of so much of gay sex; Antin, who has stayed with his current partner, this film's producer, for more than a decade, directs his most pointed preaching at his own sexual community.

All that said, I should be very surprised if Burlesque, even when viewed with adequate knowledge of its genre, were to be anywhere near so deep as YA. I've argued at length on this board that YA is a remarkably original and insightful essay in philosophy of love disguised as a teen TV drama. And philosophy of love takes one into the really deep stuff -- into theology, or whatever is left of theology nowadays, as YA's many religious allusions convey. I don't think there's anything nearly so profound in Burlesque.

[Finnegan]

Originally Posted by Finnegan (View Post) It now seems evident that Burlesque is a success both critically and commercially. ... -- As of January 9th, six weeks after release, the film had grossed $62,839,917 worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. A gross of between $80 and $85 million reportedly is needed to turn a profit on the investment of $55 million, but that does not seem in doubt at this point. DVD and TV distribution has not even begun, and the film did not open until January in much of Europe, e.g., Germany. Antin has taken a huge risk, flouted industry conventions, spoofed the genre of his own film, and survived. Antin emerges as a force to be reckoned with in any prospective development of Young Americans for the big screen; had Burlesque failed, he would not be. He seems to have increased his access to the resources needed to bring some variation on YA to the big screen if he wants to. ...

That's now confirmed. Box Office Mojo now indicates that Burlesque has grossed $87.3 million -- and it just came out on DVD and pay-per-view in the USA last week.

[s e r e n i t y]

Ooh Im glad to hear you enjoyed Burlesque, I still havent found the movie but I hope to get it while Im on vacation so Im not gonna read the rest of your post for fear of being spoiled but yay, Im glad you enjoyed it, Im a big musical fan and I hope to enjoy it too

[Finnegan]

Steven Antin has gotten himself a website -- and a nice one. Check it out:

STEVEN ANTIN

Here's his latest:

LA-based jewelry house Tacori has just released its first short film, Par Chance. Par Chance ... was directed by Steve Antin of Burlesque and photographed by highly renowned fashion photographer Thomas Nutzl. -- "LA-Based Jewelry Brand Tacori Introduces First Short Film," Haute Living.com, by Laura Schreffler, 18 December 2012

Par Chance (whole film)

Par Chance trailer

"Steven Antin ... directed this heartfelt and lighthearted story about a chance meeting between two strangers,
which blossoms into a passionate fairy tale romance." -- Film summary at Tacori.com

This short film is sooooo like the Jake-Hamilton story in Young Americans - Par Chance is more like YA than anything else Antin has done.

Like YA, it starts out with a writer, writing and narrating ... a dream/fantasy. In the very first scene, we see two conspicuous anachronisms that create cognitive dissonance for the attentive viewer, and cast doubt on the writer's age, and the ostensibly present time setting -- as do the anachronisms at Bella's garage in the fist scene of YA:

-- (1) A Yashica-Mat LM film camera (next to the bust of Venus), manufactured in 1960;

-- (2) The writer is writing on a manual typewriter, even though he's ostensibly about 30 years old, and this is ostensibly set in the present, narrated in the present, about the present.

Late in the film, the writer looks up and sees on the wall a French-language poster for this film, "Par Chance," described as being "mise en scene par Steven Antin, d'apres le roman 'The Writer.'" He then runs off to a find the girl at a bridge like the one in the poster ... and while he's running off, his manual typewriter continues typing ... he has become a character in his own fantasy story. The protagonist being inspired by seeing a poster of the film of which he is the protagonist makes Par Chance more clearly surreal and dream-like than YA; in YA, there's deliberate ambiguity, the naive "teen" interpretation is plausible. Par Chance, by contrast, is for adults -- only the surreal interpretation is consistent with all the evidence. In sum, the poster makes Par Chance less subtle than YA.

The writer's opening words are: "From the moment I saw her, I knew that if I could be with her, then everything in my life would be perfect." That's strikingly similiar to Caroline's remarks to Will at the cotillion in YA episode 4: "And you thought, 'If I could just meet that girl, then everything in my life would work out.'" The use of YA's core theme word, "perfect," is also notable.

