Creative Loafing: The moviegoer
Bruce Calvert
The moviegoer
Robert Osborne, who hosts this month's '31 Days of Oscar' on Turner Classic
Movies, represents the history of Hollywood. Up next: A new management team
tries to shape the future of the Atlanta-based network.
Published 02.20.08
By David Lee Simmons
"I'm gonna do this again."
Robert Osborne, the 75-year-old host of Turner Classic Movies, takes a few
steps back on the living-room set of Studio C, nestled inside Turner
Broadcasting's Techwood Avenue complex. He's having a hard time wrapping his
lips around the name of the 1966 western Alvarez Kelly, directed by Edward
Dmytryk and starring William Holden and Richard Widmark.
It's the "Alvarez" part that keeps tripping him up, and he knows it. The
monotone suggestion "Slow it down" comes over a speaker from director of
studio production Sean Cameron. They're longtime collaborators, and it's a
long workday. They both know verbal gaffes come with the territory. Over
five days during Osborne's monthly visit to Atlanta from his home base in
New York City, they need to knock out 280 two-minute intro and conclusion
segments for 140 movies.
In a minute, an assistant who's been with Osborne for seven years hustles
onto the set to touch up his feathery silver hair and to adjust his tie,
while Osborne takes a sip of hot water from a TCM coffee mug. There are
times, he admits, when he just can't get into a rhythm.
"I can tell the minute I get out of bed if it's going to be a good day or
not," he says offstage later. "Sometimes even my head will be clear and I
get out of bed and it's just clouded. Or the mouth doesn't work sometimes,
or sometimes you get phlegm in your throat."
Osborne finally nails "Alvarez" on his third try and gets back into a
groove. In just a few minutes he delivers a Trivial Pursuit round's worth of
movie nuggets. It all flows naturally from Osborne's light, measured
baritone - that the 1927 silent Wings, debuting as part of TCM's monthlong
"31 Days of Oscar" programming, was the first movie to win an Academy Award
and was one of Gary Cooper's first major roles; that the 1933 Busby
Berkeley-choreographed musical 42nd Street featured the debut of Ruby
Keeler; that the 1948 Powell-Pressburger musical The Red Shoes inspired a
generation of young ballet dancers; and that the 1954 sea drama The Caine
Mutiny required protracted negotiations with the U.S. Navy to guarantee its
cooperation.
So it goes with Robert Osborne, whose trademark segue in between movies, "Up
next," is as familiar as the trivia he mines with TCM staffers. Though his
once-settled network underwent a rare corporate shake-up last year, he
remains a fixture: the tenured professor in Turner Classic Movies' film
school of uncut and commercial-free presentations.
"31 Days of Oscar," which continues through Sunday's Academy Awards
ceremonies, is Osborne and Turner Classic Movies at their best. The series
highlights 350 Oscar-winning and -nominated works from inside and outside
the Turner vault, famously made formidable back in 1986 when Ted Turner
purchased MGM/UA Entertainment Co. (Turner eventually sold to TimeWarner,
and left the merged company's board two years ago.)
To show off the vault and TCM's licensing prowess, viewers in an estimated
75 million homes this year are given two sets of themed programming: Daytime
features movies by genre, while evenings present movies by the decade. And
the network is introducing 35 new titles, including movies as old as 1927's
Wings and as recent as 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
As usual, Osborne is spotted on weekend afternoons by the Los Angeles-based
Ben Mankiewicz, scion of a movie-making clan. But Osborne is so associated
with TCM that it's difficult to think of another personality who so clearly
defines a network. "I can be Walter Cronkite!" he jokes.
TCM's popular programming and website, paired with Osborne's steady, high
profile, overshadows an unprecedented year of upheaval, which saw the
elimination of almost an entire level of upper and middle management. Turner
executives primarily responsible for larger networks such as TNT and TBS
assumed some of those roles, with others going to remaining TCM employees,
as the more autonomous network is tucked more snugly into the broader
corporate structure. The goal, according to new management, is to leverage
TCM's revenue stream by working more closely with the other networks, which
in recent years underwent their own "brand" overhauls.
"If you said to me, 'Make this into a multibillion-dollar business to
compete with TNT,' that's impossible," says Steve Koonin, who, as Turner
Entertainment Group's president, assumed control over TCM last spring.
"That's not [TCM's] role. And that's why it had to be tucked into a
portfolio and not be on an island - because it has big brothers and big
sisters to help grow it and protect it."
