Many of you may think CBS is harmless; harmless like an escaped Cobra! (Actually Bronx zoo officials say that it is unlikely the escaped cobra will attack humans and they are certain it is still in the reptile house). CBS, meanwhile, is a monolithic ratings machine hell bent on turning the TV landscape into a beige hackneyed nightmare. If left unchecked CBS will turn TV into the very idiot box so many snooty intellectuals have said it is. Which is a shame because we may be in the greatest era of television since its inception. Never before has television offered such a great outlet for creative minds. The film industry is broken and many writers, actors, and directors are looking to the Tube to get their visions out to the people. Flip through the channels and you'll find Mad Men, The Walking Dead, 30 Rock, Community, Justified, Breaking Bad, and many more shows that rival anything on the silver screen. Television, which is the truest American artform, has finally broken free of its adolescent roots. The only thing standing in the way is CBS and the people who watch it.
What does this have to do with Charlie Sheen? What does it have to do with anything? First, a history lesson.
In the 1960's television became so popular that it almost destroyed the movie business. The studios decided to fight back with technicolor, 3D, and other dopey spectacles (sound familiar). This worked briefly, but when the economic malaise of the seventies hit people weren't willing to shell out money to see a movie when they could just flip a switch in their homes. It didn't help that television technology would continue to evolve (remote control, vcr, surround sound, HDTV, 3D tv) at a much faster rate than movie theaters (although thank God for stadium seating, amirite?) So in the early and mid-seventies the studios did the unthinkable and let filmakers make their own films how they wanted to make them. The idea was that people would go to the theater to get what they couldn't get on television, namely sex, violence, pathos, adult conversations, artistry, etc. That is to say it became financially necessary for movies to not just be entertaining, but actually good. It was the era of the so-called film school brats that included Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and others. It was the golden age of American cinema.
It was not meant to last. In a twist right out of Greek tragedy two of these film brats would innocently bring about the downfall of the entire movement. Steven Spielberg started the trend by creating the first summer blockbuster, Jaws (1975). Two years later his buddy George Lucas would prove it could happen more than once with Star Wars (1977). These two remarkable films set the gold standard for crowd pleasing movies with an emphasis on the craft of filmmaking. Unfortunately studios realized that the formula for the summer blockbuster could be achieved without any concern for aesthetics or even storytelling. This focus on bringing crowds in rather than what they were being brought to see would eventually lead to the cinematic abortions of Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer and, again, George Lucas. Mark Harris (no relation) wrote a great piece about how this effected the movie business in last month's GQ. Check it out after your done here. http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris
While all of this was going on in Hollywood the people in television were happy to churn out middling dreck with the occasional masterpiece, Lonesome Dove (1989), or push towards the unusual with shows like Cheers or Moonlighting. But for the most part they put out crowd pleasing schmaltz and zippy one liner factories because there wasn't any competition at the box office. There was no impetus to be anything other than a dim moving light in a darkened living room. A decade of studios using the Star Wars model changed that. Young people weren't staying home to watch tv anymore. They were going to the mall or to the movies. The problem was compounded in the nineties when an increasingly ironic youth culture known as Generation X found the lameness on the boob tube to be downright offensive. It was no longer okay to rely on old tv tropes like two people trapped in an attic or a slovenly bachelor suddenly having to take care of a baby. Interestingly Generation X loved to watch re-runs of old seventies tv shows, but they hated new shows that were just like them.
Viewers were becoming savvier and more demanding. Quentin Tarantino and his ilk came along to give them another reason to go to the movies, and again offered the adult themes that could not be found on television. Slowly over the next decade tv execs would greenlight increasingly innovative projects such as a show about nothing and a show about a mafioso in therapy. What happened in the film industry in the seventies began to happen in television in the late 90's and early '00's. It became profitable to be good. At the same time Hollywood stopped making R-rated movies except in the horror genre. Mature themes and subject matter were now more likely to be found on the Home Box Office than the real one. Networks began to embrace these changes especially after the show Lost showed that creativity could bring huge commercial windfalls. Every network began to experiment with new formats and explore new ways of using the medium. Every network except one. Wanna guess which one?
Tune in for Thank You, Charlie Sheen Part II where I reveal CBS's dastardly plan to destroy us all!!!!!!
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