Hollywood Trend Alert! Is Quiet the New Noisy?

Noisy is the new buzzword in television, and as several TV execs told me recently, the noisier the series, the better. In the old days, a few unsolved murders and a little sexual tension was enough to titillate the masses. But in today’s world of 10 billion channels, it’s no longer just about a cool, high-concept idea. For a show to succeed, it needs to make a frigging cacophony.

So, if your show’s main character is a time-travelling, gay, bi-polar cannibal who teaches Sunday school by day and by night, battles zombie prostitutes… congratulations! You might just be on to something. The equation for success in the TV biz being: More + More = More!

The word noisy so well-encapsulates the ideal of the modern television that it has officially dethroned Hollywood’s former favorite catchphrase, “fresh and edgy.” (A note to aspiring screenwriters still using the term “fresh and edgy,” you might as well describe your series as  “groovy” and see how well that goes over.)

It’s like that AT&T commercial where the guy asks the roundtable of kids, “What’s better—doing two things at once, or just one?” and the kids all shout “Two!” But when did we decide it was a good idea to listen to six-year-olds? These are people who actually laugh at The Chipmunks movies, people who prefer One Direction over Radiohead, people who’d eat an entire bag of marshmallows for dinner if we let them. Of course children (and their teenage counterparts) want noisy television. They are noisy. Which is why, whenever I find myself in a room full of kids, it takes everything in my power not to start shouting at them to zip their lips and calm the f*ck down.

My point is:  isn’t our world loud enough? Especially when it comes to TV. From the splashy lower-third promos constantly assaulting us, to the fact that roughly half of us now watch while simultaneously Tweeting, we have forgotten everything we once enjoyed about television—namely, the ability to lay down on our couches, get lost in a story, and forget all about our crazy lives.

And let’s not forget the shrill onslaught of commercials that come booming into our living rooms at alarmingly high decibels these days. After years of advertisers turning it up to eleven, the FCC has finally managed to avert their lecherous gaze away from celebrity nipple-slips in order to do their actual job. And for the past few weeks, they’ve been banging their brooms on the ceiling like the angry grandpas they truly are, shouting for advertisers “Turn that racket down!” The only problem: the damn commercials are so loud no one can hear them.

Of course, there are some cable networks that are making an impact with quieter, slower shows, like Sundance Channel’s great new series, RECTIFY. As many people have already commented, RECTIFY’s two-hour premiere episode was extraordinarily slow-paced—refreshingly, even shockingly so. But maybe that’s what it takes to truly stand out in today’s noisy world. Could it be that successful television isn’t just about who can create the biggest racket? Maybe being quiet actually makes the biggest noise of all.

Author’s note:  In the interest of full disclosure, I might be turning into an old crank, like my mother, back in the 80’s, who was baffled by my love of “quick-cut” music videos on MTV. “You’re going to get epilepsy,” she would warn as I lay, transfixed on the floor of our shag-carpeted family room. I recently went onto YouTube and re-watched some of these quote-unquote fast-paced music videos with my son, and we both agreed that by today’s standards, they seemed almost laughably slow.

 

The Art of Asking (Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk)

Amanda Palmer says don’t make people pay for music. let them ask. Could the same wisdom apply to the world of books, film, & TV?  Hmmm…

 

Battle of the Boy Bands (with prizes!)

Are you a die-hard 1D fan?

One Direction

 Or is The Wanted the one that you want?

Maybe you’re kicking’ it old-school, locked in a decades-long feud with your BFF over the various merits of the Backstreet Boys versus NKOTB.

Either way, it’s time to let your opinion be heard!  And if you’re lucky, you may even walk away with some prizes!

Just type the name of your favorite boy band in the comments section of this post and you’ll be automatically entered to win a $10 iTunes gift card plus a copy of the ultimate fan-girl novel, REUNITED.

Big TIme Rush

Level3

Jonas Brothers

NKOTB (the band formerly known as New Kids on the Block). Just like when Kentucky Fried Chicken started calling itself KFC.

Contest ends Friday July 6th.  Open to U.S. residents only.  And enter the poll, too!  But you must leave a comment if you want to win the prizes!

