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From The Washington Post (July 2, 2000)
"BEGGARS' BANQUET: Hollywood Eats It Up"
By Sharon Waxman, Washington Post Staff Writer
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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Don't hate Lori Volpone because she's beautiful. It's not necessary. There are so many other good reasons to hate her. Like the fact that she's a shallow, scheming, lying, manipulative, back-stabbing television executive. Whose personal life consists of phone encounters--let's call them "intimate"--with a sleazebag Hollywood agent, and a torrid affair with a sexy Russian mobster. The mobster is the subject of a miniseries she green-lighted for her network's premiere week, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Lori Volpone is one of an ensemble of colorfully amoral and/or inept characters struggling to survive at the fictional LGT network, on the Showtime series "Beggars and Choosers." There's also Malcolm, the gay head of casting who had to "out" himself to prove he didn't sexually harass a starlet; there's Casey, the "All About Eve"-like executive who pretends to come from the 'hood but actually went to Vassar; there's a dot-com billionaire Buddhist who buys the network from a doddering tycoon with a penchant for transvestite hookers. And trying to hold it all together is Rob Malone, the decent, beleaguered network chief, loosely based on the late Brandon Tartikoff, the former NBC chief who had the idea for the show. Except for Rob Malone, the show is entirely believable. While "Beggars" seemed to hover below the media radar during its first season last year--unlike "Action," the short-lived, high-profile series with a similar premise on Fox--it finally seems ripe for broader attention as the show starts its second year. (It airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m.) It has won a following in Hollywood, much like "The Larry Sanders Show," which regularly lampooned the denizens of TV programming during its six-season run on HBO. On its season debut last week, "Beggars" pulled fewer than 1 million viewers. But here in Babylon at least, television executives seem to take a certain masochistic pleasure in seeing themselves satirized (if barely), and actors seem to relish watching the suits get kicked around for once. CBS President Les Moonves is reportedly a fan. Pax TV head Jeff Sagansky, a former Tartikoff collaborator, has been watching. "Every one of those conversations that go overboard--I've been around long enough to have heard some version of them," says Sagansky. "The scheming, the plotting, the cynicism, what people will do to get ahead, the very non-value-oriented judgment toward the business." All true? "Do we even have to discuss it?" he asks. "It ain't as over-the-top as you might think." Another sure sign of the show's growing popularity is the inclusion in this season's cast of some well-known faces: Noah Wyle (of "ER") as a venal executive; Beau Bridges as the dot-com capitalist; Jim Belushi as his brother. Cindy Williams ("Laverne & Shirley") will play a role closer to home: an aging actress seeking work. For while "Beggars" is often absurd, hey, so is the world of network television. "We don't need any technical advice--this is our life," says Peter Lefcourt, the show's creator. He based some story lines last season on tales Tartikoff told him, like when Rob Malone has to arrange for a hooker for the network owner (sorry, no names). Others are fictional but entirely plausible, like the media circus that erupts over the disappearance of Buddy, the Clintons' dog. (The twist is that Malone has to decide whether to preempt his miniseries premiere for live coverage of the search for Buddy.) "I've been in the television business since 1975, so all I do is tilt the lens a little bit," Lefcourt says. "The root of all satire is self-importance. And nothing is more self-important than the entertainment business, with people who believe they're curing cancer. "At the root of the entertainment structure is an enormous amount of fear and insecurity, which is ultimately funny: Agents running around with gossip that's probably not true. People at studios whose jobs depend on one opening weekend. "It breeds panic, insecurity and a great deal of insincerity." Take the experience of Charlotte Ross, the 31-year-old actress who plays Lori Volpone, the most rawly ambitious female to inhabit prime time since Christine Lahti clawed her way to the top as Dr. Kathryn Austin on "Chicago Hope." While Ross has gotten some rave notices for her portrayal--the Los Angeles Times praised her as "every bit as manic, driven and exploitative as Faye Dunaway's UBS programmer Diana Christensen in 'Network' "--she's an unknown to most viewers, having spent years struggling to be noticed in the Darwinian universe of television programming. Ross is painfully gorgeous, with straw-blond hair, pale blue eyes rimmed in dark blue, buxom but slim where it matters. Does it help? Well, no, actually. A lot of the time it hurt--she was too beautiful to be considered for "smart" female roles. "This is my sixth series," she pronounces over breakfast in Los Angeles, an hour before she catches a plane back to the set in Vancouver. Let's see: There was "Days of Our Lives," when she was just out of high school. There was an Aaron Spelling series in 1991, "The Heights," canceled after 13 episodes. Then "The Five Mrs. Buchanans" on CBS, canceled when the network head was fired. Then "Pauly" with Pauly Shore--canceled after six episodes even though the network head was promoted. "I've been very burned on TV. Very burned," she laments. "Not good." Then in 1998 she landed a role on "Trinity," created by TV heavyweight John Wells ("ER"). She was sure this was a keeper. Wrong. It was yanked after 10 episodes. "I felt like I'd been paying my dues. I'd found a strong show, a good cast--as good as it gets on network TV. The ratings were starting to build." She sighs. "This convinced me--you never know what's gonna get hit. I realized how far TV has come, how much it's changed." Two weeks later the "Beggars" script landed on her desk. She hesitated; it meant a cut in pay, a move to pay cable, where the audiences were minuscule compared with network television, moving to Canada. She took the job. Lori Volpone is as smart as they come. She talks like a machine gun, spitting out a torrent of words that cut to the chase--and often to the bone. At the same time Volpone is chronically insecure, analyzing every new wrinkle at work through the prism of her career ambitions. For Ross as for others in the cast, there is more than a hint of the revenge fantasy in playing an evil network executive. "She doesn't think she's doing anything wrong; she's playing everyone like a guitar," says Ross. "I hang back and look around. A lot of people in Hollywood do that. You'll be introduced to someone and they're looking over your shoulder to see who else is there." She goes on: "People here think they're invincible. So powerful. But this shows the sadness of it, in a way. This business is all about self-promotion, about stepping on the person in front of you. It's sad to see." Then she flashes a grin, perfect white teeth: "But as an actor there's nothing more fun to play." "Beggars and Choosers" originated in 1996 in the mind of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff, who died of cancer a year later. He wanted to create a "Network" (the famous 1976 Paddy Chayefsky movie) for the '90s, with some version of himself as the central character. The networks rejected the concept as too negative for the masses, but Showtime, seeking to establish a reputation for edgy, diverse programming, agreed, and steered Tartikoff to Lefcourt, who had written a satiric novel about the business, "The Deal." Lefcourt later pursued the idea with Tartikoff's widow, Lilly, which is undoubtedly why the Rob Malone character is such a nice guy. The rest of the show is fairly politically incorrect: a token minority staff member--a black Latino intern in a wheelchair; the Russian mobster, who offends Asian Americans in a talk show appearance, forcing the network to develop an Asian series to mollify minority viewers; the homophobia in the industry's executive ranks (so much for liberal Hollywood) that is highlighted by Malcolm's fear in coming out. And yet all of these formulations reflect Hollywood as it is, not as it ought to be. Says Lefcourt, dredging up an old aphorism: "It's a crapshoot masquerading as a business masquerading as an art form." He adds, "Once comedy gets safe, it's no longer interesting." |
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