KCRW gave Harry Shearer the boot after 30 years on air. (Facebook)

Longtime Le Show host Harry Shearer went in to discuss a “proposal” with KCRW management last Monday, April 15, only to learn his broadcast the day before of the public radio show he’d hosted every Sunday morning for 30 years had been his last. “All (general manager Jennifer Ferro) said was basically, ‘We want to make some changes, it’s time to bring in some new voices,’ — sort of boilerplate management verbiage. The surprise to me was when she said, ‘It’s effective immediately,’” Shearer says. “There was no commentary about whether there was anything wrong with the show.”

Just like that, the hour-long mix of music, politics, sports, and industry chatter — an L.A. institution — was without a radio home. For years, Shearer, known to many as Principal Skinner and Ned Flanders on The Simpsons or Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap fame, had enjoyed an enviable amount of freedom in producing Le Show.

“There were never any meetings about the show, I don’t think,” Shearer says. “It didn’t escape my notice that when you’d walk down the hall of the station a few years back, when it was festooned with photographs of everybody who contributed anything to the on-air content, the only face that I never saw in that hallway was mine. I went, ‘Well, in compensation for not being in the hallway, I get total freedom. I’ll take that deal.’”

The show, which attracted a national following, aired on more than 80 stations around the country along with a few in Europe and Japan. Each episode quickly became available online, gathering more listeners through satellite and digital channels. The broad reach of the show may have been what assured KCRW that Shearer would be fine without the L.A.-based platform.  KCRW will continue to
distribute Le Show, making it available to other affiliate stations and podcast distributors.

In a statement, Ferro noted that “Harry Shearer and Le Show have been a part of KCRW since its inception, providing a voice of satire and comic relief while challenging the political establishment,” and said KCRW would support Shearer and “his incredible national and digital audience.” Ferro was unavailable to comment further for this story.

For many listeners, the toughest pill to swallow was that they were denied the chance to hear Shearer say farewell on the air. Days after it was announced KCRW would no longer broadcast Le Show on terrestrial radio, Shearer was still stung by the decision — “Well, I’m always angry. That’s what makes people funny” — but looking forward to the next chapter, whatever that may be. “I’m not happy about the situation at KCRW,” he said, “but I’m pretty optimistic about finding another broadcasting home here.”

Shearer wouldn’t say which stations were biting, only that while some were “initially interested” he wasn’t willing to let go of the creative reins for his allotted 59 minutes. “The show is the show… I’m a contrary enough person that since the inception and the creation and the production of the show has been totally up to me, the last thing I’m going to do is let somebody else decide when it ends. It sort of made me stubbornly decide, ‘Boy, I really want to do more now.’”

Shearer has plenty to keep him occupied aside from the radio show. He still records episodes of The Simpsons, and makes appearances as his Spinal Tap character — we spoke with him just after his guest spot on Conan O’Brien’s stage where he played alongsideFall Out Boy in an homage to the mock rockumentary.

He also has a series ready to premiere on British TV, Nixon’s the One, which he hopes will jump the pond to stateside TV. But the future of Le Show remains unclear. “I wouldn’t necessarily make a prediction about what will happen to me,” Shearer says.

In the meantime, Shearer has tapped his long career in public radio to offer some thoughts about the emerging trends in a medium forever scrambling to keep up with new technology and reach a more diverse audience.

In His Own Words: Harry Shearer…

On Feedback from his Fans
I was doing a speaking engagement and someone asked, “What should we do? Do you believe if we call the station and write the station, it will change their mind?” And I said, “Me personally, I think you should speak up with the same assumption I do when I do my show.” You say what you want to say without the expectation it’ll make any difference. Say what you want to say because you gotta say it, not because you think it’s going to change anything. Sometimes you might be pleasantly surprised, but most often, things go the way they go.

On Breaking Into the Biz
It’s not a way to make money, unless you happen to be Garrison Keillor. Very few people make any more than an acceptable living in public radio. You do it if it’s something that you’re passionate about. The only stuff I do is stuff I’m passionate about. I’m lucky to be able to make a better than acceptable living doing that.

On Media Branding
It’s obvious that public radio, NPR in particular, has decided that they have — this always gets dangerous when people do this — figured out what their brand is: driveway moments and a particular brand of storytelling. You’ll notice that “journalistic excellence” isn’t included in that brand identification. You have this profusion of shows that have been developed in the wake of This American Life that are first-person storytelling. And as This American Life has shown, there’s not a lot of fact checking that goes into those narratives.

On Radio Station Formats
(NPR has) developed a number of shows with two or three highly jocular guys talking on various topics, trying to recapture the Car Guys’ magic such as it was. It’s just really remarkable how they think, “Yeah, we can clone this. Easy.” I think a lot of what’s going on in public radio is sort of bad mimicry of what happened years ago in commercial radio. I don’t necessarily take this personally. I think it’s sort of symptomatic of a larger and fairly disappointing trend in public radio.

I think KCRW finds itself squeezed between KPCC with its news format and KCSN with its music format. Fear does a lot of things. In the radio and television business, it drives people into the hands of consultants who tell them, “Be more consistent!” It’s a tendency of hiding behind format that has been the hallmark of commercial radio for years.

On The Pitfalls Of Digitization
People are sawing the legs out from under the idea of radio as we speak. Television, when it came to prominence, was supposed to kill radio outright, and it didn’t. The question is: Will online audio kill radio broadcasting? I listen to about 80 percent of my audio content online, and I look at a lot of my video content online, so I’m not a Luddite in any sense of the word. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in radio broadcasting.

A lot of people driving in their cars don’t have the facility or haven’t mastered yet getting online audio into their car’s audio system. A lot of poorer people don’t have the wherewithal for broadband everywhere that they might want to hear something, and older people don’t want to mess with that stuff. Radio better be around, because in any kind of emergency, my experience has been the first thing that goes down is the electric grid, and the second thing that goes down is the telephone grid. And if you don’t have a portable battery-powered radio, you are seriously out of luck. People who are trying to dismantle this system are way in front of themselves, and may not be doing the public a service.

Published April 24, 2013, on LAMag.com.

George Clooney in the 1997 film "Batman & Robin." (Creative Commons)

Note: For our final film review paper in Kenneth Turan’s class, we defended a movie panned by critics and the general public. I grew up watching what I now understand to be terrible movies with my older brother, Jon. Even as I screened this mess again for the first time in 15 years, I found myself holding onto those memories. I would argue movies, like food, are inextricably linked to our emotions — it was hard to hate something that yanked me back to bonding with him while we grew up together. That and I love a good campy disaster. 

