what do you think, kids, does this explain me? a recent study by the british psychological society found that the "more fiction a person reads, the more empathy they have and the better they perform on tests of social understanding and awareness. By contrast, reading more non-fiction, fact-based books shows the opposite association."
so i'm a television fanatic, but there is something timeless about stories told and heard over the radio as well.
"this american life" is my favorite program on npr - it feeds into my addiction to good storytelling, and probably was the reason i first began to appreciate non-fiction. (some choice selections for the uninitiated all from the staff favorites page, or you can just go to the site and search for anything and everything david sedaris has ever done.)
and now, it looks as though the npr staple is crossing over.
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'This American Life' Is Ready for Its TV Close-Up
by Lynn Neary
All Things Considered, December 5, 2006
OK. Rats. They could film rats running in circles. It would be creepy. It would be cool.
No, scratch that. Humans in rat suits!
That's just one of the many odd discussions that took place in the process of transforming a radio program into a television series. The show is This American Life. The host is Ira Glass. The TV series will debut in March on the Showtime cable channel.
There's a certain simplicity to the art of radio. At its heart, it's all about storytelling. And This American Life is a radio show that revels in storytelling -- quirky stories, sad stories, scary stories.
This American Life seems so wedded to the medium of radio that when the Showtime cable network first approached Glass about turning it into a TV show, he couldn't imagine it.
"We basically said 'no' for a year and half," Glass recalls. "And we kept saying we have no idea how to... be filmmakers. You have to hook us up with people who could design something that got across the feeling of the radio show."
They found those experts in cinematographer Adam Beckman and director Chris Wilcha. Sometimes Beckman and Wilcha have to tell people steeped in radio that their ideas just won't work on television. Other times, they take the ideas and turn them into compelling visual images.
Like the rats. This story, dealing with erasing memory in rats, caught the staff's attention when they heard that real people had called the researchers because they wanted their own bad memories erased. But Wilcha was struggling with the visuals. While Beckman and his crew worked, Wilcha pulled Glass aside to pitch his ideas, which included humans in rat suits.
It's not the first time Glass has been a bit taken aback by one of Wilcha's ideas. Take the desk, for example. They'd been trying to figure out Glass's role as host. Would he just be an off-camera voice? And if not, would he do stand-ups on location or would he appear on a set?
In the end, they decided to give him a desk. But not just any desk.
"What if your desk appeared out on the landscape?" Wilcha wondered. "On an abandoned freeway, on the Salt Flats, in the woods. But you never make mention of it or point to it."
So Glass, staring at the audience through his big, black-framed glasses, introduces the show and the stories from behind a sleek, art deco desk made of shiny, red wood. In one shot, the desk and Ira sit in the middle of Utah's Salt Flats, looking like an inconsequential speck in a vast moonscape.
Perhaps the most painful adjustment for Glass was having to perform for the camera. Not only did he have to say his lines over and over again -- on camera, in a very public setting, surrounded by a huge crew -- he also had to watch himself over and over again.
"I don't see any positive aspect of being on camera," Glass says. "I am 47 years old, I don't like looking at myself. After a certain point, no one likes looking at themselves on television. There's just no up side."
But for all the complications of television, producer Nancy Updike says there have been moments of unexpected pleasure. A longtime radio producer, Updike wasn't sure This American Life would translate to a visual medium. Then she saw the pilot.
In a story about efforts to bring a bull named Chance back from the dead, Updike was surprised that they had managed to transfer the feel of the radio show to television. And the images of the bull provided a pleasure that radio could not.
"They're almost glamour shots of the bull, different parts of him, and he's in shadow and it's breathtaking," Updike says. "It's a moment you can't have in a radio show, a moment of pure visual reverie."
And that's no bull.
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found here, and you can listen to it here.
MattR26 (8:46:44 AM): so they're moving veronica mars away from the long arcs format to self-contained episodes
xcr253 (9:30:26 AM): so its gonna fucking be like CSI?! F that shit!
MattR26 (9:30:58 AM): yeah, it kinda sucks
MattR26 (9:31:49 AM): they said its getting hard to make up storylines that the characters are emotionally bonded to without having to bring in a whole new group of characters every time
xcr253 (9:32:28 AM): :( i dont care! you're a writer, its your job!
