For a long time, cinema viewed television as an unwelcome competitor. Now, they are allies in a battle for audiences with streaming platforms. By offering over 100,000 features on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K, Cinema Paradiso is doing its bit, as the best way to watch a film on disc is on a good size television screen that does full justice to the pristine quality of the imagery. Nine decades have passed since the BBC broadcast its first programmes across the London region from its Long Acre studio in Covent Garden. So, let's see how the movies have depicted TV down the years.
The first film-makers were fascinated with technology and a number of early flickers like Georges Méliès's Long Distance Wireless Photography (1908) featured primitive television sets. Four years after WRGB became the world's first TV station in Schenectady, New York, H. Bruce Humberstone's The Crooked Circle (1932) became the first motion picture to be screened via the new medium. In this country, this distinction was claimed by the Harry Carey Western, The Last of the Clintons (1935), in August 1937, while the first European and homegrown pictures respectively starred Anton Walbrook and Jack Hulbert in The Student of Prague (1935) and Jack Ahoy (1934). Cinema Paradiso users can catch up with the seventh film shown on the BBC, as Jacques Feyder's La Kermesse Heroïque (1935), is available on disc from the BFI, which also just happens to have released the ninth, Michael Powell's The Edge of the World (1937).
The One-Eyed Monster
Whereas anyone with a quarter could go to the pictures in the United States in the 1930s, very few could afford to have a television set in the corner of their living room. Consequently, there was a certain resistance to buying the newfangled machines, especially when the national and local radio networks had news, drama. music and comedy well covered. Many considered 'the one-eyed monster' to be an intruder, while the radio was deemed a companion. Films like Edward F. Cline's International House (1933) hedged their bets over the benefits of the new format, with WC Fields giving a Chinese inventor's 'radioscope' a wide berth on his autogyro.
Filled with vaudeville spots, this comic mishmash followed the lead set by the British offering, Elstree Calling (1930), a 19-act revue to which Alfred Hitchcock contributed the linking segments in which Gordon Harker tries to tune into the show using a prototype tele-device. Over in Hollywood, John H. Auer's Hit Parade of 1941 (1940) followed the same format in the story of an experimental TV station, while the same year saw the popular English duo of Arthur Askey and Richard 'Stinker' Murdoch offer a pirate service from a disused studio on the roof of the BBC's Broadcasting House in Marcel Varnel's Band Waggon (1940).
The same imposing edifice in Portland Place had been the scene of the crime in Reginald Denham's Death At Broadcasting House (1934) and mysteries like Clifford Sanforth's Murder By Television (1935) and Del Lord's Trapped By Television (1936) were centred on radio's cathode competitor. But TVs were still a novelty reserved for the rich and it wasn't until after the Second World War that they became a must-have consumer item in suburbia. As these new communities lay outside the main towns and didn't often have cinemas, a growing number of people bought sets and settled down to watch the improving array of shows on offer for free.
The Hollywood studios sought to fight back by limiting the number of films made available for broadcast, while contracted stars were barred from appearing in small-screen dramas, although they were allowed to guest on chat shows and entertainment specials on which they could plug their new pictures. As ageing performers were released from their deals, however, they flocked to television rather than the theatre and Hollywood sought to fight back by releasing blockbusters in Technicolor, CinemaScope and stereophonic sound, as the Janis Paige song has it in Rouben Mamoulian's Silk Stockings, a 1957 musical remake with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse of Ernst Lubitsch's comic gem, Ninotchka (1939), in which Greta Garbo had famously laughed.
Films did continue to crop up on television, however, and Bobby and Peter Farrelly structured their 2012 comedy, The Three Stooges, around the way in which the trio's two-reelers were sold to TV companies by Columbia Pictures. Moreover, features like Henry Koster's My Blue Heaven (1950) acknowledged the growing popularity of television by teaming Dan Dailey and Betty Grable as an established radio act striving to make the transition to the small screen. As the decade progressed, quiz shows and Westerns were showcased in such diversions as Richard Whorf's Champagne For Caesar (1950) and Melvin Frank and Norman Panama's Callaway Went Thataway (1951). But TV wasn't always shown in the most positive light, with Arch Oboler's The Twonky (1953), Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's It's Always Fair Weather (1955), and José Ferrer's The Great Man (1956) all positing the notion that it was a corrupting influence.
Television came of age in the 1950s, however, with the five discs in the Golden Age of Comedy series celebrating the acts who became household names through their weekly appointments with the American public. Set in 1954, Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year (1982) follows the misfortunes of washed-up Hollywood icon Alan Swann (an Oscar-nominated Peter O'Toole) trying to sober up for a slot on King Kaiser's Comedy Cavalcade, David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer Parker (Reese Witherspoon) also have difficulty believing what is happening before their very eyes in Gary Ross's Pleasantville (1998), as colour starts seeping into the monochrome world of their 1950s sitcom.
