What's Alan Watching?: In Treatment: Season two post-mortem with Warren Leight
--You told me last week that Walter didn't attempt suicide in the Israeli show.
The Israeli show stopped tracking Walter after week 4 and switched over to the daughter. My psychoanalysis of what the Israeli writers were thinking is, the next episode would have been his suicide attempt, and none of them wanted to go there. Because they were all writing about their dad in some way. It was getting to a very dark place with Walter, so they brought in the daughter and talked about lesbianism and India. pff. Mike Leigh films can sometimes get away with that, but we couldn't. good. credit Warren Leight for this season being so excellent where last season was not.
In a weird way, the show is writing the stuff you don't want to write, and going to places you would rather avoid. On top of that, it was fascinating to do the hospital scene. And we built a set, which we've never done, and there was Mahoney, staring out the window, that shot was gorgeous, that was the director, Jean de Segonzac's choice. Walter really was tough in that episode, and I thought, 'Okay.' It was kind of great. Obviously, you could play that whole episode weepy or tough. I had written it where he'd get tough again and say "Get out, get out," but I had assumed there'd be a larger loss of dignity before that, and I thought, 'This is probably correct.' This wasn't about Mahoney's chops; he can do anything.
I messed myself up with the week 6 episode, I got very sad writing it, and I thought, 'Okay, this will work.' It was interesting, because it's about missing your life, and that sense of the loss of your true self early on. Boy, did it resonate on the set with a lot of the older guys. Men, you're not supposed to acknowledge that. But seeing Mahoney weep there, and looking around, and there was a DP all screwed up, he'd just lost his dad.
Who am I to tell Mahoney? You bring John Mahoney in, you listen to him. And he's, in a way, the most people pleasing actor I've worked with.
--Were there any similar situations where the other guest actors were taking the characters in directions you didn't anticipate?
With Alison (Pill) and Hope (Davis), you don't get rehearsal time on this, but they would come in for a read-through, and I would always take their notes. I trust the collaborative process a lot. If there's one good thing I get from theater. I had Edie Falco in "Side Man" (Leight's Tony-winning play), and if something couldn't work for her, it usually meant that her instincts were right and my writing was wrong. Gabriel, too, in the morning, if something wasn't working, if you do 35 of these, you better be able to figure out when he's not happy. It's one of the more collaborative shows. The downside is you're shooting in two days and trying to do it like a play where you rehearsed for four weeks.
--Whenever you did an episode, or a scene, that wasn't in therapy, it was still structured like a therapy scene.
I don't know why I made that a rule, but I felt it's less of a cheat, if it's only two people in a room together. Walter in the hospital room, Mia in her office. Paul at his dad's bedside. It should always be a one-on-one. dyad.
You can imagine an hour-long series of this on network, there'd be a session, and a scene at the bar where they're all hanging out. It'd be a different kind of show. I know what that rhythm would be, and you would never be allowed the intensity of these 20-minute one-act plays. That's a lot of time for two characters to be talking.
--It's a lot more intense than the network version would be.
I was on "Criminal Intent" for six years. We did some very good stuff there, but it's the third one of a tired genre. There are 11 million viewers at times, or even 5 million, which is a number we'll never get, and I get more response to this than I ever did from "Criminal Intent." The people who plug into this show are in trouble, I think. It's a much more visceral experience.
--Before the season, we talked about whether Walter, at his age, is better off for having to examine an unexamined life, and you have that line in the week 6 episode where the other therapist suggests Paul shouldn't have opened Pandora's Box.
I don't think Paul opened it up. From week 1, he saw it. If you go back, you see Gabriel observing a lot early on. Maybe there were surprises along the way. But what you get are this guy whose defenses are about to collapse. So now, what do you do? There was no point. You couldn't shore them up anymore. I talked to shrinks. Some shrinks like (the flood), which tells you something, but it's like, you can never get the guy to this point, but if that's where he is when he comes in, it's about managing the crash when it's inevitable, and having enough of an alliance for when they hit bottom, so they have a person who can help them get back together. ~ f scott fitzgerald the crack up: you don't recover. you become someone else. yes, good that the therapist know that defenses are there to defend against something unbearable. the person needs those defenses, you don't take them away. but if the defenses are no longer holding, you help them find another way, and maybe even that more of a true self can come to life.
