Directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story recounts and examines the incredibly compelling, tragic, redemptive story of actor and activist Christopher Reeve. He was made famous playing the superhero Superman in Richard Donner/Richard Lester/Sidney J. Furie’s quartet of films in the ’70s and ’80s. In 1995, Reeve was paralyzed from the neck down after being thrown from a horse during a competition. That terrible accident eventually sparked the creation of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, a non-profit whose goal is to cure spinal-cord injury and improve the quality of life for those with paralysis.
It’s hard to write criticism of films like these. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is an important movie about an important subject, supported by those closest to him––in this case, Reeve’s grown-up children Matthew, Alexandra, and Will. Bonhôte and Ettedgui are accomplished documentarians (see their...
It’s hard to write criticism of films like these. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is an important movie about an important subject, supported by those closest to him––in this case, Reeve’s grown-up children Matthew, Alexandra, and Will. Bonhôte and Ettedgui are accomplished documentarians (see their...
- 1/26/2024
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
Actors John Wayne and Christopher Reeve had something in common when it came to being notable movie stars with a big presence. They both stood well over six feet tall, but they had signature acting styles that allowed them to command the screen in other ways. Wayne once told fellow legendary actor Cary Grant what he really thought about Reeve and his future in Hollywood.
John Wayne and Christopher Reeve both attended the 1979 Academy Awards L-r: John Wayne and Christopher Reeve | Images/Getty Images and Saxon/Images/Getty Images
Wayne attended the Academy Awards multiple times, and he even earned two nominations and a win. He was first nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for 1949’s Sands of Iwo Jima. Wayne’s second nomination was for something else entirely: Best Picture for 1960’s The Alamo, which he directed himself. His final nomination was for 1969’s True Grit, which...
John Wayne and Christopher Reeve both attended the 1979 Academy Awards L-r: John Wayne and Christopher Reeve | Images/Getty Images and Saxon/Images/Getty Images
Wayne attended the Academy Awards multiple times, and he even earned two nominations and a win. He was first nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for 1949’s Sands of Iwo Jima. Wayne’s second nomination was for something else entirely: Best Picture for 1960’s The Alamo, which he directed himself. His final nomination was for 1969’s True Grit, which...
- 2/1/2023
- by Jeff Nelson
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long: Draft, Pre-Season, Regular Season and Post Season. Eligibility calendar and dates of awards will determine how long each phase lasts and will be displayed next to revision date.
To see all the latest predictions, of all the categories, in one place, visit The Collective
Draft>>>Pre Season>>>Regular Season>>>Post Season
2021 SAG Awards Predictions:
Best Performance By A Female Actor In A Supporting Role In A Motion Picture
Updated: Apr. 1, 2021
Awards Prediction Commentary: The unpredictable supporting actress race continues and this is where we could see a “favorite” emerge in the race. If Maria Bakalova (“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”) wins,...
To see all the latest predictions, of all the categories, in one place, visit The Collective
Draft>>>Pre Season>>>Regular Season>>>Post Season
2021 SAG Awards Predictions:
Best Performance By A Female Actor In A Supporting Role In A Motion Picture
Updated: Apr. 1, 2021
Awards Prediction Commentary: The unpredictable supporting actress race continues and this is where we could see a “favorite” emerge in the race. If Maria Bakalova (“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”) wins,...
- 4/1/2021
- by Clayton Davis
- Variety Film + TV
Glenn Close is now in the double digits at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The actress just scored her 10th nomination from her fellow actors for her supporting performance as Mamaw in “Hillbilly Elegy.” The last time she was nominated, Close won for her lead turn in “The Wife,” which helped support a potential Oscar win that didn’t ultimately pan out. After losing the Golden Globe for “Hillbilly Elegy,” a SAG win might be exactly the boost she needs to become a frontrunner for the Oscar again.
Close’s competition at the SAG Awards includes Maria Bakalova (“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”), Olivia Colman (“The Father”), Yuh-Jung Youn (“Minari”) and Helena Zengel (“News of the World”). These are the first SAG nominations for Bakalova, Youn and Zengel, while Colman has now collected seven nominations in just three years, with concurrent bids this year for “The Crown” both individually and as part of the ensemble.
Close’s competition at the SAG Awards includes Maria Bakalova (“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”), Olivia Colman (“The Father”), Yuh-Jung Youn (“Minari”) and Helena Zengel (“News of the World”). These are the first SAG nominations for Bakalova, Youn and Zengel, while Colman has now collected seven nominations in just three years, with concurrent bids this year for “The Crown” both individually and as part of the ensemble.
- 3/10/2021
- by Kevin Jacobsen
- Gold Derby
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Christopher Reeve’s son Will, who’s all grown up and looking just like his famous dad.
The 25-year-old made an appearance at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation “A Magical Evening” Gala in New York City on Thursday.
Posing alongside his older half-brother Matthew, 37, who also bears a striking resemblance to their late father, and Glenn Close, who was a presenter at the event, the youngest Reeve was all smiles at the fundraiser for the foundation, which is a national nonprofit dedicated to improving quality of life for individuals living with paralysis.
The 25-year-old made an appearance at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation “A Magical Evening” Gala in New York City on Thursday.
Posing alongside his older half-brother Matthew, 37, who also bears a striking resemblance to their late father, and Glenn Close, who was a presenter at the event, the youngest Reeve was all smiles at the fundraiser for the foundation, which is a national nonprofit dedicated to improving quality of life for individuals living with paralysis.