It wasn't all feelgood, though, as the Fosters (Peter Finch and Kay Kendall) discover in Muriel Box's Simon and Laura (1955), when a BBC executive (Ian Carmichael) suggests starring the blissfully happy thesping couple in a weekly show peeking behind the scenes at their private life. What could possibly go wrong? More seriously, Larry 'Lonesome' Rhodes (Andy Griffin) struggles to cope with the pressures and temptations of small-screen celebrity after he's discovered by ambitious producer Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) in Elia Kazan's eerily prescient study of fame, A Face in the Crowd (1957).
Set the following year, Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1995) recalls a true-life piece of tele-skullduggery, as the producers of Twenty-One recruit academic Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) and offer to help him win in a bid to oust long-reigning champion, Herb Stempel (John Turturro). Britain would have its own 'coughing major' scandal in 2001 and the story of Charles (Matthew Macfadyen) and Diana Ingram (Sian Clifford) is retold by Stephen Frears in Quiz (2020). And let's not forget that Dev Patel's appearance on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is pivotal to the plot of Danny Boyle's Best Picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire (2008).
For most of the 1950s, George Reeves soared through the skies as TV's Superman. As Allen Coulter reveals in Hollywoodland (2006), however, his fame came at a dreadful cost, although private eye Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) isn't convinced that Reeves (Ben Affleck) committed suicide. Quentin Tarantino made life on a TV Western look much more fun, as Cliff Booth (an Oscar-winning Brad Pitt) stunt doubles for cowboy superstar Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood (2019), which rewrites the facts around the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders in August 1969.
Back in the land of make-believe, ambitious advertising man Tony Randall hopes to crack the TV big time with the help of starlet Jayne Mansfield in Frank Tashlin's Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) and commercials threaten to come between housewife Doris Day and obstetrician husband James Garner in Norman Jewison's The Thrill of It All (1963), which had originally been written for the wonderful Judy Holliday by Carl Reiner, who got his start writing for television alongside the likes of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, who includes TV gags in such pictures as Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66) set a trend for shows set in the world of television comedy that has most recently been continued by Seinfeld (1990-97), The Larry Sanders Show (1992-98), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-) and 30 Rock (2006-13). One of the earliest examples of appointment television was The Ed Sullivan Show and songwriter Albert Peterson (Dick Van Dyke) hits upon the idea for the programme to hold a contest to give pop star Conrad Birdie (Jesse Pearson) a farewell kiss before joining the US Army. Kim Macafee (Ann-Margret) becomes as determined to win as 1962 teenager Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) does to dance on The Corny Collins Show in John Waters's Hairspray (1988). Nikki Blonsky took over the role for Adam Shankman's musical remake, Hairspray (2007), which also saw John Travolta succeed Divine as Tracy's outrageous mother, Edna.
News of the World
Long before the advent of rolling news and partisan stations, the nightly TV bulletin was considered impartial and sacrosanct. George Clooney respected this bond between the broadcaster and the public in recalling how Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) used his CBS news show, See It Now, to challenge the Red Scare tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). The care with which an exposé is prepared was further explored by Michael Mann in The Insider (1999), which charts the efforts of CBS producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) to get Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) to blow the whistle on the tobacco industry on the trusted 60 Minutes show hosted by Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). On the flipside, James Vanderbilt's Truth (2015) shows what happened when 60 Minutes Wednesday producer Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett) convinces legendary presenter Dan Rather (Robert Redford) that she has uncovered damning evidence about President George W. Bush's military record.
While anchors are at the sharp end in the studio, the hard yards are put in by the scoop-hungry reporters in the field. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler brilliantly conveyed the realities of life on the frontline in his directorial debut, Medium Cool (1969), as TV cameraman Robert Forster keeps filming as chaos erupts around him at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which is also the subject of Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). Michael Douglas wields the camera, as Jane Fonda badgers fellow Oscar nominee Jack Lemmon about the nuclear power accident that could have wiped out large parts of Southern California in James Bridges's The China Syndrome (1979). A nuclear bomb dominates the action in Richard Brooks's Wrong Is Right (1982), as newshound Sean Connery tries to prove the existence of a missing warhead that both Middle Eastern potentates and a US presidential candidate are trying to buy in order to humiliates White House incumbent, George Grizzard.
Michael Nicholson covered conflicts around the world for ITN and his experiences inform Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), which follows Stephen Dillane's efforts to help Bosnian orphans with the help of Americn colleague Woody Harrelson and aid worker Marisa Tomei. Strapping on a camera, thief Jake Gyllenhaal goes looking for a very different kind of trouble in Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler (2014), a potent treatise on the link between reportage and public voyeurism that turns on the stringer's relationship with hard-nosed KWLA 6 news editor, Rene Russo.
