Out of Focus

The changing landscape of cable channels & their programming (thoughts spurred by a conversation with Sundance Channel)

In the second of my interviews with cable network programming heads for Indiewire, I spoke with President and General Manager of Sundance Channel, Sarah Barnett. Sundance Channel made noise earlier this year with the premiere of Jane Campion's limited series Top of the Lake and the six-episode first season of Rectify. Both received a great deal of critical love, and while to date Sundance has not been in the practice of releasing its ratings (something that will change as of Sept. 30 when they transition to a more traditional ad-supported model), Rectify obviously accomplished the necessary goals as it will be returning for a 10-episode second season next year.

I was most interested in Barnett's thoughts about Sundance Channel's identity, especially in relation to its name since it no longer has any direct relationship to Robert Redford, the Sundance Film Festival nor the Sundance Film Institute. The discussion also got me thinking about the larger cable landscape and the overall idea of niche programming. In the 1990s as the cable universe began expanding, almost every new channel served a very distinct purpose and targeted very specific demos. Certainly, many cable channels continue to do so. The various Scripps Networks (Food Network, DIY, HGTV) and several of the Discovery channels (Animal Planet, Discovery Fit & Health, Military Channel) are probably the best examples, but MTV is far from the only network that seems to have strayed for from its original, narrower mission.

Examining a few of the names of a number of channels across the cable landscape provides the simplest example at how many have rebranded in an attempt to distance themselves from their original niche programming.

• AMC originally stood for "American Movie Classics," which is precisely what they showed – uncut, unedited movie classics. Then they lost a huge chunk of their library licensing to Turner Classic Movies and were forced to change course. Now, they're a leader in the new form of series television and they rarely get truly "classic" in their movie selection.
• TLC (owned by Discovery) was "The Learning Channel," but I'm not sure what there is to learn from Toddlers and Tiaras or its even more popular offspring Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Their programming now focuses completely on manufactured "reality" shows with an emphasis on fashion, weddings, pregnancy and family stories.
• The History Channel never changed its name, and certainly its first steps towards scripted programming (their first series Vikings, which returns next year for a second season as well as the miniseries The Bible and Hatfields & McCoys) seem to have tried to stay within a historical focus. However, achieving the most success for the channel have been shows such as Pawn Stars, Ax Men, American Pickers and Ice Road Truckers.
• A&E always lived by those initials but originally they originally were shorthand for the "Arts & Entertainment Network." Originally, it's programming resembled what one might find on PBS – some British TV and performing arts specials – as well as reruns of some popular primetime series. Eventually, the "arts" part of A&E diminished significantly and its stable focused more on reality series like Dog the Bounty Hunter and crime documentary shows like The First 48. Their biggest hit now – and arguably the most successful show on all of television, not just cable – is Duck Dynasty, a reality series about a family from Louisiana that became millionaires due to their duck call for duck hunters.
• The TV Guide Channel has little to do with TV Guide anymore, and while E! Entertainment Television still contains an entertainment news posture, its bread and butter comes from celebrity-focused reality shows, especially those centering around the Khardashians,

And of course, there's IFC, which began its life as The Independent Film Channel. When it launched in 1994, independent film – unedited and uncut – was what they broadcast. By 1994, the indie film explosion was reaching its peak. The Sundance Film Festival and many of the films and filmmakers premiering there had received mainstream attention, especially among college-aged audiences: Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989; Reginald Hudlin's House Party, Whit Stillman's Metropolitan and Norman René's Longtime Companion in 1990;  Richard Linklater's Slacker and Todd Haynes's Poison in 1991; and arguably the breakout year of 1992 which featured Allison Anders's Gas, Food Lodging, Tom DiCillo's Johnny Suede (starring a now-famous from Thelma & Louise Brad Pitt), Neal Jimenez & Michael Sternberg's The Waterdance, and most notably, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.

Is the "Third Golden Age of Television" the new '90s Indie Film phenomenon? Let's talk to some cable execs and find out!

 

Perry SImon of BBC America

What a great way to start a (Jewish) New Year: For some time now, I've been working on putting together a series of interviews with cable network programming heads for Indiewire. Today, they published the first of these: my chat with BBC America General Manager Perry Simon.

As I write in the intro to the Perry Simon interview, BBC America has made a huge splash in the original programming arena in just the past 18 months. They've gone two-for-two with Copper and Orphan Black, receiving plaudits from both critics and audiences. They seem to be at the tip of the iceberg with Orphan Black, which built a steady fanbase during its initial broadcast, but should see a major audience uptick when the second season hits in the spring due to all the notoriety it – and its phenomenal and talented star Tatiana Maslaney – has received in the months since its first run. Simon described BBC America's approach as "very auteur oriented," so it should be fascinating to see what kinds of series the channel presents next.

