Out of Focus

On the "Breaking Bad" finale - Walt didn't win: Don't forget Walter Jr.

(Obviously, spoilers present. 'Nuff said.)

The relationship between Walt and his son forms the primary foundation at the heart of "Breaking Bad." (Photo credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC)

I suppose I'm not surprised that many felt less satisfied with the "Felina" – excuse me, the finale – of Breaking Bad than I was. I've read tweets and posts that seemed even more enthusiastic; and others – including from huge fans of the series – who were obviously at least a bit disappointed. Many people have spent the past year or two proclaiming Breaking Bad as the greatest television show of all time due to its complexities and nuance. Yet now, their perceptions that the series wrapped itself up too neatly has led to dissatisfaction with its conclusion. Based on what I've read so far, most people imagine that since Walt's death seemed inevitable, there were only two possible resolutions: Walt would die redeemed, heroically; or Walt would get the comeuppance he deserved. And yet, that binary option seems to ignore that more complex and nuanced middle ground in which both may have occurred.

Linda Holmes, who writes NPR's "Monkey See" pop culture blog (a must read, in my book), expressed her own dissatisfaction with the episode stemming from her interpretation that ultimately Walt went out exactly as he wanted to, by his own design, allowing for his own megalomania. Even with his admission to Skyler that it was all for him – and not the family – and that "I liked it," decisions such as manipulating a method to pass along his money to his kids – thereby depriving them the choice of declining it --  was neither loving nor kindhearted.

Willa Paskin described on Slate why the finale was unsatisfying to her, or at the very least left her conflicted: "After everything, after five seasons in which the writers were clocking Walt’s every misdeed, at the very end, they turned out to be Team Walt. Despite everything he did, Walt was rewarded—not with life, too much had gone down for that—but with a death on his own terms. He died having provided for his family, without going to jail or giving up on his legend."

I really enjoy reading both Holmes and Paskin, along with the A.V. Club's Donna Bowman and the throngs of other great writers expounding on Breaking Bad, and yet unmentioned in everything I've read is the one element that formed the heart of the entire series, which also happens to be the one area where Walt irrefutably had no control and did not "win": His relationship with his son Flynn, a/k/a Walter Jr.

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.

"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.

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.

A Civil War Christmas: A fascinating, serious and fun pageant for the ages

The Playbill for Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas -- which opened Tuesday at New York Theater Workshop – contains a “production history” timeline starting with the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The twelfth and final item dated “October-November 2012” notes the production’s rehearsal start, the arrival of Hurricane Sandy and NYTW’s loss of power, and the reelection of President Obama.

But the most important item on this timeline seems to be the fourth: “December 1987 – Paula Vogel promises to honor her dying brother Carl’s request to teach the children in the family about America’s history.” Fifteen years later, Vogel’s history lesson arrives in New York in utterly unexpected and spectacular fashion: akin to a jukebox musical featuring 19th century folk songs, hymns and Christmas carols, A Civil War Christmas plays with almost every theatrical convention imaginable. The end result is a fascinating and wonderful examination of our country’s history through the lens of multiple story-threads on one solitary night – the last Christmas to occur during the Civil War.

Vogel’s Christmas pageant does not attempt to teach the history of Civil War America through those iconic battles and events we learn about in elementary school. Rather, utilizing multiple interweaving and relatively simple storylines occurring in and around Washington D.C. as well as the war’s battlefields, Vogel attempts to give us a general sense of living in this time, in these places, during this turmoil. The 13-year-old southern boy who wants to go fight the Yankees is as vital to this story as President and Mrs. Lincoln.

The runaway slave and her young daughter, so spooked by the rumors of slave chasers, they separate thinking they’ll be safer but actually putting them on a path towards tragedy; or the dying Jewish soldier who just wants another visit from Walt Whitman and has never heard the song “Silent Night” before – Vogel uses stories like these and many others to piece together the experiences of a weary nation searching for peace and vengeance. The musical element enhances the drama and emotion, and even though the accompaniment rarely involves more than one or two instruments and there are certainly no big production numbers, Vogel’s use of – and, in some cases, alterations to – the chosen songs is the propellant that makes A Civil War Musical truly soar.

Vogel is clearly at play and having fun with this piece. She utilizes different narrative techniques throughout, sometimes with characters breaking the fourth wall, providing third person narration directly to the audience and creating the sensation of listening to someone read a fable; and just as quickly, the scene will shift, placing itself fully behind that proscenium separation with a more natural theatrical division between performers and audience. Characters break into song, but it never feels forced or awkward; she moves back-and-forth between light-hearted comedy and tense drama frequently and often when the audience may not expect it. And even as the overall number of stories told and frequent narrative shifts keep growing, she never complicates matters so much that the show becomes difficult to follow.