- 11/17/2017
- by Mike Miller
- PEOPLE.com
Superman's son is making a name for himself! Christopher Reeve's youngest child, Will Reeve, has been building up quite the impressive resume these last few years. After interning at Good Morning America and graduating from Middlebury College, Will earned at spot on Espn's SportsCenter. Those are just a few things about the son that bears a striking resemblance to his superhero dad. Read on for more interesting tidbits about the superstar kid that landed his dream job. 1. He was just 13 when his mother died, leaving him orphaned.Will hadn't even turned 3 when his father was paralyzed in 1995 and...
- 6/18/2016
- by Ale Russian
- PEOPLE.com
It's the final episode as Manuel has worked his way through all the Lgbt-themed HBO productions.
I began this project because, after watching and recapping Looking here, I became fascinated with the idea that, with that Andrew Haigh show, the cable network had somehow reached peak gay TV even as it also managed to alienate the very viewers it was trying to coax. I wanted to, in a way, put Looking in context by watching everything HBO had produced and aired that had tackled Lgbt issues.
This required a lot of scavenging—despite their shiny HBOGo and HBO Now ventures, a lot of the network’s older and more obscure TV movies and shows remain unattainable. And so I reached back and watched a lot of not so great TV movies from the early 80s, caught up with key “very special episodes” of their most well-known dramas and comedies, and...
I began this project because, after watching and recapping Looking here, I became fascinated with the idea that, with that Andrew Haigh show, the cable network had somehow reached peak gay TV even as it also managed to alienate the very viewers it was trying to coax. I wanted to, in a way, put Looking in context by watching everything HBO had produced and aired that had tackled Lgbt issues.
This required a lot of scavenging—despite their shiny HBOGo and HBO Now ventures, a lot of the network’s older and more obscure TV movies and shows remain unattainable. And so I reached back and watched a lot of not so great TV movies from the early 80s, caught up with key “very special episodes” of their most well-known dramas and comedies, and...
- 5/11/2016
- by Manuel Betancourt
- FilmExperience
Will Scheffer speaks candidly with Susan Kouguell about the Getting On series, adapting material, collaborations, and more.
With their fingers on the pulse -- actually ten steps ahead of -- societal happenings and hot button topics, co-creators, executive producers, and writers on their Emmy and Golden Globe-winning HBO series Big Love, Will Scheffer and his partner Mark V. Olsen are fearless when tackling “difficult” subject matters in their television and film projects. With humor and pathos, Scheffer and Olsen continue to confront timely and challenging issues with their new series for HBO’s Getting On.
Will Scheffer is a playwright, writer/producer and filmmaker. His plays have been produced and developed across the country, including Playwright's Horizons, Naked Angels, The Public Theatre and Ensemble Studio Theater, where he’s had four plays in The Marathon. His first screenplay In the Gloaming, starring Glenn Close and directed by Christopher Reeve, was produced by HBO in 1997, and won many awards, including five Emmys. An attorney and member of the New York Bar, Mark V. Olsen has created, written, and produced several screenplays, teleplays, pilots and miniseries. For HBO, he wrote Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, Cabrina USA. In 2010, after being published in Best Plays of 1999, Olsen’s play Cornelia opened at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Together, Scheffer and Olsen produced the independent feature based on Scheffer’s play by the same name, Easter in 2002, and that same year they created HBO’s acclaimed drama Big Love.
Kouguell: The HBO Web site synopsis describes Getting On: ‘The show follows the daily lives of overworked nurses and doctors as they struggle with the darkly comic realities of tending compassionately to their aging charges in a rundown, red-tape-filled hospital extended-care wing, blending outrageous humor with unexpected moments of tenderness.’ Anything else you would add to this description?
Scheffer: The show is about relationships -- as all our shows are -- the power struggles that come out of marriages between couples, or among small groups of individuals that work together out of choice or necessity. Getting On is about healthy and unhealthy codependence. It’s about love. It’s about how women in largely patriarchal systems learn to take their own power. It’s about class struggle and how it goes largely pushed into unconsciousness in our society and it’s about how the elderly, illness and the death experience is also compartmentalized in our society.
Getting On is largely about how we all deal with the process of aging and how we all care for the elderly. Like taxes and death, Mark and I think eldercare is becoming an unavoidable reality in our lives whether we like to deal with it or not. It’s becoming a shared fact of our existence, and Getting On tries to create a funny, safe place where an audience can find humor and compassion in that reality.
Kouguell: British television series like The Office have been successfully adapted for American TV. Getting On ran in Britain from 2009 – 2012. How did you come upon this show?
Scheffer: Mark and I had seen it in London while we were taking a vacation from our last season of Big Love and we were both dealing with caring for our aging mothers. We fell madly in love with the series and coincidentally had been working up a show of our own, set in the world of American eldercare. When we saw it we thought we should just adapt this series for American television. It’s an easier way to pitch an idea, and of course it gives us all this glorious material to work with.
Joanna Scanlon, Vicki Pepperdine, Jo Brand and Peter Capaldi, created an amazing show about the healthcare system in Great Britain and we felt it docked in perfectly with the kind of dark comedy we had in our heads about managed care in America and all the firsthand experiences we were going through with our moms.
Kouguell: What challenges and inspirations have you found while adapting this series?
Scheffer: The largest challenge, of course, is how to reimagine the characters and situations of the British version for an American audience and not to just “do a translation.” I think it was harder to translate a British show into American English than it might be to translate a Danish format such as The Killing or an Israeli format, such as In Treatment or Homeland.
You can be deceived into thinking you can just Americanize the dialogue and that is a huge trap when you love the original material. We had to fight that impulse. Also, we had to take the style of the British version, which is extremely “jump-cutty” and roughly assembled and improvised, and work backwards, almost to create our own “docu-comedy” style. We knew we weren’t going to do The Office but we didn’t know how challenging it would be to structure a script and a season the way we do and then make it look rougher. We love the result but it was extremely challenging for us as writers and for our entire creative team to discover our own style.
