ScreedMe.com

hOLLYWOOD RULEs

aPRIL, 2000 - tUNE in to TV's new "golden age." Case in point: HBO's The Sopranos, praised by critics for clever story lines and true to life characters. Next month the show receives the Peabody Award for "excellence in television." To scrutinize all this praise, I took a rare break from my "All Gilligan All The Time" and "Beverly Hillbillies 24 Hour Marathon" retro-channels. Here's what I learned ...

Tearing a page from a respected Hollywood scriptwriting tradition, The Sopranos features Italian-Americans most delicately described as overweight murderers who curse a lot and employ troubled grammar, all the while gesticulating with exaggerated body movements and repetitious facial contortions. More telling, they eat with napkins tucked under their chins.

In another nod to Hollywood tradition, the show's Italian-American characters speak in a genetic borough brand of New York/New Jersey accent (the Hollywood Encyclopedia of Ethnicities confirms that all Italian-Americans are in fact from the New York/New Jersey area).

Finally, spend any time with Uncle Junior, Paulie Walnuts, the late Pussy Bompensiero, or the others in The Sopranos brood and you remember that Italian-Americans are in fact gangsters - specifically of the Mafia designation.

Given this example of erudite TV renaissance, so determined to reach far into our reality based TV society, I'm planning to send HBO some reality based show suggestions of my own, cut from the excellent Sopranos mold. Here's my roster:

Southern Folk' - Just when you thought TV had turned it's back on dogs and banjos, follow Junior McCoy and the LaTrash family as they fish for carp, mumble barely intelligible racial slurs, dress their gaggle of confusing inbred offspring in rags from discarded confederate flags, and scan tabloid newspapers for discount coupons on dentures.

The MicHicks - This hilarious family send-up promises to become a real St. Paddy's day favorite as Sean MicHick returns home, drunk once again from another bender at the neighborhood bar, to beat the hell out of his wife before winning her back on a weekend retreat featuring gay bashing and assorted sectarian violence.

Oy, My Jewelry Store Already - A touching tale of elderly love opens with Aunt Bella cooking chicken noodle soup in the back of the family's East Side New York jewelry store, while Uncle Izzy counts money in the basement and schemes to cheat his customers.

Just Like A Woman - This wacky TV take on today's downtown gal, tracks new roommates Wanda and Rocks Ann. Gossiping on the phone, window shopping for shoes, studying Glamour magazine and clipping adds for breast augmentation, or just driving cars badly, our ditsy duo also find time to hatch plots to snag rich guys at the alter.

Git Jiggy - Fast and furious TV action guaranteed here as Jiggy G' and his boyz emerge from respective prison terms with dreams of selling crack and spawning scores of illegitimate children, while collecting welfare and dodging showers of bullets alternately fired by LA and New York police.

Yo' Homo - Zany characters and off-beat humor resound in an especially memorable episode where our apartment block of gay men, with little time for more than anonymous group sex and Judy Garland record collecting, must choose sides in a nasty slap fight over who owns a pair of spanking new leather chaps.

Am I cutting some spooky edge here or what?

Other shows I'm working on include Little Lesbos, a super hip spin-off featuring fire hydrant shaped woman sporting lumberjack shirts and spouting armpit hair, as well as Schadenfreude, about a wacky young German family - you guessed it - of Hitler loving goose steppers.

I'm also outlining a concept called Hey - Gimme The Frickin' Anchovies, about a family of low-class Italian slobs who ... what? That's already been done? Do it once, do it twice, then do it a thousand times. "Reality" gets most real when most repeated. Those are Hollywood rules.

Yours Truly;

Xander
Copy Boy In-Chief

go back