I was so moved by that climatic moment with Walter, the end of the sixth session, when he starts crying and Paul walks over near him and puts a hand on his shoulder, and Walter, doubled over sobbing, clutches at Paul's leg.
and it's after Paul is saying he could connect with ~ learn more about 'the other Walter', the one who is not always on duty, and Walter says why would he want to connect to him, to the part of himself who crumbled? and Paul says, "Because I don't think that's the part of you that crumbled." it's the defenses, the on-duty Walter, that crumbled. "I think that's the part of you that wants to live."
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
What's Alan Watching?: In Treatment: Week six in review
"I'm not supposed to malfunction, Paul. That's for other people." -Walter
Wow, and then double wow.
The closing sequence, with Walter doubled over and bawling and wrapping his arms around Paul's leg like a little boy clutching his daddy, was among the most affecting scenes of this incredible week. In fact, I loved it so much, I asked "In Treatment" showrunner Warren Leight (who's been writing most of the Walter episodes of late) about its origins, since he'd alluded to it when I interviewed him before the season.
[ In Treatment: Behind-the-scenes on season two - NJ.com: "In the week 6 Walter episode, there's something I hoped would happen but didn't know for sure until I saw the actors play it: a stunning acting moment at the end of that, Mahoney and Gabriel together. And the question was, now that (it's happened), what happens in week 7? Luckily, week 7 hadn't been written yet, and I remember desperately calling therapists over the weekend to find out what they thought would happen next."
Here's what Leight had to say:
"The truth is, I had been hoping for Walter to breakdown in front of Paul for a few episodes: week four, right after he'd been fired, and week five, in the hospital after his suicide attempt. What was fascinating to me was Mahoney's first take on those two episodes. His Walter stumbled, but he didn't breakdown. And even stayed confrontational. So, after week four, I wrote week five, set it in the hospital, and waited for a breakdown which never came.
After week five, I thought, Walter's defenses are crumbling, but they are all he has, and he won't go down without a fight. So I wrote week six with that in mind. When I got to the last line from Paul, about how the other Walter is the one who wants to live, I thought, 'OK, this will work.' And it did. We had a long talk on the set about the false self and the true self, and how often people split off from themselves to please others or to survive. This seemed to resonate with both actors.
The grabbing of Paul's leg was a spontaneous gesture on Mahoney's part. After the first take, Gabriel came up to me and Paris and said, basically, "How am I supposed to sit in the chair when the man is falling apart in front of me?" He asked if he could go over to Walter, we said yes, and we all decided not to tell John that would be happening. John reacted in the moment, and I think it's one of their strongest moments. Week seven then had to be rethought, to acknowledge, or deny, what had happened in week six.
John would've gone there earlier if we'd asked, but I trusted his instincts. It would take someone like Walter a very long time and a huge amount of pressure before he'd drop his defenses. Older men don't come to therapy easily."
Other than Walter's breakdown, the most interesting part of the episode to me was the comment by Walter's shrink from the hospital, about how Paul maybe opened a Pandora's Box he shouldn't have with Walter. That's what he arguably did with Alex, and what I was worried about in the early episodes of this season.
[What's Alan Watching?: In Treatment: Week two in review: Walter's made it into his 60s, and to a prominent (albeit currently embattled) position in the business sector while managing to ignore the root causes of his pain. Is making him confront his feelings about his brother's death and the rest really going to help him at this late date, or just cause more pain?]
I think the "other Walter" does deserve to come out after all this time, but I can't help but wonder if the Walter who came to Paul as a patient will be better off this way.
"I'm not supposed to malfunction, Paul. That's for other people." -Walter
Wow, and then double wow.
The closing sequence, with Walter doubled over and bawling and wrapping his arms around Paul's leg like a little boy clutching his daddy, was among the most affecting scenes of this incredible week. In fact, I loved it so much, I asked "In Treatment" showrunner Warren Leight (who's been writing most of the Walter episodes of late) about its origins, since he'd alluded to it when I interviewed him before the season.
[ In Treatment: Behind-the-scenes on season two - NJ.com: "In the week 6 Walter episode, there's something I hoped would happen but didn't know for sure until I saw the actors play it: a stunning acting moment at the end of that, Mahoney and Gabriel together. And the question was, now that (it's happened), what happens in week 7? Luckily, week 7 hadn't been written yet, and I remember desperately calling therapists over the weekend to find out what they thought would happen next."
Here's what Leight had to say:
"The truth is, I had been hoping for Walter to breakdown in front of Paul for a few episodes: week four, right after he'd been fired, and week five, in the hospital after his suicide attempt. What was fascinating to me was Mahoney's first take on those two episodes. His Walter stumbled, but he didn't breakdown. And even stayed confrontational. So, after week four, I wrote week five, set it in the hospital, and waited for a breakdown which never came.