The ambiance, like YA's, is steeped in literature, full of shots of books about art. The opening scene includes a bust of Venus, and books about art and film history, including Kate Remembered, a biography of Katherine Hepburn, a book by art historian Gaston Diehl, a book on Michelangelo, a book by or about painter Paul Klee, a book on the "Home within Home" exhibit of the work of Korean interior designer Do Ho Suh, and a book about Louis Vuitton furniture.

Like Jake in YA, the girl drives off on a motorbike. And, as in YA 7, there's a chess game. The girl plays the guy, and she wins. That's not quite cross-dressing, but it's definitely androgynous. So few women can play chess well -- spatial visualization is a biological male specialization.

The "true love" theme, as in YA, is explicit: "They say you remember everything about meeting your true love. But that's not really true. The moments you remember are the important ones, the tiny ones." Very much like Krudski's closing narrative voice-over about the moments of life that one remembers at the end of YA 2.

Par Chance ends with a kiss under a bridge reminiscent of the Jake-Hamilton "I love you" scene, set at the Middle Branch Marina with Baltimore's Hanover Street Bridge (built 1916) in the background, in YA 6. The kiss scene in Par Chance is set at the Williamsburg Bridge (built 1903) across the East River in New York; it's shot on the Manhattan side, looking southward, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

The xylophone music is strikingly reminiscent of Orph's Gassenhauser, Zimmer's adaptation of which Antin used as the Jake-Hamilton theme (and the rowing theme) in YA.

And like Coke-sponsored YA, this short film is wholly product-placement financed.

In this short film, unlike YA, the writer is the male lover, the girl is not emotionally troubled, and the "proof of true love" is merely the will and ability to play a clue game successfully. Nevertheless, this short film makes clear that the themes and techniques of Young Americans are still very much in Antin's mind.

Watch Par Chance, read my post, and tell me what you think, please.
So rarely does anyone respond substantively to my posts on this board.
But surely this one must be of interest.

Notes: (1) The custom of "love padlocks" on a bridge fence, symbolic of locking two souls together and throwing away the key, seems to have spread from China to New York, where they are most commonly seen on the Brooklyn Bridge, one end of which is in Chinatown on Manhattan's lower east side. (2) "88 Orchard," the site of the chess game, is a real coffee shop on Manhattan's lower east side -- and a lovely one. (3) However, there is no "Hotel de la Reine" in New York.

[wolkenfuehlen]

What a pretty new website!

I have to be honest, I could not properly concentrate on the short film because I kept getting annoyed with the random jewelry shots being thrown in my face every five seconds. I know it's essentially a commercial...but either you do a commercial, or you do a short film to promote your product. Make up your mind. (Also, imo most of the jewelry wasn't all that pretty. That didn't help. )

The music definitely reminded me of something I've heard before, but not YA, at all. Some movie. Something French, maybe? I really can't place it. (Sheida? Queen of all movie knowledge?)

Originally Posted by Finnegan (View Post) -- (2) The writer is writing on a manual typewriter, even though he's ostensibly about 30 years old, and this is ostensibly set in the present, narrated in the present, about the present.

My take is that a) they just wanted the guy to be more ~edgy~, and b) they didn't clear the rights to show a laptop/computer and/or didn't want any other product in their commercial?

While browsing the website, I stumbled upon this:

Currently Steven is writing and executive producing a scripted steampunk fantasy action adventure series for MTV.

What on earth is a steampunk fantasy action adventure show? It already sounds terrible. (Sorry Steven!)

[Finnegan]

Originally Posted by wolkenfuehlen (View Post) My take is that a) they just wanted the guy to be more ~edgy~, and b) they didn't clear the rights to show a laptop/computer and/or didn't want any other product in their commercial?

Ah, but it's not just the manual typewriter. We also see a 1960-vintage film camera at the start of the short. Two conspicuous anachronisms in the first few seconds ... so very much like the half-dozen anachronisms in the first "Scout meets Bella" scene of YA.

Par Chance is unmistakably surreal -- when the protagonist gets his inspiration for how to find the girl from a poster about the film of which he's the protagonist, the surrealism is not ambiguous, it's in-your-face.

