The following conversation was recorded on a November 2017 plane flight from Los Angeles to Newark.
TOMMovies have melodramas. TV has soaps. A Summer Place versus This is Us. Trouble is, I’ve only seen the pilot for This Is Us.
CAROLYou liked the pilot.
TOMIt was very ingenious.
CAROLThe show’s very soapy now. It feels like daytime.
TOMA Summer Place had its soap elements—the sex-hating mom, the sex-starved young couple, the drunken father, the adulterous romance. All just on the edge of camp. But with such great colors.
CAROLAnd the music. One of the great songs. One of the great scores. You don’t get that kind of sweep on TV.
TOMAnd the auteurship. It’s Delmer Daves. You could say he’s the poor man’s Douglas Sirk, except he’s got his own thing. Parrish. Susan Slade. They all go together, like a trilogy.
CAROLThose old movies that we treasure, watch again and again, like A Summer Place, like The Fountainhead, they’re very operatic. On the other hand, if you can take ten hours to tell a story…you can get cliffhangers. Longer scenes.
TOMThe scenes on Downton Abbey weren’t long. They seemed to end just as they were getting started. Four lines of dialogue and out.
CAROLPeople are getting driven to TV. The more these franchise spectacles dominate movies, with their one-note or no-note characters, the more people crave the opposite.
TOMAnd then the TV guys load up on the characters. Like The Deuce.
CAROLToo many characters. You don’t know where to look. Or whether to look away.
TOMIt’s like the opposite of old TV—something to help you recover from a hard day at the office.
CAROLReality TV—that’s what passes for escapism today. People have actually said to me, when I ask them why they watch The Bachelor, “So I don’t have to think about anything.” I sort of feel that way about the history lessons, like LBJ or Darkest Hour. They make you want to go home and watch Curb. Or eat ice cream. Like an after-school snack.
TOMOld TV had its share of history lessons. Roots. The Winds of War. They got huge audiences. Event television. As opposed to the general run. Remember Paul Klein’s theory? When there were only the three networks. People watched the “least objectionable program.”
CAROLI love movies where the writer has a voice: Sorkin, Noah Baumbach, the Coens. But when I wake up at night, I don’t want to hear that from TV. I don’t need originality, I don’t need to be challenged, I want something bland and soothing, something that will help me get back to sleep. Like This Is Us.
TOMI hear Jason Katims is taking that over.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Something to drink?
TOMOrange juice, please.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Ice or no ice?
TOMIce, please.
CAROLWater, no ice. Jason Katims, yes, he’s a master of the modern soap.
TOM: Would you call Friday Night Lights a soap? It wasn’t exaggerated. It had very few false notes. And I think he only wrote for a couple of seasons. But then Parenthood. Whatever you call it, it was fine.
CAROL: But would you recognize his voice?
TOMNo, and these writers don’t necessarily translate to movies. Sorkin did, but who else? Not David Kelley.
CAROLMuch as we love him.
TOMYou know what’s the best history lesson? Mindhunter. That serial killers didn’t use to be a thing. That the FBI wasn’t into profiling. Until fairly late in the 20th Century. But you couldn’t watch that, basically.
CAROLI had to leave the room.
TOMThe older I get, the more I react to painful things on screen. Especially on TV. People getting limbs sawed off. Or even something minor, like hitting their head against something. Alcohol being poured into a wound. Not sure why that is. Gunfights, though, they don’t bother me. Or fist fights. They just seem staged. Any action scene in a movie. I drift. The stuff isn’t really happening. When actors are talking to each other, that’s really happening.
CAROLYou don’t need palate cleansers as much as I do.
TOMSure I do. Curb, that’s the ultimate palate cleanser. Vice Principals. Because Danny McBride is so great to watch. I think he’s like my favorite actor.
CAROLOn TV.
TOMYeah, as the star of a movie? I don’t think I’d necessarily look forward to that.
CAROLAll these abusive characters in movies, I need a TV respite when I get home.
TOMWait till we see Wonder.
CAROL: We’ll probably want to come home and see something nasty.
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