In Praise of Margin: VDO, Jobsharing & LOCI Season 5

Music ‘Life’s What You Make It’ by Talk Talk

Now I know that diehard VDO fans are probably having a hard time getting used to the idea that Detectives Goren and Eames are not going to be the leads in every LOCI episode from now on. LOCI is to me unprecedented in the ground it is breaking for both acting and for the world in general and I think excellent things can come from it.
Are you wondering what substances I’m on right now? Not a thing. I’m 100% sober.
I want to mention a series of non-fiction books written by Dr. Richard Swenson that begin with a marvelous work called “The Overload Syndrome: Learning To Live Within Your Limits” and includes “Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves To Overloaded Lives”. If I had known VDO personally, I would have begged him to read these books well before he collapsed twice on the LOCI set. They are books that ‘Vincent’ from DASH and many of the ‘fangurls’ I know and even I could have benefitted from if only I had learned of it sooner.
Dr. Swenson makes a point of criticizing our American culture because we make heroes out of people who are on overload. In fact it’s the most overloaded people who make all of the rest of us have to take on more. More at work, more family obligations, more debt, more time commitments. We leave ourselves no breathing room, no free time, no savings, no space, no ‘margin’ for error.
And the first truism of life? Stuff happens.
From what I have read of how VDO works, he doesn’t just prepare for a part, he overprepares. It seems to be common for the best method actors out there to go to extremes — DeNiro working 12 hour days as a cabbie for a whole month to prepare for ‘Taxi Driver’, Pacino depriving himself of sleep for ‘Insomnia’, VDO working 14 hour days five or six days a week shooting a top 20 TV series and then staying up to edit his first directorial effort, the short film ‘Five Minutes, Mister Welles’, not to mention his performance for ‘Welles’ for which he gained a substantial amount of weight yet again to play one of his acting heros, Orson Welles at middle age.
Is it any wonder VDO collapsed twice? Heck, I’m impressed he could keep going at that insane pace for as long as he did.
So what about VDO and Dick Wolf’s solution, to expand the cast and split the scripts over two teams of actors?
Can you say brilliant?
US TV series are notorious for chewing up and spitting out the casts and crews that work on them. Every episode has to be shot in seven days — on day eight, if you’re still working on the same episode, you’re jeopardizing the season’s schedule (and probably going to go over budget). In movies, you can comfortably shoot over three months, filming a page of script or two a day (a page usually equates to around one minute of screen time). In TV, you better get 8 pages a day shot or you’ll fall behind. Get ready to do this for 22 weeks a season, 44 weeks a year if you’re lucky enough for your show to keep getting renewed, with 5-6 days out of each week taken up by production. This is why TV cast members are lucky if they have the time to do one movie a year.
Comparing US TV production to TV production in the UK, the pace is a little more relaxed. A typical series in the UK is 6-12 episodes a season. They have twice as much time to get everything done, twice as much room for errors and mishaps, twice as much time to work on scripts and pre-production to prevent errors. Granted actors in the UK find it hard to make a living only doing a TV series, but they can fit in more movies or plays (and in my opinion, ‘the play’s the thing’ that makes a lot of UK actors generally more seasoned actors than US actors, that and the variety of projects a UK actor has to tackle to make a living solely from acting — ever heard the saying ‘a change is as good as a rest’?). Multiple seasons of a TV series that gets renewed means only 24 weeks of the year are committed to that TV series – conceivably a UK actor could be a regular on 2 or 3 UK TV series and still not be as time pressed as an American actor.
So if you take a lead role in a US TV series and split it between two US actors what do you get? Less stressed out actors for one thing. Also you give scarce coveted work to two actors rather than overburdening one actor, creating more jobs. Chris Noth and Annabella Sciorra get regular paychecks they didn’t get before while VDO and Kathryn Erbe get some much needed time to see their families and friends, to try out other projects, to relax and catch up on their sleep.
In essence, this casting change at LOCI is nothing short of a highly visible jobsharing arrangement.
What are the disadvantages? Well VDO and Kathryn Erbe are probably taking home less money each year. But I know that LOCI pays its leads reasonably well and that with thoughtful financial management, neither Erbe nor VDO will suffer a lowering of their standards of living. Having been in a high stress professional job, I can tell you that working 60 to 80 hours a week for twice the salary of working 40 hours a week is not a great deal — there is a point at which trading more money for more of one’s time, more pieces of one’s unique nonrenewable life becomes a disadvantage. And did I mention that less income means lower taxes, while less time committed to work frequently results in lower expenses (such as lower commuting costs and fewer lunches out, etc)?
There is also much hue and cry among VDO’s  ‘fangurls’, who whine incessantly about Chris Noth’s performances (which I think are acceptable right now but I expect them to get even better as Noth and LOCI’s writers help Detective Logan integrate himself into the Major Case Squad and given time will be excellent in their own right). What the ‘fangurls’ fail to realize that the alternative would have resulted in the premature end of LOCI and possibly serious damage to VDO’s health and psyche from utter burnout. Plus under the old arrangement, VDO’s contract was up at the end of the 2005-2006 season, so if things hadn’t changed, he could have justifiably walked (if for no other reason than to save himself from burnout), leaving LOCI bereft of VDO. Better some VDO in LOCI than no more VDO in LOCI ever, if you ask me.
So what’s the broader implication for society? What if corporate America were to let more people jobshare? Wouldn’t that mean that more of us would be working resulting in lower unemployment rates and fewer people heavily dependent on government social programs? And wouldn’t that give those who are currently doing the jobs of 2 or more people the time to get to know and show our affection and appreciation for our families, our friends, and others in our communities? Granted it could come at some financial cost, but why overwork to the point where you incur the need for pricey health care? We all could eat a little less, buy ourselves a few less toys and scale back if we realized that we were getting back our lives, our health, our sanity, our true selves. This freedom is something Mastercard can’t buy.
Something to think about, isn’t it?
I am pulling hard for LOCI’s experiment to work and am eagerly anticipating the US release of DVDs for seasons 2, 4, and 5. (Hint to NBC-Universal: The sooner you release Season 2, the sooner I’ll catch up  :) May this new arrangement keep the show going for at least a few more seasons.