The tone is much lighter in Robert Altman's Prêt-à-Porter (1994), as Texan novice Kitty Potter (Kim Basinger) struggles to keep on top of events during Paris Fashion Week. By contrast, Eyewitness News reporter Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) has no doubts about his talent in Tom Shadyac's Bruce Almighty (2003). Indeed, he is so furious that he has missed out on an anchor slot at WKBW-TV that he curses the powers above for his bad luck, only for God (Morgan Freeman) to hear him and hand over celestial control to see if Bruce could do any better. He is tempted to use his powers to win back girlfriend Grace Connelly (Jennifer Aniston) and Melina Kanakaredes similarly has boyfriend problems in John Herzfeld's 15 Minutes (2001), as the reporter from the tabloid TV show Top Story follows top-ranking homicide detective Robert De Niro to the scene of a New York fire that is also being investigated by arson specialist, Edward Burns.
Towering above all other films about television news is Sidney Lumet's Network (1976), which earned Peter Finch a posthumous Oscar for Best Actor for his blistering performance as Howard Beale, the news anchor whose on-air rant on the day he's fired results in him becoming 'the mad prophet of the airwaves'. However, studio executives William Holden and Faye Dunaway (who won Best Actress) are exploiting Beale's 'mad as hell' rants for ratings and they are quite prepared to destroy their creation once his use has expired. Paddy Chayefsky's acerbic screenplay also won an Academy Award, as did Beatrice Straight's five-minute-and-two-second performance as Holden's jilted spouse.
The comedy is broader but still barbed in James L. Brooks's Broadcast News (1987), in which earnest Washington-based reporter Albert Brooks comes to resent both sports specialist William Hurt's promotion to news anchor and his romantic success with producer Holly Hunter. Another triangle forms around ace reporter Kathleen Turner in Ted Kotcheff's Switching Channels (1988). as ex-husband Burt Reynolds schemes to keep her at their Chicago news channel and away from Christopher Reeve's New York millionaire.
Shifting the narrative of Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday (1940) from a newspaper to a TV station, this romcom explored the societal shift away from the print media and the trust that viewers place in news broadcasters is also considered in Jon Avnet's Up Close and Personal (1996), in which news anchor Michelle Pfeiffer's meteoric rise takes her to Philadelphia and away from her Miami-based news editor mentor, Robert Redford. The drama is similarly derived from the tensions between the desk and the booth, as veteran anchor Jeff Daniels takes exception to the presentational changes being suggested by producer girlfriend, Emily Mortimer, in Aaron Sorkin's HBO series, The Newsroom (2012-14), which shares a vibe with the West Wing (2002-05) creator's series about a topical sketch show, Studio 60 on Sunset Strip (2006).
Power couples also take centre stage in Roger Michell's Morning Glory (2010) and Jodie Foster's Money Monster (2016). The former sees New York anchor Diane Keaton take an instant dislike to veteran reporter Harrison Ford when he is promoted by the new producer of the IBS show, Daybreak, while the latter sees director Julia Roberts desperately try to keep studio intruder Jack O'Connell calm after he threatens to kill financial expert George Clooney on air after his share tip wiped out his kidnapper's life savings.
Having endured endless disappointments in her bid to become a valued member of a Sarasota news station. Christine Chubbock (Rebecca Hall) also takes dramatic on-air action in Antonio Campos's Christine (2016), a biopic of a troubled 1970s local news reporter whose life and career are explored by actress Kate Lyn Sheil while preparing for her next role in Robert Greene's compelling docudrama, Kate Plays Christine (2016). The treatment of women in the newsroom is also to the fore in Jay Roach's Bombshell (2019), which became a banner picture for the #MeToo and Time's Up movements by showing how fictional staffer Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) allied with Fox News presenters Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and Megan Kelly (Charlize Theron) to expose how CEO Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) used the casting couch to abuse his position.
For many, however, the mere mention of a newsroom will bring to mind Adam McKay's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), in which Will Ferrell excels as the face of San Diego's KVWN Channel 4. He would reprise the role in the same director's Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie (2004) and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), alongside Paul Rudd as field reporter Brian Fantana, David Koechner as sportscaster Champ Kind, Christina Applegate as rival anchor Veronica Corningstone and Steve Carell as weatherman Brick Tamland. Mention should be made of two more meteorologists, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day (1993) and Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) in Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995), before we introduce you to Meghan Miles (Elizabeth Banks), the Los Angeles anchor in Steven Brill's Walk of Shame (2014), who has to get across the city after a hard night drowning her sorrows in order to seize a second chance at the job of a lifetime.
Things never quite run smoothly for Canadian news reporter Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) after she becomes a morning anchor for New York's Metro News 1 in the long-running sitcom, How I Met Your Mother (2005-14). But her career feels like an unbroken run of successes compared to that of Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan), who started out covering the sports beat on Armando Iannucci's The Day Today (1994) before landing his own BBC chat show, Knowing Me Knowing You (1994). A series of blunders resulted in Alan having rebuild his career on Radio Norwich in I'm Alan Patrridge (1997-2002) and on North Norfolk Digital in Mid Morning Matters With Alan Partridge (2010-16). Welcome to the Places in My Life and Open Books With Martin Bryce (both 2012), as well as in Declan Lowney's feature, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013). However, following the journey of self-discovery undertaken on Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle (2016), the king of the comeback found his way on to our screens once more as the co-host with Jennie Gresham (Susannah Fielding) of This Time (2019-). Stay tuned as a second series is on the way and will soon be available to view on disc from Cinema Paradiso.
