Sunday, January 12, 2014
Love Hurts
Why do we always hurt the ones we love?
Anyone who’s been a part of any kind of significant relationship, whether of the familial or romantic variety, has been given to ponder the paradoxical nature of those thorny, forged-in-fire entanglements. As evidenced by the brutal, bruising verbal brickbats the family members of August: Osage County lob at each other’s heads like hand grenades, no one can inflict quite as much damage as one’s nearest and dearest. This axiom may be most commonly applied in reference to human interaction, but it holds equally true when considering a writer and his work.
Anyone who’s ever put pen to paper — or, in this modern age, spent hours staring at a blinking monitor — knows that the peculiar bond between a scribe and his prose can be as complex and as intimate as that of any of the human variety. Many playwrights and novelists have likened their labors to the birthing process, and discuss their work in the same way that parents talk about their children. By that definition, writers who do harm to their own creations can be charged — at least, on some metaphysical plane — with child abuse.
This is not to cast aspersions on the character of Tracy Letts, who has adapted his Pulitzer Prize-winning play for the screen, and whom I suspect is only minimally to blame for what has happened to it (nothing good) en route. Still and all, it begs the eternal question: Why do we hurt the ones we love? As far as selling a book or a play to the movies is concerned, nine times out of ten, the road to perdition is paved with good intentions.
Rather than veering too far off course into the realm of psychoanalytic introspection, it may be best to consider the history of the property in question. August: Osage County premiered in the summer of 2007 at The Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. The production subsequently moved to Broadway in the fall of 2008, with most of its original cast intact. It remained ensconced on The Beltway for a year and a half — a rare feat for a non-musical production not featuring a movie or TV star — picking up virtually every major award along the way. I saw the production three times over the course of its run — anyone familiar with Broadway pricing will recognize that this represents a sacrifice — and reviewed it for this site in 2009. It is not an overstatement to say that, then as now, I regard it as one of the highlights of my life’s theatergoing experience. Admittedly, I am not the ideal person to review the film adaptation, since I cannot approach the material with any kind of objectivity. Nor would I want to. Even if it’s a fundamental part of our nature to hurt the ones we love, it doesn’t follow that we enjoy doing it.
Nevertheless, when the owner and proprietor of this blog calls me up for active duty, I do my best to answer the call. In interest of full disclosure, I must state that while I tried to approach the assignment with an open mind, personal prejudice (did I mention how much I loved the show on Broadway?) has gotten the better of me to some degree. Oddly enough, without that pre-existing prejudice, my response toward the film might have been even less felicitous than it is now.
It’s bad form when reviewers reference other critics’ opinions to reinforce and/or validate their own position. The mere act of doing so suggests lack of confidence in one’s opinion. That said, one of the things I’ve been struck (and depressed) by is the manner in which many non-theatergoing critics have suggested, based solely on their reaction to the film version, that August: Osage County is not, and in fact never could have been, much of a play. The critic for The New York Times, while allowing that that the material may have been “mishandled…(in its) transition from stage to screen,” pondered whether that transition may have “exposed weak spots in (Letts’) dramatic architecture and bald spots in his writing.” On the opposite coast, the scribe for The Los Angeles Times took it a step further in declaring that while he had not seem the stage incarnation, “nothing about this film version makes me regret that choice.”
I suspect many people on the receiving end of years’ worth of glowing testimonials will react in much the same fashion. Anyone experiencing director John Wells’ hamfisted, ultimately rather conventional Hollywood treatment of family dysfunction without a suitable frame of reference may well be given to wonder, “Is this what all the fuss was about?” Advance reports suggested that the filmmakers made a deliberate effort to brighten things up, even going so far as to tack on a happy ending. That’s not the case. While truncated, the play has not been radically revised. In a certain sense, that’s good news. The bad news is that fundamental fidelity to the text doesn’t bring this baby snugly into port. You could rewrite every line and still arrive at something that felt closer in spirit and purpose to what Letts created for the stage than what Wells and company have come up with. As played for cozy camp by a cast of Hollywood heavyweights, the material has not been softened as much as it has been neutered.