Checkers: Nixon's most likable moment played out less-favorably

I guess I just expected so much more. The story behind the story of Richard Nixon’s infamous “Checkers” speech; Terry Kinney in the director’s chair and the very talented Anthony LaPaglia and Kathryn Erbe doing the majority of the heavy lifting on stage; a script by the politically astute Douglas McGrath, who gained some satire chops while writing for SNL and received an Oscar nomination for co-writing Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen and has directed his own filmed adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and had the misfortune of bringing his (arguably better) Truman Capote movie to the screen second.

Missing from McGrath’s approved bio and credits in the program is theater, and his background with sketch comedy and multiple-short scenes edited together sticks out like a sore thumb throughout the entirety of Checkers, which closed today at the Vineyard Theater. McGrath and Kinney tell the story through one long flashback, framed by two scenes in 1966 focused on Nixon (LaPaglia) deciding to run for president in 1968, against the wishes of his wife Pat (Erbe).

The majority of the play occurs during the 1952 presidential campaign. Dwight Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate, however, his campaign was surprised by rumors of a secret (and potentially illegal) slush fund operated by Tricky Dick. McGrath doesn’t provide any real explanation for why Eisenhower ever chose Nixon, but he does make a point of establishing that Ike’s campaign managers and the majority of the Republican establishment is not too fond of the Quaker from California.

When this scandal erupts, Eisenhower must decide whether to drop his running mate from the ticket, and eventually, the campaign forces Nixon to make a 30 minute televised speech explaining the truth behind any fund (that it didn’t exist) and why he did nothing wrong. With that speech, Nixon saved himself and helped seal the deal for Eisenhower. The part most of the audience remembered most distinctly, however, was the few sentences describing the puppy a supporter had sent to him and that his daughter Julie had named Checkers. Suddenly, anyone accusing Nixon of doing something improper was trying to take a puppy away from a little girl, and over 99% of those who chose to call or send a telegram to the Republican National Committee supported the candidacy of the potential Veep On this night, television saved Nixon; ironic, considering how it betrayed him just eight years later running against JFK.

The Checkers speech was a seminal moment in modern American political history. To McGrath’s Nixon, it was his darkest hour. That is not my interpretation of the play, but rather the statement Nixon utters in order to throw the audience from the opening scene back in time 14 years. I would have been much more satisfied had Wayne and Garth simply walked onto the stage waving their arms back-and-forth and up-and-down while making that “do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do” sound.

Sorry: The Apple Family has nothing to apologize for

In the program to his new play Sorry writer-director Richard Nelson writes, “It is my hope that these plays are about the need to talk, the need to listen, the need for theatre, and, I now add, the need to be in the same room together.”

The immediacy of theater sets it apart from the other storytelling- and performance-based arts like film and television. Every show is different, if only in minute ways. Every performance is ephemeral, specific to that moment in time and that audience. Once it’s over, it’s gone.

I have arrived late to the “Apple Family Plays.” Sorry (which The Public Theater has extended through this Sunday, Dec. 2) is the third of a fascinating four-play experiment-in-progress. Even without seeing the first two installments -- That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad -- (as I haven’t), I enthusiastically endorse catching this show before it actually closes. Each play presents a peak through a window into the lives of one family on a day of national significance. That important date matches the play’s official opening performance. In the case of Sorry, the audience spends just shy of two hours with the Apple siblings and their uncle Benjamin in the early morning of Election Day 2012, and therefore, the play opened on Nov. 6 as well.

I don’t know how true this was for the first two plays, but Nelson obviously continued changing the script of Sorry all the way up to opening night. At least a few audiences saw this PublicLab production in previews (although I believe it’s schedule was altered due to Hurricane Sandy), but the play just as obviously becomes frozen in time as of that opening night.

The Whale: Theater at its best as Playwrights Horizons does it again

I don’t casually give standing ovations. Generally, I remain perfectly content to clap from my seat, even if I thoroughly enjoyed the just completed work. However, upon the final blackout of The Whale, I leapt to my feet to acknowledge the brilliant and award-worthy performance of Shuler Hensley, and to an even greater degree, the tremendous script from playwright Samuel D. Hunter. The Whale -- now playing at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Playwrights Horizons’s smaller, second stage -- is simply one of the best new plays I’ve seen in years. Period.

I never expected to type that sentence. I was more prepared for an evening of obvious metaphor from a play that focuses on a 600 lb. shut-in and bears the title “The Whale.” Yet I have not seen such a captivating and well-constructed play in quite some time; a storyline as lean as its main character is not; and a complete set of five dynamic multi-dimensional characters with complex relationships that all work on multiple levels. Led by director Davis McCallum’s tight staging, The Whale provides a nuanced and fully-formed exploration of love, shame, regret, self-destruction, religious guilt, reconciliation, redemption, control and longing.

