Finnegan

How better to begin a thread about a man who, in middle age, created, script-wrote, and was executive producer of a show about the possibilities of youth, than to show him in both youth and middle age? So here's Steve Antin, both in youth, as an actor ...

. . . . . . . . . . and in maturity, as a scriptwriter: . .

Since Young Americans is Antin's brain-child, understanding Antin better might help us to understand YA better. Regrettably, judging by what one can find online, little about Steve Antin is publicly known. For example, Antin has stated publicly that he did not attend a private prep school, but where he did attend school seems not to be information available online. Antin seems, since 2000, to have become a rather private man, although in August 2000 he did write an article for The L.A. Times about how he likes to spend his weekends, which described what he liked to read and what his parents did for a living. Save for that article, nearly all biographical information available online about Steve Antin online is contained in four websites:

- Wikipedia article on Steve Antin
- IMDB article on Steve Antin
- Fandango filmography for Steve Antin
- Biography of Steve Antin on the "Young Americans" website hosted by Columbia TriStar Television

In recent years, Antin reportedly has worked chiefly for his sister Robin Antin's burlesque troupe, Pussycat Dolls. Since the commercial failure of Young Americans in 2000, he has scriptwritten a couple of films, but has not again both written and produced a film or TV series. However, he reportedly has been scriptwriting and directing Burlesque, a movie musical already filmed and scheduled to be released in November 2010.

Currently, Antin seems to be remembered chiefly for his youthful acting roles in the adolescent films Goonies (1985) and The Last American Virgin (1982), and for having launched, in YA, with the assistance of casting director Jason Wood, the U.S. television careers of Kate Bosworth, Charlie Hunnam, Katherine Moennig, Michelle Monaghan, and Ian Somerhalder.

In sum, information available online about Steve Antin's life seems to shed little light on his artistic achievement and commercial failure in Young Americans. However, several of his press interviews from 2000 seem more illuminating:

I've tried to keep this first post on this thread objective, chiefly offering references to sources of information that I hope may be helpful in appreciating Young Americans, and may inspire others to voice their opinions about both the nature of Antin's artistic achievement in YA, and the roots of YA's commercial failure. I've already posted my views on those subjects repeatedly on other threads of this board.

wolkenfuehlen

Thanks for starting the thread and putting all that information into the opening post!

I didn't even know Steve was an actor until Nicole mentioned The Goonies the other day. Bad, uninformed mod!

Reading all these interviews with him is really great. He really had a proper "vision" of what he wanted to do with this show. And then there are quotes like "This is not something you put in place to tear down after eight episodes. We plan to be here for a very long time." and I get all sad and frustrated.

Finnegan

My pleasure, Anja; not least because in preparing the lead post for this thread I came across two articles about Young Americans that I'd not seen before, one by N.Y. Daily News reporter Richard Huff, the other by Harvard creative writing professor Jane Rosenzweig.

Sadly, as plaques in a number of Paris garrets testify, great art does not always sell well immediately. Particularly when marketed in an inappropriate genre and to an inappropriate audience ... artistic genius and business acumen seem not commonly to be bestowed on the same person.

That said, the eight episodes of YA that were aired have more than enough closure (as we've discussed on this board's thread about episode 8) to make one suspect that Antin crafted season 1 with no less care for the possibility that the show would be cancelled than for the possibility that it would be continued. Here, too, we encounter the ambiguity that characterizes so many aspects of this show.

Finnegan

On another thread, our moderator, Wolkenfuehlen, has asked me to post expressions of gratitude to Antin by actors in YA. Here are some I've run across:

If Czuchry seems more effusive in his gratitude than Somerhalder or Moennig (or Bosworth, from whom no comment is known), that might be because he wasn't working on YA, off and on, during nearly a full year, only to find the show cancelled after only eight episodes, as Moennig and Somerhalder were. Czuchry was not in the 1999 unaired pilot, and not kept "on call" by Antin for nine months thereafter, as Bosworth, Famiglietti, Moennig, Scott and Somerhalder were.

(Notwithstanding the line above about Somerhalder "catching Antin's eye," Somerhalder in 2000 reportedly claimed to have gotten his YA audition through his agent. On how YA's five protagonists got hired, see Jennifer Graham, "American Beauties," original publication venue and date unknown.)

Finnegan

Cher, who at age 64 will star scantily clad in Antin's new film, Burlesque, is a longstanding acquaintance of Steve Antin's. They both dated the same guy, producer David Geffen, at the same time. Below are Antin, Geffen and Cher, reportedly at "Area," a club in Manhattan, in 1983, when Greffen was first warming to Antin. Cher had broken an engagement to marry Geffen in 1974, but the two continued to date each other (by no means exclusively) for many years thereafter.