For a sharp-fanged predator used to trolling the wild with confidence, this has an effect of bland domestication, despite the fact that its path through the jungle remains essentially the same. What sets the plot in motion is the mysterious disappearance of Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard), the craggy, alcoholic patriarch of an extended clan that includes three daughters, one grandchild and an assortment of in-laws. A noted poet whose output didn’t extend beyond one fledgling success, Beverly has a habit of going missing without so much a heads up to his nearest and dearest. This time, however, his absence has an unmistakable air of finality. No one can be quite certain whether he’s alive or dead, but the likelihood of his coming back seems slim to none. One by one, the far-flung Weston children, two of whom have wisely chosen to get themselves as far away from Mom and Dad as humanly possible, descend upon the family homestead en masse to try to piece together exactly what happened to Dad, and what in hell to do about mother Violet (Meryl Streep), a chain-smoking, pill-popping, cancer-riddled gorgon who shows no signs of becoming more manageable now that her chief antagonist has vanished without a trace. Leading the charge is pragmatic, sardonic Barbara (Julia Roberts, keeping that million-dollar smile firmly under wraps), who isn’t about to let Mom off the hook without answering a few questions. Of course, when you start digging for the truth, there’s no telling what sort horrors you may uncover. As it turns out, there are good and plenty festering away in the crypt of family secrets, and Violet is perfectly willing to invite them out to dance.
Even as I lavished praise upon the play and the production in my original review, I did so with the caveat that August: Osage County was not a revolutionary work of theater, nor even a particularly original one. Borrowing liberally from Eugene O’Neill, Lillian Hellman and Sam Shepard, among others, the play harks back to the classic traditions of American drama while reinvigorating the tried-and-true machinery of melodrama with brazen, jolting theatricality. The chief mistake Wells has made for the purposes of the film version – besides some critically misjudged casting choices — is in his confusion of theatricality with camp. He encourages his cast members to go for the easy laughs whenever they can, and irons out the characters’ idiosyncrasies to the point that their behavior seems almost quaint. When Violet and Barbara literally come to blows in the climatic dinner table scene, it’s like watching Joan Collins and Linda Evans wrestling on the marble foyer at Carrington Manor. It’s outrageous, to be sure, but not particularly shocking. Without the emotional resonance that original stage players Deanna Dunagan and Amy Morton brought to the proceedings, under the skillful direction of Anna D. Shapiro, what you’re left with feels more along the lines of a live action cartoon.
While the sins of the director shouldn't be heaped at feet of the playwright, Letts' screenplay adaptation doesn’t help matters much. The clunky efforts at opening up the piece for the screen, taking the action out of doors at select intervals, never feel like an organic extension of the action. The element of claustrophobia that contributed so much to the proceedings onstage, in the rambling Pawhuska, Okla., farmhouse with its shades drawn tight to keep out light and air, has been jettisoned in favor of woebegone glimpses of parched prairies. Certain nuances inevitably fall by the wayside when condensing a 3 hour play into a 2 hour film, and while the cuts do not fundamentally alter the dramatic structure, the action occasionally feels rushed, as if the filmmakers were working on a limited budget and needed to hit all the major plot points before running out of film stock. Some characters have been whittled down to near non-existence (the Native American housekeeper, here played by Misty Upham, has been reduced to a virtual extra), while the participation of others has been severely curtailed so as not to distract from the main event of the Streep-Roberts smackdown.
About that smackdown. Judging by the posters for the film, which flaunt a scrunch-faced, teeth-baring Ms. Roberts wrestling a very harassed-looking Ms. Streep to the ground, the battle royal between two living legends already has been designated as the chief selling point for this film. I won’t argue the point. The tattered Baby Jane template still has some blood coursing through its skeletal remains, and I suspect it isn’t just camp-starved audiences who will pony up the cash to see the two biggest female stars of their respective generations going at each other like a pair of fabulously plumed Japanese fighting fish. Both actresses seem to have taken their cues from that WWE poster aesthetic, and while the ham they serve up may be to many people’s taste, the meal as a whole is less than nourishing.