From Forbes.com: VDO On Dealing With The Media

Appropriate music ‘Talk Talk’ by Talk Talk

YES!!!!
 
Can I just say that I now feel even better about my negative DASH/’fangurl’ experience and my lack of interest in online discussion, having just found *this* at Forbes Magazine (yeah, it’s in Forbes the financial/business magazine, not some tabloid). And now I’m glad I try not to watch VDO interviews on shows like ‘The View’ and when I do see him in that context, I understand why my reaction is one of apprehension and empathy. I wouldn’t want to have to go on talk shows, either.
 
FYI Forbes.com has a whole bunch of thought-provoking online articles on communicating and VDO’s piece is in with articles from leading edge thinkers and researchers like Noam Chomsky and Vint Cerf (one of the *real* co-inventors of the Internet). How cool is this, for VDO to be included in such an iconoclastic group?!
 
Vincent D’Onofrio On Dealing With The Media October 24, 2005 9:00 AM ET

http://www.forbes.com/2005/10/21/donofrio-vincent-acting-cx_pk_1024donofrio_comm05.html
“Vincent D’Onofrio is an actor and producer whose credits include the movies ‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘Steal This Movie’, and ‘Men In Black’. He currently plays detective Robert Goren on the TV program Law & Order: ‘Criminal Intent’.

Being a public figure is terrible. It changes everything. It makes all the uninteresting stuff more important than what was really interesting in the beginning: storytelling and how to do it properly. So much other crap comes in. There’s so much other stuff going on, because of the media, and the Internet, that it’s ruined a lot of the fun. If I had to do it over, I probably would have done something where I have to talk to people a lot less.

But I’ll support a film if I like it. I’ll do morning shows, print work and things like this. But I won’t do talk shows. The talk show thing, I tried when I was a kid and I just failed miserably. On a talk show, you have to entertain. In other settings, it’s up to the journalist, or the person who’s interviewing you, to make it a lively interview. But on those late night shows, if you’re not an entertainer in that way, you’re just going to fail miserably. They expect you to come in and have a little routine. I have friends that are good actors and they do that stuff really well. It’s just that some people can’t do it. I can’t.