What that means for Turner Classic Movies and its longtime host could be the
75-million-home question. Just how broadly can they expand the "brand"
without diminishing the quality?
Regardless of how that question is answered, there is the ever-steady
Osborne, who has built a career out of his poise, preparation and
personality. He believes in his company, his movies, his mission and his
audience, and is in it for however long he can be.
"It's been great for me," he says after taping his segments. "I've been very
lucky here, and also with my job at the Hollywood Reporter" - where he's
been a columnist since 1982 - "in that I'm part of the package but I'm not
in any corporation, and I understand how that works. Here I kind of work in
my own unit. So I don't get into all that kind of stuff. I realize in any
kind of corporation that's going to happen, but I'm lucky in that I don't
have to get involved with that."
Robert Osborne is the last of a dying breed, a once-aspiring actor who
turned into a Hollywood insider and historian -- an authority but a friend,
a public face revered in private. He's always seemed to be in the right
place at the right time, and if luck is when preparation meets opportunity,
Osborne has prepared with the charm and knowledge to move up in a business
swimming with sharks.
He talks about his career like he does movies, never making a cinematic
reference without context. He mentions his Seattle stage work after
graduating from the University of Washington with a journalism degree and
recalls landing a role in a 1958 production: "The actor I was doing the play
with was Jane Darwell, who'd won the Academy Award for playing Henry Fonda's
mother in The Grapes of Wrath. And she said, 'You should come to
California.' I could stay at her family's house, and I had some friends
there."
His run of luck came in succession. He scored a six-month studio contract
with 20th Century Fox - easy to get back then, he says - and started taking
acting classes.
"Paul Henreid, who played opposite Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, came to
visit a friend who was giving the class," Osborne recalls. "And he saw me,
and he said, 'You know, I'm doing a TV western called "The Californians,"
and I'm directing an episode, and you'd be right for the guy for it."
The studio that owned the show, Desilu, was run by Lucille Ball and her
husband, Desi Arnaz. He wound up being an assistant to Ball while trying to
get his acting career going. She was more impressed with Osborne's curiosity
and knowledge of movies and actors than his acting talent.
"She was fascinated by the fact that I was staying at Jane Darwell's house,
because Lucy loved all the character actors she worked with. She was
fascinated with the Edward Everett Hortons and the Donald Meeks, and those
guys. ... She was fascinated that I knew who they all were. So that's kind
of what attracted her attention to me, was my attention to old movies."
While Ricardo was off on his various extramarital affairs, Osborne says,
Ball often turned her mansion into a repertory movie theater, inviting
Osborne and his friends over to watch old movies and talk about the stars.
Back then, there was no concept of "classic cinema" - new movies opened,
played and closed, never to be shown again.
"They were all [film] buffs like me," Osborne says, "and we all had these 16
mm projectors, and we had no money, but you'd borrow a print from somebody
or somebody had a print, or you would get to know someone at a TV station
who had a print and lend it to you for the weekend. And then you'd gather
your friends together, and you'd pool your money together, and get some
spaghetti and wine and watch these old movies.
"I had a friend who was a dancer in one of Ginger Rogers' nightclub acts ...
and he'd show a movie and he'd get Ginger to come over to watch with us, and
she would talk about how they did this or how they did that," Osborne
continues. "These people loved us because we knew who they were and we cared
who they were and we cared about the process."
Osborne's acting career lagged. He may be best remembered for a spot in "The
Beverly Hillbillies'" 1962 pilot episode. Ball warned Osborne that a nice
Midwesterner like him couldn't hang with the cutthroat New York actors in
Hollywood. ("There'd be this part for a TV show that I'd go read for, and
I'd say, 'Well, George Peppard would be much better for this part!' The
completely wrong attitude.")
She encouraged him to match his journalism degree with his encyclopedic
movie knowledge. Write a book, she said. Even if it's not good, it'll be
impressive at a job interview. And so Osborne wrote a book on the Oscars
that was unique in its inclusion not just of winners but also the nominees.
If a star went to the hospital, TV stations would ask Osborne to appear and
provide a career overview for the evening news. And no matter how many stars
he met, he never seemed starstruck.
"I could watch Lana Turner arrive at a premiere and be so impressed because
it was like, 'Oh my God, this great star is coming to a premiere.' And then
I could have dinner with her the next night, and I wouldn't mix the two up."
After Turner Classic Movies launched in 1994, a task force was established
to find someone who could host the prime-time lineup. At the time, Osborne
was being courted by the dominant American Movie Classics for a daytime
hosting job.