MattR26 (9:33:02 AM): wow, this is really bothering you
xcr253 (9:33:19 AM): lol you know what? it IS. i saw your msg before i hopped in the shower
xcr253 (9:33:26 AM): so it was ALL i thought about for 20mins
MattR26 (9:33:38 AM): haha
MattR26 (9:34:17 AM): this is from tv guide
xcr253 (9:34:24 AM): F TV GUIDE.
MattR26 (9:34:30 AM): Question: I've just read the news about how Rob Thomas wants to make Veronica Mars into a boring, lousy, "safe" stand-alone show. No arc episodes anymore, only emotional drama will connect the episodes. Tell me this ain't true.
xcr253 (9:34:31 AM): :'(
MattR26 (9:35:02 AM): Ausiello: It's true — the stand-alone part, not the "boring, lousy, safe" part — and here's Rob Thomas' reasoning: "Our fear is that the big mysteries are keeping casual TV viewers away, and it's very difficult to engage Veronica in a multi-episode mystery without making it extremely personal. Season 1 was built around the mystery. Veronica's best friend was dead. Every series regular was intertwined with the mystery.
MattR26 (9:35:08 AM): Without replacing the cast with each mystery and/or killing Wallace, I'm not sure we can devise enough personal connection to a case to keep the momentum we had in Season 1." I'm of the opinion that a self-contained Veronica is better than no Veronica.
xcr253 (9:35:44 AM): no, man.
xcr253 (9:35:57 AM): i disagree.
MattR26 (9:36:22 AM): yeah
xcr253 (9:36:56 AM): i would rather have three box sets of a brilliant tv show that was brazenly ripped off the air by The Man than have a crap veronica.
MattR26 (9:37:13 AM): hahhaa
xcr253 (9:37:36 AM): lol, it's true! it's as if Arrested Development tried to "cater more to the masses" or something
xcr253 (9:37:49 AM): that's bullshit
MattR26 (9:38:08 AM): yeah, thats true
xcr253 (9:38:27 AM): all right. well, and thus begins the internet campaign, i suppose
xcr253 (9:38:32 AM): *goes off to blog about this*
MattR26 (9:38:44 AM): hahahahaah
MattR26 (9:38:47 AM): :)
okay, this is so weird.
first, a confession: i have spent the last three days - literally, the last 72 hours - watching every kristin chenoweth video on youtube. yes, it is finals time. so no, i dont have class.
it started when i was doing a bit of wicked research (going to see it at the pantages in march - w00t!). actually, it started cause i wanted to find more indina menzel clips...but then i found kristin's 1999 tony awards performance (a performance which she won for, btw!) and that shit was all over. the woman is AMAZING. i proceeded to watch everything else youtube had on her.
i've also been interested in her lately b/c i've been watching "studio 60 on the sunset strip," and aaron sorkin has been pretty obvious about modeling lead female character harriet after cheno, who is his ex. (you may also know her as annabeth from west wing.) both cheno and harriet (the character on studio 60) are multi-talented comedy and hollywood stars, very cute and endearing, who happen to be tolerant and open-minded christians, alternately shunned by the gay/liberal community and the religious one, for straddling the line between the two.
[as an aside, i *am* irritated by how dumb harriet's character is. there is a lot of good potential in this character, and i feel like the show treats her poorly to illustrate some pretty obvious psychological/societal points. a lot more depth could be found with her if the show made her less of an idiot; then we could have some real discourse on these issues. c'mon aaron.]
anyway, i gotta tell you, kristin chenoweth is all personality. she's adorable, sexy, and talented through the roof - she has, i think, near perfect pitch and perfect relative pitch (her roots are in opera, and she switches easily between that and any other form of music). as a physical comedienne she's a complete scene-stealer. (her *other* roots are in ballet.) more than that, she is humble and gracious, incredibly hardworking, and handles herself with such elegance. all of hollywood should be striving to handle publicity and fame the way she does. i adore her.