– Excerpted from an interview with Peter Kafka on Oct. 14, 2005.”
 

Stuff to Collect: Soundtracks To VDO’s Movies & TV Shows

Since my copy of the soundtrack from ‘Thumbsucker’, VDO’s latest feature film, arrived in the mail yesterday (and here it is):

I though I’d post what little I know about soundtrack collecting and some comments about some of the soundtracks to VDO’s films which are available on CD 

Soundtrack collectors are an interesting breed. The vast majority of them collect what are called ’scores’, that is to say, music specifically composed for a movie. The most famous film scorer you are likely to be familiar with is John Williams. Williams scored Star Wars, Superman, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Jaws, ET, Schindler’s List — a lot of movies including JFK (which VDO has a tiny cameo in).

Williams is schooled in classical music and very much interested in orchestral music and thus is probably the latest in a long line of classically oriented movie scoring composers. 

But not all film scorers working today are classically focused. The best known of them is probably Danny Elfman. If you’re a child of the 1980’s you probably heard of his now defunct band ‘Oingo Boingo’. If you’re not, chances are you hear his work everytime an episode of ‘The Simpsons’ is broadcast over your TV into your living room. The same sort of career long pairings of John Williams and George Lucas or Steven Spielberg are true of Danny Elfman and Tim Burton. Elfman while not a classical musician sort of mixes it up between synthesizers and computer technology and an orchestra when he scores for movies like ‘Ed Wood’ or ‘Men In Black’ or TV.

But he can also write a pop tune like ‘Weird Science’ which also got used in the 80s movie of the same name. So Elfman’s pretty versatile as is say, Stewart Copeland, former drummer with the 1980’s band ‘The Police’ and now a man who has scored anything from TV series like ‘The Equalizer’ to films like the 1998 TV remake of ‘The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3′ (the one with VDO cast in the part of Mr. Blue which character actor Robert Shaw did such brilliant work with in the original theatrical version). 

Since ‘American Grafitti’ – the classic George Lucas film, a second type of soundtrack is also prevalent — the ‘compilation’. What Lucas did that was so revolutionary in putting music to ‘Grafitti’ was to use his collection of old 45RPM records from his teenage years to provide the music for a story about California teenagers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This of course was such a runaway hit with audiences that the widespread popularity of 1950s rock and soul and doowop today largely stems from Lucas getting those songs heard by a broad audience back in 1978 (there really wasn’t much in the way of ‘oldies radio’ in the USA until ‘Graffiti’). 

How do most old time hardcore soundtrack collectors feel about the ‘compilation’ soundtracks? They largely don’t like them, mostly because they would like to see more original music created to go along with movies rather than trying to recycle popular music songs and grafting them onto a movie or TV show.To some extent, I think they have a valid argument. 

The Rolling Stones or Prince already can release music anytime they want. But when big music groups or artists take on scores to the exclusion of a composer, that’s one less chance for a composer to reach his or her audience. 

However, that’s not to say that a director can’t ever effectively add existing music to a movie and give the movie greater emotional impact. I don’t much care for Quentin Tarantino’s movies, but his soundtracks are great — they are largely like Lucas’s ‘Graffiti’ approach, pulling songs from your own music collection and putting them to scenes. As a recovering pop music collector, I can appreciate that approach. So even though I find both ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’ boring to look at, I could hum along with Chuck Berry or tap my toes to Stealers Wheels. 

So it’s no surprise that on really big movies, sometimes two soundtracks get released. “Malcolm X” has both a score by jazz great Terance Blanchard and a compilation album with R&B and soul tunes that reflect the changing times and life of Malcolm X.

And ‘Men In Black’ has both an Elfman score and an album of pop tunes including songs by it’s star Will Smith, half of pop-rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. 

I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you to hear that I collect both types of soundtracks. My only requirements are that the soundtrack be an authorized release (i.e. no bootlegs or CD-Rs) on CD (I got rid of my record player decades ago and I’m not that enamored of MP3s) and that it be related to a VDO film. 

