The TV Chick

Picture this: Miami Beach, 1959. As Ike Evans rings in the New Year at his luxurious Miramar Playa Hotel, Havana falls to Castro’s rebels. It’s a turbulent time in Miami, but it’s THE place to be. The Kennedys, the mob and the CIA all hold court here. And Ike, he’s the star of his hotel. But everything comes at a price. As Ike’s world threatens to implode, he fights for his family, and the Miramar Playa, in Magic City. Sounds pretty great right? Magic City premieres tomorrow night (April 6th) at 10 PM on Starz, so keep reading to see how you could win a fantastic Magic City Prize Pack and catch the first three episodes early!

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Next Friday (March 30th) is the big Spartacus: Vengeance finale on Starz at 10 PM. This season has been full of epic battles, deception, and everything you would come to expect from Ancient Rome. I am excited to offer this great giveaway so you can have an awesome season finale party! Keep reading to find out how you can enter to win a pretty fantastic prize pack.

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Party Down has its last episode 2nd season this week, and what a great season it has been. The season finale guest stars Jane Lynch (who is back, and getting married), and if you haven’t been watching, you really should be! It is a testament to the show that Jane Lynch came back for an episode and most of the actors stayed from season 1. Party Down centers around a catering company of the same name where none of the employees really want to be there. There’s the requisite terrible boss (played by Ken Marino) and the love interests (played by Adam Scott and Lizzy Caplan), the huge sci-fi nerd/wannabee writer (played by Martin Starr), the wannabee actor (played by Ryan Hansen) and of course the stage mom (played by Megan Mullally). I think it is one of the funniest, most clever shows on television that deserves a ton more praise and attention. I recently had the chance to chat with Martin Starr (who plays Roman) about the show, his character and even how far he would go for a season three. After teasing me about The TV Chick (and thinking it was/should be The TV Chic), we proceeded to chat about Party Down. There are many rumors going around because so many of the cast have moved on that there might not be another season, but according to Martin, it’s definitely still a possibility. I also have to warn you that while I did edit a lot of this interview down, it is pretty dirty (and awesome).

What originally drew you to the part of Roman?
I wish there was a more complicated answer that I just received a phone call that I had an offer from a TV show that I knew nothing about but that Paul Rudd was producing, and I said “I guess so. Tentatively yes, I would do it. But I’ll read the script first, I suppose.” So I read it, and of course I loved it.

Are you similar to Roman at all? Do you love sci-fi quite as much as he does?
No. (laughs) That will be a disappointment to all of our sci-fi fans I suppose. Although I kind of doubt that we have a massive sci-fi fan base. I don’t know, I don’t really watch that much TV. I love Star Trek, the original with Shatner and all those guys. I used to watch that growing up on TV Land or Nick at Nite, and that was awesome. Actually I think it was just on regular TV late at night before TV Land and Nick at Nite started.

I feel like it was on UPN or something. [Ed Note: This was a total guess]
Yeah, UPN 13.

If you don’t like sci-fi as much as Roman does, how are you like or unlike him?
Hopefully I’m not as grumpy (laughs) and unhappy and sadistic as he is. I hope!

I’m sure you’re not!
Well, you don’t know me yet.

That’s true. Maybe by the end of this conversation, I will think the opposite. I don’t know.
You will now know the real me.

Do you have any personal experiences or know anyone that you draw from to portray Roman? When I spoke with Ryan Hansen, he didn’t name names of course, but he said he did know a lot of the Party Down types.
You mean like the producers he used to go to the bathroom with to get parts from?

Right (laughs)
Is that what you mean?

Yes!
Ryan definitely used to do that. He’s told me crazy stories about San Diego all the fun stuff that happens on B movie sets. Just joking around!

Have you ever had a catering job? Or do you have a job that was your least favorite?
I wish. I wish I had. I actually always wanted to. I still want to. That’s going to sound so (laughs) — I feel like ignorant for me to say this — but I really want to work in a service industry job, because I feel like you gain a lot of respect for people with patience, once you have to deal with 100 morons a day. I feel like I know so many people that don’t have enough respect for people who take care of them. You know?

Yeah.
It’s just the general idea of respecting the people around you, in your environment. The fact that those people, who you may be disrespecting in small ways in your eyes, have the power to shit in your food. So just based on the fact that I don’t want feces in what I wind up putting in my body, I would like to show respect to all the people are kind enough to take care of whatever needs I have at an establishment that I dine at.

