Deadline: EMMYS: As More Shows Straddle Categories, Will TV Academy Tighten Rules?

[Note:   This is not specific to The Big Bang Theory, but it does relate because the issue directly impacts the ability for broadcast network shows to successfully be nominated and win awards when the fields are being broadened the way they have been.  We will continue to keep our readers updated on this issue.]

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Wednesday June 11, 2014 @ 6:10pm PDT

The Board of Governors of the Television Academy voted to split three more fields heading into this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards. That pushed the number of Emmy categories to a record 106. Yet we’ve never had so many shows that don’t seem to fit in any of them.  The problem impacts mainly anthology-style dramas, which straddle the worlds of regular series and miniseries, and the proverbial “dramedies,” which blur the lines between comedy and drama. The issue came to the forefront with the debate surrounding HBO’s decision to enter the eight-episode True Detective as a drama, Showtime switching Shameless from drama to comedy series after three seasons and Netflix entering Orange Is the New Black as a comedy after submitting it as a drama for the Golden Globes.

“Life was easier when we had Gunsmoke and I Love Lucy,” quipped John Leverence, the TV Academy’s senior VP of awards. At the heart of the problem is the issue of “dual eligibility” programs that qualify for two categories under current Emmy rules. Shows such as HBO’s True Detective and FX’s American Horror Story have the characteristics of a drama—with continuous storylines, returning writing-producing teams and “Created By” credits. On the other hand, they each feature a single plot that is resolved within the same season, which is a signature trait of a miniseries.

Once the TV Academy establishes that a program is eligible for two categories, it defers to the producers to choose which race to enter. AHS opted to go as a miniseries, despite having a semi-regular cast that has performed in multiple installments. HBO went the drama series route with Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective before it had been formally renewed and was certain to have a new cast and characters for season two. Meanwhile, PBS’ Downton Abbey submitted its first season as a miniseries before switching to the drama category a year later, despite already having been renewed when its freshman season competed as a mini.

All appear within their rights per TV Academy guidelines. Gamesmanship no doubt played a role in some submission decisions, though convictions were involved, too.

“This project was pitched to us, it was produced by us and marketed by us as a series,” HBO’s Michael Lombardo said about the decision to enter True Detective as a drama. “Nic never thought of this as a miniseries, and we always treated him as a creator of a series.”

It is interesting how perception changes. AHS raised eyebrows when it chose to compete as a miniseries in 2012. Gradually, the decision was accepted and seems to have become the norm, so much that when True Detective opted to go the other way, the move was perceived as a shocker. “It’s a strange thing; I was surprised (HBO) did it,” Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner said at the time.

Many have pointed out the competitive advantage AHS has enjoyed by entering the less-crowded longform field, topping the list of most-nominated programs for the past two years. But John Landgraf, CEO of FX, which airs the series, argues that short-run shows such as True Detective have an unfair advantage by attracting A-list talent like Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. “It’s unfair for HBO to get actors that you can’t normally get to do a series (but) who would do a close-ended show,” he says.

Both sides seem to have a point, which means there probably won’t be a right or wrong course for non-traditional dramas such as AHS and True Detective to pursue, unless the TV Academy steps in with stricter category guidelines, something many have asked for. Landgraf proposed that “the definition should be: A miniseries has a story that ends; a series has a story that continues on.”

Addressing the debate whether Orange Is the New Black and Shameless belong in the comedy or drama category, OITNB creator Jenji Kohan lamented, “I just wish there was an hourlong category and a half-hour category. I wish everyone wasn’t so focused on category.”

The TV Academy’s current stance is that “the rules that are on the books seem to be sufficient to carry through categorization,” according to Leverence.

But with the proliferation of event and genre-bending shows that will continue to compound the problem and raise the level of frustration among creators and TV executives, that might have to change.