Superhero films face a formidable foe with every box office premiere. Like the masked crusader at the center of each script, comic book adaptations are expected to live up to an audience’s wildest dreams, with big effects, desirable love interests and captivating stories true to their ink-and-paper roots.

While anticipation of these movies rises to a fevered pitch among loyal fanbases, it’s often all too quickly drowned out by a disgusted backlash when films fail to dazzle and inspire. There are few better examples of this phenomenon than Joel Schumacher’s 1997 pariah “Batman & Robin.”

Starring George Clooney as Batman and Chris O’Donnell as sidekick Robin, the movie was on paper a guaranteed win for director Schumacher two years after his fairly well-received “Batman Forever.” Frenzied marketing — the customary action figures and fast food restaurant promotions — couldn’t drown out murmurs of a rift between Schumacher and the earlier film’s star Val Kilmer, inviting intrigue and some premature doubt ahead of the June premiere. The film managed to hold its own, pulling out a No. 3 finish for the year’s opening weekends with a domestic gross of nearly $43 million in those three days alone.

But the summer blockbuster audience has never been considered a bellwether of good taste. The film was panned by critics. “ ‘Batman & Robin’ is a punishing ordeal,” Alex Ross wrote for Slate. “It has none of the minor virtues of Schumacher’s other films. It looks bad: cluttered surfaces, production design reminiscent of overblown Broadway musicals, editing too fast for the eye to catch up, poor staging of fast action.” Marc Savlov from the Austin Chronicle was particularly offended by the film’s content, or apparent lack thereof: “‘Batman & Robin’ fails to engage the spirit of Batman, Robin, or decent marketing in general, and instead ends up as a limp, excruciatingly shallow knockoff that leaves viewers cringing at the unavoidable one-liners that make up the better part of the script.”

Years later, people still hate it. Entertainment Weekly bestowed a No. 5 ranking on its 2006 list of Top 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made, and in 2010, Empire magazine voted it the No. 1 Worst Movie Ever above 49 other contenders.

That seems a bit harsh. This is after all, a comic book movie — one written around a beloved character as another installment in a rabidly venerated franchise, but a rubber-suit fairy tale nonetheless.

The film picks up where “Batman Forever” left off — gazillionaire Bruce Wayne has taken in Dick Grayson to be the Robin to his Batman. We check in with the pair as they meet a new opponent, Mr. Freeze, busy nabbing the city’s diamonds to sustain the chilled suit of armor he’s forced to wear in the wake of an experiment gone wrong. Another victim of botched science, Dr. Pamela Isely becomes the temptress adversary Poison Ivy, teaming up with Mr. Freeze to take down Gotham and its caped guardians. They’re forced to tangle with a surprise third defender — Batgirl, nee Barbara Wilson, who arrives at Bruce’s mansion to tend to her ailing uncle Alfred (Michael Gough), the man behind the mogul. Good and evil face off in a series of clashes with escalating drama, dragging the action high and low across the spectacular landscape to an exhilarating finish.

It’s clear from the opening montage — close-ups of costumed crotches, nipples and buttocks — that “Batman & Robin” did not set out to take itself seriously. As an example of camp intended to be palatable for the heteronormative masses, Schumacher’s film is an homage to Batman’s bright and garish origins. Sweeping set designs, ranging from post-apocalyptic racecourses to the frosty and tropical lairs of our giddy villains, would make a pen-wielding illustrator weep. Canned sound effects — honest-to-God banana peel slips — are joyful reminders of the KER-POWs and THWACKs in Batmans of decades past. “Batman & Robin” is undeniably ridiculous at times, but what sets it apart from other ill-advised cinematic endeavors is a cast and crew willfully in on the joke without ever slithering into smug territory.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a novel presence here. Before his entrance into California politics, the former body builder boasted a healthy if schizophrenic filmography as an actor — everything from “Terminator” to “Twins.” Best known for his action roles, he’s incredibly fun to watch while he unwinds as Batman’s beefy yet cheesy nemesis Mr. Freeze. The former scientist is confined to a cryogenic suit and wields an ice-ray gun as he terrorizes Gotham. The script often returns to Freeze’s sob story — a sick wife, foiled attempts to save her which have led to his altered genetic makeup and psychotic determination to avenge her plight  — but we’re mostly waiting for his next delightfully awkward attempt at wordplay. “What killed the dinosaurs?” he asks no one in particular during a heist. “The Ice Age!” If his one-liners get tiresome, it’s further fodder to root for the good guys. Supervillains are supposed to be a bit of a nuisance, after all.

Handsome hero Bruce Wayne tempers Freeze’s punny performance, though not even Clooney’s ever-present smirk can stifle the enthusiastic hamming of his co-stars. It’s possible Clooney was too married to his likeable persona off screen at this point in his career to really give himself to the role — he’s called his performance “weak” in interviews since the film’s debut, and late critic Roger Ebert speculated he’d only been cast because of his chin. One aspect that rings true, though, is his portrayal of the working dynamic with Boy Wonder Robin. Clooney and O’Donnell serve up an honest navigation of the unsteady trust fall between their characters. “Batman Forever” introduced the pairing, but now they must actually work together. “Sometimes, counting on someone else is the only way you win,” Dick tells Bruce after watching Mr. Freeze get away yet again. “This is no partnership. You’re never gonna trust me!”

Further complicating their relationship is a pheromone-induced battle over femme fatale Poison Ivy, played by a coy Uma Thurman. This is easily the best performance in the lot, primarily because Thurman fully commits to the theatrical seduction her character requires. We’re introduced to Poison Ivy just before her drab-to-fab makeover from dowdy, hyperactive environmental scientist to a smoldering minx in sequins and feathers. When she’s not blowing intoxicating dust into the eyes and nostrils of the men around her or planting a deadly kiss on her next victim, she’s sauntering around Gotham like she owns the place. We’re treated to a spot-on Mae West tribute, complete with “Come up and see me sometime” inflection and delicate hands on swaying hips.

Embodying a wholly separate male fantasy is Alicia Silverstone as schoolgirl gone rogue Barbara. It’s the first and only time Batgirl has appeared in a feature-length Batman film, and there’s plenty of room left to explore the character. For the first blush, though, “Batman & Robin” offers a remarkably solid depiction of female characters on both sides of the ethical divide. While Poison Ivy uses sexuality to her advantage, gaining power from each sultry exchange, Batgirl swoops in to save the day on multiple occasions once she realizes her destined alter ego.

