2/20/07: Action (1999)We’re counting down to the Academy Awards this week, and spotlighting RightWingTrash that trashes the film biz. We don’t know what it means that we’re starting with a television series. We’re convinced, however, that
Action’s lead character has one of the best names in the history of fiction. You won’t find a more Dickensian summary of ineffectual power.
Jay Mohr starred as Hollywood producer Peter Dragon, who’d just bombed bigtime with a film called
Slow Torture. The short-lived series followed Dragon as he tried to salvage his reputation with
Beverly Hills Gun Club. Any guy who’d want to make a film called
Beverly Hills Gun Club is already one of our heroes.
Action, however, thrived (and failed) by never being exactly what the critics tried to sell us.
Critics pretty much parrot what they’re told, and the Fox network got plenty of rave write-ups by packaging
Action as an amoral comedy. The show was a pioneer in trying to match the success of cable series in providing adult content. Everyone was happy to praise a TV show where the lead character was a heartless bastard. It sounded hip.
But the trick to
Action was that Dragon was the good guy. He was constantly foiled because he wasn’t nearly as amoral as his flunkies and superiors. Dragon’s typical business day included being psyched out of an important business pitch by having to talk to a studio executive who’d only take the meeting while nude. He lost out on financing because he couldn’t quite bring himself to give his daughter away to an Arab sheik. Dragon was so naïve that he was actually surprised when he was betrayed by the hooker that he’d brought in as a producer for his new film.
Action was pretty brave television. It provided plenty of goofs on Hollywood’s most narcissistic liberal values. Sadly, it could only match the idiocy of real-life Hollywood.
Action’s pilot was directed by popular young film director Ted Demme. A few years later, Demme would make a great film called
Blow that was nicely damning of the cocaine trade. Shortly after that film’s release, the 29-year-old director suffered a heart attack during a celebrity basketball game. There was cocaine in his system.
Make it your own: The Fox network couldn’t keep
Action alive, but they wrapped up the series’ entire arc with the closing episode.
The DVD set—which restores the R-rated language edited for television—is reasonably priced and includes appropriately bitchy commentaries.