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Starz officially won me over with Party Down, so I was excited to see what else the network had to offer. Gravity is a new series starring Krysten Ritter (of “Breaking Bad” and “Gilmore Girls” fame) about a suicide support group. Each member of the group tried to kill themselves in some way — some hilarious ways, others heartbreaking, and some we are just beginning to discover. The third episode is tonight and already it’s off to a great start. When I first heard about this series, I wasn’t sure what to think. However, I think death is a topic that isn’t addressed enough on TV. Gravity injects humor where necessary and serious moments as well, and I think the balance is just right. I recently had the chance to chat with the lovely creator, Jill Franklyn, who talked about the casting process, her inspiration for the show and why she had to change the name to Gravity.

What was your inspiration behind creating Gravity?
I was having a bad day. I don’t mean to make light of it. I’m not going to give you the laundry list of what was going on, but it was during the writers strike in ’07 when I came up with it. And just my dog, and there was just all this stuff, so I went to this dark place which I sometimes do–which for me, creatively is really good. And so I also was thinking about, because it was the writers strike and I knew coming back from the writers strike, that it was going to be really hard to sell something, and you really had to come up with something different. So I was trying to think of territories that no one had ever approached and so I started thinking about death, as I do, because I’ve written a lot of stories about people that are in comas, and I made them humorous. So I just started thinking about crazy ways of people trying to off themselves and it started to come alive. I started to see the faces of the characters, they had names, I had a title for the show. And then what happened was I called up my agent and I was already going out with three shows. And I called up my agent and said I have one more show I want to go out with, and they said “Okay, what is it?” and I said “I call it ‘Suicide for Dummies’” and it’s going to be a comedy about suicide, and there was dead silence on the phone.

(laughs)
“Are you guys there?” and they said “Yeah…but no. We cannot make that call. We cannot call up producers and say you have a show about suicide.” So because I already had three shows I was going out with, I put it aside. I put it aside and Eric [Schaeffer] had called me one day, we had worked together once before. He wasn’t doing anything and he asked what I was doing, and I said I had some projects I was going out with. And he asked if I had anything laying around, and I said “Yeah, I do have this idea that I really want to do but my agents doesn’t want me to go out with it. So I told him, and he said “I love that!” I’ll get my agents to go out with it. So, we talked it about it for a little bit and I said go off and think about it and I’ll go think about it because we need more than that. And he called me the next day and after I hung up with him, I was thinking about what could be the love story. And I had written this movie, I actually wrote it in a weekend after a yoga class, and sold it the next week. It was about this girl who — well there’s this big sixth sense twist to it — but I’ll just say that in the afterlife she finds her love…I’ll  say that just in case it gets made, hopefully.

Yeah, you don’t want to give it away!
No, especially that big twist. So I had this character, and I already know her name is Lily, and I’m thinking why does she do it and who is she and what happens when she dies? And the whole story just came to me really in a few minutes. So I wrote everything down and I wrote it as if I was her telling her story. And I think just a few days later, we started going out to the networks and it was really funny because we would get these reactions where people would just look at us completely dumbfounded. Fortunately, we found Starz. They were really great. And so we wrote the pilot — we actually Skype wrote the pilot — because he’s there, I’m here. [She's in LA and he's in NY] We wrote the pilot and then we had to wait a really long time. I’m going to say that it felt like it could have been like 8 months. I could be exaggerating but it was a really long time and I remember so well because my dog was so sick and my dog had died and I remember I was at Trader Joe’s and Eric called me and said “Guess what, our show got picked up.” And I said “Oh that’s really great.” And he said “You don’t sound excited.” And I said “Well, my dog died.” And he said “But you don’t sound excited!” And I said “But my dog died…”

You were like how am I supposed to sound excited after this happened?
I know, it was awful. It was awful and bittersweet. And ultimately it was great, and I will tell you right now I have my new dog laying on my lap.

Aww. I’m a huge dog lover.

[We then proceeded to talk about dogs -- I grew up with golden retrievers. We are both surprised at how many dogs live in New York City.]

So then we got the call, and then we just wrote the nine episodes and it was pretty quick. We turned them around really fast and it was really exciting. I think the biggest thing for me was just knowing that if somebody says no, it really has no more meaning to me (laughs). And so I love that. I feel much more freedom than I did before.

Yeah. And how did the name change to Gravity?
Well, I knew we were going to have a problem with Suicide For Dummies because of all the For Dummies books. So we changed it first to Suicide Dummies so it didn’t have the for in it, so it didn’t seem like it was a manual. And Starz legal they just didn’t want suicide in the title. So they threw around a lot of other names. We had Failure to Fly which I just hated. Failure to Fly is the actual term if you’re in the hospital and you try to commit suicide and you fail, they call that Failure to Fly.