At this point, we’re really not supposed to say anything bad about Meryl Streep, since certain things are to be accepted without questioning. Remember that thing they taught us in school about Democracy being the best form of government? Well, even if a few dozen Tea Party crackpots can force a complete shutdown of the entire federal shebang, you can’t fault the model, God dammit. Likewise, I’ve discovered that in certain quarters, if you broach any contradiction to the edict that Meryl Streep is The Greatest Actress Who Ever Was, people will react as if you said something bad about America. I’ve spoken this blasphemy before, and I’ve been unfriended on Facebook for doing it. I’m not exactly sure why certain folks seem to have so little sense of proportion when it comes to Our Lady of the Accents, but this is not to imply that their insistence upon her genius is entirely lacking in merit. Ms. Streep is unquestionably great. She has given some of the best and most memorable performances of the last 30-odd years. That her talent level is through the roof, residing somewhere in the stratosphere, is beyond reproof. I suspect she’s abundantly aware of this.
It isn’t that Streep has become complacent as a performer; she doesn’t just coast on her abilities, though at times, she seems to be responding more to her characters as Great Acting Opportunities than as flesh-and-blood human beings. By default, she is undoubtedly the best thing in August: Osage County. Her performance is the most finely honed and easily the most convincing of the bunch, even if the favored mannerisms and inflections are starting to look so precise and polished that they might as well be kept under glass at Tiffany’s. Where the performance loses credibility (and probably, this is the director’s fault as much as hers) is in her rendering of Violet as a lip-smacking Diva turn. Part of the fun of watching Deanna Dunagan onstage was the slow reveal of Violet’s true nature; behind the drug-induced haze and tortured insecurities lie an ineffably shrewd, twisted, Machiavellian mind, sharp as a tack and ready to do battle. By contrast, Streep takes to the screen like she’s warming up to play Eleanor of Aquitaine. When it’s crystal clear from the outset exactly who’s pulling the strings, a vital element of suspense is lost. Frankly, given who’s she up against, it isn’t as though she has much in the way of competition, anyway.
Lest anyone misunderstand my intentions, I must duly assert that I am not a snob when it comes to acting pedigree. Range and/or skill set, whether acquired by classical or method training, does not necessarily place one person on a higher pedestal than anyone else. Talent is talent, and I’ve always had a soft spot for performers who can make assembly-line crap compulsively watchable by sheer force of personality. Julia Roberts has her limitations as an actor, and her fair share of detractors (and boy, are they emphatic), but she’s also given some of the great movie star performances of her era. It’s not a knock on Audrey Hepburn to say that she probably didn’t have the chops for Albee, or that Barbra Streisand might have been absolutely disastrous in Pinter. Nor should it be perceived as a negative reflection on Ms. Roberts to say that what is required of her in this context is simply beyond her abilities. Unfortunately, that negative balance takes a lot of the charge out of the material, and gives the mother-daughter skirmish the appearance of a lopsided battle.
On stage, Amy Morton’s cornhusk-dry delivery, powerful physicality and searing emotional transparency went a long way towards revealing the deep reserves of anger and pain which informed Barbara’s metamorphosis from defeated, resentful onlooker to fully engaged combatant. While Barbara is nominally the protagonist, she’s not really the hero. That she is very much her mother’s daughter, as damaged and damaging as Violet and with the same capacity for unleashing icy torrents of cold, hard fury, is made abundantly clear as soon as Mama starts turning up the heat. You have to believe, as one character asserts, that in spite of surface appearances, there’s “no difference” between the two. Roberts endeavors diligently to embody the complexities and contradictions of the role, but going to the dark places is not the most comfortable place to be when one has made a career out of flooding the screen with sunshine. She overcompensates by punching up her sassy, feisty Erin Brockovich shtick, but what worked like gangbusters in a miniskirt and push-up-bra does not here dimension make. It’s an uncharacteristically flat, colorless performance. There’s never any risk of Barbara turning into her mother, not does it ever seems as though she is willing or able to take Violet to the mats.