Eight years ago, I regularly conducted interviews for Gothamist, which always comprised several questions I asked everyone along with another set of questions tailored specifically for that subject. I've approached this series the same way. I have a few other interviews completed or scheduled; they should be published over the coming weeks, and I continue arranging more.

I raised this idea with Indiewire TV Editor Alison Willmore not long after she established the site's television coverage, but I didn't have the time to work on it then. Television has gone through such a shift over the past decade, and I thought it coincided with, and arguably benefited from, the end of the 1990s indie film explosion. At the 1989 Sundance Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh's first feature Sex, Lies, and Videotape became the Big Bang of a new era for independent film that peaked by the mid-1990s. But by the turn of the millennium, "independent film" described a perceived – often artificial – aesthetic much more than it did a form or method of production.

Context and Peter Bogdanovich's magnificent "Targets"

My transformation from casual movie enthusiast to full-blown cinema addict occurred during the summer of 1989, between my 1st and 2nd years of college. Clichés exist because of their inherent truths, so it should come as no surprise that my entry into this obsessive world occurred while working at a Blockbuster Video in San Francisco.

I was still primarily a theater snob at the time, but that changed that summer. The store had this huge catalog listing all the movies "in print" on video, and one section was organized by director. When I wasn't at work, I was watching movies, taking full advantage of the six VHS tapes I could have out for free at any one time. I worked my way down the lists and discovered Wilder and Sturges, Ford and Kazan, Lumet and Scorsese and so many more.

Before my Blockbuster tenure, my foreign-cinema exposure was mostly limited to lyrics from the song "Manchester, England" in the musical Hair: "Finds that it's groovy/to hide in a movie/Pretends he's Fellini/And Antonioni/And also his countryman Roman Polanski/All rolled into one." I knew those names, but I hadn't yet seen any of their films.

I enjoyed watching a filmmaker's work in chronological order, so I watched Boxcar Bertha and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn before I ever got to Taxi Driver or On the Waterfront. And so about midway through that summer, I decided to embark on Peter Bogdnovich, and rather than start with The Last Picture Show, I took home Targets.

I don't remember much from that viewing nearly 25 years ago, and until The Dissolve picked Bogdanovich's debut feature as last week's "Movie of the Week," I'm not sure I had ever considered watching it again. Once I did, I was first struck by how well I actually remembered it; how so many scenes vividly stuck with me all these years later. I could not reconcile that whatever impact it had on me nearly 25 years before was an unconscious one, and now I felt floored by this young filmmaker's astounding love-letter to cinema and Hollywood; one of the best I've ever seen.

My appreciation for Targets is grounded in a reality that didn't exist when I was barely 18 years old -- for me or for the world. The contextual lens through which I now saw it made all the difference. Now I know much more about Boganovich and his career. Now I know much more about the history of American cinema and the important role of low-budget horror films to its development. Now, I see how a film that was shot as the Vietnam War was dominating the nation's consciousness and was released within four months of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy is such a representative document of its time. Enhance this context even further simply by paying attention to 2013 when the physical medium of film nears extinction, drive-in theaters are (mostly) long-gone and gun culture and terrorism are at the forefront of the national conversation, Targets becomes even more astounding in ways that couldn't have been anticipated when it was made, let alone in 1989.

One-year married, and one wedding announcement revised

I probably spend too much time marking milestones. I often attribute significance to dates, especially when I'm able to choose both the event and the date. For instance:

• Jan. 1, 1995: Quit smoking once and for all.
• Oct. 23, 1996: Left L.A. and moved to New York.
• Feb. 26, 2004: First post on this blog.

But one year ago today on Aug. 12, 2012, I marked the most important milestone -- at least of my adult life -- for on that day, I legally and officially became the luckiest guy in the universe as I got to marry the best person I've ever met. (For what it's worth, that meeting occurred on Jan. 08, 2010, and we got engaged on Dec. 13, 2011 … see? I like dates.)

Last year, I intended to post about my pending marriage. Then, once I hadn't, I meant to write about the wedding that was. But between the pre-event scrambling, the mini-moon that followed and the return to all-consuming work after, I simply didn't get around to it.