Still, these merits are cast aside when we remember “Batman & Robin.” The film seems to have haunted Schumacher. His career carried on in the years since 1997, leading him to “The Phantom of the Opera” in 2004 and most recently, two episodes of the buzzed-about Netflix series “House of Cards.” But in a heartbreaking appeal to the fans he felt he’d betrayed, Schumacher apologized for the big budget flop. “If there’s anybody watching this,” he said in an interview posted on YouTube in 2006, “that, let’s say loved ‘Batman Forever’ and went into ‘Batman & Robin’ with great anticipation, if I disappointed them in any way, then I really want to apologize. Because it wasn’t my intention. My intention was just to entertain them.”

And really, he did just that. With a full perspective, taking both the laughably absurd and earnest elements of his second stab at the Batman legend, we can drop the catered cynicism and see this is exactly what we get out of the film. There are the eye-candy backdrops, bedazzling body-conscious costumes, attractive A-listers of both genders. These are all drizzled atop easily digestible plot-thickeners and undemanding dialogue, pulling us through a tale of good and evil, tenacity and insanity, family and trust. There’s an awful lot of depth here considering Christopher Nolan had nothing to do with it.

True, this may not have the resonance of the more poignant “Dark Knight” films. But consider the range in comic books that has taken the industry into new territory, spanning simplistic cartoons to gothic, twisted graphic novels. It seems only fitting we would have such an array in a medium that allows us to explore so much more. Why shouldn’t there be examples on both ends of the film spectrum? Sometimes, as in “Batman & Robin,” it’s in our best interest to take movies at face value and just go along for the ride to camp.

Ming staggered after being shot to the porch of this house that rainy night in April 2012. (Catherine Green/Neon Tommy)

Just before the anniversary of the rainy night Qu Ming and Wu Ying were gunned down inside a parked BMW, all is well on Raymond Avenue.

The sun is shining brighter than it did the morning police cleaned up a murder scene. Birds are out in full-throated force. Mothers walk around the block with their children, pushing empty strollers as the toddlers waddle by their sides. A garageband pounds out an unrecognizable anthem, nearly drowning out police sirens in the distance.

There’s the house where Ming staggered, bloody, onto the porch around 1 a.m. that night. His girlfriend Ying sat slumped in the car while he tried to get help. Light grey, with metal lattices and bars covering the windows and doors, birds of paradise blooming on either side of the front steps — the house is cared for, unchanged. No one answers the door.

This isn’t Bryan Barnes and Javier Bolden’s neighborhood. The men charged with killing Ming and Ying were outside interlopers with fringe affiliations to gangs elsewhere. Police said theirs was a crime of opportunity, a robbery gone wrong, but opted not to release further details until they come out in court. Barnes and Bolden are due in front of a judge April 23 to set a schedule for their trial, postponed several times now since they first appeared in court May 22 last year.

Despite loose ends and unanswered questions, the community that came under scrutiny as a hotbed of crime around USC’s campus has moved on. Twenty-year-old Christian Rodriguez, a construction student at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, was surprised by news of the homicides. “Around here it’s like you hardly hear about stuff like that…because it doesn’t happen as much,” he says. “You hear (about) shootings, but not like close to home, you know?” Rodriguez grew up in the neighborhood. Just after the shootings, he moved down Raymond Avenue from 20th Street to a peach-colored house in the 2900 block. His new home is almost in sight from the spot where Ming and Ying were killed.

The streets Rodriguez has known his whole life feature more police cruisers now than they once did. As the university mourned the loss of two Chinese graduate students in the electrical engineering program, before the LAPD had arrested Bolden and Barnes, Chief Charlie Beck joined Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and USC President C. L. Max Nikias to announce increased resources dedicated to protecting the community.

During an April 26 press conference, Nikias told reporters four LAPD officers would help the school’s Department of Public Safety in on-campus patrol, and three dozen officers would be reassigned to the department’s Southwest division. Police have yet to turn over the documents detailing costs and logistics of this agreement following multiple requests by Neon Tommy.

A quieter, more closely watched neighborhood. (Catherine Green/Neon Tommy)

Residents say they’ve seen consistent follow-through on those promises. “There’s more security around here now — more campus security, more police,” Rodriguez says, his voice lilting up. “It feels more safer to be walking down the street in the night.” Short and solid, with a buzzed scalp and tattoos peppering his arms and hands, Rodriguez doesn’t look like he scares easy. Still, he says, “I have confidence now that I see campus security.”

Down the street, Velma Collins, her husband Alfred and a friend who declined to give his name are enjoying the breezy afternoon from their porch. Some reggae seeps from an unseen radio as handymen hammer away on the floor above them. The Collinses also say they’ve noticed an uptick in security over the last year — “There go one now,” Alfred murmurs as a cruiser passes. Bundling into her grey sweater, his wife laughs.

Velma, 67, hasn’t seen anything like it in her 42 years living in the neighborhood. She remembers three drive-bys back in 2001 or 2002, just down at the corner of her street. She doesn’t remember the police response being so attentive. “No, not then,” she says. “It’s a lot, lot, lot better now. It feels more safe.”

In some ways, police and DPS have become friendly fixtures of the neighborhood, on par with the mailman. “They talk to us nice,” Velma Collins says. “Sometimes they would wave. Everything’s fine now.”

In a side-by-side comparison with the Collinses, Rodriguez might draw more attention from police. “They have their days — at night they’ll stop you and see where you’re going, see if you have weapons on you,” he says. He doesn’t mind the hassle, though, if it means a safer neighborhood. “They’re respectful. They gotta do their job and follow their rules,” he says, shrugging. “That’s the way it is around here.”

Published April 10, 2013, on Neon Tommy.

James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson star. (MovieWeb.com)

“Leave.” The audience hears this trigger command plenty from hypnotist Elizabeth Lamb, played by Rosario Dawson in Danny Boyle’s “Trance.”

But with the film’s engrossing plot and mesmerizing performances by a well-chosen cast, it’s the last thing they’ll want to do.

A series of bad decisions leads London-based art auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy) to fall in debt to a group of thugs lead by Franck (Vincent Cassel). When Franck’s crew tries to pull off a high-profile art heist, things go wrong and the target, Francisco Goya’s “The Witches’ Flight,” goes missing, right along with Simon’s memory of what happened to the treasured painting. Pleas of “I can’t remember” won’t get him off the hook with his nefarious new friends though. They enlist Elizabeth’s hypnotic help to bring back the memory, and she becomes increasingly entangled in their underhand dealings. “You decide to remember,” she says to Simon in a low, steady voice during their many sessions. But as bits and pieces resurface, and new possible threads emerge, it’s unclear whether any of them is prepared to deal with the consequences of that decision.

