WBEZ's Ira Glass brings 'Life' to another planet -- television
March 18, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times
Ira Glass looks like an alien. Not just any alien. He looks like a shape-shifter who watched too many "Twilight Zones" from space, plus a few Elvis Costello videos, and then descended upon the earth to hypnotize humans with fascinating true yarns, told in the storytelling style of your favorite literature professor.
In his new "Showtime" series, "This American Life," he wears his Costello glasses and a Rod Serling suit, so sly. He sits at a desk -- sometimes situated all alone in the middle of a white salt flat in Utah, sometimes placed near a breast of a Colorado mountain, sometimes in a car garage.
The alien doesn't really talk. It's more of a curious, intellectual conversation he's having.
"Today," he says from the garage, introducing a segment, "we have a story about this guy who gets behind a camera, and he's filming some people he knows very, very well. He couldn't know these people better actually. It's his own family."
If a journalist were to rewrite this "guy who gets behind a camera" segment, to fit the efficient formula of TV news or the Associated Press, it would lose its rapture. It would be more like:
"A Van Nuys man has made a documentary about his family, and in the process, he experienced a revelation about how his mother and stepfather neglected him while they were hooked on drugs and alcohol. What went wrong?" (Ick.)
Listeners of public radio understand the appeal of Glass, the charming alien. "This American Life" is the most enthralling thing on talk radio. Glass and his massive crew renovated sound itself into a lush portraiture of meandering lives as heard in 20-minute and hourlong features.
It is understandable some radio fans fretted the transition of "This American Life" to TV. But people worry too much.
Let's skip to the fourth episode. It's about a guy who paints Jesus over and over. Painter Guy has to find models to pose as Jesus and pals. Specifically, he needs dudes with beards. So he talks bearded homeless guys and bearded recreational-drug users into hanging around all day on crucifixes and on biblically large rocks.
One beardy guy who's done up like Judas contemplates how he himself strayed from religion to become a "Jack Mormon" and how religion is like Wal-Mart. And then he gets this surprised look in his eyes, like, "I'm here to pose as Judas! Bizarre."
"I don't even know how much I'm really into the whole Bible thing altogether," Beardy Judas Guy says. "Dude [the painter] just came up to me and he's like, 'Hey. You look like Judas.' And I'm like, 'I guess that's a compliment.' So, you know, why not, man? Can't really deny the world of their Judas."
The look of the TV version of "This American Life" is geniusly framed. The main players (Glass, producer Christine Vachon, director Chris Wilcha and cinematographer Adam Beckman) spent many months experimenting with cameras and interviewing techniques.
What they settled on was one camera. On a tripod. It's often set up far away from the regular people in each segment. But I guess camera operators zoom in to get close-ups and other shots. This creates a painterly frame, like a still photograph. And the distance of the camera seems to ease interviewees, not having lenses in their faces.
And they talk. And talk. And talk. In the most intimate, freeform ways.
There's the bull owner who raises a clone of his dead beloved bull, a one-time "Letterman" guest. (This is one of the few segments that already aired on the radio show.)
There's the woman who reads from a diary she kept at 13; she recites her long-ago, teenage thoughts about snorting coke with drug-dealer boyfriends while trying not to get pregnant. ("Oh well.")
It's all very intriguing and oddly funny at unexpected moments.
The first four episodes don't turn up any deep, comical musings of radio show guests Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris. But Alien Glass has said they'll appear in future episodes; they just couldn't figure out yet which of their wry writings would work on TV, and shy Sedaris doesn't want to be on camera.
The show doesn't suffer without them. It's really kind of a glorious little miracle, a half-hour series of little pictures of simple, complex and unfamous Americans breathing everyday lives, with a twist of kookiness, while they search for the Meaning of Everything and The Big Picture.
In the second episode, there's a beautifully framed scene of a gun on the bedroom counter of an old woman's apartment. Her hand brushes near it. She plucks up her lipstick and puckers at her reflection in a pink, old-person's sweater.
The weapon is a prop. The woman is an actor for the first time in her life. She's making a movie with other old people in her 55-and-up condo building. They hope their amateur film will land at the Sundance Film Festival.
If not for "This American Life," where else would you see or hear their long, patient story?
Watching those old people, I was reminded of what it is about the radio show that gets me every time. A lot of the magic is Alien Glass, and the similar vocal stylings of his guest truthsayers, and the creepy, cool music that interludes, and the silky narrative flow.
But what gets me every time, the secret sauce, are the startling reminders of how profound life is in ordinary detail.
The old people who just want to make a movie -- they're a cute little charcoal sketch. But their story is also alarmingly about death (pending), the death of youth, the resurrection of dreams -- and best/worst of all, the notion that hope is worthy of enduring, despite all blunt evidence to the contrary.