But, according to former TCM executive vice president and GM Tom Karsch, TCM
offered something else: "Yes, to be in fewer homes, but it was to host
movies he cherished - and to be in prime time instead of daytime."
Karsch remembered Osborne from back in the 1980s, when Karsch worked for
Showtime and Osborne at Showtime's sister network, The Movie Channel. "We
even shared the same hairstylist," Karsch recalls over coffee. Karsch, who'd
joined TCM within its first year, thought it was a perfect move.
"Robert is incredibly warm, incredibly gracious," says Karsch, who left TCM
last spring when Koonin added TCM to his duties. "Any stranger that comes up
to him, and you can imagine how many people come up to him with all sorts of
oddball trivia or anecdotes, he treats everyone like they're very important
people. When you come across a person like that, you want to jump on him.
Ann Miller once said during an interview with him, 'You know my career more
than I do!'"
Armed with Osborne's cache and Ted Turner's MGM/UA library, TCM went after
AMC, and after some initial struggles caught up with the network in cable
subscription. By late 2002, AMC had stopped trying to compete in the
classics market, started adding commercials and now focuses on original
programming such as the Golden Globe-winning "Mad Men."
But one thing AMC never had was Osborne, with his connections as a columnist
and with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences; while he's been
the official greeter at the Oscar ceremonies' red carpet only recently,
Osborne has produced an updated coffee-table book on the awards for the past
two decades since the 1980s. His next update, 80 Years of the Oscar: The
Official History of the Academy Awards, is due out on Abbeville Press in
September.
He has become synonymous with Oscars, and the movies, and AMC was never able
to top that.
"There's a casualness to Robert," Karsch notes. "The attempt by the network
from the very beginning ... there already was AMC, which had positioned
itself as nostalgic, like going to the Fox Theatre with all that red velour
... so when we launched we said, 'We'll be the hip guys. We're going to do
this in a way that doesn't turn off an older person. We're going to do it
with a freshness, like a club that you want to be a member.'"
Steve Koonin is known for thinking big when it comes to branding. This is
the man who, near the end of his tenure at Coca-Cola, wanted to celebrate
the new millennium by projecting the Coke logo via laser to the moon.
Over his years at Turner, Koonin helped oversee the successful rebranding of
TNT as the drama network and TBS as the comedy network. After he was named
president of Turner Entertainment Group last year, Koonin turned CourtTV
into TruTV and the local Atlanta station TBS into Peachtree TV. Turner
Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent added TCM to Koonin's duties, which sparked a
departure of some top TCM executives. Koonin won't go into details about the
exodus. But as someone who had to deal with similar corporate shake-ups at
Coke "on a weekly basis," he saw the change as a necessary business move.
"I don't think it's appropriate to talk about why we made contraction
decisions," says Koonin, who adds that he saw "redundancies" in TCM
management. "How many senior marketing folks do you need? How many senior
on-air people do you need? The reason we constantly work with people and
develop people is so they can work on a multitude of brands.
"I don't think that there's been substantive management changes," Koonin
continues. "One or two. I don't think it's substantive in a world of 60-plus
employees."
Within a few weeks, Karsch, the head of TCM since 1995, was gone. So were
Katherine Evans, senior vice president for marketing and enterprises;
Shannon Davis, senior vice president for on-air packaging and original
programming; and Chris Merrifield, vice president and creative director for
TCM on-air creative.
The change basically meant going from more of a vertical management
structure to a horizontal one, with other Turner executives adding TCM to
their duties and TCM executives adding assignments at other Turner networks
to their duties.
As an example of this new structure, Koonin points to Jonathan Karron, who
went from being TCM's director of marketing to vice president of digital
marketing for TBS, TNT and TCM. "We saw that there was opportunity to give
people broader exposure. ... You can learn best practices from each one."
At Turner, like with most networks, it's all about strengthening the
"brand," and the network is contemplating several strategies to do this. The
term in vogue is "brands without borders," which is in keeping with a push
to make the networks function more in concert with one another.
Before, TCM operated more independently of the other networks. But under
Steve Koonin's leadership, the desire is to bring TCM more in line with the
others, which includes cross promotion.
"Around Christmas we did an e-commerce spot on TNT promoting TCM products,"
says Molly Battin, the senior VP in charge of brand development and digital
platforms. "And we saw a spike in our sales."
While the network may have lost some of its management and veteran creative
energy, there seems to be faith that those who remain will maintain TCM's
level of quality. You can see it in Osborne but also in the one-two
programming punch of senior VP for programming Charlie Tabesh and VP of
original productions Tom Brown.