The Obligatory Horror Bit
Whatever theme or topic you select on Cinema Paradiso, you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be a horror movie lurking in the shadows. Television is no exception. You only have to read the words, 'They're Here', to think of Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O'Rourke) crouching in front of a static-filled screen in her cosy Cuesta Verde home in Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist (1982) to feel a shiver go down the spine. And there's no sitting comfortably during Jim Sharman's Shock Treatment (1981), either. Now married after their experiences in the same director's The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - when they are played by James Brolin and Susan Sarandon - Brad (Cliff De Young) and Janet Majors (Jessica Harper) are parted by host Bert Schnick (Barry Humphries) on the Denton Television show, Marriage Maze, so that Janet can be groomed for singing stardom by sinister fast food magnate, Farley Flavors (also De Young).
Pandering to the basest tastes of the audience, Max Renn (James Woods), the boss of the Toronto-based CIVIC-TV station, becomes obsessed in David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) with a snuff show that seems to be broadcasting from Malaysia. However, kinky radio host Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry) discovers that its base is much closer to home and is linked to a political movement associated with media theorist Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley). The film (Demons, 1985) being viewed by the residents of an apartment building causes them to regret tuning in after Sally Day (Coralina Cataldi Tassoni) undergoes a hideous transformation in Lamberto Bavi's Demons 2 (1988). Suddenly, the extraterrestrials lured to Earth by a suburban satellite dish in Ted Nicoleau's TerrorVision (1986) don't look so terrifying.
The alien force in Ed Hunt's The Brain (1988) enables mad scientist David Gale to use his Independent Thinkers show to brainwash viewers and control their minds. But how many dastardly schemes have been confounded by a pesky kid? Sadly, it's going to take more than teen tampering to deal with the spirit of serial-killing TV repairman Mitch Pileggi, as his botched execution in the electric chair now means he can creep along cables and materialise through television sets in Wes Craven's Shocker (1989). Network executive Sean Young hopes some capital punishment will boost her ratings in Tommy Lee Wallace's Witness to the Execution (1994). However, drifter Ron Marquette knows just how to push the buttons of the residents of the small town of Brewster when he sets up a Sunday evening TV show called Our Town in Bryan Singer's debut feature, Public Access (1993).
Experienced movie watchers know that nothing good can come from opening a parcel containing a video cassette and reality TV host Miyuki Ono comes to regret heading to a deserted army base with her crew to investigate the brutal horrors she has witnessed on the tape in Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap (1988). This was released a full year before Hideo Nakata's Ring (1998), in which journalist Nanako Matsushima strives to get to the bottom of an urban legend about a cursed videotape that kills anyone who watches it within a week. Sadako the restless spirit returns in Jôji Iida's The Spiral (1998), while reporter Miki Nakatani takes on the challenge of solving the mystery having survived the first onslaught in Nakata and Iida's Ring 2 (1999).
In Gore Verbinski's Hollywood remake, The Ring (2002), Naomi Watts takes on the mantle and has just seven days to complete her story after viewing the tape herself. The outcome is somewhat given away by the fact that Watts confronts the evil Samara in the Oregon town in which she is trying to raise her son in Nakata's The Ring Two (2005). Having made it through Keenan Ivory Wayans's gleeful parodies, Scary Movie (2000) and Scary Movie 2 (2001), Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) becomes a reporter in time to run into a videotape terror named Tabitha in David Zucker's Scary Movie 3 (2003).
The Japanese influence continues in Maurice Devereaux's Slashers (2001), as six contestants compete for the $1 million prize on a murderous reality show that pits them against such psychos as Chainsaw Charlie. Preacherman and Dr Ripper. The crazed killers on the loose in Joe Castro's Terror Toons (2002) are Dr Carnage and Max Assassin, who have been unleashed by Beverly Lynne from DVDs mailed to her by Satan himself on the very night that her parents are away and sister Lizzy Borden is having a wild party. Do these kids ever watch horror movies? Maybe they should sign up to Cinema Paradiso to avoid such basic errors.
There have long been rumours that Apollo 11's Moon landing was faked in a television studio and Peter Hyams's Capricorn One (1977) exploited the conspiracy theories to show how astronauts James Brolin. Sam Waterston and O.J. Simpson are coerced by NASA officials into pretending that a studio set is really the surface of Mars in order to convince millions that they are witnessing history. Fact and fiction also blur in Dean Parisot's Galaxy Quest (1999), as aliens picking up an old sci-fi series draw the conclusion that the only people capable of saving the universe are the crew of the NSEA Protector. Unfortunately, Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman are merely ageing actors who are way out of their depth without a script.