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times
Ira Glass looks like an alien. Not just any alien. He looks like a shape-shifter who watched too many "Twilight Zones" from space, plus a few Elvis Costello videos, and then descended upon the earth to hypnotize humans with fascinating true yarns, told in the storytelling style of your favorite literature professor.
In his new "Showtime" series, "This American Life," he wears his Costello glasses and a Rod Serling suit, so sly. He sits at a desk -- sometimes situated all alone in the middle of a white salt flat in Utah, sometimes placed near a breast of a Colorado mountain, sometimes in a car garage.
The alien doesn't really talk. It's more of a curious, intellectual conversation he's having.
"Today," he says from the garage, introducing a segment, "we have a story about this guy who gets behind a camera, and he's filming some people he knows very, very well. He couldn't know these people better actually. It's his own family."
If a journalist were to rewrite this "guy who gets behind a camera" segment, to fit the efficient formula of TV news or the Associated Press, it would lose its rapture. It would be more like:
"A Van Nuys man has made a documentary about his family, and in the process, he experienced a revelation about how his mother and stepfather neglected him while they were hooked on drugs and alcohol. What went wrong?" (Ick.)
Listeners of public radio understand the appeal of Glass, the charming alien. "This American Life" is the most enthralling thing on talk radio. Glass and his massive crew renovated sound itself into a lush portraiture of meandering lives as heard in 20-minute and hourlong features.
It is understandable some radio fans fretted the transition of "This American Life" to TV. But people worry too much.
Let's skip to the fourth episode. It's about a guy who paints Jesus over and over. Painter Guy has to find models to pose as Jesus and pals. Specifically, he needs dudes with beards. So he talks bearded homeless guys and bearded recreational-drug users into hanging around all day on crucifixes and on biblically large rocks.
One beardy guy who's done up like Judas contemplates how he himself strayed from religion to become a "Jack Mormon" and how religion is like Wal-Mart. And then he gets this surprised look in his eyes, like, "I'm here to pose as Judas! Bizarre."
"I don't even know how much I'm really into the whole Bible thing altogether," Beardy Judas Guy says. "Dude [the painter] just came up to me and he's like, 'Hey. You look like Judas.' And I'm like, 'I guess that's a compliment.' So, you know, why not, man? Can't really deny the world of their Judas."
The look of the TV version of "This American Life" is geniusly framed. The main players (Glass, producer Christine Vachon, director Chris Wilcha and cinematographer Adam Beckman) spent many months experimenting with cameras and interviewing techniques.
What they settled on was one camera. On a tripod. It's often set up far away from the regular people in each segment. But I guess camera operators zoom in to get close-ups and other shots. This creates a painterly frame, like a still photograph. And the distance of the camera seems to ease interviewees, not having lenses in their faces.
And they talk. And talk. And talk. In the most intimate, freeform ways.
There's the bull owner who raises a clone of his dead beloved bull, a one-time "Letterman" guest. (This is one of the few segments that already aired on the radio show.)
There's the woman who reads from a diary she kept at 13; she recites her long-ago, teenage thoughts about snorting coke with drug-dealer boyfriends while trying not to get pregnant. ("Oh well.")
It's all very intriguing and oddly funny at unexpected moments.
The first four episodes don't turn up any deep, comical musings of radio show guests Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris. But Alien Glass has said they'll appear in future episodes; they just couldn't figure out yet which of their wry writings would work on TV, and shy Sedaris doesn't want to be on camera.
The show doesn't suffer without them. It's really kind of a glorious little miracle, a half-hour series of little pictures of simple, complex and unfamous Americans breathing everyday lives, with a twist of kookiness, while they search for the Meaning of Everything and The Big Picture.
In the second episode, there's a beautifully framed scene of a gun on the bedroom counter of an old woman's apartment. Her hand brushes near it. She plucks up her lipstick and puckers at her reflection in a pink, old-person's sweater.
The weapon is a prop. The woman is an actor for the first time in her life. She's making a movie with other old people in her 55-and-up condo building. They hope their amateur film will land at the Sundance Film Festival.
If not for "This American Life," where else would you see or hear their long, patient story?
Watching those old people, I was reminded of what it is about the radio show that gets me every time. A lot of the magic is Alien Glass, and the similar vocal stylings of his guest truthsayers, and the creepy, cool music that interludes, and the silky narrative flow.
But what gets me every time, the secret sauce, are the startling reminders of how profound life is in ordinary detail.
The old people who just want to make a movie -- they're a cute little charcoal sketch. But their story is also alarmingly about death (pending), the death of youth, the resurrection of dreams -- and best/worst of all, the notion that hope is worthy of enduring, despite all blunt evidence to the contrary.
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