i am not presumptuous enough to say that seeing kristin on stage makes me miss theater, but watching a ton of stage stuff, and planning to go see a lot of stage stuff next semester does remind me of that whole world. i fully intend to get back in to it. some of you know i [kind of] stage managed a show this summer, but LA, unfortunately, is NOT really the place for small, indie on-the-side stuff. the big name tv stars can anchor a show in a professional space, but theater doesn't hum the way it does in new york city. still, once i can afford it =/ i'll be doing it again.
anyway, i was saying it's weird b/c after my weekend of obsession with her, the ny times ran this article! about cheno! so timely!
okay, this is my favorite clip that i want to share with you - i watched this like a million times. i am not kidding you. she's so ridiculously watchable.
talent like that is totally amazing.
well, twin-looking blogs have got to share content at some point, eh? many thanks to my lovely ny-based scatteredpaper, who noticed this article on LA's decision to start weeding out palm trees.
i'm of slightly mixed mind about this, mainly b/c i am one who believes strongly in iconic images and i do love how those trees look on our skylines. still, i have to agree - if the concern is an environmental one (the palms aren't pulling their weight to clean our air - at least not as much as other trees could), then it's more important to put in more efficient trees. gotta look out for our kids, kids.
my favorite tv show:
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Going Away To College: Or, Why We Should All Cut Riley Finn Some Slack
by Dan Carlson
In case it's escaped the notice of even the dullest reader out there, I've got a pretty special place in the black rock I call my heart for "Veronica Mars." Now cruising gamely along in its third season, despite low ratings and a network dumb enough to pair it with "Gilmore Girls" (a show about absolutely, positively nothing at all), "Veronica Mars" is still one of the best shows on TV. But after two full years of exploring high school life, Veronica up and graduated, and is now attending Hearst College. Her matriculation mirrors not just the show's transfer from the defunct UPN to the new CW, but also the fact that the show itself is at a crossroads, namely, the elimination of its premise — high-school private eye — and a gradual change in its mission statement.
This is bound to be a polarizing time for the show's hardcore fans, and it's reminiscent of the similar struggle faced by what some have called the show's ancestor, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Granted, I think that comparing any two shows beyond a certain point is unwise, and most people are just linking "Buffy" and "Veronica Mars" out of a well-meaning laziness: Both shows were centered around a strong, flawed, complex female character in high school; both shows placed a premium on witty dialogue and interpersonal relationships; both shows are on low-rated pseudo-networks; etc. But the shows do have their similarites [sic], primarily their ability to explore the hell of growing up through the archetypal lens of high school, the one experience that unites us all in common misery. After its third season, "Buffy" went through the same growing pains now working their way through "Veronica Mars," as Buffy went off to college and the show struggled to find its larger purpose even as its core dynamic was forever altered. More than just having key characters removed and assigned to a spin-off, the "Buffy" universe had to deal with its very own existential crisis: What happens when the teenage superhero starts to grow up?
The show dealt with the inevitable problems the only way it knew how: By pushing through them. The first episode of the fourth season features another pack of vampires led by one of the lamest ringleaders the show ever came up with, but the villain of the week did one thing right: She broke Buffy's umbrella, a symbol of the good work she'd done in high school. It was a crushing, visceral way for the show to proclaim that the times were changing in a big way.
The fourth season, though certainly not a favorite of some fans, nevertheless turned out some great episodes — the experimental "Hush," the crossover "Pangs," the enjoyable one-off "Superstar," the excellent "Fear, Itself" — and, much more importantly, broadened its worldview. College is a world of gray tones next to the starkly defined areas of high school, and Buffy interacted with a greater variety of people with more darkly human (as opposed to demonic) traits, including Parker, who slept with Buffy and never called her again. He wasn't supernaturally evil, just a tool. It was in important step for the show, and one that paved the way for more complex relationships in the characters' collective futures. The fourth season was radically different from the first three because it had to be.