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Variety: Comedy Scribes Talk Shop at Variety’s Night in the Writers’ Room

June 11, 2014 | 02:12PM PT  Laura Prudom, News Editor @lauinla

Variety’s annual “Night in the Writers’ Room” panel drew scribes from across the comedy and drama spectrum for a lively discussion about the state of the industry, cable versus broadcast models and the changes they’ve encountered since they joined the business. Variety TV critic Brian Lowry moderated the free-wheeling Comedy Q&A at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills — although “Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence did his best to usurp that position — with every panelist demonstrating a thorough knowledge and appreciation of their fellow writers’ work, occasionally offering their own queries and riffing on their colleagues’ responses.

The comedy panel featured Lawrence, “House of Lies” creator Matthew Carnahan, “Maron” mastermind Marc Maron, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s” Rob McElhenney and “The Mindy Project” showrunner Matt Warburton.

The panelists were quick to agree with Lowry’s suggestion that the television industry is in the midst of a “golden age of comedy,” and while Lawrence asserted that “television comedy is so much better than feature comedy right now,” the participants also conceded that cable has the edge over broadcast in the current creative landscape.

“It’s good that we’re in an age of TV comedy where you can actually turn the TV on and for a few minutes go ‘what the hell is this?’ I think there are so many unique voices and so many different outlets for people to do exactly what their vision is, and there’s networks that support that vision,” Maron noted. “There’s a wide variety of different approaches to comedy that I don’t think anybody’s ever seen before — there are literally shows on TV now that never would’ve been possible before this, and it’s amazing.”

Warburton observed that the lines between comedy and drama have blurred “in a way that is confusing to people and kind of exciting” — pointing to shows like “Orange is the New Black” and “Louie” as series that “are ostensibly comedies but get to emotional truth.”

Maron agreed that in the case of his eponymous IFC series, “the comedy has to come from a real place if it’s going to work for me … Jokes are great, but if you’re not careful, comedy is a way of completely avoiding emotion, and I’m really conscious of that when I’m doing my show: ‘Do you wanna put that joke there or you want to let the sadness come through’? It’s good to choose sadness sometimes, as long as you can buffer it with something funny eventually.”

Carnahan’s “House of Lies” undeniably straddles the line between comedy and drama, and the showrunner admitted that “I end up pulling a lot of the jokes out … and end up with something that is definitely a hybrid. We’re really interested in discussing race and the problems of corporate America, and we do it in a comedic context, but we have Don Cheadle who’s a remarkable actor. He’s really funny but he’s also so engaging to watch.”

Lawrence recalled that “the most trouble I ever got in, career-wise” came after he dared to tell a journalist that he considered “The West Wing” funnier than “Desperate Housewives” at an Emmy panel. “Qualifying anything doesn’t really matter except for bogus awards that no one cares about except the community,” he declared. “TV is TV; I find some dramas incredibly comedic, I find some comedies incredibly poignant … to me it’s either good or it’s not.”

The writers also agreed that a showrunner with an auteur sensibility is paramount in creating a product worth watching. “So many different showrunners are modest and contribute a lot of responsibility to the staff, but every show that everybody’s ever liked has one voice that takes the scripts home on weekends and writes them so they sound like they’re supposed to sound in their heads, whether it’s Shonda [Rhimes] or Marc or whoever,” Lawrence said.

But in the case of series like “Maron” or “Mindy,” the staff often have to juggle a writer’s specific vision with the challenges of having the creator appear in front of the camera, too.

“Mindy [Kaling] is the creative voice and the storyteller of our show, but she has to act 12 hours a day sometimes — especially [on] a network schedule. 22 episodes is an inhuman amount of content,” Warburton remarked. “So the job becomes how to balance a writers’ room with the auteur. Mindy’s the auteur and the rest of us have to get to a position where we’re in a mind-meld with her, where I basically learned to think like an Indian-American ob-gyn, which has been really valuable to me in my life.”