Can’t a 40-Something Woman Read “Seventeen Magazine” in Peace?

My husband frequently tools on me for reading SEVENTEEN and TEEN VOGUE, even though he knows I do it for work.  As a young adult novelist and screenwriter who writes a lot of teen movies, it’s important to stay up to date with the teen culture and lingo.  Which, as I often remind my husband, makes my subscriptions tax deductable.

But the thing is, I’m secretly glad I have an excuse to read these magazines.  And not just because I like to keep up with the fashion trends for Prom season.  These magazines aren’t intended for me, but like unearthing a repressed traumatic memory, I believe they are healing the teen girl inside of me, the young me who flipped through their pages filled with self-loathing because she didn’t look like the models, no matter how much Clearisil and Noxema she slathered on, the girl who felt like a reject because didn’t have a boyfriend about which to fill out the ubiquitous Love Quiz at the end.  Or, at least a boyfriend who wasn’t gay.

I think there’s something very valuable in grown women  (and men!)  looking back on that time in our past when were first stepping (and mis-stepping) into our adult selves. As someone who writes about and for teenagers, I’m glad I’m able to use my own experiences to offer some wisdom to teenagers today.

And apparently, I’m not alone.

Below are some fun and entertaining resources for that rich and fascinating intersection of the adult and teenage worlds.   Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

1. THE JV CLUB PODCAST

Presented by Nerdist.com and produced by the wonderful Janet Varney, this weekly, hour-long podcast features Janet interviewing popular actresses and comedians about their teen years.  Hilarious, wise, and absolutely addictive!

2.  DEAR TEEN ME

Dear Teen Me is a blog of letters, written by YA authors, to their teenage selves.  And now, it’s a book, too!  Read my Dear Teen Me post here, and peruse hundreds of others.  So heartening.  So 80′s.

3. YOUNG ADULT

If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s worth checking out.  Definitely the dark side of that strange phenomenon known as Grown-Ups Who Are Stuck in High School.

Shave It for Later

I was only twelve years old when I begged my mother to let me start shaving my legs.  She said I was too young, I whined and pleaded, and ultimately, she sat me on a folding chair in the backyard and slathered my legs with Nair.

Part rite-of-passage, part torture session, my introduction to the world of hairless legs was followed up by mom’s pit-shaving tutorial, along with a package of knee-skinning disposable razors.  (Anyone ever note how Bic rhymes with nick?) But after one particularly bloody slip-up on my ankle (no one ever believed me, but I swear I saw bone), I decided to take matters into my own hands and biked down to the local pharmacy to buy myself a sturdy, grown-up and sophisticated Personal Touch.  The package came with three free replacement blades and I remember thinking its fake tortoise shell appearance was “classy.”

Goodbye, old friend. I know you'll be shaving armpits in heaven.

Ten years later, when I lost my razor, I was disappointed to learn that Personal Touch had replaced the yellow-flecked brown of the faux tortoise shell with a more uniformly-colored plain brown plastic.  But what that second razor lacked in style, it made up for in reliability, lasting me all the way from my early 20’s up until this morning.  And it still works just fine.

The sad thing is, I can’t find blades for it because they stopped making Personal Touch razors about five or six years ago.  Much like that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine stockpiles boxes of the discontinued Today Sponge, I hoarded my finite supply of Personal Touch razor blades for years.  Then, when my stash ran out, I bought them on eBay.  And then that just got crazy.  Or, I guess, crazier.

Elaine contemplates her date's spongeworthiness.

So last week, I finally caved in and bought a slick, overly packaged mega-blade monstrosity, but only because it promised to give me creamy-smooth legs like J-Lo.  Which means I’m officially saying goodbye to my Personal Touch razor blade.   Goodbye, old friend.  I know you’ll be shaving armpits in heaven.

Cheez-Its, Democracy, and Me

My husband is a Cheez-Its fan, and since he brings his lunch to work every day, we often have a box in the house.  Which is how I became aware of the Cheez-Its “Vote for the Top Cheese” campaign currently on the back of the box, where snackers are urged to log on to Facebook to vote for one of the eight candidates, each personifying a different flavor of cheese.