That's the problem, and possible solution, facing "Veronica Mars." The show's first two seasons delved into the dark sides of class warfare between the haves and have-nots of the small town of Neptune, smartly recognizing that cash is the biggest dividing line between the lunch tables in the cafeteria. But university life is rarely that stratified, and the only people who cling to such dated notions of how to define themselves are the jerks who seem to think college is basically Grade 13. "Veronica Mars" is going to have to figure out how to let go of the rich-poor struggle that so often defines the stories.
Veronica used to be a high-school snoop, and but she's going to have to transform into a bigger, more nuanced character to get the show over the tough bumps coming out of two solid years of stories. The show should set about trying to define Veronica in grander terms, like what kind of person does she want to be, in order to work. The central group of characters has been altered — Duncan's gone, Beaver's dead — and the remaining ones aren't what they used to be, none more than Weevil, who's gone from ruthless gang leader to the equivalent of wacky sitcom neighbor in only a few months (seriously, making Weevil the janitor at Hearst was a low blow, especially after offering up the tantaloizing [sic] possibility that he might work with Keith). But "Veronica Mars" can and will succeed if it pushes the characters to grow, and if it becomes comfortable with somewhat redefining itself. You don't go back; you go on to the next place, whatever that is.
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find the article here, at slowly going bald.
science is so awesome. and the japanese are so awesome, too. check out this article on the science behind invisibility cloaks and some potential real-world applications of this technology. i've heard of this before but it's neat to read up on exactly how far we've gotten with it, and where we could be using it.
yet another great article that discusses the nexus of psychology and pop culture. i love stuff like this b/c it's rather intuitive - not necessarily obvious - but awesome to have research back it up.
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Prime time to learn
In law dramas, medical shows and comedies, science is invading TV story lines. Good thing they try to get it right.
By Susan Brink
Times Staff Writer
November 13, 2006
AMERICANS more than just believe the health information they get from fictional television shows. Spurred by what they see on shows like "ER" or "The Bold and the Beautiful," surveys suggest, they take action. They go to the doctor. They tell a friend to have that cough checked. They ask a lover to use a condom.
Fans develop trusting relationships with the characters who come into their homes each week, and industry insiders can't betray that trust. "I'm aware of the number of people who are paying attention to the facts around the fiction," says Jan Nash, executive producer of "Without a Trace." Thanks in part to the Internet, where health sites consistently rank at the top of those most visited, more and more viewers know when something doesn't ring true.
They're getting a lot of chances to make such calls. Science is invading scripts. Disease is increasingly a backdrop to plots. The woes of the nation's healthcare system are punch lines. Heroic characters have mental diseases or incurable neurological disorders.
And behind the scenes, a body of communications research and an eager network of health and policy advocates are working with writers and producers to get the facts right. The shows milking medicine for back stories or main plot lines aren't limited to the medical genre such as "ER," "Grey's Anatomy" or "Scrubs." Sick, damaged or dying characters are showing up in shows about crime, politics, the legal profession, or wacky families and friends.
But seeing how profoundly true prime-time television can be was a shock, nonetheless, for Robert T. Brennan, a statistician at the Harvard School of Medicine and his daughter, Emma Brennan-Wydra, 13. On Jan. 3, 2006, they thought the night was winding down like hundreds of others, just another evening of TV viewing in their Somerville, Mass., home. It was 10 p.m., and Emma, a devotee of "Law & Order," was curled up watching the episode "Infected" with her father. "No popcorn. Nothing special, just uneventful viewing," says Brennan.
Little did they know, within their pajama-clad coziness on the other side of the country, that they were about to get an insider's glimpse into one of the latest trends in Hollywood.
Brennan and his daughter sat, mesmerized as the crime drama got closer and closer to home. It was about a grammar school-aged boy who, after seeing his mother shot to death, killed her murderer and went on trial as an adult.
"Annie Potts is addressing the jury," Brennan says, still amazed that his study, published in the May 27, 2005, journal Science, was quoted, statistic by statistic, by actress Potts, who played the boy's defense attorney, Sophie Devere. "She talked about kids being two to three times more likely to commit gun violence after they've been exposed to gun violence." As the character gave closing arguments, she referred to Science, gave the number of study participants and said the research took place in Chicago. There was no doubt. She was talking about Brennan's study.