So as our first anniversary approached, it seemed only appropriate to celebrate in this space. We had an amazing wedding, on a virtually perfect day with sunny skies, comfortable temperatures and barely any humidity, all important qualities for an outdoor ceremony alongside a peach orchard.

As we considered locations, we realized we wanted a place that could be more than just a wedding venue to us; someplace that we would want to visit again in the future but not because we were married there. Rather, we wanted a place that would become a part of our lives; where we could return year-after-year with our family. That this place was the location of our wedding would become a secondary bonus. So with that in mind, what could be better than a pick-your-own-fruit orchard?

"Casting By": An underappreciated job and the woman who changed it and Hollywood

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences made history when it elected Cheryl Boone Isaacs as its new president, making her the third woman and first African-American to lead the organization. But another monumental shift also occurred last week that may not have seemed so important to casual observers: After decades of requesting representation and recognition, casting directors will finally have their own branch, just as cinematographers, production designers and costume designers do; just as hair & makeup artists do and musicians do. Just as public relations executives do. And it's about time.

In seemingly cosmic synchronicity, Tom Donahue's fantastic documentary Casting By premieres tonight on HBO at 9 pm. (It will then, of course, be available whenever you want via HBO Go.) The film focuses on the development of the role of the casting director in film and television from what was once a simple administrative department during the studio era to the important creative position it is today as the key collaborator ensuring that the best possible – and often unknown – talent fills every role. Donahue shows this evolution primarily through the story of Marion Dougherty, the woman most responsible for the progression of this role.

One of my first jobs after college was at a boutique talent and literary agency in Beverly Hills called Susan Smith & Associates, where I spent over two years as the senior assistant to the agency's eponymous owner. During that prehistoric era of the mid-1990s, I spent a great deal of time reading Breakdowns (i.e., character lists and descriptions for upcoming films and TV series), collecting physical headshots and resumes, typing submission letters and packaging everything together into envelopes to messenger or overnight to casting directors in L.A. and New York.

During this period, Dougherty was the head of casting for Warner Bros., and I talked to her office on a regular basis. My boss Susan had opened her agency in New York in the 1970s and remained fiercely independent her entire career, even as the era of the mega-agency exploded in the 1980s with CAA, ICM and William Morris. She always had a great eye for talent, and she was responsible for launching the careers of many extraordinary actors and actresses. She had great relationships with many casting directors, but Dougherty had also become one of her closest friends.

Studying The Brady Bunch finally pays off

Today Indiewire published a piece I wrote about the portrayal of kids coming-of-age on The Brady Bunch. It's the third in a series of five stories they're running this week to mark tomorrow night's launch of Participant Media's exciting new cable network pivot. As I think about all those afternoons trying to one-up my UCLA Daily Bruin colleagues in Brady trivia 20 years ago, I certainly never realized that one day my encyclopedic knowledge of most-things-Brady would actually come in handy.

I was a typical latch-key kid of the '70s and '80s, so my addiction to television should surprise no one. I had several afterschool television companions. Had you asked me when I was seven or eight to name my favorite show, I likely would have said channel 2's Captain Cosmic. But the show I ultimately absorbed and knew most intimately was absolutely The Brady Bunch, which aired its repeats on rival channel 44.

I'll admit it: I loved the Bradys. My parents divorced when I was four, and neither remarried until I was 13. I had no siblings, and even my two first cousins closest to my age lived out of the country until I was nine. I split time between each of my parents' San Francisco apartments: Mom in the Richmond, Dad bordering Golden Gate Park in the Sunset. The Brady Bunch presented a situation I could recognize and I suppose realistically long for even though it was pretty removed from my own.

I've never been someone who possesses instant recall of movies, television, theater or music. People will quote a song lyric or a line from a film and then be surprised -- or even disappointed -- that I can't identify it. I'm still that way. I tend to remember my feelings and reactions to the overall story more than the intricacies of plot or individual lines themselves.

However, that was never true with The Brady Bunch. By the time I arrived at UCLA in 1988, even though I had stopped regularly watching the Bradys years earlier, I realized that I could identify almost every episode within its first 10-15 seconds. The initial post-credits shot, background music and first few seconds of the first scene often were enough for me to know whether Marcia was about to get hit in the face with a football or Greg was about to "fit the suit" and turn into Johnny Bravo. When I became involved with the Daily Bruin, I met a few other people with Brady obsessions, and thus began the aforementioned trivia battles.