After week five, I thought, Walter's defenses are crumbling, but they are all he has, and he won't go down without a fight. So I wrote week six with that in mind. When I got to the last line from Paul, about how the other Walter is the one who wants to live, I thought, 'OK, this will work.' And it did. We had a long talk on the set about the false self and the true self, and how often people split off from themselves to please others or to survive. This seemed to resonate with both actors.
The grabbing of Paul's leg was a spontaneous gesture on Mahoney's part. After the first take, Gabriel came up to me and Paris and said, basically, "How am I supposed to sit in the chair when the man is falling apart in front of me?" He asked if he could go over to Walter, we said yes, and we all decided not to tell John that would be happening. John reacted in the moment, and I think it's one of their strongest moments. Week seven then had to be rethought, to acknowledge, or deny, what had happened in week six.
John would've gone there earlier if we'd asked, but I trusted his instincts. It would take someone like Walter a very long time and a huge amount of pressure before he'd drop his defenses. Older men don't come to therapy easily."
Other than Walter's breakdown, the most interesting part of the episode to me was the comment by Walter's shrink from the hospital, about how Paul maybe opened a Pandora's Box he shouldn't have with Walter. That's what he arguably did with Alex, and what I was worried about in the early episodes of this season.
[What's Alan Watching?: In Treatment: Week two in review: Walter's made it into his 60s, and to a prominent (albeit currently embattled) position in the business sector while managing to ignore the root causes of his pain. Is making him confront his feelings about his brother's death and the rest really going to help him at this late date, or just cause more pain?]
I think the "other Walter" does deserve to come out after all this time, but I can't help but wonder if the Walter who came to Paul as a patient will be better off this way.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Shake & Fingerpop - True Blood 2.4 recap by Jacob p6 | TWoP: Lynda Barry has an interesting thing to say, which is that
some dogs are so beaten by the time you get them, you could spend a lifetime training them to stay off the bed, go to the bathroom in the proper place, not be scared of strangers or men, stop shivering when there's nothing to be afraid of. Stop barking when people try to pet you. You could go nuts waiting for them to pull it together.
And in these cases -- and for us all -- there exists an alternative, which is to go back to the beginning. You let that dog, no matter how old or stinky or terrified or angry, just be a puppy again. You let her have the chance for another mother, a softer and more loving one. You hold her you take the giraffe in your arms, and you rock him. you rock him, speak in soothing tones, and you let her have her way long enough that she realizes she's got a second shot. Now, it's only temporary, and in the wrong circumstances -- and most of the time they are -- this would be disastrous. why. what is the disaster. what's wrong with being like a child again. michael jackson. what's wrong. But if the dog is broken enough, sometimes it's a way to heal.
when I awoke, the animals were there all around me. the giraffe, weeping like flowers in the moon.
inconsolable.
some dogs are so beaten by the time you get them, you could spend a lifetime training them to stay off the bed, go to the bathroom in the proper place, not be scared of strangers or men, stop shivering when there's nothing to be afraid of. Stop barking when people try to pet you. You could go nuts waiting for them to pull it together.
And in these cases -- and for us all -- there exists an alternative, which is to go back to the beginning. You let that dog, no matter how old or stinky or terrified or angry, just be a puppy again. You let her have the chance for another mother, a softer and more loving one. You hold her you take the giraffe in your arms, and you rock him. you rock him, speak in soothing tones, and you let her have her way long enough that she realizes she's got a second shot. Now, it's only temporary, and in the wrong circumstances -- and most of the time they are -- this would be disastrous. why. what is the disaster. what's wrong with being like a child again. michael jackson. what's wrong. But if the dog is broken enough, sometimes it's a way to heal.
when I awoke, the animals were there all around me. the giraffe, weeping like flowers in the moon.
inconsolable.
Friday, July 10, 2009
'I am just a vessel' sings Callahan (Smog).
I am just a view.
Let me, remind me, I am a view. ~ the window. not: what's to look at.
an encounter. a happening. H: the Event. ~unfolding.
"I could while away the hours, consorting with the flowers, if I only had a brain."
and I do - the mind O the mind has mountains - and I can, isn't that wonderful? whiling away, consorting, the mind, the mountains, the view.
I am just a view.
Let me, remind me, I am a view. ~ the window. not: what's to look at.
an encounter. a happening. H: the Event. ~unfolding.