"Emma and I looked at each other in total disbelief. Literally, I was flushed and my hair was standing up on my neck. The exact details of the study were on television," says Brennan. "And the accuracy of it was really amazing. I hate to say this, but it was more accurate than anything I've ever had covered in a newspaper."
His research ended up on the airwaves after Dr. Neal Baer, pediatrician and executive producer of "Law & Order: SVU," read the study on childhood violence by Brennan and coauthors Jeffrey Bingenheimer and Felton Earls. With all due respect, the paper was "wonky policy stuff, research that almost nobody reads," says Baer. But for a doctor who is also a television writer, it triggered an idea for a plot. "Just as you're exposed to flu when someone sneezes on you, this boy was exposed to violence. He was infected, and he committed a violent act," Baer says of his TV character.
What Baer did with a dry study illustrates the challenge to television writers: Take timely, important topics and make them entertaining. Accuracy and responsibility matter, industry insiders say, but their job is to attract and hold television viewers, not lecture or teach.
"Ultimately, our responsibility is to the drama of the show," says Nash. If writers start getting preachy, she says, viewers will hit the button on the remote.
At a time when reliance on traditional news media is slipping, entertainment communication becomes an important health issue. Prime-time television is where Americans gather, and it's where they learn. It makes sense to put the information where people are likely to get it.
The emphasis on the human and emotional drama behind the science, it turns out, is exactly what helps messages stick with viewers, according to communications research. Movies have a powerful effect too, but television fans come to know the characters they watch each week. Done well, the messages play out in the lives of familiar characters, and viewers learn something.
Premiering a theory
One of the first proofs that popular shows can educate large numbers of people came in 1977, in Mexico. Broadcast pioneer Miguel Sabido decided to make use of a classic learning theory, called social cognitive learning, in a soap opera. The theory, developed by Stanford social scientist Albert Bandura in 1961, holds that one way people learn is from watching others, particularly if they identify with the people and observe long enough to see a successful outcome. Sabido's telenovela was called "Acompañame," or "Accompany Me." The characters, including a poor but strong young woman who had two children and didn't want any more, grappled with family planning.
In its first year, it was apparent that the people who listened also learned — and acted. The Mexican government's National Population Council reported that monthly phone calls requesting family planning information increased from next to none to 500. Contraceptive sales increased 23% the first year the show aired, compared with an increase of 7% the previous year.
Following Mexico's success, the entertainment-education movement spread to India, China and Africa, where people in even the most remote villages tune their portable radios to soap operas. Characters routinely deal with the reality of AIDS. "You put up a billboard saying 'AIDS Kills, Use a Condom,' and it doesn't tell a woman how to approach her husband to talk about condoms," says Sonny Fox, whose Studio City consulting company works internationally to advise media and public health advocates. "In a radio drama, you put that right into the story. The listener has to be able to say, 'If she can do it, I can do it.' "
At a recent workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, a survey presented Nov. 6 by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examined the effect of one such program. It found that reported condom use during the last sexual encounter increased from 34% among people who did not tune into a soap opera called "Tsha Tsha" to 60% among those who watched 10 or more of the programs.
Third World successes got the attention of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If people in poor countries learn from radio and television entertainment shows, maybe Americans would too.
The CDC analyzed U.S. health survey data in 1999. Researchers concluded that of the 38 million Americans who regularly watch daytime soap operas, almost half said they learned something about diseases and how to prevent them. Even better, about a third of viewers said they took some action based on what they saw on a soap opera, including 7% who visited a doctor and 6% who did something to prevent a health problem.
A year later, the CDC looked at prime-time television. It found that of Americans who tuned in twice a week or more, 52% said they trusted the health information they see to be accurate, and 26% said that prime-time TV was among their top three sources for health information.
Inspiring ideas, facts
Inspired by such research, health advocates are figuring out how to work with entertainment television, without raising the hackles of creative types. The Kaiser Family Foundation and CBS and Viacom, for example, hold annual briefings in which writers and producers hear the real-life stories of people living with HIV.
Writers listen, awaiting the muse. And advocates cross their fingers, hoping that truth morphs into broadcast fiction.