Rosario Dawson shines here as sherpa into Simon’s psyche. She’s ahead of Boyle’s plethora of plot twists, sliding smoothly between her character’s shifting motivations as they become apparent to us. While the men around her fall under her spell — Dawson even manages to make schoolmarm blouses and a colonial braid alluring — Elizabeth takes advantage of her position of power at nearly every turn. She’s the fulcrum in every lurch of the scale when either Franck or Simon thinks they gain the upper hand. They need her. Elizabeth has her moments of weakness, but a backstory of rising above abuse helps put these into context without letting her character fall into flat victim territory.

With a soft exterior and determinedly ‘90s heartthrob hair, co-star James McAvoy runs his own risk of becoming a damsel in distress. In some ways, his character at the beginning of “Trance” is much like his Wesley in “Wanted” — down to the fumbling and whimpering as his life takes a series of turns for the worst. The various transformations in his latest rendition of the reluctant anti-hero are a bit more believable though. That might be because they’re most often driven in “Trance” by emotion, primal reactions to his fate getting jerked around by a charismatic baddie.

Is there anyone better than Vincent Cassel to sidle up to that casting call? Hints of his performance as demanding director Thomas Leroy in 2010’s “Black Swan” waft up every now and again, but this works just fine for the part. Cassel brings something more to the standard villain — there’s a heartbeat beneath his menacing demeanor. Even before we find some sympathy for the character, we’re led, willingly, into Franck’s underworld. His natural habitats make the film’s set work another highlight. We split time between daylight shots of his nightclub lair, a neon sign “analog LONDON” lighting up the wall, or we’re muffled inside his sleek penthouse with frosted glass panels and a casket-like swimming pool located strategically close to the bedroom.

Boyle’s films are usually among the more visually stunning examples to come out each year — even “Trainspotting” was a sensory treat at times. “Trance” doesn’t have quite the same eye-feast appeal as “Slumdog Millionaire,” but subtle choices in focus and color work to high impact here. Carefully executed blurred shots are on point to guide us through a reality constantly reversing and revising — rarely do we know for sure what’s real and what isn’t until the final reveal and satisfying conclusion. Smaller revelations come hushed in close scenes of dialogue between actors lit up by white light against blue-tinged backgrounds. Red and orange seem to filter in during especially high-drama moments. These crescendos are heightened by Rick Smith’s original score — sort of a throbbing homage to Depeche Mode that keeps us keyed up for the choice bursts of action without shredding our nerves for the full 101 minutes.

That running time speeds by for the audience. With Boyle at the helm, these moving parts, thoughtful effects and sound performances make for an ideal psychological thriller. Truly, this is the result we expect when we pay $15 or more for the latest mindbender. The trick appears to be infusing plot twists with enough emotion to make us care about the outcome, all the while splicing in grim and sultry details to keep us on the edge of our seats. Aspiring directors should consider “Trance” the new paradigm, a piece of work to be studied and revered like the famed painting at the center of its eddy plot.

Published April 9, 2013, on Neon Tommy.

Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson star. (MovieWeb.com)

If “Gimme The Loot” answers a call, it might be one from fans of “Kids” with more delicate sensibilities. Drop the HIV and inebriated rape, sculpt a more recognizable storyline, and you’ve got director Adam Leon’s petty crime Hero’s Journey through New York City.

Fledgling graffiti artists Sofia and Malcolm (tag name: Shakes) run the streets of the Bronx and beyond. Or rather they try to — it seems as soon as they get up a respectable tag, it’s desecrated by rival groups of “writers.” They set their sights higher and decide to take on a never-pulled-off heist: “bombing” the huge apple that rises every time a Mets player bats a home run at Citi Field. Financing their illicit feat is a hurdle, though. They embark on a two-day quest to scrape together $500, ambling across the sticky urban landscape from subterranean drug dens to a rich girl’s family penthouse. Along the way, Malcolm and Sofia find the limits of their morality, teetering on the edge of right and wrong.

Theirs is not a breathtakingly beautiful backdrop, but Leon and cinematographer Jonathan Miller use that to their advantage. The winner of SXSW’s Grand Jury Prize wallows in low-quality grit — think 1990s HBO. Mid-range, waist-level shots of the cast’s sweaty bodies are remarkably effective, impressing upon us the stench of a New York City summer.

A little grime won’t deter Sofia, played by Tashiana Washington, and Malcolm, Ty Hickson, from their mission. Despite long odds and a constant dance of one step forward, two steps back, the taggers remain steadfast throughout the plot. Washington and Hickson don’t always seem on board with their characters’ dedication, though. They keep things low-key, at times to a fault — I caught myself wondering if casting directors Lindsay Burdge and Eleonore Hendricks had maybe scavenged the city’s youth workshops for talent.

The actors bring their own brand of realness to a solid script, and they do have shining moments, especially in scenes with Fagin-esque mentor Champion (played by Meeko). In another scene, Malcolm steps between Sofia and an insufferable creep, hinting he may have more weight to throw around than previously thought. His puppy-love rollercoaster fawning over rich girl Ginnie (Zoë Lescaze) is just crushing enough — though as bratty and entitled as Ginnie is during their first rose-colored exchanges in her lofty bedroom, it’s hard to say why he finds her so beguiling.

Sofia, on the other hand, is at her best while flirting with former flame Kaps (Melvin Mogoli). When he invites her to swing by after his party dies down, we blush right along with her. Love and other misguided affections are a central point in “Gimme The Loot,” almost as much as the ultimate tag itself. Thankfully though, the movie never delves too deeply into the inevitable will-they-won’t-they territory between our two heroes.

Instead, the film might double for some as a sociological exercise in street culture. We leave with a greater appreciation for the bold, looping tags that adorn billboards, overpasses and unsuspecting delivery trucks around our bustling cities. For Shakes, Sofia and their punk rivals, the carefully refined calling cards are everything, the legacy they leave with each fleeting mark. These spray-painted credentials howl from the trenched rooftops long after their owners depart, and can be used as retaliation in dealing with neighborhood foes.

We watch Sofia slap a scrawled nametag on the plastic windows of a crooked bodega when she’s denied money in a cell phone resell. Later on, she’s leaving Kaps’ apartment with a smile when a pack of kids jump her in the stairwell, scribbling “WKC” on her shirt — Sofia fights back, but the attack is in the same vein as a rushed, fumbling sexual assault. The next time we see her, she’s turned the shirt inside out to downplay her shame, take back even a bit of her tagger pride. The film’s escalating placement of these incidents helps us grasp why Sofia and Malcolm care so much about landing the Mets apple bomb.

