Thursday, January 15, 2015

The envelope please....

X number of years ago, back when I was a pretty serious NASCAR fan, NBC started doing the races. To kickoff their coverage a very excited Brian Williams opened up the first race. He acted like it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him, as if he had been waiting his whole life. He was a huge fan, he declared, and NASCAR was becoming a seriously major 'sport' in America. Then as now, Brian Williams hosted the Nightly News- which I rarely watched- and I thought it quite odd that a guy in his position would be called on to host like that. Didn't NBC have anybody besides their leading news anchor for this new gig of theirs? I guess he's a trooper and a showman. I think that's what I don't like about him, the showman part.

He's "in the business". Not so much the news business but, the entertainment business. That was his phrasing when he recently discussed his actress daughter's show-biz career. He slow jams the news on Jimmy Fallon and pals around with my favorite comedic terrorist, Jon Stewart. So why don't I like him?

Well, mind you, I don't hate him. I just like my journalists to be Walter Cronkite. Brian Williams is no Walter Cronkite. Really, no one is today. Bob Schieffer of CBS comes close. Bob probably wouldn't slow-jam the news. Walter certainly would not have gone on Jack Parr or Carson and slow-jammed either. We didn't have to put up with this shit from Cronkite, or Huntley and Brinkley.

Brian's daughter is the actress, Allison Williams. Allison is quite lovely and talented. She recently did a live presentation (on NBC, of course) of Peter Pan where she played the title role. I watched some of it, but there was a rival program that got m attention, probably live football. As far as this reviewer knows, she did a fine job. Evidently her dad did the news from the set that week to promote the show. That irks me but the news is a money-maker for the networks now. Maybe he would have promoted it even if his daughter wasn't the lead? I recently found out that she has a role on the HBO series, "Girls". I don't have HBO so, I have never seen it. My perfunctory knowledge of it from reading the newspaper and the internet alerts me to the fact that the shows pushes the envelope. Well, how much envelope pushing can a show that stars a network news anchor's daughter really do? Well, analingus. 

Yikes, huh? Well, that is premium cable.... That's quite an envelope.

As Brian Williams explained, "...everybody has to remember it's acting...no animals were harmed in the filming and ideally, nobody gets hurt..."

At least he didn't say it was "tasteful".

You know how cinemagical Hollywood is so, I'm sure it was well done and not as graphic for the actors as you'd expect. One of my favorite lines not heard on film was between the great George C. Scott and an actress he was filming a love scene with. "I apologize in advance for anything that does or does not happen, my dear."

Since I haven't seen the scene, I can't speak to how well it was done. Or even why except, well, the envelope pushing. All I can say is, we never had to put up with this shit from Cronkite's kids.




4 comments:

Maggie said...

Hmm... I like him, but yeah, I was a bit perturbed when his daughter kept showing up on NBC news. It's good to have connections, I guess.

ex-ferrer said...

That's entertainment!

I bet she hosts SNL this year. I think daddy did. A family tradition....

Gravitas Counts said...

I used to like Brian Williams a lot but I agree that he's become too much of an entertainer. Hosting SNL seemed to change things and he's sort of spun off from there.

These days I prefer watching Charlie Rose in the morning. He's better than anyone who's on in the evening. His show late at night is good too. With the internet, those nightly news shows are becoming less and less relevant.

ex-ferrer said...

Agreed on Charlie Rose!And on the nightly news too. I'm not much on local news either except when I'm on the road. I always liked small market news as a change of faces if not pace.