More on Geffen's relationships with both Cher and Antin can be found in Tom King's 2001 biography of Geffen, The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood, in which the photograph above was published.

Rawley was never like this. Which may be why Antin wanted to go there ...

Finnegan

Advance publicity for Antin's Burlesque -- the first thing he's both written and either produced or directed since YA -- is starting to come out. See, for example, this article in today's edition of USA Today: "'Burlesque' director Steve Antin proves most persuasive," by Susan Wloszczyna.

Antin apparently retains the meticulous obsession with detail that is evident in "Young Americans:" "Seeing Antin's office walls plastered with storyboards and reference material ... led [Cher] to call him 'the most prepared director I've even seen.'"

And Antin apprently brings to this project the sense of artistic history, of tradition, and the interest in reviving it, that is evident in "Young Americans:"

Interestingly (in context of my previous post), the article indicates that David Geffen helped Antin to persuade Cher to play in "Burlesque." And if Antin retains that kind of access to Geffen, then he may have access to very substantial film-making resources -- if he can demonstrate that he has learned to combine sound business judgment with his artistic talent, something he failed to do in 2000.

Will a "wholesome," historical approach to burlesque be more commercially successful than YA was? We can only wait and see ...

One wonders why a film titled "Burlesque" is being released at Thanksgiving to play in theatres during the Christmas season. It had better be wholesome and traditional indeed for that not to prove a great handicap. And its wholesome traditionalism had better be communicated more intelligibly than YA's was.

Finnegan

Released yesterday: the trailer for Antin's "Burlesque," due in U.S. theatres during (shudder) Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Burlesque Trailer

wolkenfuehlen

I'm utterly fascinated by their relationship. So much that I may even read the biography, if I ever have the time.

I'm sorry to say, but the trailer makes the film look so incredibly boring that I'm unsure at the moment whether I'll even bother watching it. I mean, that the story wouldn't be outstanding and incredible was to be expected, but I'm absolutely shocked at Aguilera's lack of talent when it comes to acting. Plus, when I think "Burlesque" I think Dita van Teese. I think elegant, gorgeous imagery. At the very least, I was expecting to get that. But judging from the trailer even that won't be the case.

Finnegan

I don't know what Antin's smoking, either, Anja. I think this film is supposed to be some kind of heartwarming small-town-girl-makes-good-in-big-city story. But it's going to take a miracle for a film titled "Burlesque" to succeed in the USA when released at the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, by far the most traditional time of year in the USA.

Glad you find the Antin-Geffen-Cher triangle interesting. Myself, I'm more interested in how money makes films and films make money, on which Tom King's biography of Geffen sheds a bit of light.

Finnegan

Finally, I have a bit of biographical info about Steve Antin that may actually shed some light on "Young Americans:"

During the early 1990s, Antin acted in three egghead art films directed by University of Southern California film professor Jefery Levy.

(1) Drive, directed and written by Levy, in which Antin co-starred, impressed critics and did well at film festivals in Europe, but flopped commercially, especially in the US. Nevertheless, Antin's performance in it may well be his best work as an actor, even if he chiefly only listened to a motormouth. These three clips from "Drive" are well worth watching, if you like egghead flicks: Drive: the trailer; Drive: "Im not an anythingist"; and Drive: IBM vs. Apple.

(2) Inside Monkey Zetterland (1992), written by Antin and directed by Levy, is about a dysfunctional family; sadly, it is so autobiographically based on Antin's family that some of them took serious offense at it. Antin also played the lead role, as "Monkey."

(3) S.F.W. (short for "So ****ing What?" (1994). Antin cameos as a news reporter named after his character in Inside Monkey Zetterland in this film, written and directed by Levy, about the destructive role of the news media, set in context of a hostage-taking.

If Antin liked Levy's kind of film - and his appearance in successive Levy films that didn't make money suggests that he did - then his compulsion to engineer egghead adult content into a teen TV show, despite the absence of any possibility of commercial pay-off, becomes more understandable.

Antin and Levy are the same age; both were born in 1958. "Drive," "Monkey" and "SFW," in all of which Antin acted, were the first films that Levy diricted; he had been scriptwriting since 1985. The first Levy script to be produced was the 1985 film, "Ghoulies," which Levy produced as well as wrote, while still in grad school. It seems to be a bizarre spoof on the 1985 kiddie hit film "Goonies, in which Antin played a bad-older-kid role. Levy's second scriptwriting effort was "Rockula," a vampire-genre spoof about a bloodsucker who has been cursed not to lose his virginity for 400 years. The next thing he did was "Drive."