The end of their escapade comes neatly, a touch too sweetly given the muck and grunge of the rest of the film. Throughout, we’re reminded that Malcolm and Sofia are at their core good kids, even as they set up plans for home burglaries and drug deal scams. By the end of the movie, we’ve forgotten our own scale of ethics: It’s charming and mildly thrilling when Malcolm lifts a bouquet from an outdoor flower stand while Sofia distracts the cashier.

That shift in audience morality is fairly impressive for a quick, slice-of-life film like “Gimme The Loot.” After all, we only have 81 minutes and two days’ time to shuffle into Malcolm and Sofia’s sneakers and increasingly ragged T-shirts. Leon does himself a favor by not trying to tackle too much here. This isn’t “Do The Right Thing,” — race is hardly addressed. And that’s ok. Not every movie set on the streets of New York’s boroughs can tackle the world’s social ills. Sometimes it’s enough to offer a glimpse into a neighborhood unlike our own. And if, like in “Gimme The Loot,” you can sneak in an engaging storyline and likable characters, you’ve hit the jackpot.

Published April 2, 2013, on Neon Tommy.

Alice Englert and Elle Fanning star. (MovieWeb.com)

Facing change as a moody teenage girl is plenty dramatic on its own.

But the talented cast of “Ginger & Rosa” subtly merge this internal angst with international tumult to create an authentic narrative of unsteady, often lonely self-discovery.

Sixties-era London provides a dreary, dismantled setting for Ginger and Rosa (Elle Fanning and Alice Englert, respectively), both 16 and beset with the customary teenage frustrations.

They are friends in the truest sense: Ginger defends Rosa when she overhears her parents gossiping, and when Ginger declares she wants to be a poet, Rosa says encouragingly, “I thought you already were.” Their living-room dramas — bickering parents, fretting over how to dress for social acceptance, navigating the uncharted territory of dry-humping unsuitable young men — are heightened by the looming Cold War threat of nuclear destruction. Ginger’s ensuing paranoia that the world could end at any moment becomes a crutch as she deals with the horrors of her own personal crisis.

Much of this upheaval revolves around her shifting friendship with Rosa, who becomes more of a plot device than titular character. “My memory of having best friends at that age is that it’s major,” director Sally Potter told TimeOut London. “They’re serious, profound relationships.”

But 16 years appears to be the shelf life for the girls’ friendship. At first, they dip their toes together into the anti-war movement, attending meetings in dimly lit church basements. Their interests begin to diverge, and Ginger is soon flirting alone with the radical movement. Its members are easily dismissed, excluding the leader whose dark curls and wild eyes elicit giggles and experiments with eyeliner from our protagonist. The pacifist cause is primarily a backdrop for Ginger’s personal growth. Despite ideological dialogue, Potter doesn’t seem concerned with confirming or altering the audience’s convictions on conflict.

Standout performances by familiar faces make it hard to disagree with Ginger and her fellow conscientious objectors. Annette Bening is American dissenter Bella, who gives the film’s depiction of the crusade some gravitas as she gently pushes Ginger to further embed. Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt’s characters, family friends Mark and Mark Two, are less inclined toward activism. Their value comes while mediating the tense intimate landscape between Rosa and Ginger’s families.

Just 12 years old when she first met director Potter, Fanning was almost passed over for the part of Ginger. But she’s aged herself nicely here, filling Ginger’s oversized sweaters and pea coats to swing gracefully between the full-blown melodramatics and immaturity (her intensity in a fast-paced hand-clapping game with Rosa is especially endearing) which occupy girls’ lives between the ages of 14 and 23.

Her behavior is often to the chagrin of mother Natalie, played by Christina Hendricks, whose role as maternal harpy recalls almost every dislikeable trait of “Mad Men” secretary Joan, for whom Hendricks is best known. But even at her shrillest, Natalie doesn’t seem to deserve the cad she’s married.

Roland, played by Alessandro Nivola, is handsome and passionate to a fault. He demands not to be reminded of his fatherly status, and eventually we see how deeply that lacking responsibility wounds. But through most of the movie, Roland’s rejection of authority is part of the allure of London’s damp counterculture. In his beatnik world and the wind-whipped night drives while Mom fumes at home, Ginger and Rosa see opportunity to advance their back alley debauchery.

At first, we prefer his approach to the world — like Ginger, we want to be included in his hip enclave. But gradually we find ourselves disapproving of what that cool perspective means to a household, siding with shrewish Natalie in their crumbling marriage. Roland is partly responsible for a major betrayal of Ginger’s trust halfway through the story. The reluctant patriarch’s actions here are so thoughtless, his handling of the aftermath so petulant and self-centered, that he becomes wholly unsympathetic by film’s end.

His despicable behavior is entwined with that of Rosa. Englert is believable as a teenager dabbling in cigarettes and bad decisions, and her character’s contrived transformation is spot-on: a young girl trying desperately to fit in with the grownups. It might have been nice to see more of that metamorphosis, but feeling it through Ginger’s increasingly distant exchanges with her is effective. The less we see of Rosa, the more we identify with Ginger as she strikes out on her own.

Ginger’s loneliness is made palpable by the chill of London’s fog throughout Potter’s film. Also key are the jaunty ‘60s pop songs she flips on to distract herself from fear of the unknown and abandonment by family and friends. These are among the small, wonderful elements Potter throws in to create a full experience of Ginger’s world. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan uses vastness and close quarters to high impact, starting with a compelling series of parallel shots to tell the short story of Ginger and Rosa’s beginnings. Ryan closes the film with a different sort of side-by-side: Ginger and her dad, seated inside a stoic hospital waiting room, while her voiceover reads a poem in progress considering the future of her shattered best-friendship. We know how the Cold War ends. The fate of Ginger and Rosa’s formative alliance, on the other hand, is a fraying loose thread.

Published March 25, 2013, on Neon Tommy.

Photo courtesy of Philip V. Caruso/HBO

The tagline for David Mamet’s film Phil Spector, which premieres this Sunday (March 24) on HBO, starts off by warning viewers who expect journalistic accuracy: “The truth is somewhere in the mix.”

A fictionalized blending of events, the movie imagines what might have happened on the night when actress Lana Clarkson was shot dead inside Spector’s Alhambra mansion then follows Spector’s subsequent murder trials and the media circus surrounding them. How true to life is this account? Criminal defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden, whose work on Spector’s behalf in the 2007 trial forced the jury into deadlock, is cagey about the details.

