Rotophonic

Always a hypocrite, Tom DeLay shows a side of his personality that, I think, would amaze the most loyal Bush Republican. Speaking to clearly hungover College Republicans, Tom DeLay argues that aborted fetuses might have prevented our immigration crisis. It’s about half way through the video, but the whole thing is pretty great. Wow.

Thanks, Max Blumenthal.

While I seem to rarely write about television despite working in it, the NBC “special” Victoria Beckham: Coming to America so barely represented the notion of entertainment that I’m compelled to give it a few lines here. As someone who has seen reality television produced, I couldn’t restrain myself from uttering, “Fake, fake, fake, fake!” at the television during the airing of NBC’s newly compressed one-hour special. I can only hope one thing: this show is never rerun on TBS every other weekend like it’s Eddie Murphy namesake.

While pseudo-reality shows craft situations that challenge the celebrities featured and make good TV, every shot in this pathetic epic was a staged, piece of crap (Really. These 42 minutes are that long). Here’s the episode breakdown:

- Photo shoot with David and Posh in Spain. Settle in Becks lovers as this is the last time you’ll see him until the final 40 seconds.

- Slow motion shot of Victoria arrving to mucho paparazzi as Victoria feigns surprise at the attention caused by the show’s press release about her arrival.

- Arrival at the rental house with champagne toast, soon to be followed by arrival of new American personal assistant: faux dramatic moment—the assistant thinks David Beckham is cute. Drama, drama, drama

- Goes for a drive, gets pulled over (probably by a fake cop), cheats on driving test (had to prevent my wife from forcibly changing the channel)

- Shopping therapy

- Faked surprise meeting with Perez Hilton to show him how cool she really is. Oh, Perez. The only good moment in the show as we actually learn how deep the Victoria pool truly is: She never eats on camera and intentionally wears an unhappy face in public. Yes, folks, that’s as deep as it gets.

- Lunch and tequila shots with a whole room full of women who looked like plastic surgery scarred AbFab Patsies. Fake.

- little league practice to assess Victoria’s ability to throw out a first pitch at a Dodgers game: shockingly the verdict is poor. Fake

- The above mentioned Dodger game with a 10 second moment on the field turned into a 5 minute moment of suspense as we wonder if she can toss the ball ten feet. Dramatic moment: “Where’s the ball?” Also, fake.

- VO about the flight back to arrive with Beckham together. 30 seconds of footage of the paparazzi mob around Becks and Posh.

- “God bless, America!”

- Apology to wife for making her endure this show.

Having to restage the show from six half-hours down to one hour must have been challenging for the 20 editors and AE’s assigned to this project, but thank heavens someone at the network caught a look at one of the dailies and sought to minimize the misery for the audience, while still giving the Beckhams their big appearance on American TV. Even the staged vignettes throughout this painful hour were so obvious that I had to force my wife to continue to watch. Reality editing lesson one: if the subject is being shot at dusk, don’t cutaway to a reaction shot in broad daylight. Sorry Tommy Lasorda.

I’d love to hear more from the players involved with the production of this show. I feel for you. If you have any information on the trials and tribulations endured in the production of this piece, drop me a line at rotophonic at rotophonic.com and I’ll keep your identity safe.
[photo credit: Joesete1]

If you want to watch the trainwreck that is post-war Iraq from the inside, the Center for American Progress is screening the brilliant film No End In Sight on July 24th at 7PM at the Landmark Theater. You need to RSVP on their site. The film will be released on July 27th.