I do have a few foreign versions of VDO soundtracks on CD. ‘The Thirteenth Floor’ soundtrack in the USA is an orchestral affair scored by Harald Kloser which makes use of the Vienna Boys Choir.

In Europe though, the same soundtrack has only a few Kloser cuts but also has tracks by alternative acts ‘Orgy’, ‘Filter’, the Finnish group ‘H.I.M.’, and David Bowie. Same film scored differently for different markets.

‘Mystic Pizza’ also has a soundrtack CD in Europe that I can only describe as Eurodisco and Europop (the Swiss group ‘Hot Chocolate’ that wrote the disco hit ‘You Sexy Thing’ has a song on ‘Mystic Pizza’ called ‘What About You’ and that’s the most famous group on that CD). 

There are a few expensive VDO soundtracks out there. ’The Whole Wide World’ is much sought after by old school soundtrack collectors because scoring giants Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson Williams did such a beautiful job on the music and because so few copies got made (this I know is typical of ’score’ soundtracks on CD — my soundtrack collecting customers used to buy up every score in sight as I got them in because they never knew if or when they might see a copy again!).

‘The Velocity of Gary’ score is also a little pricey because it is on an obscure record label, Bongos of Domani, which is out of business now. Peitor Angell did a very dance oriented soundtrack for ‘Gary’.

And there are days when a soundtrack to ‘The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys’ will sell for more than $25.00 because it is hard to find now and because fans of one of the few truly talented alternative groups out there ‘Queens Of The Stone Age’ are very enthusiastic and competitive (and 2 QOTSA members did this soundtrack).

While Klaus Doldinger’s CD score to ‘Salt On Our Skin’ is tough to get in America (it wasn’t released here), a German or other European can often find a copy in a used CD bin for a fair price (note to European VDO fans — you should be trading for US VDO things with copies of the ‘Salt On Our Skin’ CDs ;-) 

But most of the other scores or albums will sell for no more than $25.00. So this is an area where anyone can afford to collect.

UPDATE: all of the available soundtracks to VDO films that are on CD can now be seen at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40946898@N00/sets/72057594058653446/

A Tale of Three Edgars: New Lows At ebaY or How To Get ‘Zapped’ In A Live Auction

Music ‘Lucifer’ by The Alan Parsons Project

Out of boredom I checked out FeeBay the other day and what did I find? 

Consider the following auction at FeeBay 7549008602: 

$599.00 Men In Black MIB Zap Em Ken Thorley Wardrobe Costume (ended – seller is Star Wares Collectibles) 

Oh and I am also aware of these (both available at Reel Clothes): 

$600.00 MIB007: Ken Thorley ‘Zap-Em Exterminator Outfit” http://test.reelclothes.com/product.asp?id=MIB007 (no damage or teching i.e. what is done to a costume to make it look worn, torn, dirty, bullet riddled, etc. on screen) 

and 

$500.00 MIB008: Ken Thorley ‘Zap-Em Exterminator Outfit” http://test.reelclothes.com/product.asp?id=MIB008 (torn shirt) 

So what about this auction at Heritage Galleries? 

20353: Men In Black Exterminator Costume 

“Men In Black” Exterminator Costume. Green pants, hat, and shirt with “Zap ‘Em” pest exterminator logo, worn by actor Ken Thorley, all in great condition.

Only $1.00 opening bid?! What gives? 

Well what gives is FeeBay and Heritage Galleries engaged in some slightly shady auction practices. 

This is what the FeeBay auction listing REALLY should say (and if you did the sleuthing I have done, you would in fact know ACTUALLY is): 

Lot 20353:“Men In Black” Exterminator Costume. Green pants, hat, and shirt with “Zap ‘Em” pest exterminator logo, worn by actor Ken Thorley, all in great condition. Estimate: $800 – up. 

Reserve Amount $800.00 (with Buyer’s Premium $956.00) 

http://www.heritagegalleries.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=616&Lot_No=20352&src=pr 

I saw these when they first launched at ebaY and heritagegalleries.com – back then it was a NO RESERVE listings on ebaY and a ’reserve to be determined’ listing on heritagegalleries.com. They got changed over the weekend to RESERVE auctions (not that the ebaY listing says that clearly though — at least the Heritage software is crystal clear on that point) and all bids placed before the reserves were posted were cancelled. 