The scribes admitted that it was a challenge to completely block out the constant stream of feedback and reactions from their fanbases in the social media age — but for McElhenney, maintaining the integrity of “Always Sunny’s” characters is key. “We’ve always thought that it’s our responsibility to preserve the tone of the show. As long as we stayed consistent with the tone, and told stories that we wanted to tell, that’s what the audience would want,” he said. “And we had to make sure that each episode felt true to the characters we’ve created, but also continually surprise the audience, which is what we’ve been trying to do since day one.”

Lawrence emphasized the importance of engaging with viewers on Twitter and creating additional content for the fans of his various shows — the industry veteran is currently producing TBS’ “Ground Floor” and “Cougar Town,” and NBC’s “Undatable.” He credits the loyal “Scrubs” audience with keeping the comedy on the air for nine seasons across two networks (NBC and ABC).

“You have to consider them like a mass — you have to keep them generally pleased, because this is a business and they’re the ones who are fighting for you,” he observed.

While all the panelists, save for Lawrence, are involved in single-camera shows, the enduring popularity of “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS and in syndication has proved that multicam sitcoms are still viable, according to Lawrence. “With the prevalence of such deep, multilayered shows, I think there’s always going to be a place for a show you can listen to with one ear while you’re eating dinner and hopefully laugh a little bit,” he said. “I think networks can compete in multicamera comedy and still make a big ol’ throwback sitcom. When they make a singlecamera comedy — on a network, anyway — they have to have somebody who’s captured the zeitgeist like Mindy to have a chance to compete with the storytelling that people are allowed to show on cable and the other outlets.”

When asked to offer advice for aspiring writers and creators, McElhenney was vehement about the importance of demonstrating the viability of an idea before studios or agents even get involved. “Without a doubt, shoot something. The one thing you can’t pitch, or get anybody to truly understand when reading a script, is tone. That’s the single-most important aspect of storytelling on our particular medium — getting people to understand the kind of show you want to make. And right now, we have the technology in our pockets to shoot a television show way better than the pilot we shot ten years ago,” he pointed out. “The only thing that sold that show — about a guy lying to his friends about having cancer to impress the woman that he was stalking — as a comedy, was that we went out and shot it first so I didn’t have to explain and have everybody go ‘What? How is that funny?’ We just popped in the DVD and there it was.”

Lawrence noted that “nine out of ten of young writers I meet still haven’t written anything … You’ve got to have a giant stack of things you’ve written in your car, or you’re wasting your time.”

For Warburton, collaboration is essential — since that’s how the majority of writers produce episodes when staffed on a show. “The rest of your career is going to be working with other people, making something together – find people to hone your craft against and you’ll do that for the rest of your life.”

(Pictured: Matt Warburton, Rob McElhenney, Marc Maron, Bill Lawrence, Matthew Carnahan and Brian Lowry)

Variety: Actors Riff On Their Public Personas In Guest Turns

June 11, 2014 | 10:00AM PT by Iain Blair

Like images in a hall of mirrors, actors appearing as themselves on shows are like an approximation of reality; they look and talk like the real thing, yet the performance also gives them the chance to play with their persona, tweak perceptions and riff on an iconic role.

The latter was the case when James Earl Jones guest-starred as himself on season seven of “The Big Bang Theory.”
“It was a real coup getting this legendary actor who played Darth Vader, and when we first approached him, he said he absolutely loved the idea of discussing ‘Star Wars’ with a fan like Sheldon (Jim Parsons),” says executive producer Steven Molaro. “So we wrote the part specifically for him, and then he brought a somewhat heightened version of himself, and he was truly up for anything.”

When a particularly mean-spirited Jerry Seinfeld appeared in the current season of “Louie” (he also appeared in season three), this time asking Louie to open for him at a Hamptons benefit that turns disastrous, “he again basically just plays himself, but within the set-up circumstances of the plot,” says executive producer Blair Breard. “We don’t write ‘a character’ for him — it’s more just playing off his relationship with Louie and their history together. And he’s the consummate professional. He shows up knowing all his lines, he’s always very punctual, so it goes very smoothly.”