Our inspiration was largely drawn from our own ongoing experiences and then the actors we cast and the creative team we assembled. Adapting for these actors became a sublime treat and working with artists like Migel Arteta, Pam Martin, Tami Reiker, Jim Denault, Heather Persons, and also a lot of our Big Love team also was invaluable. And we had Jane Tranter, Julie Gardner, and Amy Hodge from BBC Worldwide as producing partners and they were incredible to work with. We got so much creative support from them.
This show (more than any other we’ve worked on) was a collaborative effort. Michael Lombardo, Casey Bloys and Francesca Orsi were very involved in our editorial process and I think this (sometimes uncomfortable) creative mix of smart people actually made the show different and better than what our vision alone foresaw. This was a rare instance of a lot of chefs in the kitchen actually producing a better stew.
Kouguell: How have you made it your own?
Scheffer: It was impossible not to make it our own. We lived a lot of what is seen on the show. Mark’s mom was in a small boarding care facility, which we were lucky to land her in when she developed dementia, and we had to bring her out to Pasadena to be near us. The caregivers and women there infuse our show. That was where we found tenderness and compassion. My mom was in the New York City healthcare system. She lived in a great assisted living apartment building, but when she got kicked out of hospitals and into Medicare “Rehabs” or what they call “skilled nursing facilities” the experience wasn’t so compassionate.
We used all of our personal knowledge of hospital life (which is considerable) and researched the hell of American geriatric care. We also imbued the show with our style and taste, which I would call simply: “Laughing and crying is good to do at the same time.” We cast actors who were vivid and real and very un-tv. They were all so talented and fiercely brave. We shot each episode in only three days. It’s unlike any TV show or film we’ve ever done.
Kouguell: Talk about your adaptation process.
Scheffer: We definitely started with all of the original material. We had no scripts though, so we had to first transcribe all the episodes from film (or video, as it were). We then picked and chose the material we knew was gold and worked endlessly on how we could compose a season structure -- knowing we had to compress their first two seasons of nine episodes into our first season of six.
We had some strong ideas of what we needed to do in order to achieve an American version as we had our ‘make someone happy campaign,’ which was based on our research of the Disneyfication of hospitals. We also knew we wanted to shake up the pilot and create a real dramatic reason of why there was a new head nurse (Patsy) coming into the ward and why Dr. Jenna James was stuck over here.
The British show has all these gold nuggets but since they worked in a more improvisational mode and we’re much more scripted, we had to take their nuggets and weave them into our structural considerations. Also, once we saw how the pilot worked with our cast, we identified a kind of idea of what each episode should have in it, to fulfill what we saw as a winning episode structure.
Our cast was so talented we knew we could always have a physical slapstick element and real emotional stakes side-by-side. We wanted each episode to have a laugh out loud scene that played against the dark comedy and realities of what happens in an extended care wing.
Also, the show was rebuilt in the editing room. We actually took more time to edit an episode than we did to shoot it. We had plenty of material but we essentially rewrote the show many, many times from before production, through rehearsals, and then in the editing room. When we completed the first episode I turned to Mark and said, “Oh my God, we actually made a black comedy.” Something which we knew was really hard to do and we made one that had a heart.
Kouguell: How do your characters in Getting On depart from the original British series?
Scheffer: The characters are very similar to the original ones except of course they are completely different. Jenna James is Doctor Moore in principal, but Laurie Metcalfe brings a fierceness and virtuosity to the role that makes the character’s inner life more roiling with insecurity. We began to see that in the world of the show, all the other characters saw Dr. James as imperious and incompetent at the same time, but failed to see what the audience saw -- a woman who is falling apart inside.
Nurse Dawn, as played by the multi-talented Alex Borstein, became more co-dependent, needing to always please Jenna, and also blatantly psychologically immature. Her core is the same as Joanna’s wonderful Den, a woman without an inherent self-esteem but I think our Dawn became more outrageously confused.
All our characters are less constrained and polite than the British cast. I would say that you see “America versus our British cousins” in the way all the characters become more visceral. Didi differs the most. In the British show she’s played by the amazing comedienne Jo Brand, as a retiree coming back into the workforce. Niecey, in what I think is a transformative role for her, is younger and of color. I think she retains what Kim (Jo Brand) is to the show, its tender heart, but somehow Niecey manages to bring her comedy skills yet delivers such a subtle earthiness to her performance; she is the beating heart at the center of the show.
It’s a hard question when I answer it, because in a way I see that the characters essentially are the same but completely different at the same time. It’s in the writing but it’s what these actors brought to all their roles. There was only one right actor for each of these roles and they all give award-worthy performances in my book. They just made the characters their own, which is what you want from an actor and we began to write to who we saw they were becoming in the parts. I think the old saying about casting being 99 percent of a successful production was what we knew we had to achieve for this show. It was really hard to cast, but we held out for the perfect actor for each role and they delivered.
Kouguell: What drew you to this material and why did you feel that it could be ‘translated’ for an American audience?
Scheffer: The British show is about the “National Health” and three women who are “getting on” in years, and also together. Our show translated that into eldercare, a women’s ward. It’s a subtle but profound translation. If you compare the shows they look like -- well sisters.
We just knew that we had to do this show. We wanted to create a place where our friends and family, our audience who we knew was aging and dealing with dementia and death in their loved ones, could come and laugh. Even if they were afraid to watch us, we knew once they did, they would want to be in our world with these characters. It’s scary but it’s life. And it can be funny and sad at the same time. It hits close to home and that’s a good thing.