There’s Colby, the bowtie-wearing “people’s cheese,” and Cheddar Jack, adorned in a bowler tie and cowboy hat (not to be confused with Pepper Jack who wears a top hat and monocle, because the guy apparently thinks he’s Brie).   The whole thing is completely cheesy.  Maybe it’s supposed to be.   So why am I so upset that only one of the candidates for Top Cheese is a woman?

Poor Mozzarella, batting her long eyelashes demurely in her matching pearl earrings and necklace.  She looks more like Baby Swiss’s mother than the next Commander in Cheese, even as she promises to be a “cheese for change.”  Surely such a bland cheese will never win the office of Top Cheese.  But I know that someday there’ll be a female Cheez-It worthy of that role.

The Coolest Teddy Bear in the Universe

Inside the caustic exterior, I’m a pretty sentimental person. Show me a video of an animal befriending and/or helping an animal of another species and I’ll weep like a newly crowned Miss America.  I’ve been known to tear up when the national anthem is played at youth sporting events, and I feel like my heart might just burst into a million tiny pieces whenever I see a baby call a slighter younger baby a baby.

So, I was similarly overwhelmed with emotion when my baby, now almost eight, went to Build-a-Bear with his grammie and came home with this.

 Behold Rex, the coolest teddy bear in the universe.  Note the aviator sunglasses, camo skin, and jeans slouched down to Lil’ Wayne proportions.  Yet, at the end of the day, Rex is still just a fuzzy, snuggly teddy bear.  Because even though my little boy aspires to be cool like Rex someday, right now he is a second grader who likes to sleep with his stuffed animals.  Bad-ass, skater-dude stuffed animals.

cool glasses

Johnny is definitely deserving.

You know what really bugs me these days is how everyone wears cool glasses.  I mean, when did everyone decide to jump onto that train?  It used to be that cool glasses were actually just for cool people, but now, it’s suddenly okay for your fat Uncle Dale from Ohio to walk around in these tiny, angular wire frames like he’s a frigging German art director. And it’s not that I don’t like cool glasses frames.  Obviously I do.

But my problem is, if everyone’s wearing hip glasses, it makes it impossible to tell who’s cool just by looking at them.  Now you actually have to go talk to people.  I mean, who has that kind of time?

We are the Champions

In a few hours I’ll be heading off to a Junior Lego League event with my son.  And even though the email assured me this event is NOT a competition, it also mentioned that there WILL be prizes.  Because, as any modern parent knows, our kids are all winners, all the time.

I’m not trying to diss Lego League specifically.  It’s really no different from any of the other things my seven-year-old son does, like soccer or baseball, where we grown-ups mandate that “we don’t keep score” even as the children themselves tally up the points in their heads with a Rain Man-like precision.

Then, at the end of the season—which hasn’t been a competition, kids, it’s just about having fun—we hand out trophies.  But who doesn’t deserve a shiny reward after a long season of “having fun”?

The weird thing is, I don’t know a single parent who actually believes in this.  Not one.  We read the New York Times.  We’ve heard about the phenomenon of “tea-cup” children—kids whose parents overly rewarded them, protecting them from any unpleasantness or taste of failure, so that by the time they go to college, they shatter into pieces when the tiniest little thing goes wrong.

So why the heck do we keep on handing out trophies to five-year-olds?  Why don’t we have the guts to stand up to this silly trend and stop the madness?  Because if someone actually took away the golden statues at the end of a soccer season, I swear, I’d give them a prize.

ADDENDUM:  So yesterday’s Lego event was lovely.  And even though they handed out prizes to everyone, instead of trophies, they were cool, home-made lego statuettes (created by high school students) with very distinct awards given to the top three teams.  And despite the fact that my son’s team didn’t walk away with the biggest trophy or the #1 prize, he felt proud of his work and had a wonderful time.

You Have the Right to Remain Sexy

Since the time we became friends in high school, and all through our twenties, my friend Jane* and I had a running joke about stripper cops.  It’s hard to say exactly what we found so hilarious about the concept, but the subject often wriggled its way into our conversations with  a glib (and deeply ironic) lechery.