Par Chance gives me confidence that my interpretation of what Antin was doing in Young Americans is substantially correct. Until I saw Par Chance, I thought maybe YA was a fluke, because Antin had never done anything quite like it. Now he has done something very like it. And when the same guy uses the same tricks to achieve the same effect twice, one can be sure it's not an accident.

[Finnegan]

I recently ran across a July 2000 interview with Antin that I'd never seen before -- an unusually informative one:

"Class Struggle Between Town and Gown"
July 8, 2000
By Erica Marcus. Staff Writer, Newsday

Some of Antin's remarks seem disingenuous, e.g., about "wanting" to set the show in the summer, when in fact he was forced into the summer season as a fill-in for D.C. But Antin's always less-than-totally-credible in interviews, and some of what he says about Young Americans in this one is illuminating:

"I wanted to write a show about that time of your life, that window between 14 and 17 when you're not a child anymore but you're not yet an adult. You're invincible and innocent and the possibilities of the world are endless. I loved that time of my life,'' he continued ...

Antin struggled not only with writing a script that captured this ``innocent free feeling,'' but also with creating a visual style that expressed this splendid languor. An admirer of both still photography and cinematography, he was heartened by the look of some recent TV shows. ``In the last few years,'' he said, ``I've seen some extraordinarily beautiful television, 'Felicity' for one.'' So he hired Bob Primes, ``Felicity's'' Emmy-winning cinematographer, and the two men worked to imbue the show with the right texture and palette.

Still, a few recent examples to the contrary, such attention to visual detail is far more common in film than in television. Why didn't Antin, the writer and producer of the 1993 independent feature film ``Inside Monkey Zetterland'' try to put his vision on the big screen? ``I had had several wildly unsuccessful and unhappy experiences as a writer in film,'' he said. The best chance to control his vision, he believed, was to create, write and produce it as a television show.

And why shouldn't a television producer work at the highest artistic level possible? Antin feels that the issues dealt with in ``Young Americans'' are the Big Ones. ``Thematically, I wanted to tell the story of star-crossed lovers. I love the classics,'' he said. ``Scout and Bella? They're Romeo and Juliet.'' He characterized another couple _ whose identity should remain a secret _ as ``right out of 'Twelfth Night.' '' ``I'm not reinventing the wheel,'' he said, ``just giving it another spin.''

There's a certain tension inherent in having teenage characters act out age-old dramas, and Antin is well aware of it. ``I constantly have to rein in the sophistication,'' he said. ``We did so many focus groups with 16-year old kids, and while it never ceased to amaze me how sophisticated they were, they don't always articulate that sophistication. I don't want to dumb kids down, but I also don't want my characters to say things that are out of the realm of 16-year-old kids.''

I'll put the full text onto my Rawley Revisited site soon; all the other interviews with Antin about YA are already there.

[Finnegan]

Joe Voci, executive producer of Young Americans and co-writer of the script of its last episode, died on February 7, 2015, at age 51.

Voci was on the staff of Mandalay Television in 1999-2000. He came up with the unprecedented in-show product-placement deals with Coca-Cola ($6 million) and Friendly's (unkown amount) that covered virtually all of the $8 million production budget of Young Americans. Without that innovative financing, the show would never have been aired.

Voci worked on a number of other scipts for prospective shows with Steve Antin (see my post earlier on this thread), and helped launch Robin Antin's PussyCat Dolls dance troupe. He and Steve Antin seem to have been friends.

See:

Joe Voci, Longtime TV Executive, Dead at 51

Ian Somerhalder Mourns the Man Who Gave Him His First Big Break

[wolkenfuehlen]

Thanks for bringing that Ian article over, I missed that (because I don't follow him on twitter anymore).

[wolkenfuehlen]

So Steve has a new movie on IMDb to be released in 2018 that he wrote, Proud Mary.

An assassin meets a young boy that sparks her maternal instinct.

Sounds kinda lame but Taraji P. Henson is the lead, so that's good at least

[s e r e n i t y]

Sounds super lame but fingers crossed!!!