August, 1996:
The week after our very first International Radio Production & Voiceover Summit, I attended a Television Academy (you know, the people who award the Emmys) panel session. I had been to one other, and much of that evening was ruined by the awful moderating of the hostess.
This time, the panel consisted of 13 members of NYPD Blue — including Steven Bocho, David Milch (boy, do I wish I could be half as funny as that guy thinks he is), Jimmy Smits, Dennis Franz…a pretty big, impressive turn-out from the show.
And…alas…it turned out to be moderated by the same well-meaning but spectacularly incompetent woman. Let’s call her “Pandora.”
They began the session 20 minutes late (with no explanation or apology to the audience). Some woman (an Academy board member) came out, introduced herself, and spent five minutes thanking a bunch of individuals for their invaluable service in putting together this event. The audience — which had yet to receive anything of value — was expected to applaud each of these people.
Then she spent five minutes giving the show biz credits of her partner in producing the evening, by way of introducing her.
Her partner got up and thanked a bunch of people. (They both seemed to think they were being given an award.) She then talked about how wonderful NYPD Blue is, and that her very favorite scene from that show was the one where Lt. Fancy took Sipowicz to a ribs restaurant, where Sipowicz was the only white person there and how it was so entertaining to watch Sipowicz’s reactions to that situation.
Then she said, “And now let’s look at some highlights of NYPD Blue’s first three years.”
Two minutes later, the lights came down and someone remembered to turn on the film projector.
What followed were 30 entertaining minutes from NYPD Blue….including the “ribs restaurant scene,” which that woman had ruined for everyone by describing it a few minutes earlier.
After the clips, the woman re-appeared and introduced Pandora — citing all of her show biz credits. (Note that after all of these long-winded introductions, the audience had yet to be introduced to any of the people they came to see & hear.)
Pandora asked the panelists to come onstage and take their seats.
They did.
But three of them — Jimmy Smits, Dennis Franz, and Kim Delaney — immediately got back up and walked off the stage in search of toilet facilities. (I suspect there was a pre-seminar reception that had filled them with fluids while the audience sat around for 20 extra minutes.)
Pandora then introduced each panelist — listing each person’s complete professional credits. (Imagine going to a stage play and, before it begins, having a moderator read every actor, writer & producer’s credits verbatim from the printed program.)
During the next hour, two other panelists (including Bochco) similarly disappeared for several minutes at a time.
Pandora asked some incredibly insightful & intelligent questions — almost as good as the questions one might expect from the hosts of A.M. Bakersfield.
Such as?
Such as her first question of the actors (one by one, relentlessly in turn):
“How do you like being on NYPD Blue?”
At this first question, Jimmy Smits looked like she had just vomited into his hat. “Uhhh….Well, um…..Y’know, I, uh, I like to talk about the PROCESS that we go through, y’know, questions about acting…But I, uh….How do I like being on NYPD Blue? Uh, well…Um….Well, I like it a lot. But….Well, maybe we could talk a little about the PROCESSES we go through to arrive at what we get….”)
So did Pandora take the hint and ask something about process? No, she turned to the next actor on the panel and said, “How do you like being on NYPD Blue?”
She also asked, “What has been your favorite moment in this show?”
Now, although I would not have asked that question, I would have forgiven it…if it had been asked only once. But she asked each actor on the panel, and each actor basically said, “Uh, well…I don’t really have a favorite moment. It’s all a process, and it’s really hard to think of individual moments.”
Finally Bocho said, “Look, a TV series is like the Bataan Death March; we just try to get through the season, and everything blends into everything else. We don’t have moments.”
That question had been preceded by Pandora asking every actor, “How much are you like your character?” (Takes a real show biz insider to ask a penetrating question like that.)
I don’t recall if she asked about their favorite colors.
There was one unintentionally wonderful moment: Sharon Lawrence (who played Sylvia, Sipowicz’s wife) suggested that Sylvia’s character was a bit saint-like. To illustrate, she said, “I think that Sylvia gives a whole new meaning to the word….{Long pause}….Well, I can’t think of a word….”
A splendid evening.