Joseph Losey's "The Servant" expert take on "class warfare"

More violent than any of the tentpole summer blockbusters at the local multiplex, Joseph Losey's 1963 film The Servant examines the diminished and disintegrating British class system of its era. This new restoration for the film's 50th anniversary presents a stunningly claustrophobic and utterly engaging experience for audiences, and if you've never seen it before (as I hadn't), rushing down to Film Forum before it ends its run on Thursday should be a top priority.

The story centers on a young but lazy member of Britain's upper crust named Tony (James Fox) who upon returning to London from time abroad hires Barrett (Dirk Bogarde), a seemingly dutiful and professional live-in butler. The idea of a young bachelor living alone with a manservant was enough of a relic by the early '60s that even Tony's suitably positioned and wealthy girlfriend Susan (Wendy Craig) doesn't understand or like Barrett's presence. As the story unfolds and Barrett reveals his true motivations, the line between master and manservant blurs, and in more than one scene during the absolutely brilliant final third of the film, the two better resemble an old bickering married couple.

With excellent performances all around – including a near-perfect case study in sexy swinging sixties coquettishness from Sarah Miles, introduced to the story as Barrett's sister Vera – the film truly rests on Bogarde's shoulders. He somehow achieves a perfect blend of passive aggressive subservient mischievousness. The subtleties of Bogarde's performance allow Barrett to slowly evolve and transform from soft-spoken and composed to aggressive and dominant.

The first of three collaborations between noted playwright Harold Pinter and Losey, The Servant plays like an Upstairs, Downstairs trip into an alternate reality where everything proper, expected and controlled has been flipped on its head. In fact, the entire film feels like an exploration of flowing duality, a steady and unceasing transference between Yin and Yang. Each character experiences both moments of total control and utter submission; the story itself focuses on the eventual reversal of roles; and even the structure of Losey's storytelling complicates the nature of the protagonist/antagonist relationship.

These multiple realities present themselves in very concrete ways throughout the film. Although set primarily in a large townhouse, Losey shoots most of the action in tight-closeup or showing just a small part of a room with one character dominating the foreground. He repeatedly returns to the narrow foyer and stairwell or shoots through a doorframe from one room to another, further constricting the space and eliciting a tension-raising sense of claustrophobia.

Losey also regularly utilizes mirrors and their reflection (as shown in the film's poster, above), and in one of my favorite sequences, he creates a magnificent separation between Tony's old world represented by Susan and the developing one controlled by Barrett, from which he can't escape. The scene occurs at what seems to be the moment Tony has regained the upper-hand, discovering Barrett's duplicity, but Losey hints that something very different is actually happening. Keeping both images in focus, he divides the frame between a tight shot on the area immediately in front of the mirror and the action within the larger space in its reflection, providing an obvious but no less magnificent through-the-looking-glass moment that further moves Tony from one realm to the other.

In an era when some of a certain political persuasion use "class warfare" an unthinkable derogatory term despite its constant presence in society, The Servant remains ever-relevant and never feels too dated. That's some achievement for a film that couldn't be more rooted and specific to its time and place.

PAUSE FOR PODCASTS: An Introduction, and Goodbye to "It's All Politics"

I once loved to drive. During my eight years living in Los Angeles, I regularly drove myself home to San Francisco to see my family. It didn't take much longer than flying onec I accounted for getting to the airport early, the flight itself, and then the drive to my mom's house in Marin County. I also consider driving way less stressful. In fact, I found it relaxing.

I sometimes enjoyed driving around L.A. too, but I hated having to drive. After spending my first four years carless, once I had the ability, I never considered not I felt driving anywhere more than a few blocks. While I wasn't quite as bad, Steve Martin's half-block journey by car in L.A. Story wasn't too far from my reality, but that was in large part due to the atrocious transportation options available in early 1990s Los Angeles. My one saving grace of being in the car so often was the radio: Howard Stern, Jim Rome, and the early days of Loveline. (Hey, I was in my early 20s!)

After I moved to New York in 1996 and no longer drove with regularity, I rarely listened to the radio other than when I was in the shower or falling asleep. My portable CD player had a radio, which of course was useless in the subway. And so, I found myself listening to much more album-based music and significantly less talk.

Podcasts changed all of that. Suddenly, I could take NPR/PRI with me, and at first, my podcast rotation was limited to shows from those distributors. I wrote about This American Life and Radiolab in 2007, but my obsession with the medium has exploded especially over the last three years as I continued discovering phenomenal shows of all varieties. I have such a backlog of podcasts; I know I will never listen to them all, but when I'm riding the subway, walking around the city, doing dishes or cooking, I'm usually playing one.