As might be expected, the situation was a lot looser when Adam Sandler guest-starred on the new comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”

“Andy Samberg had done (the feature) ‘That’s My Boy’ with Adam, so they already had this relationship, and when he said he’d come on the show, we knew there’d be a lot of improv,” says show co-creator/executive producer Dan Goor. “So we had some lines for him and he came up with a bunch of jokes and ideas that we also used. He also just wore his regular clothes, so we didn’t even have to bother about wardrobe.”

The episode’s set-up — “Andy’s character goes undercover as an auctioneer and Sandler is bidding, as himself” — derives much of its comedy from the movie star’s apparent intense interest in Greek antiquities. “I’m tempted to say he’s even more into Greek antiquities than we showed, but that may not be accurate,” admits Goor.

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New Work: AwardsLine (Emmy Issue 3 of 5) June 11, 2014

Rob Rice Designs presents Jim Parsons

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Jim Parsons (The Normal Heart) photographed by J.R. Mankoff

The Big Bang Theory on Cover of Backstage Magazine June 12, 2014 Issue

Beautiful Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting is a ‘Funny Honey’

RELATED ARTICLE

On June 15  at 9 AM EDT A&E will air the Hollywood Report Best Actress in a Comedy Roundtable with Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting participating on the panel for her role as Penny in The Big Bang Theory.  Below is a photo of the lovely “funny honeys’ that will be participating on the Roundtable.

normancook 4 minutes ago The funny honeys 😊 #hollywoodreporter #surroundedbycoolchicks

Not in order of photo, participants include: Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie), Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project), Zooey Deschanel (New Girl), Taylor Schilling (Orange Is the New Black), Emmy Rossum (Shameless) and Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting  (The Big Bang Theory).

normancook 2 minutes ago #hollywoodreporter #emmyissue #funnygals makeup @jamiemakeupgreenberg hair @clsymonds behind the scenes shenanigans @mkates100

 

Variety: The How-To-Guide on Online Emmy Voting

[Note:  While most of the viewers of The Big Bang Theory are pure fans, some are part of the Academy and may find this information useful and for those who can’t vote, it at least will be an interesting read.]

June 11, 2014 | 11:58 AM PT Tim | Tim Gray, Awards Editor@timgray_variety

Attention Emmy voters: You will learn to love electronic voting. This is the first year the TV Academy has introduced online voting for nominations — borrowing a page from the motion picture academy, which used the system to great success for the Oscars. The TV Academy is confident it’s the most secure system available —and Variety is confident this how-to chart will make it easy. If you have questions, the Academy has set up a call center June 9-20 during its first round of voting: (855) 845-9201. You can also email onlinevoting@televisionacademy.com or look for answers at TelevisionAcademy.com/online-voting. And while electronic voting will be used for nominations, final voting will still be on paper for everyone this year.

BEFORE YOU START:

Make sure your dues are paid.
Know your existing user name and password (if you need help, go to TelevisionAcademy.com/members).
Make sure the Academy has your current email address or mobile phone number. This is important.
TO CAST YOUR VOTE (BETWEEN 6/9-6/20):

Go to vote.TelevisionAcademy.com.
Enter your user name and password. Hit “Continue.”
If your user name and password are correct, you will see the Send Verification Code screen.
Choose how you want to receive your verification code: email, text message, or voicecall. Hit “Continue.”
You will get a six-digit security code via your chosen delivery method. Input that code on the Enter Verification Code screen and hit “Continue.”
You are in! You will see a welcome screen, with some instructions. Hit “Start Voting.”
You should now see the categories you can vote in.
Select a category to vote in.
Make your voting selections by checking the boxes next to the entry you wish to vote for. When done making your selections, hit “Review.”
When finished reviewing, hit “Submit.”
You will return to the main category screen where you can select another category to vote in.
A few other things to know:

Once you vote in a category and hit “Submit,” you can’t change your vote.
You will vote in multiple categories, but you don’t have to enter all your votes at once.

You can log out after finishing a category and return another time.