"The great comfort I have not being at the company anymore is knowing that
people like Charlie [Tabesh] are still carrying the torch," Karsch says.
Tabesh, who's been with TCM since 1998, oversees the programming from a
library of 5,000 titles. About 40 percent of movies shown on TCM come from
the Turner library, with the rest coming from licensing arrangements with
other libraries. The complicated arrangements are based on factors such as
how many titles are needed and for how long.
On more challenging projects such as the "Race and Hollywood" series, which
addresses racial stereotypes, TCM lines up academics and film figures to
introduce movies that speak to them.
Tabesh also works in concert with Brown to pair documentaries of film
legends with themed programming of movies that celebrate their work. Among
those is last year's three-hour, Emmy-nominated Brando. And last month, the
network featured the Martin Scorsese-narrated documentary, Val Lewton: The
Man in the Shadows, a partnership of TCM, Scorsese (a huge Lewton fan) and
writer/director Kent Jones.
The documentary kicked off a 10-film series by the horror master including
The Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. TCM also added the doc to sister
company Warner Home Video's re-release of its Lewton box set. "There have
been people like Clint Eastwood or Martin Scorsese with a project they knew
no other network would do, but also, we don't have that budget," Brown says.
"Val Lewton was [Scorsese's] passion project. We were intrigued ... this was
a producer who was very influential in Hollywood but one the average
movie-goer didn't know about."
Future original programming projects include a Race and Hollywood series
focusing on Asian figures in American movies, as well as a serialized
version of the special Under the Influence, in which film critic Elvis
Mitchell interviews actors and directors about movies that influenced their
work.
The financial stakes of all the new deals and partnerships are high,
especially considering that the network is already in more than 90 percent
of the cable homes it can be in. Those cable-operator license fees, which
Variety projects will climb past $200 million in 2008, have a ceiling.
So Koonin is looking for other ways to make more money. If there's one thing
management is most proud of, it's the increased revenue generated from book
and DVD sales. Part of the jump has come from its partnerships with Warner
Home Video and the home-entertainment warehouse Movies Unlimited.
With the TCM name on a movie almost instantly offering a seal of approval,
sales doubled last year from $2 million in 2006 to $4 million. The network
scored another coup with its promotion of an 800-page DVD catalog (priced at
$15 with shipping), which sold 30,000 copies and led to more DVD sales.
"It speaks to classic fans," says Richard Steiner, VP for new
media/interactive. "They love to have something physical in their hands that
speaks to classic film, the ones who like to have it and see it. It
represents a collector's element, and it helps you add to your collection."
So there's a push to drive more people to a website that already draws more
than 1 million unique visitors a month, and which is flush with DVDs and
other merchandise.
"The need is to cultivate that passionate fan base and to create and utilize
and build a community with those folks," Koonin explains. "And if that's a
community that supports you in DVD sales, if it's a community that supports
you in festivals, if it's a community that supports you online, if it's a
community that's going to support you if you have a branded product, that
idea is to take that share of mind, and that share of heart, and develop it
into a share of wallet."
Other changes include TCM's on-air talent. Take the "Guest Programmer"
series. Osborne says the series - traditionally an occasional program - was
inspired from his conversations with everyone from people on the street to
conversations with friends on what TCM should program.
In November, the network spent the entire month of evenings using guest
programmers, including nonfilm-related figures such as Donald Trump and
Atlanta's own Alton Brown of Turner's Food Network.
Rose McGowan, recent star of the movie Grindhouse, whose now-defunct WB
series "Charmed" runs in syndication on TNT, impressed executives so much as
a guest programmer that they decided to hire the 34-year-old for "The
Essentials." The program is used to entice the average viewer to appreciate
classic cinema. After allowing directors Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner and
Peter Bogdanovich to host solo, TCM decided to pair Osborne with a woman
(first film historian Molly Haskell and then actress/author Carrie Fisher).
McGowan debuts with Osborne on "The Essentials" March 8.
"Rose McGowan ... is young and pretty, which doesn't hurt," Tabesh says.
"But she's such a fan. We wanted to use somebody who legitimately loves the
movies, not just putting on a pretty face that doesn't fit. She was so good
[with "Guest Programmer"], she talked about movies with such knowledge and
passion, and she was such a great contrast to Robert."
Maybe the best and worst thing that could have happened to Turner Classic
Movies was AMC's departure from the commercial-free format. Whenever TCM
shows a movie from within the last 20 years, the website's message board
lights up.