Hensley’s Charlie began eating himself into morbid obesity after his partner Alan passed away. While we’re never told precisely how Alan died, the implication is that he essentially starved himself to death, making Charlie’s mode of self-destruction that much more compelling. Charlie now works nonstop as an online essay tutor and never leaves his cluttered apartment in northern Idaho. Charlie knows he has little time left due to regular bouts of debilitating chest pain and his increasing difficulty breathing. His only friend Liz (Cassie Beck) – a nurse who takes care of him – berates Charlie for not letting her take him to the hospital while simultaneously enabling his slow suicide by providing him with buckets of fried chicken and meatball subs.

Wild With Happy: More wild, less happy, looking for the proper balance

Oh, how I would love to be happy all the time! Wouldn't that be wonderful? For that very experience, vacationers spend thousands of dollars to visit the happiest place on Earth, Disney World. In so many ways, they leave the real world to enter an entirely different one, filled with multiple resorts, attractions, countries, malls and, yes, the Magic Kingdom, where every night is New Year’s Eve and ends with fireworks.

Yet Disney World is an illusion, as all those same vacationers discover when they realize just how many thousands they spent for four days and three nights hotel, food, park admission, airfare and all the other requirements to divorce themselves from life in order to become intimate with Mickey. Disney World is the fantasy life we can buy; it is an escape from the heartache, failure, sadness and loss we face in our daily real lives. This conflict between the fanciful dreamer and the cynical realist lies at the heart of The Public Theater’s current production Wild With Happy.

Colman Domingo’s play focuses on Gil, a 40-year-old gay struggling actor with a degree in English literature from Yale who lives in New York, slightly estranged from mother. He calls her by her first name, Adelaide. After a short prologue during which Gil (also played by Domingo) explains why he has renounced church, we learn that Adelaide has died, somewhat (but not 100%) unexpectedly. The rest of the show focuses on Gil’s attempts to deal (or, more accurately, not deal) with this loss.

The new TV season: First Take — Lone Star

Kyle Killen, the creator of the new Fox series Lone Star, wrote an open letter beseeching the greater American television audience to watch his show. Why would a writer need to do such a thing? Well, in case you haven't heard, Lone Star debuted to terrible numbers: In today's television landscape, a 1.3 rating equating to 4.1 million viewers ain't gonna cut it.

Fox promoted the hell out of the show. In fact, with the exception of NBC's The Event and ABC's My Generation, no other series of commercials for new fall season shows had become more annoying. Additionally, even with as much ad money behind it, the Monday at 9 p.m. timeslot remains so competitive, Fox likely had reasonable and moderate expectations for the early numbers.

But the shockingly low number fell too far, and even worse was the consistent decline seen over each quarter-hour. After watching the pilot myself, though, and then re-examining the time-slot, I can't say I'm so surprised.

Don't get me wrong: Now having seen all but a few of the first episodes from this season's new shows, Lone Star definitely takes its place among the most intriguing prospects of this young season. As I wrote about Monday, a pilot can only tell so much, and my "first take"s are just that: initial impressions based on one hour of what will, would and should be just a small part of a larger story. Lone Star has so many twists and complexities inherent in its premise, its ability to sustain itself over the course of an entire season—much less several—remains highly suspect. But its first episode also does precisely what every pilot should, and that's make you want to come back for more.

Still, I can see how the pilot's opening minutes might have confused some viewers. For those hanging around for a few minutes after House, it would have been really easy to say, "What's going on here? Meh, I wonder if Bristol's dancing yet?" Simply following the opening 10 minutes of Lone Star took a certain degree of attention, not due to bad writing, but out of Killen and episode director Marc Webb's determination to set the scene with a degree of intrigue and complexity. This degree of sophistication in the writing, however, may have backfired, not from the perspective of quality, but from easy accessibility.

The series has an interesting pedigree: Killen is a newbee to the TV scene, but has had his fiction published in numerous notable places, and wrote the screenplay for Jodie Foster's The Beaver, still awaiting a release. Producers Christopher Keyser & Amy Lippman were responsible for the mid-'90s Fox hit Party of Five. Also on the producing roster? Paul Weitz (as executive producer) and his brother Chris (as consulting producer). Now, I don't remember the specifics of a lot of Fox's promotion for the series, but I don't remember seeing anything mentioning "From the people behind Party of Five, Ameican Pie and Twilight: New Moon. Granted, such promotion would have given an audience absolutely no realistic idea of what it was in for, but networks and film studios do that all the time, and it could have attracted more eyes.