Kouguell: This is the second HBO series you and Mark have collaborated on as executive producers and writers. Describe your work process and collaboration.
Scheffer: We are a married team so when we do a show we are with each other 24/7 365 days a year. Mark and I talk everything through but don't actually write together. We take turns on drafts, passing them back and forth for multiple revisions. Sometimes I'll write the first draft and he'll revise and sometimes he'll write the first draft. On set it's looser and we'll have to revise together but we prefer to actually write in our own space. The "fantasy" image of having desks facing each other and tossing lines back and forth doesn't work for us.
We definitely complement each other and make a good team. And we’ve survived thus far. The marriage seems to get stronger in the roil of collaboration. It does test our mettle, though.
In production we do everything -- from writing, to casting, to directing, to editing, to selling the show -- we’re there and uber-controlling. But we’re also extremely collaborative. We want to create a “safe set” and work environment where everyone wants to be. When people enjoy coming to work they do their best work. We make sure that condition is met. We treat everyone the same, including ourselves. Even though we get to be the auteurs, as it were, we treat our PAs the same way we treat our Dp, and we submit ourselves to the same conditions we expect from our team. We give ourselves over completely to a show. I credit Mark with expecting a standard of excellence. We depend on each other for different aspects of the work, but Mark’s ability to focus and dig is one of the things that make our collaborations successful. He’s my “closer.”
Kouguell: You describe the show as a ‘docu-comedy’ – please detail.
Scheffer: The British version was so raw and the camera just followed the actors and it was all done 360 degrees, with natural light and there was no worry about continuity and we loved that feel. So in principal, we tried to recreate that. We shot the same way in a real location. We used only two cameras and our Dp’s operated one and moved constantly around a 360 space with natural lighting. We felt that the show’s essence was in that “seed.” It felt like a documentary. We wanted the audience to feel like they were observers of life.
It turned out that we had to do a lot of “reverse engineering” to make our show. It became a different beast. Our show still is very gritty and it jump cuts -- but we learned we had to write in the jumps. We had to structure them. That was really hard to figure out because the British show was more “assembled.” We had to write in those moments when the scene was jumping and we began to have a principal that the jumps furthered the dramatic action of the scene. We did this in the editing room, too.
Our show had to become its own animal, and the “docu-comedy” style that we identified in the original became a different kind of “docu-comedy.” I think the two versions complement each other. In a way, we did with the British show what we do together as writers. We collaborated with it. We make a good team.
“Docu-comedy” is not The Office; it’s not an imposed, hand-held camera style. It’s an ethic. It’s more about trying to capture the truth of what it feels like to be in the midst of the insanity of crisis. What it feels like to be in that world that lives between life and death all the time. It’s about surrendering to it and reveling in the surreal quality of it all. Finding death as being a vital part of life. Not shying away from it. Living into it.
To learn more about Getting On go to: http://www.hbo.com/getting-on
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting and film at Tufts University and presents international seminars. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com .
With their fingers on the pulse -- actually ten steps ahead of -- societal happenings and hot button topics, co-creators, executive producers, and writers on their Emmy and Golden Globe-winning HBO series Big Love, Will Scheffer and his partner Mark V. Olsen are fearless when tackling “difficult” subject matters in their television and film projects. With humor and pathos, Scheffer and Olsen continue to confront timely and challenging issues with their new series for HBO’s Getting On.
Will Scheffer is a playwright, writer/producer and filmmaker. His plays have been produced and developed across the country, including Playwright's Horizons, Naked Angels, The Public Theatre and Ensemble Studio Theater, where he’s had four plays in The Marathon. His first screenplay In the Gloaming, starring Glenn Close and directed by Christopher Reeve, was produced by HBO in 1997, and won many awards, including five Emmys. An attorney and member of the New York Bar, Mark V. Olsen has created, written, and produced several screenplays, teleplays, pilots and miniseries. For HBO, he wrote Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, Cabrina USA. In 2010, after being published in Best Plays of 1999, Olsen’s play Cornelia opened at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Together, Scheffer and Olsen produced the independent feature based on Scheffer’s play by the same name, Easter in 2002, and that same year they created HBO’s acclaimed drama Big Love.
Kouguell: The HBO Web site synopsis describes Getting On: ‘The show follows the daily lives of overworked nurses and doctors as they struggle with the darkly comic realities of tending compassionately to their aging charges in a rundown, red-tape-filled hospital extended-care wing, blending outrageous humor with unexpected moments of tenderness.’ Anything else you would add to this description?
Scheffer: The show is about relationships -- as all our shows are -- the power struggles that come out of marriages between couples, or among small groups of individuals that work together out of choice or necessity. Getting On is about healthy and unhealthy codependence. It’s about love. It’s about how women in largely patriarchal systems learn to take their own power. It’s about class struggle and how it goes largely pushed into unconsciousness in our society and it’s about how the elderly, illness and the death experience is also compartmentalized in our society.
Getting On is largely about how we all deal with the process of aging and how we all care for the elderly. Like taxes and death, Mark and I think eldercare is becoming an unavoidable reality in our lives whether we like to deal with it or not. It’s becoming a shared fact of our existence, and Getting On tries to create a funny, safe place where an audience can find humor and compassion in that reality.
Kouguell: British television series like The Office have been successfully adapted for American TV. Getting On ran in Britain from 2009 – 2012. How did you come upon this show?
Scheffer: Mark and I had seen it in London while we were taking a vacation from our last season of Big Love and we were both dealing with caring for our aging mothers. We fell madly in love with the series and coincidentally had been working up a show of our own, set in the world of American eldercare. When we saw it we thought we should just adapt this series for American television. It’s an easier way to pitch an idea, and of course it gives us all this glorious material to work with.