“I can’t confirm anything, because to confirm would be breaching the attorney-client privilege,” she says when asked about her impressions of the film, which stars Helen Mirren in a role based on Baden. “I think what David [Mamet] is doing, and what juries do, is they try to see what could have happened behind the scenes.”

Could the defense team have gathered a focus group to gauge the sympathy factor in Spector’s case? Could they set up elaborate reenactments of what happens when you startle a woman with a gun in her mouth? Could they conduct blood splatter analysis to determine whether Spector’s white jacket could have been left nearly immaculate standing arm’s length from an explosive, fatal gunshot? “Sure,” Baden says. “It could have happened, and maybe none of it happened.”

Though her former client is serving a sentence of 19 years to life in a California prison, Baden thinks Spector is innocent. Mamet’s film raises doubts about the producer’s guilt as well as questions about how much merit there is to fictionalizing cases of true crime for the sake of entertainment. We talked with Baden about her reactions to the movie and how she’ll look back on the career milestone of defending a music industry legend now considered a monster.

What was your reaction when David Mamet first reached out to you?
I got a call on my phone and someone said, “Hello, Linda? This is Dave Mamet.” Your first reaction is, I’m being punked. Then he says, “I’ve written a screenplay using a character based on you with your name. Would you like to read it?” At that point, you don’t care if you’re being punked. If anyone’s writing a screenplay, sure you’d like to read it! David then emailed me what he had written and within like an hour, I sent him back notes on technical aspects, on some of the jargon. This went on a couple times and finally he said, “Would you consult on the technical aspects?” I told him, “I can’t tell you what happened behind the scenes, but I’d love to work with you on the technical aspects so that’s all correct.”

You hit the jackpot with Helen Mirren playing you.
Yeah, you try to be cool about it, but even as a jaded lawyer, when the producers call you up and say, “Do you wanna know who’s playing you? Helen Mirren,” you get off the phone and you’re like, “Oh my God!” It’s surreal. It’s almost unnerving, sitting there watching somebody portray you.

Let me just say that in terms of her portrayal of me, I thought that she really nailed the passion and the commitment that I have to both that case and pretty much any case that I try. As an attorney, you tend to leave a piece of yourself with every case. If you’re doing a good job for your clients, you are involved basically on a 24-hour basis mentally and it takes a toll on any attorney. As a matter of fact, I hope what I do as a lawyer could do her justice as an actor.

How did you go about helping her get ready for the role once Bette Midler was out (due to back problems)?
I didn’t have as much time (with Mirren). We did speak on the phone, we did email several times, and she had all the notes that I had given Bette in terms of how I approach cases. HBO also had obtained the video of the trial so everyone was able to see how I worked and what my mannerisms are. It was a pleasure meeting with her and it’s obviously exciting to have someone like Helen play you. I hope the gravitas is conveyed in the role. It was for me.

What did you think of Al Pacino as Phil Spector?
Al obviously had watched a lot of tape of Phil. I thought that he had a lot of his mannerisms down correctly, how he spoke. I did think that Al’s performance showed a side of Phillip that the Helen Mirren character could talk to. I thought that was very good. Anyone who watched that, I think, came out thinking there is another side to Phil Spector that maybe no one realized before Al’s performance.

Is it at all problematic to fictionalize cases like these?
I think it depends on who the writer is. With someone like David Mamet, whose dad had been a lawyer and who really respects the law, it’s fine. You know it’s going to have an importance, and he did explore a number of themes in this movie — our age of Twitter and social media, and media attaching to trials like they were at the Coliseum with the Romans and lions. Do juries and the public pay more attention to the look of the character and maybe the freakishness of defendants as opposed to the facts? I think those are themes that have to be explored. I think with a lesser writer it may not be a good thing, but with someone like Mamet, it is a very good thing.

You mentioned public perception of Spector as a freakish character. Do you feel protective of him?
I do feel that there are a number of stories out there which do not reflect the client that I grew to know. I’m not sure you can call it protective. It’s like anything else. We talk about Spector’s hair and the question becomes: Why did that become something we judge him on? Like David, I am concerned about those types of things infiltrating a trial.

Ten, 20 years from now, how do you think you’ll look back on trial? Do you think fondly of Phil as a person?
Yes, I do. I was perturbed to find that the second trial didn’t go as well as the first trial. [Baden was unable to participate in the 2009 trial due to reactive arthritis as a result of her pneumonia during the 2007 trial.] With any client, you work hard for them and you hope that the outcome will be in their favor. So I do think fondly of him. I hope that whatever happens to him, he has some type of peace in his life.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

Published March 20, 2013, on LAMag.com.

Representatives from the coalition took turns speaking at the podium. (Catherine Green/Neon Tommy)

Gun owners in Glendale felt the ripple effect of the nation’s recent slew of mass shootings when the City Council approved a ban Tuesday on gun shows held on public property.

The ordinance, introduced by Councilman Rafi Manoukian and approved by a 3-2 vote, prohibits the sale and possession of guns and ammunition on city property, and will take effect April 18. It’s a direct blow to a profitable gun show held three times a year at the city’s civic auditorium, located near a special needs school and across the street from a community college.

Roughly 30 residents filled the seats of the small council chambers this week for the official vote, far fewer than the 140 who poured in for public comment at the March 12 meeting.

Taking turns to speak last week at a podium in front of the four council members and Mayor Frank Quintero, gun show challengers and supporters dressed the part, respectively. A woman from the Coalition for A Better Glendale, which backed the ban, wore a sash adorned with photos of her children. One man sported a rumpled, bright yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” T-shirt. Their emotional appeals ranged from cries of constitutional infringement to pleas for the security of the community, echoing rhetoric tossed between both sides of the nationwide gun control debate.

During her allotted 90 seconds, Joal Ryan, a founding member of the coalition, responded to gun show supporters’ suggestion that the ordinance was a knee-jerk reaction to shootings outside of Glendale, particularly the deaths of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., last December. “Yes, it’s true,” Ryan said. “We are here on this night because we have been moved to action by the mass murder of children. What would it say about us and our community if we weren’t?”

Councilman Manoukian first pushed for the ban in 2006 during his tenure as mayor. It found little support from council members at the time, but public shock in Newtown’s wake revived the initiative.

City Attorney Michael Garcia presented his legal analysis of the ordinance at last week’s meeting, pointing out the auditorium’s ”sensitive location,” across the street from Glendale Community College, which enrolls 16,000 students, and “less than 1,000 feet from College View School, a Glendale Unified School District school that provides K-12 instruction to students with special needs.”

