TV is the New Reading

‘On the Lot’ is a lot of filler

Leading the way into another summer wasteland on network television, we open with an age-old question executives have struggled with for years:

How do you sell 54 minutes of ads for 18 minutes of content and burn up three hours of programming?

At FOX, the answer is: “On the Lot.”

The debut this past week featured washed-up Hollywood has-beens gushing over material that would barely get three stars on YouTube.

Is that unfair? Well, Ang Lee, Sofia Coppola and M. Night Shyamalan were clearly unavailable so it was left to Garry Marshall, Carrie Fisher and guest judge D.J. Caruso to judge this nonsense.

And what nonsense it was! Sifted from thousands of entries – which must have been something akin to swimming around in broken glass – 50 “directors” were chosen. They were given project challenges that sorted them down to 36 hopefuls. That group was then culled to 24, and then to 18.

And even some of them had no freaking idea how to tell a story.

Each of them had to direct a comic short – one minute of funny. It felt like some of them really didn’t understand the assignment.

These wannabes envisioned ... well, since these are “movies,” let’s just give it over to Don “The Voice of God” LaFontaine. Hit it!

In a world ...

IN A WORLD where a woman has to wait an hour – a whole hour – before being able to pee ...

IN A WORLD where a moron uses the “Get a room” epithet inappropriately so is sent to the eternal torments of hell ...

IN A WORLD where a man is changing a lightbulb, and for no apparent reason is suddenly surrounded by costumed idiots while he gulps down a bowl of oatmeal in the dark ...

IN A WORLD where a boss wants a file formatted differently and a hapless clerk struggles to comply ...

IN A WORLD where it seems as though someone might have broken wind ...

IN A WORLD where a woman in labor is distracted by her cellphone and her epidural-induced hallucinations ...

IN A WORLD where a man is berated by his peers for not being able to commit crimes effectively ...

IN A WORLD where a crazy cab-driver ... um ... drives around ... cackling ... and ...

IN A WORLD where a woman meets her blind date in the men’s room ...

... it seemed as though all hope was lost.

That was half of them. Half of these small one-minute projects ranged from poorly conceived to poorly executed and from off-the-mark to just plain dumb.

Seriously, for these people to have grown up in our media-suffused society with the interest they claim to have in making movies and to be so incapable of telling a story, that says something depressing about where the bar is, creatively speaking. Especially since the winner of this contest – yes, one of these people – is going to be working with Steven Spielberg on a $1 million project.

Oy. The budget for antacids alone ...

Spark of hope

I only remember seeing three or four pieces that were remotely interesting, and for one of these, the judges actu-ally took the director to task for doing it wrong.

One of the directors put together a hilarious movie trailer of a poorly planned heist, cutting shot to shot among the hapless idiots planning the heist and their gross incompetence, and the high-roller they’d be up against. One of the funniest scenes was the announcer guy introducing one aspect of their brilliant scheme, which involved “24 angry little ninjas.”

It was stylish, sharp, smart and just plain fun. But while the clip was great in and of itself, the judges complained because now they wanted to see the movie and all they had was a trailer.

I wanted to slap them.

Seriously, FOX, scale back the judges’ incoherent commentary, the babbling of host Adrianna Costa and the little life stories of the contestants and let the work stand on its own. It should be acutely embarrassing to someone that such a small amount of material – an amount which could fit comfortably into a half-hour of programming – was stretched to fill two freaking hours, with a third blocked out for a results show.

That’s right. An hour. To send three people packing. From among a group I personally had spent far too much time with already this week.

As for who got the boot, it was two of the entries I mentioned up there as being especially awful. So that leaves 15 uncertainly capable directors to distinguish themselves in the coming rounds.

Who will make it? I’m not hanging around to find out. I realized very quickly that not only did I not actually care, but summer is simply too short to consume 2-1/2 hours of filler each week.

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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