Joanna Scanlon, Vicki Pepperdine, Jo Brand and Peter Capaldi, created an amazing show about the healthcare system in Great Britain and we felt it docked in perfectly with the kind of dark comedy we had in our heads about managed care in America and all the firsthand experiences we were going through with our moms.
Kouguell: What challenges and inspirations have you found while adapting this series?
Scheffer: The largest challenge, of course, is how to reimagine the characters and situations of the British version for an American audience and not to just “do a translation.” I think it was harder to translate a British show into American English than it might be to translate a Danish format such as The Killing or an Israeli format, such as In Treatment or Homeland.
You can be deceived into thinking you can just Americanize the dialogue and that is a huge trap when you love the original material. We had to fight that impulse. Also, we had to take the style of the British version, which is extremely “jump-cutty” and roughly assembled and improvised, and work backwards, almost to create our own “docu-comedy” style. We knew we weren’t going to do The Office but we didn’t know how challenging it would be to structure a script and a season the way we do and then make it look rougher. We love the result but it was extremely challenging for us as writers and for our entire creative team to discover our own style.
Our inspiration was largely drawn from our own ongoing experiences and then the actors we cast and the creative team we assembled. Adapting for these actors became a sublime treat and working with artists like Migel Arteta, Pam Martin, Tami Reiker, Jim Denault, Heather Persons, and also a lot of our Big Love team also was invaluable. And we had Jane Tranter, Julie Gardner, and Amy Hodge from BBC Worldwide as producing partners and they were incredible to work with. We got so much creative support from them.
This show (more than any other we’ve worked on) was a collaborative effort. Michael Lombardo, Casey Bloys and Francesca Orsi were very involved in our editorial process and I think this (sometimes uncomfortable) creative mix of smart people actually made the show different and better than what our vision alone foresaw. This was a rare instance of a lot of chefs in the kitchen actually producing a better stew.
Kouguell: How have you made it your own?
Scheffer: It was impossible not to make it our own. We lived a lot of what is seen on the show. Mark’s mom was in a small boarding care facility, which we were lucky to land her in when she developed dementia, and we had to bring her out to Pasadena to be near us. The caregivers and women there infuse our show. That was where we found tenderness and compassion. My mom was in the New York City healthcare system. She lived in a great assisted living apartment building, but when she got kicked out of hospitals and into Medicare “Rehabs” or what they call “skilled nursing facilities” the experience wasn’t so compassionate.
We used all of our personal knowledge of hospital life (which is considerable) and researched the hell of American geriatric care. We also imbued the show with our style and taste, which I would call simply: “Laughing and crying is good to do at the same time.” We cast actors who were vivid and real and very un-tv. They were all so talented and fiercely brave. We shot each episode in only three days. It’s unlike any TV show or film we’ve ever done.
Kouguell: Talk about your adaptation process.
Scheffer: We definitely started with all of the original material. We had no scripts though, so we had to first transcribe all the episodes from film (or video, as it were). We then picked and chose the material we knew was gold and worked endlessly on how we could compose a season structure -- knowing we had to compress their first two seasons of nine episodes into our first season of six.
We had some strong ideas of what we needed to do in order to achieve an American version as we had our ‘make someone happy campaign,’ which was based on our research of the Disneyfication of hospitals. We also knew we wanted to shake up the pilot and create a real dramatic reason of why there was a new head nurse (Patsy) coming into the ward and why Dr. Jenna James was stuck over here.
The British show has all these gold nuggets but since they worked in a more improvisational mode and we’re much more scripted, we had to take their nuggets and weave them into our structural considerations. Also, once we saw how the pilot worked with our cast, we identified a kind of idea of what each episode should have in it, to fulfill what we saw as a winning episode structure.
Our cast was so talented we knew we could always have a physical slapstick element and real emotional stakes side-by-side. We wanted each episode to have a laugh out loud scene that played against the dark comedy and realities of what happens in an extended care wing.
Also, the show was rebuilt in the editing room. We actually took more time to edit an episode than we did to shoot it. We had plenty of material but we essentially rewrote the show many, many times from before production, through rehearsals, and then in the editing room. When we completed the first episode I turned to Mark and said, “Oh my God, we actually made a black comedy.” Something which we knew was really hard to do and we made one that had a heart.
Kouguell: How do your characters in Getting On depart from the original British series?
Scheffer: The characters are very similar to the original ones except of course they are completely different. Jenna James is Doctor Moore in principal, but Laurie Metcalfe brings a fierceness and virtuosity to the role that makes the character’s inner life more roiling with insecurity. We began to see that in the world of the show, all the other characters saw Dr. James as imperious and incompetent at the same time, but failed to see what the audience saw -- a woman who is falling apart inside.
Nurse Dawn, as played by the multi-talented Alex Borstein, became more co-dependent, needing to always please Jenna, and also blatantly psychologically immature. Her core is the same as Joanna’s wonderful Den, a woman without an inherent self-esteem but I think our Dawn became more outrageously confused.
All our characters are less constrained and polite than the British cast. I would say that you see “America versus our British cousins” in the way all the characters become more visceral. Didi differs the most. In the British show she’s played by the amazing comedienne Jo Brand, as a retiree coming back into the workforce. Niecey, in what I think is a transformative role for her, is younger and of color. I think she retains what Kim (Jo Brand) is to the show, its tender heart, but somehow Niecey manages to bring her comedy skills yet delivers such a subtle earthiness to her performance; she is the beating heart at the center of the show.