"I could while away the hours, consorting with the flowers, if I only had a brain."
and I do - the mind O the mind has mountains - and I can, isn't that wonderful? whiling away, consorting, the mind, the mountains, the view.
GAZPACHOT: Why Facebook Sucks...
Facebook is just about my worst nightmare. What a shallow vortex. Yes, sure, the tingly thrill, the thrill of people! All that attention from the past and present. All the faces, all the old crushes and curiosities. The drug of memory, the afrodisiac of the past, the cartoon concepts of important people who want y-o-u, without all that stench and awkwardness of actual human life. So this is it - the future!
So what? We're staining our social fabric with this?
I simply don't buy these bullshit "connections." As far as I can tell, two weeks into this experiment, there's no substance. It's an extended high school popularity contest for people who can't let those glory days go. It plays/preys on people's desperation to be included. Really what gets me though is the brazen insult it heaves at technology's potential to offer amazing new forms of communication.
GAZPACHOT: Arcadias and Guantanamos of technology...
I like the iPhone. It's user-made applications are great. Still in the cutesy phase, but I see tremendous potential. This is a piece of technology that can evolve and we can teach it to do many things. Getting back to my vs Facebook, this is just a dead white box that provides a rigid system of rules and cues as to how one should behave in a public space. does it? I mean, the format is not itself int, but how restrictive is it? It's so conservative!! Here's your little text box. Write something cute and clever. Ding! People like you! It has huge ramifications on our collective notion of social space. Facebook is such a small unimaginative place to gather. It reduces us to the banal details of our days well they did change the prompt at the text box from ~What are you doing? to~ What's on your mind? (did anyone write about, comment on that? seems a move toward encouraging more kinds of text box entries, right? more openness?) and leaves us only with our futile attempts to punch our way out of its monotony. It sets the bars low and we look out from behind them, unwilling to own up to the cage around us. what would it like to set the bars high higher no bars? what would an imaginative online gathering place be?
~ an open empty space ~ YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU LIKE
#but we had homepages
and people seemed to default to a boring format of static self presentation:
'I am so&so, this is my homepage, here is my resume; my list of interests; my writing; my art, my family photos.'
# then blogs
which seem to improve on this, maybe, by adding the backward chronology device (a restriction, but a fruitful one?) but people will do as they do, and Gazpachot is one of only a few I find using the blog format in a way of their own, expression of self that strikes me as genuine, interesting, lovely, thoughtful. art!
where more of the blogs I see have a boringly conventional tone (& topics) of day-to-day self-presentation:
'I did this, here is my glib comment on that ... this is how I view myself as an object ~ from the outside ~ as I expect you to see me. 'I am this kind of guy. These are twenty five things about me. It took me a long time to realize that you know what? you don't have to read the whole book if you don't like it! life is too short! Here's what I overheard on the bus this morning. Here's an anecdote about that weird guy at work. Here's my smart flippant attitude about the strangeness of life. Here's my distinctive favoring of the word discombulate (how come it's never just 'combobulate'? and other peculiarities I've observed); of the word spurious; of randomness; ridiculousness. Here's I as an earnest but insincere and unoriginal presentation to the generic audience.'
This. characterization I'm giving, the cliches of tone and topic, these do sound like high school to me, or earlier. adolescence. is that an actual phenomenon? maybe some kinds of adolescents (eg 'educated', that's what I'm thinking right? ~privileged).
adolescents. relatively new to being a person, well, to seeing oneself as a person in the view of the others = a presentation, a character -- and there are typical ways of inhabiting this newness? the way I'm so bothered by, which persists especially in social settings and in writing, has this glibness ~ this liking to characterize things as strange & ridiculous ~ this callous enactment of knowingness.
pretension, I guess. I guess pretention and newness go together.
sure: you pretend to something that you have not yet really inhabited.
you may think you are inhabiting it. you don't know (yet) what it would feel like if you were ~
Facebook is just about my worst nightmare. What a shallow vortex. Yes, sure, the tingly thrill, the thrill of people! All that attention from the past and present. All the faces, all the old crushes and curiosities. The drug of memory, the afrodisiac of the past, the cartoon concepts of important people who want y-o-u, without all that stench and awkwardness of actual human life. So this is it - the future!
So what? We're staining our social fabric with this?
I simply don't buy these bullshit "connections." As far as I can tell, two weeks into this experiment, there's no substance. It's an extended high school popularity contest for people who can't let those glory days go. It plays/preys on people's desperation to be included. Really what gets me though is the brazen insult it heaves at technology's potential to offer amazing new forms of communication.