No one else meandering through the din makes much of an impression, although a few of the performers — notably Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale and Juliette Lewis, who brings some nice flashes of hysteria to her marginalized role as the most clueless and least functional of the three sisters — are at least better suited to the material. While Benedict Cumberbatch has carved out a nice niche for himself in recent years as the thinking girl’s sex symbol, and Ewan McGregor likely will remain boyishly handsome well into his 60s, their presence here as, respectively, a sad-sack, slow-witted underachiever and an unprepossessing middle-age college professor, defies all measure of reason. Julianne Nicholson, Dermot Mulroney and Abigail Breslin are among those also caught in the cross-hairs, although everyone not named Meryl or Julia is essentially treated as window-dressing. While it’s something we’ve come to expect of the movies, casting so many extremely photogenic performers was probably a mistake. Quiet desperation, romantic neglect and midlife crisis have never looked more red-carpet-ready.
That red carpet will doubtless unfurl in the months to come for at least one member, and possibly more, of August: Osage County’s creative team. Tracy Letts may reap some of the rewards for his contribution here. Of course, nominations are nice, and so is the money…but reading between the lines of the playwright’s recent comments to The New York Times, he’s not entirely satisfied with the finished product. A writer’s life is one of compromise when the camera comes into the picture, and based on Letts’ statements, he probably realized that trying to maintain too much control over the film version would have been fighting a losing battle. At least, by doing the adaptation himself, he could still score a few points and protect some of what needed to be preserved. Why do we hurt the ones we love? If August: Osage County is any indication, the answer may be to prevent others from hurting them instead.
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Labels: 10s, A. Hepburn, Albee, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, Harold Pinter, Julia Roberts, O'Neill, Shepard, Streep, Streisand, Theater
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Different ways of playing 'Cards'
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the three segment British miniseries House of Cards from the 1990s starring Ian Richardson and this year's 13-episode U.S. version made for Netflix, produced by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey. If you plan to watch either version and haven't yet, read no further.
By Edward Copeland
After giving people time to watch the American version of House of Cards and with its availability on DVD and Blu-ray for those without access to Netflix Instant, I thought enough time had transpired to discuss both the new version as well as the original BBC miniseries, whose first part premiered in 1990. Prior to watching the David Fincher-produced D.C.-set House of Cards with Kevin Spacey playing the wily lead, I felt I needed to see the British version to see how well the differences translated. (Obviously, Britain's parliamentary system of government works quite differently from our legislative branch — which, in its current state, doesn't work at all, but House of Cards exists in the land of make-believe. I lacked either the time or the energy given personal matters to attempt to read the novel by Michael Dobbs that spawned the BBC miniseries.)
Though the new version pads out its story to 13 roughly one-hour episodes while the first of the three British House of Cards miniseries told mostly the same story in four episodes of approximately the same length, the U.S. take does hit many of the same plot points except when it comes to the ending, but the makers of the U.S. House of Cards envision it as a continuing series. (I needn't have watched the second and third BBC miniseries, To Play the King and The Final Cut, since the stories in those sequels aren't covered in the first season of the U.S. House of Cards.) Both versions of the political chicanery, whether set here or across the pond, offer solid entertainment and mostly solid performances, though the U.S. House of Cards wins out in terms of production values. Unfortunately, when it comes to the battle of FUs (Francis Urquhart in the U.K., Francis Underwood in the U.S.), the late Ian Richardson wins hands down. Spacey proves capable as usual for the most part, but he burdens himself with an off-and-on Southern drawl that's wholly unnecessary and, at times, a major distraction. When Richardson's Urquhart speaks to the viewer in his well-mannered, upper-crust tone, it always works. When Spacey's Underwood attempts to pull it off while simultaneously putting on a generic son of the South voice for his South Carolina representative, at times it comes off as too cutesy by half.