It’s a hard question when I answer it, because in a way I see that the characters essentially are the same but completely different at the same time. It’s in the writing but it’s what these actors brought to all their roles. There was only one right actor for each of these roles and they all give award-worthy performances in my book. They just made the characters their own, which is what you want from an actor and we began to write to who we saw they were becoming in the parts. I think the old saying about casting being 99 percent of a successful production was what we knew we had to achieve for this show. It was really hard to cast, but we held out for the perfect actor for each role and they delivered.
Kouguell: What drew you to this material and why did you feel that it could be ‘translated’ for an American audience?
Scheffer: The British show is about the “National Health” and three women who are “getting on” in years, and also together. Our show translated that into eldercare, a women’s ward. It’s a subtle but profound translation. If you compare the shows they look like -- well sisters.
We just knew that we had to do this show. We wanted to create a place where our friends and family, our audience who we knew was aging and dealing with dementia and death in their loved ones, could come and laugh. Even if they were afraid to watch us, we knew once they did, they would want to be in our world with these characters. It’s scary but it’s life. And it can be funny and sad at the same time. It hits close to home and that’s a good thing.
Kouguell: This is the second HBO series you and Mark have collaborated on as executive producers and writers. Describe your work process and collaboration.
Scheffer: We are a married team so when we do a show we are with each other 24/7 365 days a year. Mark and I talk everything through but don't actually write together. We take turns on drafts, passing them back and forth for multiple revisions. Sometimes I'll write the first draft and he'll revise and sometimes he'll write the first draft. On set it's looser and we'll have to revise together but we prefer to actually write in our own space. The "fantasy" image of having desks facing each other and tossing lines back and forth doesn't work for us.
We definitely complement each other and make a good team. And we’ve survived thus far. The marriage seems to get stronger in the roil of collaboration. It does test our mettle, though.
In production we do everything -- from writing, to casting, to directing, to editing, to selling the show -- we’re there and uber-controlling. But we’re also extremely collaborative. We want to create a “safe set” and work environment where everyone wants to be. When people enjoy coming to work they do their best work. We make sure that condition is met. We treat everyone the same, including ourselves. Even though we get to be the auteurs, as it were, we treat our PAs the same way we treat our Dp, and we submit ourselves to the same conditions we expect from our team. We give ourselves over completely to a show. I credit Mark with expecting a standard of excellence. We depend on each other for different aspects of the work, but Mark’s ability to focus and dig is one of the things that make our collaborations successful. He’s my “closer.”
Kouguell: You describe the show as a ‘docu-comedy’ – please detail.
Scheffer: The British version was so raw and the camera just followed the actors and it was all done 360 degrees, with natural light and there was no worry about continuity and we loved that feel. So in principal, we tried to recreate that. We shot the same way in a real location. We used only two cameras and our Dp’s operated one and moved constantly around a 360 space with natural lighting. We felt that the show’s essence was in that “seed.” It felt like a documentary. We wanted the audience to feel like they were observers of life.
It turned out that we had to do a lot of “reverse engineering” to make our show. It became a different beast. Our show still is very gritty and it jump cuts -- but we learned we had to write in the jumps. We had to structure them. That was really hard to figure out because the British show was more “assembled.” We had to write in those moments when the scene was jumping and we began to have a principal that the jumps furthered the dramatic action of the scene. We did this in the editing room, too.
Our show had to become its own animal, and the “docu-comedy” style that we identified in the original became a different kind of “docu-comedy.” I think the two versions complement each other. In a way, we did with the British show what we do together as writers. We collaborated with it. We make a good team.
“Docu-comedy” is not The Office; it’s not an imposed, hand-held camera style. It’s an ethic. It’s more about trying to capture the truth of what it feels like to be in the midst of the insanity of crisis. What it feels like to be in that world that lives between life and death all the time. It’s about surrendering to it and reveling in the surreal quality of it all. Finding death as being a vital part of life. Not shying away from it. Living into it.
To learn more about Getting On go to: http://www.hbo.com/getting-on
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting and film at Tufts University and presents international seminars. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com .
- 1/2/2014
- by Susan Kouguell
- Sydney's Buzz
We’ve seen a noticeable rise in recent years in terms of Lgbt visibility in Hollywood, but if you flash back even ten years ago—let alone twenty or thirty—the number of “out” performers and gay film and TV projects dwindles markedly. This was the Dark Ages, when Hollywood brought out maybe one movie a year with a gay character (who hopefully didn’t die or wasn’t a stereotype), and maybe one or two art-house films that broke through the clutter. Things began to improve in the 90’s, but it’s largely been since the age of reality television and the rise of cable over the past 15 years that we’ve really begun to see a more realistic breadth and scope of gay life being portrayed in a wide variety of ways.
Before that however, there were a handful of brave performers who—though not necessarily gay themselves...
Before that however, there were a handful of brave performers who—though not necessarily gay themselves...
- 8/2/2013
- by Dback
- The Backlot
Glenn Close Glenn Close, a double 2012 SAG Award nominee for the television series Damages and Rodrigo García's indie movie Albert Nobbs, arrives at the 18th Screen Actors Guild Awards broadcast on TNT/TBS held from the Shrine Auditorium on January 29, 2012, in Los Angeles, California. Close's competition for the Best Actress SAG Award consisted of Meryl Streep for Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady, Viola Davis for Tate Taylor's The Help, Tilda Swinton for Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, and Michelle Williams (as Marilyn Monroe) for Simon Curtis' My Week with Marilyn. Viola Davis was the winner. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage.) Close's television comepetitors were Kathy Bates for Harry's Law, Julianna Margulies for The Good Wife, Kyra Sedgwick for The Closer, and the eventual winner, Jessica Lange for American Horror Story. Both Close and Lange have each received six Oscar nominations: Close has never won; Lange won twice,...