GAZPACHOT: Arcadias and Guantanamos of technology...
I like the iPhone. It's user-made applications are great. Still in the cutesy phase, but I see tremendous potential. This is a piece of technology that can evolve and we can teach it to do many things. Getting back to my vs Facebook, this is just a dead white box that provides a rigid system of rules and cues as to how one should behave in a public space. does it? I mean, the format is not itself int, but how restrictive is it? It's so conservative!! Here's your little text box. Write something cute and clever. Ding! People like you! It has huge ramifications on our collective notion of social space. Facebook is such a small unimaginative place to gather. It reduces us to the banal details of our days well they did change the prompt at the text box from ~What are you doing? to~ What's on your mind? (did anyone write about, comment on that? seems a move toward encouraging more kinds of text box entries, right? more openness?) and leaves us only with our futile attempts to punch our way out of its monotony. It sets the bars low and we look out from behind them, unwilling to own up to the cage around us. what would it like to set the bars high higher no bars? what would an imaginative online gathering place be?
~ an open empty space ~ YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU LIKE
#but we had homepages
and people seemed to default to a boring format of static self presentation:
'I am so&so, this is my homepage, here is my resume; my list of interests; my writing; my art, my family photos.'
# then blogs
which seem to improve on this, maybe, by adding the backward chronology device (a restriction, but a fruitful one?) but people will do as they do, and Gazpachot is one of only a few I find using the blog format in a way of their own, expression of self that strikes me as genuine, interesting, lovely, thoughtful. art!
where more of the blogs I see have a boringly conventional tone (& topics) of day-to-day self-presentation:
'I did this, here is my glib comment on that ... this is how I view myself as an object ~ from the outside ~ as I expect you to see me. 'I am this kind of guy. These are twenty five things about me. It took me a long time to realize that you know what? you don't have to read the whole book if you don't like it! life is too short! Here's what I overheard on the bus this morning. Here's an anecdote about that weird guy at work. Here's my smart flippant attitude about the strangeness of life. Here's my distinctive favoring of the word discombulate (how come it's never just 'combobulate'? and other peculiarities I've observed); of the word spurious; of randomness; ridiculousness. Here's I as an earnest but insincere and unoriginal presentation to the generic audience.'
This. characterization I'm giving, the cliches of tone and topic, these do sound like high school to me, or earlier. adolescence. is that an actual phenomenon? maybe some kinds of adolescents (eg 'educated', that's what I'm thinking right? ~privileged).
adolescents. relatively new to being a person, well, to seeing oneself as a person in the view of the others = a presentation, a character -- and there are typical ways of inhabiting this newness? the way I'm so bothered by, which persists especially in social settings and in writing, has this glibness ~ this liking to characterize things as strange & ridiculous ~ this callous enactment of knowingness.
pretension, I guess. I guess pretention and newness go together.
sure: you pretend to something that you have not yet really inhabited.
you may think you are inhabiting it. you don't know (yet) what it would feel like if you were ~
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Well, the thrill of people (as you said in your earlier post), yes. People gathering can be thrilling or pleasant or frightening or nauseating, for me. Names & faces of the present, past, further past. People evidence of whom could not before be easily found if I searched the internet using google. And now, here so many of them are, findable, viewable, messagable. I like that at first, then I dislike it. Now everyone persists. Before there was so much disappearance: acquaintances from one place or phase of life becoming only what I remember, only in my mind. Facebook confronts me with their continued reality, and presents to me --through the feed of their text box entries-- these various people mixed together: the friends from middle school when I lived on an American army base in Germany, the friends from the States who I knew before & after that, then from one high school, then from another, from one college, from another, from one city, from another. All still out there keeping on keeping on, and my access to them --at least initially ~ because we can always leave the party & go to our own place to keep talking, right?-- but initially, the access to all these people is through the same interface, has the same frame of the Facebook pageview, presenting them all together, so that the associations of each to a specific place & time of my life is flattened. But, despite my discomfort, is this for the better? To confront me with more of an outer reality, to intrude upon my mental world, where these people had populated only the memories I place them in?
what do you think?
And, that little text box. Well, but you can write whatever you want, you can say whatever you like. anything you like! sing: "you can vote however you like. I said, you can vote however you like.'
and can't our use of Facebook not be about collecting friends, about being popular? can it be about saying things you want to say, seeing what other people have to say, responding to what interests you, interacting?
People gather, and many talk about mostly the banal details of their details, but in this or whatever gathering place, we *can* talk about whatever we want.
Can't we? please?