Conversely, "Monkey Zetterland" was Antin's first script to be produced. Levy was its executive producer and director; Antin was co-director. The years of Antin's association with Levy are the years in which Antin began his transition from actor to writer/producer/director.

How and when Antin and Levy first met, I don't know. Levy, unlike Antin, seems to be straight; at least, he's married to a woman.

Although originally from New York, Levy studied English literature, film and semiotics as an undergraudate at UCLA, then took his master's degree from UCLA's Graduate School of Cinema - but then he went for a law degree at Loyola U. and became a member of the California Bar. During 1991-96, he was an associate professor at USC's school of television and cinema, where, in 1995-96. he taught directing.

Levy's website is hilarious. Especially the page called "critical writings," on which Levy has posted only some of his undergraduate essays from UCLA, replete with the marginal notes and comments of his professors. There's more than a bit of contempt for film criticism in that.

There's also a Jefery Levy Channel on YouTube. Looks like Levy might really be the one uploading onto it -- it's all his own work, much of it not easy to find elsewhere. And quite surreal in recent years.

* * * * * *

"Actor Steve Antin spent two quarters studying Sailing and Political Science at the UW [University of Washington]."

-- source: Apple Cup Stories From Hollywood - MyNorthwest.com

That may be just a spoof; and apart from that, all I can find out about Antin's education is that he did not attend a prep school.

Finnegan

This just in from film critic Aric Mitchell, here:

Oh dear ...

By the way, did anybody check out any of Jefery Levy's stuff, the subject of my last post on this thread? I think that offers more insight into what Antin was up to in YA than anything else I've been able to find.

Finnegan

I'm not much given to either Facebook or Twitter, but for what it's worth, these seem to be real, no?

Steven Antin | Facebook

Steven Antin (stevenantin) on Twitter

wolkenfuehlen

^They do seem legit, yes. I'm gonna follow him on Twitter, just for the hell of it, maybe we'll get some interesting info here and there.

Finnegan

Thanks, Anja. Do please let us know if you learn anything of interest about YA; right now, understandably, Antin seems focused on Burlesque.

But the prospect of direct communication with Antin is enough to make me contemplate starting a true-name Facebook account, given that he seems unlikely to respond to any approach under a pseudonym.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .* . . . . . . . . . .* . . . . . . . . . .*

Among the gems on the 2000-2001 "News" thread of the old "Rawley Academy" board on Fanform, preserved by Archive.org, is a July 11, 2000, Associated Press article by Ben Nuckols that is based on interviews with members of the YA production staff including Antin. It states:

Nuckols' observation is insightful. His statement of the youth-adulthood paradox in YA comes as close as one could, after viewing only episode 1, to capturing the temporal ambiguity of YA: with deliberate irony, YA is about being both young and old at once.

Antin's statement that YA represents the perfection of youth restates, from Antin's own lips, what Krudski says at the end of episode 1: that Rawley offers "the perfect people, the perfect life." That is, for Krudski, "something that wasn't meant for me" because he's old, and can recover it only by an act of imaginative will ("free Will," per the title of episode 7), as YA's plethora of anachronisms, time-jokes, and the change in the tense of narration at the end of episode 8 all indicate.

What is "the perfection of youth"? Youth is not a static condition, but a dynamic one. It is growth into maturity. But the maturity that is the perfection of youth is not a static maturity, not the complacency of Krudski's father, but rather a maturity that retains youth's dynamism, youth's growth -- youth's passion to become more than one is, to "exceed expectations," to become one's "true" self.* Love being the source of growth, and youth being largely about learning to love, youth is perfected only by "true love," by striving to love more "truly," in maturity no less than in youth. Hence the drama's theme is "true love" that can turn the obstacles of "star-crossed" love into opportunities to grow in love, as the "opportunities from obstacles" language of Krudski's essay in episode 1 suggests. Pratt and Fleming prove able to do that; Calhoun and Bella fail to do so.

Beneath YA's gender-bending and the putative incest lies highly traditional moralizing, as Krudski's voice-overs indicate. It's not just YA's "star-crossed" love theme and its cross-dressing that are Shakespearean; the underlying moral framework is one with which an Elizabethan might feel comfortable. What's novel, other than use of cross-dressing to update the "test of true love" of fairy tales, is Antin's depiction of how passion, in true love, complements compassion; but that, sadly, is no less novel now that it would have been in Shakespeare's day.

*This is ancient, indeed Biblical. It's the point that Jesus makes in the synoptic gospels in saying that to enter the Kingdom, one must become as a little child. To keep growing spiritually, one must recover, emotionally, a child's awareness that one is not yet what one should become.

Finnegan

duplicate post, sorry.