I listen to some shows without fail on a weekly basis; others stare back at me from my iPhone and iTunes, wondering when I'll visit, and periodically, I'll have a little binge session. Still others – like the how-had-I-not-discovered-it-before Professor Blastoff -- have become major addictions. I listen to new episodes each week while also working my way through the archives from the beginning so I may belatedly witness the show's development. (To date, I'm up to episode 38.)

As part political-junkie, my weekly must-listens include a few political podcasts, and I was sad to learn that one will end its seven-year run this week. NPR's It's All Politics has been one of the most entertaining and informative political podcasts I've found, but the episode released later tonight - assuming it's on schedule – will be its last.

NPR's decision to cancel the long-running Talk of the Nation, announced a couple months ago, also produced the demise of this weekly conversation between Ron Elving and Ken Rudin as the latter is leaving the network. The show frequently utilized guests hosts when in Elving or Rudin's absence, but it makes sense for them not to continue with a permanent replacement. Although the fill-ins were always engaging and informative, the bad-pun, Borscht Belt-like shtick and chemistry between Elving and Rudin is the primary ingredient that made this podcast such a blast.

Both hosts are seasoned political reporters, and their commentary included a level of thoughtful, usually non-partisan analysis frequently absent from some of the louder shouting matches among the media. Their discussions possessed a wonderful sense of glee allowing even their dumbest jokes – and wow, were some dumb! – to consistently elicit chuckles and even the occasional guffaw.

The most frequently recurring joke involved repeated references to "the listener," as if the podcast's audience totaled one. As the show regularly ranked among the top 30 political podcasts on iTunes - competing with podcast versions 60 Minutes, PBS Newshour and The Rachel Maddow Show among other mainstream TV and radio programs people choose to experience in podcast form during commutes or because they've otherwise cut the cable cord - I'm sure they had a relatively large listening audience, certainly allowing them to add an "s" to "listener." However, if I ever was, in fact, the sole listener to NPR's It's All Politics podcast, I am very grateful to Ron and Ken for doing their show just for me. This listener will miss them and their banter a great deal.

Jumping back into the pool: Writing is hard -- an "Uh-Huh" moment

Several years ago, I started having not-quite-epiphanies: Moments of realization in which something I already knew becomes consciously absorbed. I was not having giant light bulb moments; these weren't sudden ideas that popped into my brain out of nowhere. Rather, I experienced flashes of clarity on subjects not foreign to me. I wasn't exclaiming, "A-Ha! I get it now". Instead, I experienced a huge, "Uh-Huh. Yup. I know, but wow, that makes much more sense now."

I have repeatedly posted about my blogging comebacks, only to feel a sudden need to do so again months or even a year later due to my failure to stick around. I have trouble believing that I began this blog more than nine years ago, but when I travel back in the archives, I find my "Pilot Post" dated Feb. 26, 2004. It was an election year filled with Howard Dean's screams and, eventually, George W. Bush's earning "political capital."

I was in such a different place back then, and the way I treated this blog showed that. For one thing, I not only took this blog's name from my old column at the UCLA Daily Bruin – as described in post two on day two, Feb. 27, 2004 – but I unintentionally maintained my then 13-year-old writing habits. I described looking back at some of my old columns: "WOW, did they ever suck." But what certainly remains in those posts from my most active period of this blog -- its first two years -- is an obvious and blatant carelessness.

I'm not the most patient person. I never have been. Writing takes patience, at least good writing does, and that goes for writing in all of its forms, even the quick-turnaround variety. The emergence of blogging and the immediacy of information sharing online via Twitter et al has certainly not helped those, like me, who prefer adding im- to their patience. It has also led to the emergence of a seemingly endless amount of writing lacking adequate rewriting, proofreading or copyediting. It has created a world in which "Breaking News" is both the rumor of a relatively minor piece of information and than just hours later the "official" word that said rumor was true.

With such tight deadlines and the necessity of being first with everything to ensure that people visit your site rather than a competitor's for every piece of news or even opinion, it's understandable how mistakes make it into the final product. With plenty of professional sites, copyediting in general is an afterthought at best if not actually an even-thought.

I don't say this to critique other writers and publications out there. I'm talking about my own work and habits. Carelessness is prevalent even among many people who care a hell-of-a-lot. I never considered myself such a brilliant writer that in either my opinion pieces or my screenwriting and fiction I never made any mistakes or wrote the perfect final draft with my first draft. I just didn't have the time (I told myself) or didn't care enough (more likely). And suddenly, I do. I've drafted dozens of pieces the last few years that I've simply saved into irrelevancy on my computer but never published in this space and offered to any others. I didn't like the initial results, and I simply procrastinated returning to finish them.