Click for Award Contenders

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Variety: Some Comedies Lacking Laughs as Category Lines Blur

JUNE 11, 2014 | 11:53AM PT   by Brian Lowry, TV Columnist, @lowryontv

Be honest: How often do you laugh watching “Girls”? “Nurse Jackie”? Even the more melancholy episodes of “Louie”?

One-hour series have made the leap, for reasons both pragmatic and cynical, to labeling themselves comedies. Yet a mental block lingers to considering programs that are at least as dramatic as they are funny “dramas,” simply because they occupy half the time.

Oddly, with so much of primetime having spun back to the medium’s infancy — seeing the return of quiz shows, hidden-camera shows, panel shows — this is one circle that hasn’t closed. Because early TV was full of half-hour dramas, including tightly constructed little Westerns like “The Rifleman,” “Have Gun, Will Travel” and “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” and cop/detective shows like “Dragnet” and “Peter Gunn.”

In terms of existing half-hours, the issue is clearly somewhat arbitrary, and distinctions a matter of degree. The best comedies have always woven in dramatic moments, including genre-defining gems like “All in the Family,” “MASH” and “Frasier.” In the ’80s, tweeners like “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” gave birth to the term “dramedy,” reflecting their hybrid nature.

Moreover, current series like “Modern Family” and “The Big Bang Theory” don’t indulge in many “very special” episodes but still weave heart into the mirth.
Nevertheless, the marked shift toward single-camera half-hours — while the multi-camera sitcom has struggled to maintain its turf — has further blurred the line, resulting in more programs that feel at least as tilted toward drama as comedy, especially in the premium tiers.

In terms of awards, migrating hours to the “comedy” designation didn’t happen by accident. First “Ally McBeal” moved over to win the Emmy, followed a few years later by “Desperate Housewives,” which — eyeing a dramatic field teeming with heavyweight contenders — also labeled itself a comedy.

The trend has continued, abetted by the latitude the TV Academy allows producers to decide where they think their show fits and, more significantly, the most advantageous way to submit it. Thus, “Orange Is the New Black” will vie for the Emmy in comedy (after submitting as a drama for the Golden Globes), sparing Netflix a Sophie’s choice between that hour and “House of Cards.”

As for creating half-hour drama, reality shows have essentially raced ahead of their scripted brethren, as basic cable nets like Investigation Discovery dabble in mini-dramas — shows that detail a true crime in half the time a network procedural would devote to it.

If anything, there’s a potential value in economy — especially in an age where viewers enjoy such a surplus of options, and three-minute YouTube videos serve as comedy “content.” Even if the half-hour drama might face an uphill climb generating awards recognition in the current climate, commercially there’s something to be said for the haiku-like appeal of those old Westerns (some of which, if you watch Me-TV, still hold up surprisingly well) in a truncated package.

Some sitcom veterans do draw a distinction between traditional comedy and award-nominated shows like “Girls,” “United States of Tara” and “Enlightened” — series that might explore the absurd and uncomfortable, but, despite their half-hour package, seldom evoke laughs.

Granted, a writer who plied his trade in drama as well as comedy once wrote “What’s in a name?,” and the hard-to-pin-down nature of such shows helps explain their appeal, in the same way dramas like “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men” and “Justified” can be flat-out funny.

But as long as series have to stand up and declare a category — comedy or drama — if you’re enjoying a half-hour show and don’t so much as crack a smile, guess what? You might just be watching the latter.

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USA Today: For Jim Parsons, ‘Home’ is where the alien is

 Brian Truitt, USA TODAY 3:09 p.m. EDT June 11, 2014

Aliens are invading, humans are rounded up and heroes are on the run. Yet this potentially apocalyptic sci-fi scenario becomes a heartfelt comedic adventure in the animated film Home.

Directed by Tim Johnson (Over the Hedge), the movie (out March 27, 2015) stars three-time Emmy winner Jim Parsons as the voice of a little purple alien named Oh. Pop singer Rihanna is Oh’s new human friend Tip, and comedian Steve Martin is the beleaguered Captain Smek, who’s trying to find a hospitable home for Oh and his fellow Boov after they were run off their own planet.

