Marvin Kitman

Get in on the 'Action'

June 29, 2000
Web posted at: 11:51 a.m. EDT (1551 GMT)

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(Los Angeles Times Syndicate) -- FX is performing a major public service by bringing back "Action" on Tuesday nights through September 12. A series that has been MIA since December 2, when after the eighth episode of its first season on Fox, it ran into technical difficulties. It was canceled.

FX is rerunning the comedy series in its entirety, including the five never-shown episodes. Who said there is never anything on TV in the summer?

"Action" was the most controversial show of the fall season. People either loved it -- "The best since Seinfeld," according to Jean Scafo of Island Park, New York -- or hated it. "I didn't laugh once," explained my e-mail pal David Solomon. Mostly, they didn't know about it or didn't care.

I cared about it a lot.

It was a remarkable experience in TV comedy, a field overpopulated with young friends and couples making out. It tried something completely different from the usual garbage.

Created by Chris Thompson and Joel Silver, the Fox half-hour was an irreverent, ribald series that nailed the manners and mores of our cultural leaders. The people making movies, "Action" suggested, were crass, self-involved, amoral and greedy.

It did for the movie biz of the 1990s what Kaufman and Hart did in their "Once in a Lifetime" Broadway play about Hollywood morals in the 1920s. It got to the heart, souls and heels of the industry the way Nathanael West did in his classic Hollywood/Babylon novel, "The Day of the Locust."

"Action" is the story of Peter Dragon (played by Jay Mohr), the hotshot head of Dragonfire Films. He is foul-mouthed, cruel, insensitive, egomaniacal -- in other words, your average young film mogul on his way to becoming rich, famous and powerful by exploitively pandering to the audience.

What I liked about "Action" was its basic honesty. Thompson ("Larry Sanders") and Silver ("The Matrix," 1999 and "Lethal Weapon," 1987) have been there.

The casting is inspired. Mohr is brilliant as the producer who always needs to find and make his next hit film. Illeana Douglas is fantastic as the prostitute whose background (as a former child star) qualifies her to be head of development.

And it's hysterically funny at times.

So what's not to like about "Action"?

Well, for one thing, it didn't have a laugh track. The satirical barbs whiz by faster than AK-47 bursts. Raised on a diet of canned laughter, people can be stunned by the real wit.

The humor is rude and crude. They bleep words and even digitize lips.

And, frankly, it is sometimes disgusting, even revolting. But, hey, that's what life is about in Hollyweird. It's a business filled with lying, cheating, back-stabbing people. And I'm only talking about the nice people.

They say the main character (Peter Dragon) isn't lovable. "Larry Sanders wasn't a particularly nice person," as Chris Parker of Union City, New Jersey, has observed, "nor was Archie Bunker, or any character played by Dabney Coleman. How can that old trope persist?"

I have a set of complete "Action" tapes that I play over and over again. And Peter Dragon really does become almost a likable guy. The really unusual thing about the end of "Action" last fall was the lack of whining by the producers about the network. Nobody blamed the lack of promotion or time slots. Management was supportive and enthusiastic.

The only thing that went wrong is that Fox threw a party and nobody showed up. "Action" failed because not enough people watched it.

Fox never had anything compatible as a lead-in to "Action." With FX playing Howard Stern's "Son of the Beach" at 10 p.m., it might finally be party time for "Action."

If "Action" had been on HBO, starting its second season this summer, it would be as big as "Larry Sanders."

On the upside, the movie industry sleeps better on its casting couch with "Action" out of action.

The worst thing about its cancellation is the bad message it sent out to the creative community. "Action" could have opened up the market a little for the next guy with a different idea. But the exact opposite happened this fall. People who went in pitching shows with a different flavor knew they would be rejected out of hand with "Action" being cited as an example of why not to go there.

I suggest you tape all the episodes on FX. This is an American comedy classic the likes of which might never be seen again. Anyone wanting to grow up to be a rich, famous and powerful movie mogulette will find the tapes even more instructive than a summer at the UCLA film school.

Kitman is the television critic for New York Newsday. His column appears regularly on CNN Interactive's Entertainment section. E-mail Kitman at MarvinKitmanShow@worldnet.att.net

(c) 2000, Newsday Inc. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

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