For me, the best moment of the fantasy was when the man assumed to be an officer of the law dropped his ruse (and his pants) and delivered his Miranda rights punch line:  “You have the right to remain sexy.”  Of course, the flashing blue lights would be the perfect accompaniment to Donna Summer’s “It’s Raining Men,” which, as all women and gay men know, happens to be the only song men ever strip to.

So when it came time to celebrate my friend Jane’s 30^th birthday, it was with this deluded scenario in mind that my friend Kim* and I decided to order Jane a stripper cop.  After all, we wanted to make Jane’s 30^th birthday special.  And what could be more special than a gyrating half-naked policeman?  Plus, there was already a big birthday bash planned at Kim’s house, so when the police barged in “to break up the party,” it would seem so believable, no one would ever suspect our ploy.

Kim and I booked the stripper cop, and for the next few weeks, whenever I imagined the look on Jane’s face as some handsome beefcake cuffed her against his squad car, I giggled to myself.

But by the time Jane’s birthday actually arrived, I’d started to have second thoughts.  And instead of enjoying myself at the party, all I could do was obsess about the fact that our sardonically amusing fantasy was about to become a very real reality.   Every ten minutes I’d pull Jane aside for a worried tete-a-tete.  This was going to be weird, wasn’t it? I whispered anxiously.  Maybe we didn’t really think this through.  Or maybe, Kim mused, we just need to drink more.

To make matters worse, the stripper cop was lost, and as the rest of our friends partied on, getting looser and more relaxed, Kim and I were now periodically fielding calls from this man, attempting to guide him through her labyrinthine neighborhood of one-way streets.  His gruff Boston accent was the first turn-off. But even more unpleasant was the realization that this man on the other end of the line was an actual human being.  And the only reason he was driving in circles through Allston Massachusetts at 11:00pm on a Saturday night, about to take off his clothes for a bunch of strangers, was the only reason anybody did–because he needed the money.  And the harder Kim and I tried to help this guy find us, the less we wanted him to come.  But now that we had set this plan in motion,  we felt powerless to stop it.  Plus, if he didn’t strip, there would be no birthday gift for Jane.

By this point, I was starting to feel sick, and it wasn’t from the six beers I’d chugged.

But it was too late to turn back now.  The stripper cop was already pulling into Kim’s driveway, and not behind the wheel of a shiny blue squad car, but in a rusted out 1991 Ford Fiesta.   Before he even got out of his car, all ambivalence about the issue vanished and we knew with a grim certainty that we’d made a mistake.  But Kim and I just stood there, paralyzed with dread as we handed our $150 cash to this short, unattractive stranger and told him how best to sneak attack our oldest, dearest friend.  ”Use the back stairs and look for a pretty blonde about six inches taller than you.”

From the very first moment he threw open the kitchen door and announced there’d been a noise complaint, I knew we were done for.  Even if he’d attempted to hide the boom box in his hand, no one would have believed he was a real policeman for a second.  Even worse, nobody cared.  In the harsh light of the kitchen, Kim and I took a better look at this man we were now in collusion with—noting every detail of his acne-scarred face, the spiky crispiness of his thin, overly gelled hair, and his pained expression at having to go through with this.

We could have stopped it right then and there, but instead, Kim and I dutifully pointed him towards the living room, where Jane was on the dance floor, unaware that the fun she was having was about to come to a screeching halt.

She knew as soon as she saw him.  Even before he turned on his boom box, or told her, in his dull, mechanical Southie accent that she’d been “a wicked bahd girl.”  Most people opted to leave the room before the striptease began in full, but a few onlookers gathered around Jane, like witnesses to a car crash–the birthday girl, it’s only victim.

There was no Donna Summer song as the stripper cop peeled off his uniform, performed a few rusty breakdancing moves, then proceeded—with nary a hint of irony—to push Jane to the floor in order to repeatedly thrust his speedo-clad package in her face.  Because after all, what better way is there to say, “Happy birthday, friend?”

The lesson here being that things that are fun to talk about, are not always fun to actually do.

*names have been changed to protect the guilty.