Clearly, a time lord would have been a better choice of troubleshooting saviour and Terry McDonough's An Adventure in Space and Time (2013) shows how actor William Hartnell (David Bradley) and producer Verity Lambert (Jessica Raine) changed the face of Saturday evening television in Britain and small-screen science fiction everywhere with Doctor Who (1963-). There's a Whovian whiff about the premise of the Alan Moore and David Lloyd graphic novel that inspired James McTeigue's V For Vendetta (2005), as British National Television employee Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) has to decide whether V (Hugo Weaving), the Guy Fawkes mask-wearing rebel who keeps jamming transmissions to speak to a nation under the heel of a neo-fascist jackboot is really on the side of the angels.
There's more dystopic gloom to disconcert audiences in Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch (1980), a fascinating adaptation of David G. Compton's novel, The Unsleeping Eye, which follows reporter Harvey Keitel's efforts to use the camera implanted in his eye to transmit broadcastable footage of Romy Schneider, who is the only woman in a healthy world to be suffering from an incurable disease. The same year brought another downbeat drama, George Kaczender's Agency, which draws on a Paul Gotlieb novel to show how Madison Avenue advertising executive Robert Mitchum seeks to swing an election by inserting subliminal messages in TV commercials.
# A Brief History of Films About Television: Part 2
For a long time, cinema viewed television as an unwelcome competitor. Now, they are allies in a battle for audiences with streaming platforms. By offering over 10,000 features on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K, Cinema Paradiso is doing its bit, as the best way to watch a film on disc is on a good size television screen that does full justice to the pristine quality of the imagery. Nine decades have passed since the BBC broadcast its first programmes across the London area from its Long Acre studio in Covent Garden. So, let's see how the movies have depicted TV down the years.
In the first part of Cinema Paradiso's survey of the link between film and television, we explored movies set in newsrooms and pictures with a horror and sci-fi slant. We should also highlight the fact that cinema and TV have been cross-pollinating for decades, as you can see from our articles on the Top 10 Films Turned into TV Series and the reverse process, From Small Screen to Silver Screen.
Sitcoms and Soaps
Having found fame through the TV show, The Monkees (1966-68), it's somewhat apt that Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith wind up in a glass fish tank at the end of Bob Rafelson's Head (1968), as it's the perfect metaphor for television celebrity. Another small-screen musical staple to make the transition to cinema was Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head (1993-2011), which was centred around a pair of couch potatoes from Highland, Texas who spend their days making snarky remarks about the videos on MTV. They did wander out of their comfort zone in Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996), however, which would make for a splendid triple bill with Penelope Spheeris's Wayne's World (1992) and Stephen Herek's Wayne's World 2 (1993), which centres on the public access show hosted by Aurora. Illinois slackers. Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Agar (Dana Carvey).
The humour comes from a darker place in Martin Ritt's The Front (1976), in which screenwriter Walter Bernstein recalled his experiences under the Hollywood blacklist following the Cold War HUAC investigation into Communism in the American film industry. Zero Mostel excels as Hecky Brown, the TV comic whose future depends on him uncovering the names of the banned writers using small-time loser Howard Prince (Woody Allen) as a 'front' for their work. Desperation to make the big time drives Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), as he kidnaps comedian Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) in the hope of landing a spot on his chat show in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy (1983).
Frustration also prompts struggling Africn American writer Pierre Delacrois (Damon Wayans) to teach bigoted boss Thomas Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport) a lesson in Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2000) by writing a TV show that exposes racism in the United States. Much to his dismay, however, Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show becomes a rating smash and makes stars of street performers Womack (Tommy Davidson) and Manray (Savon Glover), whose small-screen characters were based on Willie 'Sleep'n'Eat' Best and Mantan Moreland, who can respectively seen in Frank R. Strayer's The Monster Walks (1932) and Melvin Van Peebles's Watermelon Man (1970), which features a standout turn by Godfrey Cambridge, as the prejudiced white slob who become black overnight.
Weird Al Yankowic comes up with some wacky programme ideas of his own after his uncle wins Channel 62 in a card game in Jay Levey's UHF (1989), while writer David Duchovny learns the hard way while trying to pitch a show to producer Sigourney Weaver in Jake Kasdan's satire, The TV Set (2006). However, narcissistic star Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) gets more than he bargained for in Nora Ephron's Bewitched (2005) when he unwittingly hires real-life witch Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman) to play Samantha Stephens to his Darrin in a remake of the revered William Asher sitcom, Bewitched (1964-72), in which Dick York had originated the role of Darrin opposite the marvellous, nose-wrinkling Elizabeth Montgomery.