Just such a briefing sparked the imagination of Nash and Greg Walker, executive producers of "Without a Trace." "We heard these testimonials, and we were moved by the accounts," says Walker. Adds Nash, "We would drive home and think, 'We have to figure out a way to do this.' " In the 2005 HIV-AIDS briefing, they heard the true story of Jennifer Jako, a pregnant HIV-positive woman who felt the judgment of people who thought she shouldn't have risked passing the virus to her child.
Her story inspired an April 13, 2006, episode called "Expectations," about a pregnant HIV-positive woman who resents the judgmental comments of a nurse, who tells her she should never have gotten pregnant. The character disappears shortly before her baby is due. The suspense builds as the missing woman calls from her cellphone to say she is in labor. She needs a cesarean section, and she needs it now.
To get the AIDS facts straight, Nash and Walker worked with Tina Hoff, director of the Media Entertainment Program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "We're not the creative visionaries," Hoff says. "But once a story line is developed, we can help ensure that it's accurate."
In reality, the baby of an HIV-infected mother has a less than 2% chance of being born with the disease provided the mother has taken appropriate medications during pregnancy and the delivery is cesarean. If the audience didn't know that before they saw the show, they did after.
In the show, the woman was found in time to deliver a healthy baby by cesarean section. In real life, Jako gave birth — C-section of course — to a healthy daughter in July.
The influence of a popular television show can make physicians' everyday advice pale, says Dr. Mark Morocco, an emergency room physician who was a technical advisor to "ER." "I might see 20 to 30 people a day," he says on his morning shift at the real emergency department of Brotman Medical Center in Culver City. "A show like 'ER' at one time was reaching 30 million people a week. You just can't beat that for power."
The magnitude of the impact of that one show was measured in classic studies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CDC. They surveyed "ER" viewers before and after specific episodes. One episode included a vignette on date rape. The victim was advised that she could take a morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy. Before it aired, the study found that only 10% of viewers were aware that high-dose birth control pills were an option to prevent pregnancy. In the week after the episode aired, 33% of viewers were aware of the morning-after option. Another episode dealt with HPV as a cause of cervical cancer, and before the show ran, 24% of "ER" viewers knew about HPV. A week after the show aired, 47% said they had heard of HPV.
"That research reinforced that you just can't ignore the role of entertainment media in people's lives," says Hoff.
Such studies have encouraged shows to use the expertise of real doctors to go deeper than helping actors correctly pronounce medical words, or showing them how to attach electrocardiographic leads. Morocco helped the show's writers figure out how to write Anthony Edwards, who played Dr. Mark Greene on "ER," out of the script after Edwards announced he'd be leaving the show. "What could we give him that would be accurate, that could kill him in 15 months?" says Morocco. The answer: glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor whose sufferers have a life expectancy of about 18 months.
Viewers watched, week after week, the dramatic arc of Dr. Greene's diagnosis, treatment success, relapse and decline. "We were able to show what people with a bad brain tumor really go through," Morocco says. "How it affects your family, the real roller coaster ride you're on when you get this kind of diagnosis." Until, finally, the fictional Dr. Greene died, in the May 9, 2002, episode.
Premiering this week may be one of the most intense efforts to get the science right. A new series, "3 Lbs.," named for the weight of the average human brain, is about two neurosurgeons. The pilot shows symptoms, brain scans and neurosurgery wrapped around the lives of two patients shocked that their brains have gone haywire. "It's all research-based," says executive producer Peter Ocko. "There's not a neurological condition we deal with that's not documented in research. We consult with two neurosurgeons. We gather case histories. There's a doctor and a nurse on the set for every medical moment. And we do just as much research on the patient's perspective." From there, poetic license comes in.
Even nonmedical shows are hiring researchers whose job it is to ferret out what's new and true in multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, cancer, diabetes or even policy issues such as the growing number of uninsured Americans or the vast disparity between donated organs and the need for organ transplants. All those topics have made their way into recent prime-time shows.
Hollywood insiders
The effort to educate while entertaining goes beyond doctors and staff researchers working within television.