Garcia said his office concluded the ban was “not a restrictive ordinance” and would not “substantially burden the rights of individuals to bear arms for self-defense,” given the availability of firearms for purchase from 37 licensed dealers in Glendale and those in surrounding cities.

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the South Central L.A. Tea Party, which demonstrated in support at the latest — and last — gun show held March 2-3, wasn’t reassured by the city attorney’s report. “One thing leads to another one,” he said March 12 after being forcibly removed from the podium for exceeding his time limit. “If we cave into this, believe me, there’ll be something else they want to ban until eventually they take away all our rights to bear arms.”

Ryan clarified the coalition had no current plans to demand other gun-related ordinances.

Sean Brady, attorney for Glendale gun show owner Steve Friesen, said he and his client could resort to legal action. “This particular ordinance and the way it’s drafted presents various issues that will necessarily require litigation,” Brady said. “I don’t understand what the rush to pass this ordinance is.”

Friesen offered a prepared statement to argue against the city terminating its contract with his gun show: “…This is an example of hastily crafted laws that will only harm law-abiding citizens. My event has been safe, well organized, and met all civic regulations, and generates revenue for the City of Glendale.” Buyers at Friesen’s shows are subject to background checks and the state-mandated 10-day waiting period. As for profitability, a Jan. 22 report by Garcia’s office projected the three shows this year would have raked in $57,000 for the city in parking and other event fees.

Friesen and his client could not be reached for comment immediately following Tuesday’s vote.

Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA who specializes in gun control, said the ban itself and Friesen’s chances in court were both grey areas. Winkler cited the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, which explicitly prohibited guns in “sensitive areas” like schools and government buildings, “but whether that applies to parks or any place in public where there’s likely to be a gathering of people remains unclear,” he said.

“It’s uncertain how this lawsuit would fare in court,” Winkler continued. “The government has broad regulatory authority to keep guns out of sensitive places, but there are limits to what the government can do. Depending on the breadth of this ban, it may be unconstitutional. The devil’s in the details.”

California is already one of the strictest states in the country on gun regulation. But according to the FBI’s uniform crime reports, the state also ranked highest in murders by firearms in 2011 at 1,220. The next highest tally came from a state with decidedly looser regulations — Texas, with 699 gun-related homicides.

Democrats in California’s legislature pushed to further regulate purchasing and owning guns earlier this year. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and other lawmakers were confident last month when they introduced 10 proposals, including required background checks for ammunition purchases and a prohibition on selling semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines.

Some of these statewide proposals would affect residents who already own guns. Manuela Albequerque, special counsel assisting City Attorney Garcia, made clear that wouldn’t be the case in Glendale’s ordinance. “It does not regulate the owners of firearms,” Albuquerque said during the city attorney’s presentation March 12. “It only provides that firearms cannot be possessed and sold on city property.” She addressed the council members specifically: “You are the proprietors of the property, and you need to tell (residents) how you use that property.”

In total, the ordinance will apply to Glendale’s 47 parks and recreation facilities, nine fire stations, eight public libraries, several Glendale Water and Power facilities, a youth center and an emergency shelter.

While voicing support for the ban, Councilwoman Laura Friedman expressed sympathy for the city’s gun owners, but said Glendale leaders had to consider conflicting priorities from both sides.

“My feeling is that this building and all public property belongs to everyone in Glendale,” Friedman said. “I don’t believe that it’s the responsibility of this city to host that gun show given how unpopular it is with many of our residents.”

For Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Tuesday’s vote marked a significant loss. “It’s an insult to the voters and taxpayers in Glendale,” he said. Peterson noted the South Central L.A. Tea Party is “involved with educating the people” in Glendale, and is in touch with gun advocates there to nail down their next steps. “The folks on the side of good have to start fighting back. The Constitution protects us, and (local government) cannot go against the Constitution,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Published March 20, 2013, on Neon Tommy.

James Franco and Mila Kunis star. (MovieWeb.com)

Sam Raimi could have been walking into a career killer when he signed on to direct “Oz the Great and Powerful” — done poorly, his flick had the potential to desecrate the legacy of “The Wizard of Oz,” enraging countless movie buffs.

But by yanking the audience back to a time before the original, “Oz the Great and Powerful” doesn’t overstep its bounds into the vault of Great American Classics, delivering instead a charming, visually joyful first chapter.

The opening scene drops us into a grayscale Kansas circa 1905. Before his tenure as the great wizard of Oz, Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is a womanizing carnival magician, and though adept in sleight of hand, not a terribly successful one at that. He and his assistant Frank (Zach Braff) scrape by in threadbare jackets and dusty hats while putting on their rickety show for skeptical fairgoers. Oscar knows he’s not a good man, but that doesn’t bother him much. He tells his one-that-got-away Annie (Michelle Williams), “Kansas is full of good men. I want to be a great one.”

He gets the chance to become one when the traveling circus’ strong man finds out Oscar’s been canoodling with his girl. The resulting rampage chases Oscar up into a hot air balloon just before a tornado sweeps through. Cowering in the balloon’s basket at the mercy of the cyclone, he pleads with a higher being above the din of swirling carnival debris: “I don’t want to die! I haven’t accomplished anything yet! Gimme a chance — I promise I can change!”

Destiny takes his word for it, and delivers him to Oz, where a prophecy has set expectations high that a great wizard will save the kingdom from conniving, murderous witches. But at first, it’s unclear who fits the bill for any of these roles. Mila Kunis plays Theodora, the witch who finds Oz once he’s landed and falls for his charms — hard enough that it eventually initiates her descent into truly wicked territory.

Her sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz) runs the show inside Emerald City.Claiming to be the slain king’s royal advisor, she dispatches Oz to kill the woman she says is the wicked witch. Joined by a flying bellhop monkey named Finley (voiced by Braff) and a talking porcelain doll (Joey King), Oz sets out only to find his target is Glinda (Williams again), who bears a striking resemblance to his lost love Annie. Infatuation with the nurturing witch — not to mention a bounty of gold at stake — is enough to get Oz to take on the sister temptresses.

Williams, with old-fashioned beauty that made audiences take note in 2011’s “My Week With Marilyn,” is perfect for the role of Glinda. Her sugary mannerisms drill down into the sweet tooth as deeply as Billie Burke’s cooing in the 1939 classic — and that’s oddly comforting.

Franco as Oz is exactly what we expect — hit-or-miss. Sometimes he’s on point with the bombast and camp his role requires. In other scenes, he underwhelms, and his con-man-turning-over-a-new-leaf character feels typically half-baked. The college roommate dynamic he shares with Braff is among the more redeeming aspects of Franco’s performance. Otherwise, we don’t feel quite along for the ride as Oz undergoes his personal transformation from girl-crazy swindler to, well, girl-crazy swindler in a dazzling green palace.

