One of the ways you can distinguish high culture from the other stuff — and I’m assuming the distinction is one of the reasons you’re holding this section — is that you can enjoy bad popular culture, but not bad highbrow culture. There is no pleasure to be gleaned from a dud opera or a clumsy ballet, but cheesy pop music is the stuff of back-of-van sing-alongs and drunken bonding. We all have a favourite list of good bad movies. Television is a marvellous medium for good bad offerings. Indeed, there are some of you who think television’s saving grace is its failures. A bit too cool and ironic for me, but I do see that there is something truly addictive in appalling game shows (any game shows) and desperate soap operas; and we all have favourite moments of really cheap and creepy children’s programmes. My own all-time-number-one, guilty little curtains-drawn, seedy, small-box pleasure, however, is Inside the Actors Studio, an American series that has never been on terrestrial TV here, but is what is piously and risibly called the flagship programme of the US Bravo channel (a name I’ve always thought an unfortunate hostage to misfortune).

The format is simple and idiotically inspired. The Actors Studio is the New York drama school made famous by Stanislavsky and his method (although the series is now filmed elsewhere). These shows are thinly set-up masterclasses for students. The clever­ness is in the vanity it allows the guests, who are the very greatest and most self-regarding performers and creators of theatre and film. People who are too grand to talk to anyone will talk to Inside the Actors Studio. They believe they’re giving something back, offering precious pearls of insight to a new generation. And who doesn’t look good passing it on to adoring students? My guess is that 90% of the guests get laid before they leave the building.

In truth, it’s just a chat show on satellite, but the veil of education and posterity is held decorously high, so everybody turns up and talks with a smile. This week, it was Ricky Gervais. For Inside the Actors Studio, that’s barrel-scraping. I have a feeling someone pulled out in a hurry and a student said: “That guy from The Office is in town.” And someone else said: “Oh, that was brilliant, I loved him in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

Gervais is a particularly unrewarding guest, as everybody except Jonathan Ross knows up to their back teeth. He is the man who won the fame lottery. You look at him and you think, lucky bastard, you filled in one form and look what happened. What he won, of course, was you, the audience. And every time we see him patting himself on the back and gurning like a frog in a centrifuge, we resent him just a little more. On Inside the Actors Studio — for the benefit of the students, you understand — they showed The Dance, which really, really isn’t funny any more. And he did a medley of his hits as David Brent. A thin act.

The real joy, the guilty pleasure of this show, however, isn’t the guests or the clips. It’s the presenter, who just is the celebrity’s David Brent. A man whose self-image parted company with its reality a long time ago. James Lipton is a deathless luvvie-licker. He looks like a gay undertaker or the wine waiter at a Ukrainian restaurant. His CV is an inspired comic creation. For real. He wrote for and acted in daytime soap operas, and was the author of a short-lived Broadway musical, Sherry!. Savour that exclamation mark. He is the author of a book, An Exaltation of Larks, a collection of real and invented collective nouns. Best, he is peerlessly servile while at the same time managing to be creepily familiar. The questions are coated liberally in baby oil before being reverentially offered as congratulatory suppositories to the prone thespians. There is a regular quiz that is supposed to be quirkily revealing. What is your favourite word? Which noise do you hate most? I can’t get enough of this stuff. It is the perfect antidote to celebrity. Occasionally, I’m asked to do things on television, and generally I decline. But if they ever made an English version of Inside the Actors Studio at, say, Rada, I would be James Lipton like a shot. I’d do my own make-up.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article7048349.ece

Well I hate how they act like writing and acting in a daytime soap in and of itself is proof you're not very talented, they shoulda pointed out that he nearly drove, or did drive, several soaps into the ground as writer (Another World, Capitol) and that all of his (oddly many) writing periods, as well as his created Best of Everything, were artistic disasters. But I'm glad someone finally said in print the exact way I've felt about the man for some time (you have to hear his craptastic, campy Sherry! musical to believe it).

What a windbag douche of a writer! That's one of the most incoherent things I've read in a while. Pretentious as hell.

Koos, are you James Lipton?

Another roundabout thread designed to explain us to all why we are all idiots for watching soaps, created by a longtime poster on Soap Opera Network. Do you think you're special because your avatars are of Hollywood Flavors of the Month?