Oh and there’s another gotcha at FeeBaY: Buyer’s Premium = 24.5%. 

Math problem time: $800.00 x 24.5% + $800.00 = $996.00 

So riddle me this: Why is the same Zap-Em suit $996.00 at ebaY and $956.00 at Heritage? That’s right, Heritage is passing on *its* ebaY fees to the hapless ebaY bidder. If you know better (and now you do), you sign up to bid on the same lot at heritagegalleries.com and pay only a 19.5% bidders premium. 

FeeBay is hot to attract more upscale (upmarket for you UK folks) bidders. They need sellers with more big ticket lots. So they do all kinds of things to accommodate the high end sellers (at the expense of ebaY bidders of course, because they’re FeeBay. They’re all about their stock prices, baby.) 

So what about Star Wares and Reel Clothes (both of whom also list items at ebaY but not in the ‘live auction’ format and neither charges any buyers premiums)? While they are selling the same caliber of goods,  FeeBay isn’t as hot to deal with them because online *live* auctions generate more FeeBay fees than regular old online auctions. 

Now for the VDO related part: 

Search on the following lot at heritagegalleries.com: 20352

http://www.heritagegalleries.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=616&Lot_No=20352&src=pr 

And at ebaY: 6566013134 

Yes, it’s a Farmer Edgar costume from ‘Men In Black’. 

Is it real? Probably. Was it screen used? Possibly. 

How the heck would I know?

I already own a complete Edgar transformation costume. I also own a complete Edgar ’hero’ costume (ie the one VDO wears in every scene but the one where Edgar becomes a big ole bug). My costumes both have multiple wardrobe tags. 

Only as of October 5th has anyone at Heritage bothered to return my phone calls and emails as to whether their bug suit comes with a wardrobe tag. Here is an exerpt from an email via an ebaY submitted question [my comments in brackets]: 

“There are no studio or wardrobe company tags in the [Edgar transformation] outfit. The costume does show some evidence of cutting down the back and across the back right shoulder — sorry no photos are available [well not in the worthless FeeBay auction anyway. One lousy blurry pic and it's of the front of the costume where there is *no* teching]. Though we usually do not reveal consignor information, this particular consignor has given us permission to relay this information to you. The costume was consigned to us by Star Wares Collectibles based in California and comes with a COA from Star Wares”.   

Anybody wanna guess where the Heritage / FeeBay Zap-Em costume also came from?!? 

Oh and if you noticed the minimum bid at heritagegalleries.com, it’s not going to a new home for less than $2000 (well actually $2390 with buyers premium at Heritage or $2490 with buyers premium at FeeBay) 

Here’s another zinger: I paid less than half either number for my Edgar transformation costume from Reel Clothes. And I still paid less than either number for the ‘hero’ costume (which came to me from a private collector who bought it straight from Reel Clothes). No buyers premiums, no outrageous shipping fees, no half-assed clueless answers from the sellers, plus I got more complete costumes (I even got size 13D footwear with both my costumes and unbelieveably a pair of socks came with the ‘hero’ costume). 

So this is what I meant when I said in an earlier entry that you should stick around here and learn something. And, heck no, I’m not bidding on this Edgar transformation costume (besides three different versions of the same costume in one collection would be a little, um, ‘excessive’). 

Oh and right now the high bidder on the Zap-Em costume (as of 10/05)? It’s Startifacts, a notorious seller of mutilated costume bits, 1″ square, attractively matted & framed and sold for like $60 each. This guy can afford to get zapped for $2K, because he’ll turn around and zap dozens of unsuspecting fans for $60 each. 

Collecting can be a rough business. 

UPDATE: Neither MIB costume sold (no big surprise to me). Star Wares periodically relists the Zap Em costume at ebaY and the Edgar suit was listed at heritagegalleries.com at a fixed price of $2000 + $390 buyers premium but did not sell.