- 2/1/2012
- by D. Zhea
- Alt Film Guide
Welcome to Back Stage's exclusive guide to this year's Screen Actors Guild Award nominees in film and television. Here, you will find a write-up of every nominee for SAG Awards in 2011. Be sure to look for continued coverage of the awards race at our awards blog, "Behind the Scenes." The 17th annual SAG Awards will be broadcast live Sunday, January 30, on TNT and TBS. Outstanding Performance By A Female Actor In A Television Movie Or Miniseriesclaire Danes"Temple Grandin"Claire Danes so convincingly becomes Temple Grandin that it's almost inconceivable that the actor was the face of 1990s teen angst as Angela Chase in the short-lived but beloved "My So-Called Life." Danes is so brave and daring in her performance as the woman who changed the face of autism—singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" at her college graduation—it's no wonder the real-life Grandin felt proud to be affiliated with the HBO project,...
- 1/13/2011
- backstage.com
Forget the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Emmys, and all those other mainstream awards shows. What we have here are the 4th Annual Splatcademy Awards celebrating the very best films, actors, and moments the horror genre had to offer in 2010. Where else do breasts get their own category?!?
Below are the nominees and the podcasts sponsoring them. Click here or on the below graphic to cast your vote, and be sure to head back to DeadLantern.com on February 28th, 2011, for Splattercast #218, when the winners will be announced.
Good luck to all the nominees - and quite a worth group they are!
Best Film presented by Cadaver Lab
* Dark and Stormy Night
* Frozen
* The Human Centipede
* Let Me In
* Piranha 3D
* Rec 2
* A Serbian Film
* Shutter Island
* Splice
* The Wolfman
Best Director presented by Horror Etc.
* Vincenzo Natali, Splice
* Adam Green, Frozen
* Srdjan Spasojevic, A Serbian Film
* Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza,...
Below are the nominees and the podcasts sponsoring them. Click here or on the below graphic to cast your vote, and be sure to head back to DeadLantern.com on February 28th, 2011, for Splattercast #218, when the winners will be announced.
Good luck to all the nominees - and quite a worth group they are!
Best Film presented by Cadaver Lab
* Dark and Stormy Night
* Frozen
* The Human Centipede
* Let Me In
* Piranha 3D
* Rec 2
* A Serbian Film
* Shutter Island
* Splice
* The Wolfman
Best Director presented by Horror Etc.
* Vincenzo Natali, Splice
* Adam Green, Frozen
* Srdjan Spasojevic, A Serbian Film
* Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza,...
- 12/14/2010
- by The Woman In Black
- DreadCentral.com
Patricia Arquette, 'Medium'Howard Hawks once said that a movie is "three great scenes and no bad ones." A good performance is a similar thing: Nail the important scenes and don't bomb the rest. A great performance, however, is found in the details.Allison Dubois is a wife and mother, as well as a psychic working with the Phoenix district attorney's office. Patricia Arquette plays not only these roles but also the spaces in between. Allison must remain confident in and dedicated to her ability, so as to withstand the skeptics, yet she also has doubts about the wisdom of her role. As a woman raising three daughters, she knows the immense danger she puts her family in and yet feels a calling to help that cannot be ignored. We may not all commune with ghosts and solve mysteries, but Allison's dilemmas are recognizable to anyone.Procedurals will...
- 1/8/2010
- backstage.com
Nominees for the 16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards) for both film and television categories were announced this morning. Michelle Monaghan and Chris O'Donnell announced the nominees at the Pacific Design Center's Silver Screen Theater in West Hollywood.
The 16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be simulcast live nationally on TNT and TBS on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010 at 8 p.m. Et/Pt, 7 p.m. Ct, and 6 p.m. Mt from the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. Recipients of the stunt ensemble honors will be announced from the SAG Awards red carpet during the TNT.TV and TBS.Com live pre-show webcasts.
If you want to predict the acting categories for the Oscars, look no further than the results of the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Voted by actors' peers, the SAG award has closely resembled the winners of the Oscars in the past few years.
For example, the SAG...
The 16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be simulcast live nationally on TNT and TBS on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010 at 8 p.m. Et/Pt, 7 p.m. Ct, and 6 p.m. Mt from the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. Recipients of the stunt ensemble honors will be announced from the SAG Awards red carpet during the TNT.TV and TBS.Com live pre-show webcasts.
If you want to predict the acting categories for the Oscars, look no further than the results of the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Voted by actors' peers, the SAG award has closely resembled the winners of the Oscars in the past few years.
For example, the SAG...
- 12/17/2009
- by Manny
- Manny the Movie Guy
It's a testament to the indomitable spirit of Christopher Reeve, who died Sunday at age 52 of complications from an infection that led to cardiac arrest, that he will be remembered more for his fortitude in the face of adversity and his tireless efforts on behalf of spinal cord injury research as he will be for portraying Superman on the big screen. Despite continuing to fight the physical and emotional obstacles that had followed him since a May 27, 1995, horseback riding accident left him a quadriplegic, Reeve worked at his craft until nearly the end of his life. His second directorial effort, the A&E Network biopic The Brooke Ellison Story -- based on the true story of a quadriplegic young girl who goes on to become a Harvard University honor student -- is scheduled to premiere Oct. 25. One of the greatest thrills of my career in journalism was conducting a telephone interview with Reeve in 1997, on the eve of his maiden directing gig on the HBO drama In the Gloaming. He spoke about that movie but also about how his life was coming along. "Every day is an adventure," Reeve said. "But I can't say that I feel unlucky or cursed. Quite the contrary, actually. I have love all around me. And I have an awful lot of hope." That hope never left Reeve, whose advocacy for stem cell research helped it emerge as a major campaign issue in the current presidential race. His name was even mentioned in connection with that research by Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry during Friday's second presidential debate.