Cinematic alien invasions tend toward the dark, yet Home gave Johnson an opportunity to flip the genre and tell the story from the newcomers’ point of view while holding “a funhouse mirror up to our own culture.”

“The attitude the aliens have is that they’re doing us such a great favor and they will be so good for us primitive natives,” says Johnson. “I liked the arrogance of that and also the social commentary on all of us humans.”

When Oh and Tip meet, they find they’re both outsiders among their own species. Oh gets in so much trouble he has to flee his fellow Boov, and 12-year-old Tip is still adjusting to her new Midwestern home with her mother after growing up in the Caribbean.

Oh, whose mangled English comes mainly from watching a lot of TV, promises to help Tip find her parent since all the adults have been taken to a huge theme park the Boov built called Happy Humans Town. “They’ve studied us and know what we want,” says Johnson.

They end up with both of them running for their lives, Parsons says. “It really turns into a very odd buddy road movie. She’s hostile toward him and he considers her basically a savage, and as they go, they realize they have more and more in common.”

Even though Oh looks down at humanity at first, “you don’t pull away … because Jim is capable of such great warmth,” Johnson says of the Big Bang Theory star. “You root for this character t to really become a human.”

Home marks Rihanna’s first animated-movie role — and one of just a few acting gigs on her résumé. However, Johnson found she was at home pouring her soul out in a recording studio.

“The microphone has been her partner her whole career,” says the director, who notes that Rihanna easily found the voice of a girl on the cusp of being a teenager.

“Tip’s had to be very scrappy and live on her own, so she’s had to be a grown-up. But of course she desperately needs her mom, like every little kid.”

Martin’s Smek is inspired by goofier James Bond villains. Still, the alien leader is “a villain you’re rooting to be converted by the end.”

Parsons and Martin had their own unexpected visitor last fall when President Obama took a tour of the DreamWorks animation studio and watched them record a scene.

With Secret Service folk and others “running all over like really intelligent mice,” Parsons says he found it impossible to say anything with the President around. “All the entertainment business things I’ve done, that felt the most like I had entered a movie myself.”

The actor did find him cool in every way, though, with Obama being interested in his little Oh.

“He didn’t seem awkward at all,” Parsons says. “And I guess that’s good — as leader of the free world, it’s important that you feel pretty at ease with all different types of people and situations.”

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GLOBAL DISPATCH: Jim Parsons Talks ‘The Normal Heart’ And Sheldon On ‘The Big Bang Theory’

by Steven Nevets | Wed., Jun 11th, 2014

While promoting The Normal Heart, star Jim Parsons discussed the value of the film and its message while addressing questions regarding his award-winning role on The Big Bang Theory.

“So many people could benefit from knowing this story,” Parsons says of the film. “I think anybody who has a heart and is a human. A story is a story and it plays differently to everyone’s ear but there is no doubt in my mind or my heart that this is a force of good.”

Parsons can’t say enough positive things about the film and what it has to offer, “…I’m so happy about certain people who are going to see this. For someone like myself, who felt fairly well-adjusted in life, this was a real education and I’m not referring to the specifics of dealing with the early days of the Aids crisis. I’m talking about the whole fight to be heard and to be seen.”

Jim then talks about getting the role as Sheldon and that initial response.

” I had other friends who were working so I knew enough to know I’d probably sign a five-year contract – which was hard to wrap my head around at the time – and earning an amount of money I’d never seen before…I don’t remember how much but it didn’t matter – anything would have been impressive to me. So I sort of knew there was this element that could freak you out to a certain degree.”

Parsons puts the praise on others for his award-winning character. “The show’s creators and writers created a character that’s unique on television and I’m taking no credit for that. I don’t even think about that or I wouldn’t be able to play it properly. Sheldon has something broken about him, which I think endears him to a lot of people.”

See more of the interview here

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