Speaking of TV sets, Peter Sellers gives the Oscar-nominated performance of his career in Hal Ashby's exceptional adaptation of Jerzy Kosinki's Being There (1979), as Chance, the gardener who has spent so long in an old gentleman's Washington, DC mansion that his only knowledge of the outside world comes from television. Mistakenly dubbed Chauncey Gardiner by tycoon Ben Rand (Best Supporting winner Melvyn Douglas), the holy innocent becomes the darling of the political establishment and Mike Judge mines the same theme in Idiocracy (2006), which sees the buffoonish Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) wake in 2505 after a bungled hibernation experiment to find society so dumbed down that he is now the sharpest tool in the box. However, Matthew Broderick encounters a much more dangerous loose cannon when Jim Carrey comes to hook him up to the underground network in Ben Stiller's The Cable Guy (1996).
Long before Strictly Come Dancing became a global phenomenon. TV dance shows were regarded as rather tacky. Federico Fellini captures the mood to perfection in Ginger and Fred (1985), which is beautifully played by Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni as the Rogers and Astaire impersonators who are persuaded to take to the floor again three decades after their retirement. Old-style variety shows like Sunday Night At the London Palladium (1960-66) were also once an audience magnet and Jim Henson satirised the format to a tee in The Muppet Show (1976-81), which Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy in the form of three 'Very Best Of' compilations. However, Peter Jackson skewered the format with devilish wit in Meet the Feebles (1989) and grown-ups should take note that his account of the events that culminated in the Peebles Variety Massacre are most definitely NOT for family viewing.
Thankfully, there's nothing to stop viewers of all ages from enjoying James Bobin's The Muppets (2011), in which Jason Siegel and Amy Adams try to reunite Kermit, Fozzie and Miss Piggy for a telethon to prevent oil magnate Chris Cooper from demolishing the Muppet Theatre. The Muppet magic is also readily evident in Brian Henson's The Happytime Murders (2018), although the faces may not be as readily familiar, as puppet detective Phil Phillips is paired with LAPD officer Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) to discover who keeps bumping off retired sitcom stars in a neverland that contains echoes of Robert Zemeckis's Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
Staying in the world of children's television, washed-up tea-time favourite Robin Williams seeks revenge on Edward Norton for luring away his audience while dressed as a pink rhino in Danny DeVito's Death to Smoochy (2002). There's also an edge to the comedy in Abe Forsythe's Little Monsters (2019), as tot favourite Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad) proves to be nothing like his screen persona after zombies take over Pleasant Valley Farm. Fortunately, Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) lives up to his genial billing when cynical hack Tom Junod (Matthew Rhys) comes to profile him in Marielle Heller's charming fact-based drama, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019).
Soap operas have been firm favourites with audiences since ABC latched on to the Grace Metalious novel that had been filmed by Mark Robson in 1957 in order to produce the groundbreaking Peyton Place (1964-69). Hundreds of shows have followed in its wake, including Days of Our Lives, which starred Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) in Friends (1994-2003). In Sydney Pollack's Tootsie (1982), the show that actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) has set his sights on is Southwest General and he drags up as Dorothy Michaels to land the role of hospital administrator Emily Kimberly (a tactic that Stewie Griffin also employs in becoming Karina Smirnoff in order to star in Jolly Farm Revue in the 'Go, Stewie, Go!' episode from Season Eight of Family Guy, 1999-).
Scribe John Candy gets a shot at winning a Daytime Emmy when he bumps his head in Tom Mankiewicz's Delirious (1991) and finds himself part of the Beyond Our Dreams world, which he can control with his typewriter. Writer Whoopi Goldberg has much less say in what happens on The Sun Also Sets after ambitious actress Cathy Moriarty sleeps with producer Robert Downey, Jr. in Michael Hoffman's Soapdish (1991) and persuades him to turn the show's popular mainstay, Sally Field, into a monster by having her mistreat waif Elisabeth Shue and struggle to deal with the return of the nemesis Field had once had fired, Kevin Kline.
Just about everyone on the show producer by Christopher Plummer has a skeleton in the cupboard in Peter H. Hunt's adaptation of Danielle Steele's Secrets (1992). But he soon finds himself risking his own reputation by falling for Manhattan's newest star, Stephanie Beacham, and the complicated love life of EastEnders star Barbara Windsor is laid bare in Dominic Leclerc's Babs (2017). Samantha Spiro takes the title role having also played Windsor in Terry Johnson's Cor, Blimey! (2000), which chronicled her tricky relationship with Carry On co-star Sidney James (Geoffrey Hutchings).
Sid is up to his shady tricks as the purveyor of Bonko washing tablets in
Lance Comfort's Make Mine a Million (1959), which sees him persuade National Television make-up artist Arthur Askey give his product a free plug by interrupting a live lead. British commercial television was still only four years old when this romp was released, but only the BBC manages to subsist without adverts nowadays. There are also several specialist shopping channels for the dedicated spender. Among them is Good Buy, which is facing something of a downturn in Steven Herek's Holy Man (1998). However, executive Jeff Goldblum's prayers are answered when Eddie Murphy proves to be a natural born salesman. Cranky Shop-A-Lot producer Whoopi Goldberg also gets her Christmas wish in the form of Nigel Hawthorne in Peter Werner's Call Me Claus (2001), which followed in the festive footsteps of Richard Donner's Scrooged (1988), in which Bill Murray has an eventful evening after insisting that his cast work late for a live production of A Christmas Carol.