With my original UCLA column, I developed a simple pattern: Have idea, write it, quickly scan for typos (i.e., run my spellcheck and therefore miss all those correctly spelled but wrong words), and submit. If the piece was too long (this was for a physical, print paper, mind you!), I'd cut as rapidly as possible. That's why my old columns "suck," to quote myself.

Sure, I was also 19-20 years old and like most people that age, had a heightened sense of self and my opinions. Plus, I was still learning how to write. But I also took pride in the conversational tone of my writing, which was another way of saying that I didn't really care that my columns were long-winded, possibly dull, and certainly not targeted to an actual "conversation" with a reader.

Don't get me wrong: I find nothing improper about a conversational tone in print, and I believe I still use one. But doing so successfully actually takes a craft; one different than simply recording one's stream-of-consciousness to the page.

When I looked at those early posts from nine years ago, I noticed the same carelessness. I wrote the same way – type, type, type, scan, publish – and I found multiple typos and several minor coding errors, i.e., forgetting a quotation mark at the end of a web link creating a completely incoherent sentence in a published post.

My last temporary comeback occurred at the end of last year. I didn't want to make promises (even to myself) that I wasn't going to keep, so when I found myself seeing a ton of theater while simultaneously searching for a way to satisfy the longing to do something creative, I wrote a few reviews before getting sidetracked again.

More importantly, I had spent the previous year-and-a-half (give-or-take) consumed with a job that kept me from my usual obsessions and joys – namely, film, TV, and theater. I thought my blog made the most sense as a place for me to start shouting back at culture and the world, even if nobody was paying attention. Hell, that was the whole purpose of Out of Focus in 2004, even if I spent those first weeks mentioning and linking and "trackbacking" to other more popular destinations in a frantic attempt to say, "Hey, look at me! I'm here now too."

I parted ways with my most recent job in early April and decided it was time to refocus my attention on those things I've danced around and avoided for most of the past two decades: my own writing and other creative projects. It has been a slow process as I continue to try to develop a routine and not get in my own way. I continuously face the reality that writing is hard. That's no epiphany, of course. That's a continuous "Uh-huh."

But with every new journey, there's always a first step, even if it's the hundredth or thousandth "first" step. So here I go...

Chaplin: The Musical All Falls Down Right from the Start

I will stipulate that compressing the life of one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th Century is no easy task. Satisfying all audiences is impossible. The creators of a big, meant-for-Broadway musical must omit fun, interesting and clever bits of story and information, and too, they must simplify and consolidate large swaths of time. Important events must be prioritized, and ultimately potentially upsetting choices will be made. To do all this, they must utilize creative license as they cut and even fictionalize small bits of the examined life. And yet with all those understood caveats, I can’t imagine a worse, more mundane effort than the musical take on the life of Charlie Chaplin, closing on Broadway this Sunday.

I’ve missed several shows this season that I’ve been dying to see. Most notably, I’m saddened that I won’t have the chance to see what I understand is an astounding production of Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy that will close days before I return from an out-of-this-hemisphere vacation. But when I heard Chaplin: The Musical had announced its closing last month, I made sure I didn’t miss it.

I love movies. I love theater. I love silent movies, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Chaplin’s films for years. I don’t consider myself an expert on Chaplin’s life and career, but I know enough to be baffled by many of the choices -- both inclusions and omissions -- made by librettist and composer Christopher Curtis who co-wrote the book with three-time Tony winner Thomas Meehan (The Producers, Hairspray and Annie). Meehan’s impressive credits can’t obscure the colossal storytelling mess that has inhabited the stage at the Ethel Barrymore Theater the past few months.

Broadway has long been home to weak shows featuring amazing talent, and Chaplin’s primary (and sole) strength fits neatly into this scenario. Rob McClure’s works hard to save this show with his central, titular performance. He captures the essence and spirit of Charlie Chaplin as thoroughly as Robert Downey Jr. did in Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic, but McClure has the added quality of looking remarkably like the man who was Hollywood’s biggest star and arguably one of the three or four most important filmmakers of the silent era.

Try as he might, and as impressive as his combined interpretation and mimicry often are, the rest of Chaplin provides a formulaic, inconsistent and often false storyline that shoots for the salacious at every turn. The show’s book lacks any subtext placing every bone in the plot’s skeleton front and center, with anvil-dropping obviousness, just in case the audience misses the point.