Topic: Ed O'neill - Two L's.

[8ullfrog]

This is Pt. 1, pts 2 and 3 should show up in recommended.

I found this riveting, dropped my Saturday to watch it. Certainly meets 6's "Better than a documentary on a pedophile" bar of quality.

I found it interesting how his agent bent him out of some seriously meaty parts, but if he'd hit those notes, maybe Ed Harris would have been screwed out of a film career. And we never would have had Al Bundy!

I also like that he views acting as a punchcard. Don't overact, just sell your character as a real person. The Platoon and Deadwood parts were shocking, and I don't think I was ever bored, even though this is damn near three hours.

I also feel like his "button" story backfired on him. He said he had a button to cancel the actress who played his neighbor, but in reality, he was pulling the hammer back on the whole series, and essentially pulled the trigger by being a jackass.

I also noticed some bitterness when he talks about Steven Spielburg and Helen Miren being fans of Modern Family, when they probably wouldn't have given Married with Children the time of day.

Seriously, check it out.

[6pairsofshoes]

Married with Children was an entertaining show, although it sort of grew mannered in its later seasons.  I admired both O'Neill and Katey Sagal, the two principal actors in that series.  I liked Sagal in Sons of Anarchy, a series that I watched twice.  O'Neill in Modern Family has received much critical acclaim, and I've yet to see it.  This makes me want to check it out.

[8ullfrog]

I don't care for it. [Modern Family] It hits that niche of both cringe humor and what I call "White Panic Comedy" which is like a scallywag child of slapstick and jumbled up yelling. The Yuppie Mom - Claire, is particularly bad about this, and I really hate the fat gay dad, he's just a horrible person all around and you're just supposed to ignore that and consider him lovable. But that has almost nothing to do with this interview series. I think it gets about 20 minutes in the third segment.

He goes into the way the show [MWC] dissolved towards the end, and it's pretty clear egos ran rampant. There is a short video on youtube of Amanda Bearse trying not to talk poo about Ed O'neill, she calls it the thumper rule.

Ed claims the show just had nowhere left to go.


Another thing I picked up is that he's always wanted to play a Westie, and always gets stuck playing a cop OPPOSITE the Westies.

I really want to visit the alternate universe where he played Al Swearengen.

[8ullfrog]

I think this is the highest I've seen your post count

I really liked the part where Ed talked about how stuck up the main players in the soap operas he was on were, while he was doing it to pay rent. You know, like a normal human person.

Still, $500 a week in 1980's money means you can buy ALL the video games! I don't get the impression Ed was much of a gamer though.

[6pairsofshoes]

I love Married with Children (Heck - I lived through Married with Children - I have a boy and a blonde girl!), and can't bring myself to watch Modern Family (I most definitely am not Modern, and would not survive in a "Modern Family").

Sitcoms are generally not very satisfying so I'm surprised to see such high critical acclaim for Modern Family.  But the critics love lots of stuff that I don't so it depends on which critics hold it in high esteem.  I rarely watch such shows so I've been too lazy to look into it.  I have a hard time visualizing chris as Al Bundy, though, regardless of the number and gender of his progeny.  In fact, it's hard visualizing him at all, given all we've ever seen is the back of his head in a photo taken by Jock a million years ago. 

I did tune in for 5 minutes of it just now.  I was bored.  I'm not easily bored.  abc allows for free online streaming.  Thanks, but no thanks.  To each his own.  I watch terrible tv that most people would find embarrassing, so it's not like I'm a snob or something.  https://abc.go.com/shows/modern-family/episode-guide/season-10/18-stand-by-your-man

I was watching public tv last week and saw Miss Nancy from Romper Room interviewing John Waters.  Just one more reason to love Baltimore.  Married with Children is based in Chicago, city of the broad shoulders, but when it comes to sleaze, it can't hold a candle to Baltimore.  Waters only makes movies, though, so that's another matter.  Still, there's a celebration in these shows (including MWC) of the downtrodden working classes who have no pretensions or aspirations to Culture. Maybe that's why they're so popular.

[8ullfrog]

I never did!

My uncle calls me super poor for not doing more to "fit in". Idiot buys Lucky jeans. 501's were always enough for me.

I was like, in my head because I was his slave, "fool, I have to drive you to Newark to pay child support, in your beat to poo F150 that doesn't have power steering, and you're lecturing me on culture?"

I liked the poorness of the bundy's. Yeah, it's a stretch that a dude working at a shoe store could afford that house NOW, but back then I could see him paying the mortgage... and not much else.

Huh, maybe that's part of why I hate sitcoms. Their problems are so alien.

[6pairsofshoes]

Their problems are so alien.  Yeah.  And sanitized.  Roseanne Barr was supposed to be some kind of blue collar champion but I found her phonier than most.  Geez, give me "I Love Lucy" before that bland effort at every family.

I used to watch I Love Lucy all the time.  It never got old.  When Lucille Ball died, I broke down sobbing.  She was like my ideal wacky housewife.  But Katey Sagal's musical whine "Al" sort of struck home for some reason.  Maybe it's because she sings professionally.  The inexplicable longevity of the Bundy's marriage underlay part of the comic premise of the show.  And it seems to translate to the Simpsons, although there's more affection there.

I used to like the title sequence of MWC because of the great views of the Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park.  Chicago is a beautiful city and that fountain is such an anchor.  It was part of the great Chicago Plan improvements in the late 19th early 20th century/but I digress.

[8ullfrog]

Funny you say that, my mom's skinny, but the Conners were essentially my world view, despite being an only child.

The Super Nintendo was a big out for my dad, and when we'd eat dinner with the intermingled family, it was in a kitchen very much like the one in Roseanne.

Now if you're saying she herself rang false, yeah. But John Goodman acted the hell out of that part.  As to Lucy, My mom's gone in on a lot of schemes, and it's not funny like on the show, it lead to real, damaging monetary consequences, but my roommate calls them Lucy & Ethel situations.

Like when mom decided to get in on an e-shopping mall. I still use that as my primary business email, but it was 10k into a black friggin hole.

[6pairsofshoes]

Thanks for the analysis.  And I think it's generally on point, especially with respect to Modern Family.  But even MWC had a couple that served as a comic foil to the Bundys that is analogous to the cultural norms of your Modern Family "modern society."  They were more affluent with pretensions of upward mobility and the related cultural baggage, but if memory serves (I can't remember their names or specific examples because it's been more than 20 years since I've seen the show--the Rhoades--had to look up on Wikipedia) they were at times secretly envious of the Bundys in the way that the latter were free to express opinions and desires that their upper middle class norms prohibited.