Edited March 10, 201015 yr by Vee

James Lipton is a deathless luvvie-licker. He looks like a gay undertaker or the wine waiter at a Ukrainian restaurant.

What do wine waiters at Ukranian restaurants look like?

Like James Lipton, I guess (I do have to agree that the writer takes their hatred a bit over the top--are all his articles like that?)

Koos, are you James Lipton?

James Lipton is almost as much of a blowhard as that guy, but not quite.

I find his criticism of Ricky Gervais and Eddy Izzard retarded. He's right about Lipton, but nothing else. By the time he gets to Izzard, though, it's almost impossible to even tell what he's trying to say, what with that particular brand of nonsense writing designed to appear clever.

Edited March 10, 201015 yr by koos

Well I hate how they act like writing and acting in a daytime soap in and of itself is proof you're not very talented, they shoulda pointed out that he nearly drove, or did drive, several soaps into the ground as writer (Another World, Capitol) and that all of his (oddly many) writing periods, as well as his created Best of Everything, were artistic disasters. But I'm glad someone finally said in print the exact way I've felt about the man for some time (you have to hear his craptastic, campy Sherry! musical to believe it).

I don't have an impression they act like writing and acting in a daytime soap is a proof of someone's un-talentedness. Maybe it's better that there are no further mentions of his daytime stints, they would again be unfairly treated as ... and it would really be a bit too negative RE: Lipton.

How he got the Studio job is, however, a mystery.

Edited March 10, 201015 yr by Sylph

Like James Lipton, I guess (I do have to agree that the writer takes their hatred a bit over the top--are all his articles like that?)

I have no idea, I stumbled upon this by accident and was at the amount of negativity. It really takes it over the top.

I think he's very good at talking his way into things. The thing I love is he himself seems to be embarassed about writing soaps--he's always mentioned his long run acting on GL but for years reportedly left his soap writing stints off any info about him (not sure if this is still true).

That said, I do think it's easy to see that the writer of the article is pointing out that the fact he wrote for daytime soap operas proves something about his lack of talent. "His CV is an inspired comic creation. For real. He wrote for and acted in daytime soap operas, and was the author of a short-lived Broadway musical, Sherry!."

In any case, James Lipton will forever have the legacy of being daytime's first hack to write multiple soaps.

it's almost impossible to even tell what he's trying to say

I understood. Did I agree is another matter.

I think he's very good at talking his way into things. The thing I love is he himself seems to be embarassed about writing soaps--he's always mentioned his long run acting on GL but for years reportedly left his soap writing stints off any info about him (not sure if this is still true).

Either that's a classic case of "being embarrassed" of working in soaps or perhaps he decided to omit it because if people dug a little deeper, they'd have realised how much of an incompetent he really is.

Still, again, it is fascinating how he not only wrote but got his musical produced and on top of that a bizarre book.

That's absolutely typical for Gill, who is considered scathing even by UK standards. Let me put it this way: for Gill, this is relatively pleasant commentary. Good-humored, even.

I understood. Did I agree is another matter.

Either that's a classic case of "being embarrassed" of working in soaps or perhaps he decided to omit it because if people dug a little deeper, they'd have realised how much of an incompetent he really is.

Still, again, it is fascinating how he not only wrote but got his musical produced and on top of that a bizarre book.

Sherry! had some pedigree behind it--it was based on The Man Who Came to Dinner by Kaufman/Hart and I think it was kinda "assembled" by its producers--ie they auditioned different writers, etc (maybe it's again a case of Lipton being very good at talking his way into thing--to be hired as librettist and lyric writer with no real previous experience). It ran under a month though and is one of the more notoriously expensive flops of the 60s, right up there with the Breakfast at Tiffany's musical with Mary Tyler Moore (however it's camptastic title song became something of a gay cabaret hit and led to them finally recording the show 5 or so years ago--and showing that nothing in it was memorable except that song).

I think, though maybe he left off soaps for both of the reasons you mention.

And yeah, Soapfan has a point of him being one of the first examples of a soap scribe who is endlessly hired to write different soaps even though he hasn't had success at even *one*.