As fun and endearing as Mila Kunis appears to be in bro-comedies and real life interviews, she’d do well to avoid sincere characters like pre-jilted Theodora. She gets the job done, peppering scenes with plenty of the nostalgic revelations we like in films like this (“Oh, that’s where the broom thing came from”). But she might not be a good enough actor to convincingly cover up the fiery personality audiences want out of her.

Meanwhile, her co-star Weisz is a standout as despicable witch Evanora, despite the actor’s ladylike reputation. We know from the beginning there’s something dark about her when Oz first arrives in Emerald City, but Weisz’s sinister portrayal is utterly convincing as it deepens throughout the film.

Together with Braff and a legion of well-meaning Oz extras, the actors create a healthy ensemble, adding some interpersonal depth through manipulation, hesitant trust and disappointment. And Raimi’s film does what most prequels can’t — it makes the original feel more complete. Now we have a respectable backstory for the Man Behind the Curtain, one that shows consideration for the responsibility of advancing the treasured narrative.

The storytelling is made all the better by a wondrous aesthetic. From steampunk to technicolor Candyland, everything about the ornamentation of the film is a treat. In the land of Oz’s brilliant color palette, canyonesque land sculptures, musical lilypads and hybrid creatures, we see the benefit of a modern day reboot. With better effects at their fingertips, Raimi and cinematographer Peter Deming were empowered to fully explore their imaginations on screen. Suffice it to say they didn’t waste the opportunity.

Braver even than its ambitious protagonist, “Oz the Great and Powerful” faces head-on the formidable challenge of crafting a kid-friendly fantasy film while honoring a moviemaking legend. It may never nestle inside the vault next to its predecessor, but at the very least, it’s earned a spot on plenty of Netflix queues for years to come.

Published March 11, 2013, on Neon Tommy.

The cast seemed as in the dark as we are when it comes to future plotlines. (Kevin Parry/Paley Center for Media)

Can the world handle a Nashville tour? Stars of ABC’s hit drama — Connie Britton, Hayden Panettiere, Clare Bowen, Charles Esten, Jonathan Jackson, and Sam Palladio — seemed a little wary when pressed during Saturday afternoon’s PaleyFest Q&A.

Their fans in the audience, however, were happy to answer for them with thundering applause.

It seems like a natural step for the actors who’ve developed a following for their musical talents as much as for their on-screen chemistry. Offscreen, Nashville soundtrack has already been downloaded some 1.5 million times; onscreen, original music remains the centerpiece of a show embroiled in under-the-table political dealings, simmering romances, and plenty of Southern twang.

For creator and executive producer Callie Khouri (check out our Q&A with her), who counts 1991′sThelma & Louise and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood among her writing credits, the show has been a way to pay tribute to a city that still holds her heart. “I’m glad everybody’s getting to see my town the way I’ve always wanted to show it,” Khouri said from the Saban Theatre stage.

Khouri introduced the last aired episode of the show’s first season, “Dear Brother,” which revolved around the aftermath of Rayna Jaymes and Teddy’s divorce and the abrupt departure of Juliette Barnes’ manager. (New episodes return March 27.) This wasn’t merely an exercise in tying up loose ends; audiences saw the plot thicken for Gunnar in ways that even sweet Scarlett might not be able to smooth over.

The dynamic between Sam Palladio (Gunnar Scott) and Clare Bowen (Scarlett O’Connor) was among the more interesting points of Saturday’s panel. A native Brit Palladio landed the part of Gunnar via a webcam audition; flying to Nashville to start work on the show was his first trip to the States. The pair, who would become one of Nashville‘s key will-they-won’t-theys, met for the first time jet-lagged in their hotel to rehearse the sultry ballad “If I Didn’t Know Better” with legendary country singer and producer Buddy Miller.

According to Khouri, their demonstrated talent that day set the bar high. “Buddy called me right before to say, ‘Well, I’m gonna have to probably rearrange the song’” — a piece written by The Civil Wars that included some daunting falsetto for Palladio — “and I said, ‘Buddy, whatever you think is best.’ About an hour and a half later, he called to say, ‘Ok, they can sing it,’” she laughed.

Bowen, an Aussie who picked up her character’s Southern accent from videos her flight attendant father brought home from his travels, including Song of the South (yikes) and Fried Green Tomatoes, said it was “validation” to earn Miller’s vote of confidence after getting kicked out of opera class in school and being told she couldn’t sing. “That’s what we’ve had the whole way, being supported and being pushed and pulled with the utmost generosity… by these people who know exactly what they’re doing. That’s been one of the biggest things for Scarlett,” Bowen said. “She and I are going through the same thing, almost at the same time.”

Hayden Panettiere, who plays country poptart Juliette Barnes, had her own insecurities to overcome while launching into her character’s stardom. Surprising for an actor who’s been working steadily since the age of 7, Panettiere said stage fright posed a serious challenge in the beginning, tempered only by the guidance of producer T Bone Burnett.

In fact, all of the cast members had praise for Burnett, the show’s executive music guru (and Khouri’s husband). “He’s like a music whisperer,” Britton said after explaining how he contributed almost as much as Khouri in developing Rayna’s character. “You talk to any actor who’s been able to have the great, great fortune to work with him, and they will tell you the same thing. Boy, we all got hit by the lucky stick.”

Charles Esten, who plays Deacon Claybourne, piped up: “I’ve seen so many award shows and I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say, ‘I wanna thank T Bone Burnett…’ I think for each of us, there was that moment in the studio where we go, ‘I get it. I get what they were thinking.’ So, thank you, T Bone Burnett.”

The cast was less forthcoming with details about future storylines. No doubt the show will keep up its trademark drama, which Britton said was subtle compared to the stories she’d heard from industry folks around Music City. On-tour tension in the Rayna-Deacon-Juliette triangle could easily carry the show on its own — don’t get us started on that elevator kiss. “It’s textured,” Esten said of his character’s relationship with Rayna. “We have this deep, old, abiding, undeniable love. She’s the one for me… But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work out easily.”

Meanwhile, there’s the forever foiled romance between Scarlett and Gunnar. “It’s been kind of a series of knee-jerk reactions,” Bowen said of their trajectory so far. “They function normally and haven’t ever really stopped and looked at each other and gone, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ We’re waiting for something like that… Maybe.”

Suffice it to say their eager fans are, too.

Published March 10, 2013, on LAMag.com.