Subscribe To
This Site
ACTING OUT
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Despite the snow falling outside, egghead astronomers inform us that the sun has passed over the equator and is now hurdling back toward our open arms and pasty skin. Spring has sprung and a young man’s fancy turns to Parker Posey. Especially true it is this year as she is starring in a new sitcom, The Return of Jezebel James.
I know, I know, I hear you muttering to yourself: Parker Posey? In a sitcom? A sitcom starring Parker Posey?! Cognitive dissonance. Does not compute. Does not compute.
Or maybe you’re just thinking: Parker Posey? Who the hell’s Parker Posey?
The one-time reigning Queen of the Indies.. independent film that is, not a geographical designation.. she is, in fact, a fairly ubiquitous acting presence once you know the face. She has appeared in the occasional blockbuster like Superman Returns as well as in guest spots on various television shows from Boston Legal and Will and Grace to The Simpsons and Futurama. But her reputation has probably been forged most by her roles in Christopher Guest’s ensemble comedies beginning with Waiting for Guffman through to the most recent outing, For Your Consideration. Pretension bids me to write, boastfully, that she hit my radar with her performances in a handful of writer/director Hal Hartley’s films in the `90s including Amateur, Flirt and Henry Fool.
Posey is an idiosyncratic and fearless performer who might strike some as an acquired taste. This made the very idea of Parker Posey as the lead in a sitcom more than a little intriguing. To use her, the creative team obviously had something offbeat and unusual in mind. An idea so crazy that it might just work.
Alas, no. No, it doesn’t but not for lack of trying on Posey’s part. Saying that the material fails her does not aptly diagnose the problem. Yes, the writing is weak. Despite a fairly interesting premise -- neurotic woman, unable to conceive a child, cajoles her equally but differently neurotic sister into being a surrogate -- the stock characters doing stock schtick and a wildly disproportionate laughs to jokes ratio quickly nip any hopes for prolonged entertainment in the bud. The material fails all the performers including Oscar winner, Dianne Wiest, and Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose.
For Posey, though, the show simply seems at complete and utter odds with her very essence. It reminds me of primetime television’s unsuccessful attempts at corralling stand-up comedian, Norm MacDonald’s volatile, anarchic spirit or going back a few decades to the woeful miscasting of the legendary Peter Cook.
(A self-indulgent tangent, if you please. 20+ columns in and I finally get to mention one of the true geniuses of English comedy, Peter Cook. Hats off, gentlemen, as I eulogize. Beyond the Fringe Peter Cook. The original Bedazzled Peter Cook. Derek and freaking Clive Peter Cook!) This is who they tapped in 1981 for the role of snobby British butler, Robert Brentwood, in the bland and mercifully brief sitcom, The Two of Us. Of course it didn’t work, just like it didn’t with MacDonald’s The Norm Show and A Moment with Stan Hooper. It simply couldn’t. One of these things is not like the other. An edgy, unpredictable performer trapped within uninspired, formulaic surroundings.
On the big screen, Val Kilmer immediately springs to mind when mulling over this dichotomy. While a very good actor if he’s working with a solid script, when he’s not, Kilmer disengages and has a tendency to drift into his own sphere, free of everything and everyone else in the film around him. That was never more the case than with his performance in the remake of The Island of Doctor Moreau. In one scene in particular, he seems to be doing an impression of Marlon Brando while acting across from Marlon Brando. Brando, a mercurial actor like Kilmer, was no stranger to disassociative performances as can be witnessed in the western, One-Eyed Jacks, a movie, probably not coincidentally, Brando directed himself.
This is not to say that a movie or TV series where a performer works in almost opposition with the script is necessarily bad. In fact, One-Eyed Jacks is quite a good flick. It’s just that when it doesn’t work, you sit back and scratch your head, wondering what the hell they were thinking trying to conjoin two such disparate entities in the first place.
Such is the case with The Return of Jezebel James. The show’s creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, is a veteran television writer-producer who earned her stripes working for four years on Roseanne. Her subsequent career was undistinguished until her show, The Gilmore Girls, caught a minor cult status wave and ran for six seasons. An undiscovered gem to many viewers, it was a little too maudlin for my tastes and its beloved “quirkiness” felt ham-fistedly forced after about the first season.
So how did this pairing of a middle-of-the-road, mainstream writer-producer and off-kilter, oddball actress, come about? Did someone think that Posey might be able to bring some life into what was otherwise a listless product? There were a couple of scenes in the first 3 episodes that displayed what could’ve been had Posey’s potential been fully tapped. Oddly enough, both occur in a doctor’s office; once when her character, Sarah Tompkins, first learns that she cannot conceive a child and then again when she has to comfort her sister during a routine examination. Posey reacts and processes information in completely unique and unexpected fashion, leaving you to wonder just how interesting the proceedings might’ve played out if everyone else involved had hitched their creative wagons to the thing that makes Posey most interesting as a performer.
They didn’t and now, a mere 3 episodes into the run, Fox has pulled the plug and cancelled the show. The experiment in contrasting styles failed abysmally, once more eliciting the question: if network television doesn’t have the stomach for experimentation, why do they even bother trying? Watching Parker Posey nobly soldier on, dragging a misbegotten and ill-executed concept behind her, there can be little doubt that when it comes to dealing with the unconventional, the networks are forever at a loss how to embrace it and simply go for broke.Return from Acting Out to home page