- 10/12/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Christopher Reeve, the star of Superman, whose later riding accident made him a worldwide spokesman for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure in Mount Kisco, New York. He was 52. Reeve suffered cardiac arrest on Saturday at his Pound Ridge, NY, home, and then slipped into a coma, and died Sunday at a hospital surrounded by his family. The son of a journalist and a novelist, Reeve was born on September 25, 1952 in New York. He started on the stage: at the age of 10 he appeared in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeoman of the Guard at McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J. Reeve moved to television with a stint on the daytime soap opera Love of Life but was launched into stardom when he beat out 200 other aspirants as the eponymous character of Richard Donner's 1978 film Superman. The film was a box-office smash as was the follow-up, Superman II. Reeve would play the role of Superman, and his dual identity, Clark Kent, four times and even though the budgets, and the quality of the films eventually decreased, Reeve continued to imbue his super-hero persona with sly humor and the bumbling reporter alter-ego with quiet integrity. Reeve was not content to merely play the Krypton survivor, however, and almost immediately began to play against type. He took a role as an actor whose obsession leads him to travel back to the turn of the 19th century in the cult-classic Somewhere in Time, as the scheming playwright in a dangerous triangle in Deathtrap, and an American who presence sparks changes in a British household in The Remains of the Day. Reeve struggled to free himself of the association that made him famous over the years, with varying results. He only agreed to play the role in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace if he could help shape the script, earning him a writing credit for the anti-nuclear weapons film. A new chapter in Reeve's life began on May 27, 1995 at a Virginia horseshow when his chestnut Thoroughbred stopped short on a fence. Reeve, whose hands were caught in the bridle, was pitched forward onto the ground. He fractured the two top vertebrae of his neck and injured his spinal cord, rendering him a quadriplegic and reliant on a ventilator to breathe. Initially suicidal, the actor turned his energy toward recovery. Though the process was slow and painful, Reeve astounded doctors by regaining sensation over 70 percent of his body and even moving one of his fingers. He went further than thought possible and, with the assistance of electrodes, was even able to go for long sessions without his ventilator. With some interim successes, Reeve returned to his craft, acting in the television version of Rear Window, lending credibility to the story of a man whose infirm situation turns him into a voyeur. He also went behind the camera, directing 1997's In the Gloaming and The Brooke Ellison Story, about a family coping with a spinal chord injury. Reeve became a tireless lobbyist for spinal cord injury patients, calling for insurance reform for catastrophic injury and, most recently, lending his name to the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act, which could create five centers across the US to support people with paralysis. The act is currently before Congress. In addition to his invincible role, it may be his inspirational courage and perspective that may be remembered the most about Christopher Reeve. Quoted in Reader's Digest Reeve said: "Your body is not who you are. The mind and spirit transcend the body." Reeve is survived by his parents, his brother, his wife, Dana Morosini, and his three children (Will, 12, from his marriage to Morosini and Matthew, 25, and Alexandra, 21, from a relationship with Gae Exton). --Prepared by IMDb staff...
- 10/11/2004
- IMDb News
HBO has upped Keri Putnam to the post of executive vp HBO Films. Putnam, who is responsible for overseeing the development and production of movies for HBO Films, is credited with shepherding a large chunk of the division's most successful and award-winning projects for the cable outlet, including Joseph Sargent's Something the Lord Made, Gus Van Sant's Elephant, Mira Nair's Hysterical Blindness and the upcoming Stephen Hopkins-directed The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. "Keri has impeccable taste, is an accomplished manager and has great relationships with talent," HBO Films president Colin Callender said. "This promotion is an acknowledgment of and a testament to the central role she has played in the evolution of HBO Films and its slate." Putnam had served as senior vp HBO Films since 1999. Before that she was vp HBO NYC Prods. since its inception in 1996. Under the East Coast banner, she was responsible for some of that division's most successful projects, including If These Walls Could Talk, Christopher Reeve's directorial debut In the Gloaming and Subway Stories.
- 10/7/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
HBO is in Big Love with Tom Hanks. The premium cable network is close to greenlighting a pilot for the drama project from Hanks and Gary Goetzman's Playtone Prods. Will Schaffer (HBO's In the Gloaming) and Mark V. Olsen penned the script for the show, which is set in the world of bigamy. The two would be executive producing with Hanks and Goetzman. Greenlighting production on Big Love is said to be contingent on budget and director. The drama is the latest collaboration between Playtone and HBO, following such hits as the Emmy-winning World War II epic miniseries Band of Brothers and the indie blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Hanks and Goetzman, along with Band of Brothers executive producer Steven Spielberg, are also developing a new 10-part World War II mini for the cable channel centered on the Pacific theater (HR 7/22). On the comedy side, Hanks and Goetzman have tried to transform the novel Lloyd: What Happened into a comedy series for HBO. Hanks, Goetzman and Schaffer and repped by CAA.
Paralyzed Superman star Christopher Reeve is set to direct a new film - but he is keeping the details to himself. The brave star took Sunday night's Tony Awards as an opportunity to reveal small pieces of information about the upcoming project, but won't be drawn into confirming the title or its inspiration. He says. "I'm working on something that I can't announce yet because it's gonna take about a year but it's a very famous book that's been around for awhile. I should be shooting because it requires the weather a year from now. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time. The author has turned down over the years since 1975 eight offers from producers and studios to make the film so I'm particularly honored. He saw In The Gloaming and got in touch with me and said that if I would direct the film that he would give the rights, so that's mind blowing."...
- 6/10/2003
- WENN
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