Games, Chat and Reality
Audience participation had long been a part of variety shows and early radio stations got listeners involved by sending in requests and answers to quiz questions. The game show first appeared in 1938, with BBC TV's Spelling Bee pipping NBC radio's Information Please to the airwaves. While the basic format has changed little over the years, novelty has always been the name of the game show game and cinema has reflected the shifts since the days of Paul L. Stein's 20 Questions Murder Mystery (1950), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Renown's Crime Collection, along with Leslie S. Hiscott's Inside the Room (1935) and Robert S. Baker's Blackout (1950).
We've already mentioned Robert Redford's Quiz Showand the extent to which contestants could become national celebrities is reinforced by Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), as 'Quiz Kid' Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) continues to struggle with the fallout of his time on What Do Kids Know?, as host Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) asks questions of the latest child prodigy. Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman). A chance to appear on her favourite quiz show prompts Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) to go on a crash diet so that she can fit into her favourite red dress in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For a Dream (2000), while Bristol University student Brian Jackson (James McAvoy) risks alienating his working-class mates in Southend when he lands a place on the University Challenge team in Tom Vaughan's Starter For 10 (2006).
George Clooney profiles one of American television's most contentious innovators in the Charlie Kaufman-scripted Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), in which Sam Rockwell plays Chuck Barris, the creator of The Dating Game and The Gong Show. A dating show also prevents Jeremy London from proposing to girlfriend Claire Forlani in Kevin Smith's Mallrats (1995), as she has promised to appear on father Michael Rooker's Truth or Date show after a female contestant had died during a charity swim.
In the quest for ratings, station executives have often sought to offer increasingly outrageous entertainment. But cinema has blithely gone beyond the realms of possibility to present perilous programmes like The Big Hunt, which sees Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni bumping off fellow contestants while competing for a big prize in Elio Petri's The 10th Victim (1965). A similar concept was explored in Yves Boisset's The Prize of Peril (1983), which has long been overdue an American remake, and Paul Michael Glaser's The Running Man (1987), an adaptation of a Stephen King story that makes Arnold Schwarzenegger the quarry on the highest-rated TV show in history.
Kill or be killed is also the name of the game for the sextet competing in the grim reality show in Daniels Minahan's Series 7: The Contenders (2001), while six more willing victims dice with death on the Russian roulette show devised by Eva Mendes in Bill Guttentag's Live! (2007). Three school friends go head to head for the $200,000 prize in the streetfighting reality show that drives Kang Wu-suk's Fists of Legend (2013), while it's hell on wheels for those in the driving seat in Paul Bartel's Death Race 2000 (1975) and Paul W.S. Anderson's 2008 remake Death Race, as well as in Bill Kopp's Tom and Jerry pastiche, The Fast and the Furry (2005).
The most profitable pictures to exploit the human hunt format, however, are those spun off from Suzanne Collins's bestsellers, with Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) hosting the TV coverage of the murderous mayhem orchestrated by Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) in Gary Ross's The Hunger Games (2012) and Francis Lawrence's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part One (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part Two (2015).
Talk shows have branched out in many directions since Joe Franklin hosted the first one in 1951. Steve Allen perfected the form on The Tonight Show, which has remained on the NBC schedule since 1954 and has featured in several movies. Daytime favourites like The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986-2011) often command even larger audiences and Kathy Bates parodies the hosting style to amusing effect as Kippie Kann in Nick Hurran's Little Black Book, which follows researcher Stacy Holt (Brittany Murphy) as she scrolls through the messages on the PalmPilot belonging to her boyfriend, Derek (Ron Livingston). Local talk show host Bernice Graves (Bette Midler) also decides to take matters into her own hands in Helen Hunt's directorial debut, Then She Found Me (2007), when she seeks out elementary teacher April Epner (Hunt), whom she had given up for adoption as a baby four decades earlier.
Michael Haneke provides a variation on the theme by making Daniel Auteuil's guilt-ridden character the host of a literary chat show in Hidden (2005), while local channel chief Teodor Corban comes to regret suggesting a talk show to mark the 30th anniversary of the overthrow of Romania's Communist leadership in Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006). Facing up to reality brings disgraced TV personality Pierce Brosnan to the roof of the Toppers Building in London on New Year's Eve. However, he soon discovers that he's not alone, as Toni Collette, Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul have also come to embrace their destinies in Pascal Chaumeil's adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel, A Long Way Down (2014).