The granddaddy of the industry-science collaboration is probably the Entertainment Industries Council, started in 1983, just about the time John Belushi died of a drug overdose and Richard Pryor set himself ablaze freebasing cocaine. Created to promote health and social issues via entertainment, the council first tackled drug abuse. It quickly expanded. "We're the folks who got actors to put their seat belts on for driving scenes," says Larry Deutchman, executive vice president of marketing and industry relations for the council.
Now there is a growing industry in Hollywood made up of advocates who are neither entertainers nor insiders, but who want their disease or issue to get dramatic play before a mass audience. Similar to product placement, it's a kind of ideas placement. A group called the Entertainment Professionals Resource Assn. pulls dozens of these groups together, including the American Cancer Society, Down Syndrome in Arts and Media, the American Heart Assn. and the Mental Health Media Partnership.
"We're trying to shift the norm," says Deborah Glik, director of the UCLA Health and Media Research Group, who is affiliated with the entertainment group. "When you're going to portray a health issue anyway, and you're working with a platform that reaches millions of people, you should do it accurately."
Members make themselves available with scientific facts and a bank of real citizens willing to tell their stories. They carefully push their causes, knowing they walk a delicate line between sparking creativity and triggering annoyance.
David Sampson, director of media relations at the American Cancer Society, has learned that it's better if his organization stays away from pitching specific plots. Policy wonks, it turns out, aren't so good at recognizing the germ of a compelling story line. "Writers come to us," he says, "and almost invariably, they'll pick up on some bit of information that we had no intention of relaying."
But the society doesn't hesitate to advise, when asked. When Alexis on the soap opera "General Hospital" was diagnosed with lung cancer despite being a nonsmoker, Sampson heard that writers wanted to attribute her disease to asbestos exposure. "About 4,000 non-smokers a year come down with lung cancer," he says. "But short of working in a mine, you only get lung cancer from asbestos exposure if you're also a smoker." Exposure to second-hand smoke, the society suggested, was a far better explanation.
The idea is to present entertainment insiders with powerful real stories, inundate them with facts, and then sit back and hope the creative juices take over. "I believe the writer is king or queen," says Lisa Allen, director of the Media Project, which provides entertainment industry professionals with information on reproductive issues. "We don't preach, we don't proselytize."
But sometimes, when the people who understand the power of the medium watch TV, they do a slow burn. Glik recalls one of those moments. She was watching a prime-time drama in which a character had hepatitis. "I got so upset," she says. "They should have talked about immunizations. It was a missed opportunity."
Missed opportunities and programs that are just plain wrong persist. Soap opera characters can still come out of comas as though they simply took a long nap. Prime-time shows can still depict death as though it's as quick and painless as fainting.
And while television may have become more daring in portraying how disease affects real people, network television pulls its punches on some controversial topics. Abortion, for example, has become more taboo over the years. In 1972, Maude, played by Bea Arthur, had an abortion, a decision that unfolded over two episodes on the sitcom "Maude," watched by 65 million viewers. Thirty years later, Claire Fisher, played by actress Lauren Ambrose on the HBO drama "Six Feet Under," whose viewership peaked at 5 million, had an abortion. In between the two shows, almost all unplanned television pregnancies ended either in miscarriage, adoption or a decision to keep the baby.
No issue unaired
But because truth can be stranger, and more entertaining, than fiction, increasingly even the most tedious of topics — the economics of the healthcare delivery system, for example — are finding their way onto the airwaves. What "Friends" fan will ever forget the time that Joey, an aspiring actor, faced losing his health coverage, an all too real dilemma for 46 million Americans? In the Oct. 14, 1999, episode, Joey's coverage through the Screen Actors Guild was going to lapse unless he chalked up more work hours. Then he got a hernia, the pain of which required treatment but also interfered with his ability to work the hours he needed to remain insured.
Joey does solve his problem, recalls Kate Langrall Folb of Nightingale Entertainment, who works to get stories on health policy, including the uninsured, onto television shows. "He gets a gig portraying a dying guy in pain," she says. He earned his hours, kept his insurance and got his hernia treated.
It was, after all, television. Everything must be tidied up within 30 to 60 minutes.
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from the la times.