Oh! I had no idea!
I had no idea either, but I still hated it. And I don’t remember exactly how we had Gravity. I think Gravity was in a list of maybe three names and it just, at first I wasn’t crazy about it and then it grew on me, and now I love it.

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I have been waiting for Party Down to return for quite some time. I have talked it up to all of my friends and called it one of the best comedies of the year. For a show in its first season, that is a feat. Tonight’s season premiere “Jackal Onassis Backstage Party” does not disappoint. The show centers around a group of caterers (the company is called Party Down), who all have no desire to be caterers. Rob Thomas (genius who created Veronica Mars) along with John Embom and Dan Etheridge have created a series that supposedly uses the British Office as an influence. Party Down stars a cast with some familiar faces: Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, Martin Starr, Ken Marino, Ryan Hansen and joining them for season 2, Megan Mullally. Jane Lynch was a part of season 1 and she was phenomenal but she left to do Glee (which I’m happy about but wish she could do both).

Nothing can ever go right in Party Down world. People are always goofing off, their boss is usually leading the pack and the last thing any of them care about is actually catering. Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott (Casey and Henry) start dating last season, but at the end she goes to do stand-up comedy on a cruise. Ryan Hansen (Kyle) will literally do anything for a part, Martin Starr (Roman) is into hard-core sci-fi  and like everyone else in Hollywood, is writing a screenplay. Megan Mullally (Lydia) fits perfectly in the group as she moved to California for her daughter to become famous. I was a bit worried that no one would be able to fill Jane Lynch’s hilarious shoes but Megan Mullally does a great job.

At the end of last season it seemed like the group was disbanding. All of them were leaving to do “better” things including Ron, who went to fulfill his dream of running a Souper Crackers. When the season picks up, however, the crew is back with Henry as team leader. Of course, no one takes him seriously. Their first job is to cater a backstage party for satanic rocker Jackal Onassis. Hilarity ensues when Roman decides he wants to be Jackal Onassis to pick up women. You’ll just have to tune into see whether Casey and Henry’s romance picks up and if Ron is able to handle his new subordinate position. I’ve seen the first batch of episodes and it just gets better and better. There have been rumors floating around that this might be the last season of the show because Adam Scott is now going to be on Parks and Recreation and Lizzy Caplan has another pilot, but I really hope this isn’t the case. The creators have said that they understand they can’t hold people to the show but because it’s a catering company, people (and actors) can come in and out. I’m counting on a season 3, Starz, don’t let me down! Also, if you don’t get Starz, the episode is available online!

The 2nd season premiere of Party Down airs tonight at 10 pm.
Gravity is a new series on Starz, that is truly unique. Here’s what the network has to say about it:

“Starz premieres its new dramatic comedy “Gravity,” which follows the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic exploits of a group from an eccentric out-patient program of suicide survivors. Krysten Ritter stars as Lily Champagne, a twenty-something who just can’t connect to anyone until she actually dies. She stars with Ivan Sergei, who plays Robert Collingsworth, who is despondent following the death of his wife, and who becomes an internet celebrity when his suicide attempt goes comically awry.  He stars with Eric Schaeffer, the series’ co-creator and one of its executive producers, who plays Miller, an enigmatic cop with mysterious intentions. Also in the cast are Ving Rhames as Dogg McFee, the group’s leader and a former Major League Baseball player, now confined to a wheelchair; and supermodel Rachel Hunter as Shawna Rollins, a former spokesmodel and current life coach who is surprised to find herself attracted to someone much younger than herself. Robyn Cohen, James Martinez and Seth Numrich round out the main cast.”

I wasn’t sure what to think of this new series at first. I love Starz, so I had high hopes. Krysten Ritter is a favorite actress of mine from Gilmore Girls (others may know her from “Breaking Bad”) and it’s so great to see her in a starring role. The series premiere, titled “Suicide Dummies” centers around getting to know each of the members of the suicide support group. The premise of the show is interesting and definitely unique but it took until about half way through the episode for me to get hooked. I still want to know more about Lily’s (Ritter) life and what lead her to attempted suicide, but you can’t get everything in the first episode. I think this show has a ton of potential and I am intrigued by each storyline. The creators have gotten some flack about tackling this subject, so I hope they can continue to do it in a respectful way. I am certainly looking forward to seeing more. As with Party Down, you can also watch Gravity online, so you should check it out.

Gravity premieres tonight at 10:30 PM on Starz.