Emmy boldly strides out of Oscar’s shadow

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DUSTY HIGGINS
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DUSTY HIGGINS

Once upon a time, boys and girls, in the magical land of La La, there lived a poor little golden statuette named Emmy.

Although she had wings and was bright and shiny and reaching for the stars, little Emmy was always looked down upon by the rich and powerful inhabitants of La La Land.

It seemed that little Emmy, who was born in 1949, was always in the shadow of her big brother Oscar.

Oh, it was so very, very sad to see. Everybody fawned and fussed over Oscar, who was 20 years older than Emmy and could do no wrong. Oscar was the toast of La La Land. Everyone wanted Oscar.

Although nobody said it to her face, everyone thought, "Oh, Emmy is, well, OK, but she's no Oscar." And this went on for years and years.

But as time passed, the wealthy royalty of La La Land were blinded by the bright lights and big money. They thumbed their noses at all the little people who had made the land so magical.

Then one day, Emmy didn't look so little to the rest of the inhabitants. Slowly, Emmy was causing heads to turn.

And so it was that the people of La La Land came to notice that little Emmy had grown up. She was strong, powerful and flexing her muscles doing the important things that Oscar had forgotten.

That's how, boys and girls, everybody came to love Emmy. And she

lived happily ever after, a poor little statuette no longer.

That may be a bit precious, but it's illustrative of how the formerly second-class Emmys have come of age in recent years. For many Hollywood A-list actors, television is now where the meaningful work takes place since the film industry seems to be mainly interested in big-budget blockbusters and another installment of a successful franchise. (Examples: Iron Man, X-Men, Godzilla, Spider-Man, Hunger Games, Transformers, Planet of the Apes.)

Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying TV is better than movies. There is plenty of dreck to go around on television and in film, but TV has finally achieved what one critic labeled "pop culture parity." TV has grown up.

Once a sort of consolation prize for those who couldn't find "real" work in film, Emmy has lost her second-class status. TV now represents some of the best that Hollywood has to offer and an Emmy on the mantel is a new status symbol in La La Land.

How'd that happen? Well, times changed and TV picked up the slack.

Oscar winner (and Hot Springs native) Billy Bob Thornton explains it succinctly. Thornton is up for a Best Actor Emmy for his recent role in the FX miniseries Fargo, which was inspired by the Coen Brothers 1996 film of the same name.

Thornton told the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in January, "When I was coming up, if you went to television from film it meant something was wrong. Now it's the opposite. Now it has a cachet and actors are clamoring to get on television because it's a place we can do the things we were doing in movies."

Thornton told the TCA that in recent years, Hollywood has abandoned midlevel movies and higher-budget independent films.

"[Today] the motion picture studios make big-event movies, broad comedies, and action movies," he said. "For actors who want to do good dramatic work, with dark humor and drama, you have to do it on television. If you want to be an actor, get on a really good series on television, because that's where it's at."

Credit Tony Soprano

Martin Freeman, Thornton's Fargo co-star and rival for an Emmy at Monday's awards, said, "The best writing, I think we can acknowledge, for 10 years has been on television. I think there's much less of a differentiation now [between TV and film] than there was 20 or 30 years ago."

Best writing the past 10 years? It was a decade ago that HBO's The Sopranos (1999-2007) was setting a new standard for adult TV. Before it was finished, the series earned 21 Emmys in 111 nominations.

Viewers can credit (or blame) cable for increasing adult content. Cable, which is not bound by the same content restrictions as the broadcast networks, has been pushing boundaries for years.

"On TV, you have even more creative freedom now," Thornton said. "And I think part of that is because censorship has loosened up over the years and now you have sex and violence and language and stuff on TV. So now all those things that made you not want to do TV when I was coming up in the '80s are gone. So there's no reason not to."

In addition to Thornton and Freeman, some of the other A-list movie stars nominated for an Emmy this year are Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom), Woody Harrelson (True Detective), Matthew McConaughey (True Detective), Kevin Spacey (House of Cards), Jon Voight (Ray Donovan), Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey) and Jessica Lange (American Horror Story: Coven).

Others are Helena Bonham Carter (Burton and Taylor), Cicely Tyson (The Trip to Bountiful), Kathy Bates (American Horror Story: Coven), Ellen Burstyn (Flowers in the Attic), Paul Giamatti (Downton Abbey), Diana Rigg (Game of Thrones), Jane Fonda (The Newsroom), Steve Buscemi (Portlandia), Joan Cusack (Shameless) and Julia Roberts (The Normal Heart).

This list illustrates Thornton's reference to TV's newfound cachet. Among these actors alone there are 14 Academy Awards and 34 nominations.

Current example: Oscar-winner Halle Berry (Monster's Ball opposite Thornton) is starring in the CBS Wednesday night limited drama Extant. Major Hollywood mover and shaker Steven Spielberg serves as one of the executive producers.