Morning show researcher Katherine Heigl gets off to a bad start with the cynical Gerard Butler when he is hired to do a relationships spot by her Sacramento station in Richard Luketic's The Ugly Truth (2009). But his self-obsession pales beside that of Oprah fan Kristen Wiig, who blows $15 million of her lottery win on enough air time to broadcast 100 episodes of a show centred exclusively on herself in Shira Piven's Welcome to Me (2014). Staff writer Mindy Kaling is convinced that presenter Emma Thompson is every bit as egotistical. However, when station new broom Amy Ryan orders Thompson to shape up or ship out, she suddenly becomes heavily reliant on Kaling and her fellow scribes in Nisha Ganatra's Late Night (2019). The same year saw Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) make a dramatic debut on the Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) chat show that had aired clips of his failed stand-up routine in Todd Phillips's origins story, Joker (2019), which earned Phoenix and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir a hat-trick of the Golden Globe, Oscar and BAFTA awards.
The tabloid talk show originated in the States with Les Crane in the mid-1960s, with successors like Geraldo Rivera frequently cameoing as themselves in such pictures as Robert Zemeckis's Contact (1997), Mike Nichols's Primary Colors (1998) and Phil Traill's All About Steve (2009). Jerry Springer, the King of Confessional Television, got to play a version of himself in Neil Abramson's Ringmaster (1998), which anticipated Peter Orton's Jerry Springer: The Opera (2004) - in which the title role is taken by David Soul - which castigates both the purveyors and the consumers of so-called Trash TV.
Following the briefest of detours to talent shows both fictional (Paul Weitz's American Dreamz, 2006) and factual (Havana Marking's Afghan Star, 2009), we arrive at the most divisive kid on the small-screen block - reality television. Although it seems a relatively new phenomenon, the unscripted format dates back to such early TV shows as Queen For a Day (1945-64), which borrowed the premise of Frank Capra's Lady For a Day (1933) - which he remade as Pocketful of Miracles (1961) - in which street vendor May Robson (Bette Davis in the retool) is given a makeover to convince her visiting daughter that she's doing well for herself by gentleman hoodlum Warren William (Glenn Ford).
In Britain, director Paul Almond put a reality spin on the documentary with Seven Up! (1964), which followed the fortunes of 14 children born in 1957 and launched a franchise that continued with Michael Apted at the helm until 63 Up in 2019. All nine series are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, which reaffirms what a remarkable selection of titles we have on offer at the click of a mouse. Being in the public eye had different effects on the Up participants and Cliff Spab (Stephen Dorff), Joe Dice (Jack Noseworthy) and Wendy Pfister (Reese Witherspoon) find it tough to come to terms with having their experiences as hostages broadcast by the SPLIT terrorist group in Jefery Levy's S.F.W. (1994).
Make-up artist Veronica Forqué becomes involved with scar-faced reality host Victoria Abril through her catatonic boyfriend and maid Rossy De Palma's rapacious thief boyfriend in Pedro Almodóvar's Kika (1993). Seeking to boost his own profile, tabloid reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) ensures that the murder spree perpetuated by Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis) makes it on to the box in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), which was scripted by Quentin Tarantino. Seeking sensationalism for his In Your Face channel in Ben Stiller's Reality Bites (1994), a small-time executive (Stiller) hopes to persuade budding videographer Winona Ryder that she's better off entrusting clips of her Generation X friends to him than John Mahoney, the host of the Houston morning show for whom she currently works.
Amateurs weren't alone in the 1990s in creating their own versions of the truth, as the President of the United States tries to blur the reality line in David Mamet's Wag the Dog (1997) when a scandal threatens to break over him two weeks before an election and he requires White House aide Robert De Niro to fill the news bulletins with stories about a victorious war that is actually being stage-managed from the comfort of a studio by Hollywood producer Dustin Hoffman. De Niro finds himself on the wrong side of the cameras in Tom Dey's Showtime (2002), as he plays an LAPD detective whose punishment for a snafu is to appear with motor-mouthed partner Eddie Murphy on a cop-based reality show produced by Rene Russo.
The launch of Big Brother in the Netherlands in 1997 transformed the nature of reality television, although French-Canadian film-maker Michel Poulette had anticipated the notion of a 24/7 focus on the life of an everyman in Louis 19, King of the Airwaves (1994). This provided the inspiration for Ron Howard's EDtv (1999), in which True TV producer Ellen De Generes selects video store clerk Matthew McConaughey to live his life on screen. Featuring a standout turn by Jim Carrey, Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998) riffed on the reverse notion of someone not acting up for the camera because they have no idea they're going live into the living rooms of America.
Ex-porn star Sarah Michelle Gellar strives to launch her own reality project in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2006), while the central 'Reality Television' segment of John August's The Nines (2007) sees producer Hope Davis muddy the waters so that writer Ryan Reynolds and actress friend Melissa McCarthy fall out over the pilot for a new series. But we end with the insurance salesman played by Joel Murray in Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America (2011) because reality TV is just one of the things that grinds his gears. He also hates talk radio, the Internet and celebrity culture. But it's episodes of American Superstarz and a reality show about a spoilt teenager that tips him over the edge and he embarks upon a battle for the nation's soul with gun-toting high-school accomplice, Tara Lynne Barr.
