ACTION! - dave c - Films/DVD Asylum

ACTION!

Posted by dave c (A) on August 15, 2007 at 19:16:53

I have just found out that not only is this funniest ever TV sit-com(is it????) available on DVD, but there are several never shown episodes and a short doco about the rise and fall of the series.
If you have never seen it, just try this review from Amazon which I have lifted for artistic purposes...

This send-up of Hollywood makes Altman's Hollywood satire THE PLAYER look like it was shot under water by actors on valium. The pun-intendted title suits this series well. It is jammed with clever plot-twists and stellar talent (principals Jay Mohr as the Darwinian narcissist producer Peter Dragon; Ileana Doublas as the ultimate Hollywood insider, a professional sex worker whom Dragon makes his assistant producer because of her faultless nose for good--and bad--scripts; Jarrad Paul as the neurotic TV writer who hopes to make it in the big-budget action genre with his script for "Beverly Hills Gun Club"; Jack Plotnick as the ambitious but massochistic, dry-cleaning-fetching gay executive producer; and Buddy Hackett as Dragon's nap-susceptible body guard and chauffeur who just also happens to be his uncle). Add to this a number of cameos from the likes of Keanu Reeves, David Hasselhoff, Scott Wolf, Salma Hayeck, Sandra Bulluck, and "that Joe Isuzu guy" (David Leisure playing an out-of-work version of himself serving as security guard/gate-lifter at the studio lot).

Originally produced for Fox TV, the series takes a jab at everyone remotely connected to "the business." As rude, politically indifferent, and self-serving as Peter Dragon is, you soon come "to feel his pain" when you see the number of spoiled brats, self-promoters, and losers he is asked to manage and/or navigate among in the course of any given day. (When he seeks spiritual counsel from a rabbi at a funeral, the rabbi is quick to offer him a script to read. "Streisand is very interested," the rabbi assures him. Dragon takes the script, asking, "Starring or direting?" When the rabbi answers "Directing," Dragon tosses the script in a nearby trashcan. Mohr's expression? Priceless!)

The writing for the (unlucky?) 13 espisodes is consistently top-notch. The fun never lags. It is as if everyone involved knew Fox would not give them a second season and they had to pack everything into the first. (Everything beyond episode 6 was new to me, so I suspect Fox never even broadcast everything they had.) Although we don't ever get to see the premier of "Beverly Hills Gun Club," or the predictable Oscar snub, the story arc is satisfyingly complete at the end of episode 13 when the legal rights to the threatened script are secured and Douglas's character returns to her more honorable previous profession.

I'm so glad the makers of this show believed in it enough to put it out on DVD--and with a "making of" featurette and filmmaker commentaries for several episodes. This is satire at its most outrageous--directed at such a worthy target.

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Topic - ACTION! - dave c 19:16:53 08/15/07 (1)

I've had this for a couple of years; I'll second your recommendation. - Audiophilander 22:22:26 08/16/07 (0)

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