"To me, some of the best writing is on television," Berry said in a Zap2it interview last month. "I also love that it's quickly becoming no division between film actors and TV actors. It's becoming OK to go wherever the good writing is, wherever the great characters and storytelling are. And if truth be told, it's becoming a lot easier for people to see your work on television."

Future example: Two-time Oscar nominee Viola Davis will star in ABC's How to Get Away With Murder this fall on ABC. She told the TCA press tour, "The day of choosing TV over film and TV somehow diminishing your career as an actor or actress has changed. I think people migrate toward material, especially after they reach a certain age, certain hue, certain sex."

tv training ground

Some of this year's Emmy nominees, such as Harrelson (Woody Boyd in Cheers) and Rigg (Emma Peel in The Avengers), began their careers on TV and transitioned to movies. For decades that was the career path as actors hoped to use a memorable performance on the tube as a stepping stone to the more prestigious and lucrative Big Screen.

Examples of former TV stars (and their shows) who moved up to the movies and Academy Awards include Morgan Freeman (The Electric Company); Clint Eastwood (Rawhide); Sally Field (Gidget); Michael Douglas (The Streets of San Francisco); Tom Hanks (Bosom Buddies); Denzel Washington (St. Elsewhere); George Clooney (ER); and the late Robin Williams (Mork & Mindy).

Between them, this bunch boasts 16 Oscars and 29 nominations.

Hoping to transition quickly to film was understandable when there was a stigma to working in television. Early TV was pablum for the masses -- cheap and easy to digest with a commercial break every 10 minutes to pay the bills.

How can an actor do his best work when the action stops every few minutes for an ad with Tony the Tiger, Speedy Alka-Seltzer, dancing Old Gold cigarettes, the Brylcreem man ("a little dab'll do ya"), or Bucky Beaver and Ipana toothpaste?

How could "the idiot box" expect to compete with movies? TV was, as former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Newton Minow put it in 1961, "a vast wasteland."

Much of television today is still a wasteland (I'm looking at you, reality TV), but there are more quality programs, especially on cable, that are as compelling and satisfying as anything in theaters. This year's Emmy nominations reflect that.

Emmy's longtime inferiority complex is understandable for a medium that began, in essence, as radio programs with pictures.

When the first Emmy was handed out Jan. 25, 1949, it went to 20-year-old ventriloquist Shirley Dinsdale, host of the children's show Judy Splinters (also the name of her dummy), for Most Outstanding Television Personality.

By comparison, a couple of months later at the 21st Academy Awards, Oscar was in all his glory. Best Picture went to Hamlet with Laurence Olivier (who won Best Actor). Also earning statuettes in 1949 were Walter Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston got Best Director), Claire Trevor for Key Largo and Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda. Joan of Arc, starring Ingrid Bergman and Jose Ferrer, had seven nominations and won two that year.

Oscar glamour? Among those presenting Academy Awards in 1949 were Ethel Barrymore, Ronald Colman, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, George Murphy, Robert Ryan, Elizabeth Taylor and Loretta Young.

There's no way Judy Splinters could top that.

Granted, that first Emmy Awards ceremony was established by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles solely to honor locally produced programs. But recognizing good public relations when it saw it, the organization expanded as America began to tune in and by the mid-1950s, Emmy went bicoastal.

Emmy got more respectable as America bought TV sets and the so-called "Golden Age of Television" dawned and ran through the '50s into the early '60s.

Despite increased success, TV faced an uphill battle. Hollywood movers and moguls looked at the new industry as a threat, asking why should the audience go out to the movies when they could be entertained at home? To lure the audience back to theaters, producers responded with wide-screen epics (think Cinerama, VistaVision and CinemaScope) you couldn't get on TV.

TV plugged along and by 1988, cable was also eligible to compete for Emmys (previously it had its own Cable Ace Awards). Notice had been served.

times changing

This year, HBO once again leads all networks in Emmy nominations with 99. Far distant No. 2 CBS has 47. FX Networks, with such shows as American Horror Story: Coven and Fargo, has 45, just behind NBC (46), but ahead of ABC (37) and Fox (30).

Demonstrating the changing world of entertainment consumption is Netflix, which last year became the first online-only content producer to be nominated for and win an Emmy (House of Cards). This year Netflix is up for 31 Emmys, including 13 for House of Cards and 12 for Orange Is the New Black.

Other online providers jumping into the "television shows without a TV" format are Amazon, Yahoo, Hulu and even YouTube. Times are changing.

Oscar winner McConaughey, who's up for a Best Actor Emmy this year, has the final word.

Speaking July 19 at the annual TCA Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., he said, "People ask me, 'Why did you go do True Detective, why did you go do TV?' And I've said it before: Quality."

Little Emmy, indeed, has grown up.

Style on 08/19/2014

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