This year, Tabesh hatched the dual-theme idea of featuring movies by genre
by day and by decade at night - which, due to timing, meant more than a few
movies from the past 17 years showing up over the weekends. So when a movie
as recent as 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - which is
often shown on TNT - shows up as part of "31 Days of Oscars," Tabesh braces
for an inevitable backlash.
"There are some people who watch the network constantly and some get grumpy
about watching some of the newer ones, and think we're becoming more like
AMC," he says.
But network executives seem content to trade some criticism for showing more
recent, more accessible and less pedigreed Oscar winners. "There's no goal
of introducing more contemporary movies this year," Tabesh says, "but the
goal is to showcase the history of the Academy Awards. ... Some people
definitely freak out when they see a movie from the '90s. We're still living
with this ... from when AMC shifted their format. Everyone is still on edge
from that. [Viewers are still] scarred by that and feel that any movie that
we play from the '80s and '90s, it's, 'Oh my God, they're going the way of
AMC, and they're going to add commercials,' which is not at all true."
The push to broaden the network's appeal risks turning off some TCM
loyalists. The seven-year-old Young Film Composers Competition, in which
five finalists score a 90-second segment from a silent-film classic,
underscored the network's commitment both to silent-film preservation and
encouraging young artists.
The winner gets to score the entire film. Last year's winner, James Schafer,
provided the score for 1924's Beau Brummel, which was aired on TCM last
month. But the project has been shelved while the network tries to "evaluate
the program." That hasn't sat well with some fans.
"I think it's pretty unfair of TCM to suddenly cancel the competition when
so many of you talented composers were looking forward to entering," wrote
one poster on the message board. "Always thought this was a great
opportunity for those with such a talent and interest in silent films to
contribute to and also inspire more interest in some classic films."
Koonin, who notes the response on the message board is limited to 18
comments, believes the value of the program is limited and wants to consider
other potential projects.
"Well, right now we were disappointed in how narrow the scope of it was,"
Koonin says. " ... Nor had it hit on the brand elements that you'd want to
put in a Turner Classic Movies. So we completed it, but we're evaluating
whether to bring it back and see what the call for it is. Young Film
Composers is asking a very narrow group of demographics to do a very
specific task, and there are a lot of other things that we can do with the
brand and that we are doing with the brand that I can't talk about today
that are much larger in scope than this."
Amid the personnel shuffles, new lines of business and programming changes,
one thing is constant: Osborne. His stature in the movie business is
cemented - literally. He earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in
2006, and this past December was given the William K. Everson Film History
Award by the National Board of Review.
Even at his age, Osborne remains a part of the network's long-range plans,
insists Koonin, who will renegotiate his contract extension this year.
"Whether it was a man half his age, they couldn't do as good a job as he
does," Koonin says. "We have every intention to renew him for as long as he
wants to be with the network."
Even out of makeup, he could pass for 65, lines and all. He seems to pace
himself in everything he does or says. "I would love to keep doing it as
long as it's still viable for Turner," Osborne says. "There obviously will
come an age when you're too old to be doing it, I guess, but I'd love to
keep doing it. I feel good, and I love the people I work with. And I love
this product."
This isn't his only Georgia gig. Each April, he hosts Robert Osborne's
Classic Film Festival at the Classic Center in Athens. University of Georgia
journalism professor Nate Kohn conceived the idea in 2005 after doing
something similar with Roger Ebert up at his previous stop, the University
of Illinois. From April 10-12, the pair will present eight classics,
starting with Young Frankenstein and concluding with The King and I. "I've
thought, 'It's so great to have TCM to show all these great films,'" Osborne
says, "but how fun would it be to take these movies ... and show them on a
big screen?"
For a man who once pondered an acting career where youth is everything,
Osborne has put his years and knowledge to perfect use. Even with the
network keeping an eye on younger viewers, Osborne remains unfazed. "I've
thought of myself as making choices as to how it would affect TCM," he says,
"but I've made choices like that all my life. My dad was a high school
principal and a superintendent in this small town I grew up in. There were
certain things I wanted to do that I knew I shouldn't because it would
reflect badly on my dad.
"So I was not a problem child, but I never felt I needed to rebel because
everybody always gave me a lot of space, and kind of let me do what I wanted
to do. But all I wanted to do was go to the movies."
--
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
jarretes
referred to Desi Arnaz as "Ricardo" at one point? An understandable
slip, but you'd think someone would have caught it before publication.
-----
Steve Jarrett
http://vintagevideo.blogspot.com