Despite the differences in forms of government, both House of Cards begin with essentially the same kernel of a motivation for our two Francises. In the 1990 BBC version, Urquhart has served faithfully as an MP of the Conservative Party, functioning as their Chief Whip under Margaret Thatcher's reign as prime minister. In its fictionalized view of history, Thatcher's loss of support has led to her resignation and while the Conservatives look bound to keep a weakened majority hold of the British government, Urquhart expects
the new prime minister, Hal Collinridge (David Lyon, whose death at 72 was announced today), to appoint him to a long-sought Cabinet position and remove him from his duties as whip. Instead, with the slimmer majority, Collinridge decides not to shake up the Cabinet and an angry Urquhart starts maneuvering many people to get his revenge and build his own rise to power. In the 2013 U.S. take on the tale, Underwood long has held the title of Democratic Whip in the House, now the Majority Whip as a new Democratic president (not Barack Obama), Garrett Walker (Michael Gill), takes office. but Walker reneges on a promise to pick Underwood as his secretary of state. This begins Underwood's convoluted maneuvering. One problem that separates the two versions comes down to logic. You see why Urquhart longs to become the prime minister himself, but if you know U.S. history, it seems downright silly for Underwood to leap through all the hoops and commit all the deeds he does just to end up as vice president. When George H.W. Bush won the presidency, he was the first sitting vice president to manage the victory in his own right since Martin Van Buren. Unless Underwood plans to kill off Walker in a subsequent season of the U.S. House of Cards, why does he see that as a plausible path to the Oval Office?
What delineates our two Francises (the U.S. version only uses the FU joke once as its expected, vulgar stand-in by some of Underwood's opponents while the BBC call Urquhart FU frequently and affectionately by both friends and foes to his face without a hit of a double meaning) most distinctly comes from the difference in the way Spacey acts the words by Beau Willmon and his writing staff and Richardson's delivery of Andrew Davies' dialogue. Almost everyone appears to be on to what Frank Underwood conspires to do at all times, even if his machinations win in the end since Spacey doesn't take much of an effort to hide his moves from those he attempts to manipulate. In contrast, it takes some time for people to catch on to the lengths that Francis Urquhart will go to to accomplish his means thanks to Richardson's performance, which he keeps close to his vest. Both versions rely on the conceit that the Francises speak in asides to the television viewer about what they think and plan, only Spacey talks to audiences in the same basic tone as most of the other characters. Richardson confides to us, letting us in on secrets that others aren't aware of and it makes his performance much richer and, given the late actor's training, provides Francis Urquhart with an almost Shakespearean air. Urquhart picks off opponents with a variety of means and accomplishes most of this without leaving any fingerprints. The game plan in the U.S. House of Cards differs slightly as no list of vice presidential contenders stand in Underwood's way, but they do match in terms of subject matter. Urquhart must sink health and education ministers while those two issues become legislative hurdles that play a part in Underwood's climb.
Both House of Cards include two main women in the lives of their protagonists: their wives and young reporters who become the pols' lovers as well as their tool to help advance their plots. The idea of the female journalist follows fairly closely in both versions (except where they end up in the first installment and the level of their naïveté). In the BBC, the young reporter Mattie Storin (Susannah Harker) takes a long time (too long for her sake) to catch on to Urquhart's true nature and their illicit romance takes on a somewhat twisted father figure complex where the young Mattie tends to call the much older Francis "Daddy" during their dalliances. In the U.S. version, the young woman journalist Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) contains a much more ambitious nature and she uses Underwood as much as he uses her. Both Mattie and Zoe do make colleagues jealous with their scoops and end up booted from their newspapers, only the U.S. version updates for technological changes and makes Zoe's success come via instant blog posts and finds her gaining new employment with an online political publication. Probably due to the way Mattie is written, Harker comes off as a weaker actress than Mara, who has a more fully developed character. The bigger difference presents itself in the portrayal
of the political wives. Elizabeth Urquhart (Diane Fletcher) truly serves as her husband's partner-in-crime. She knows of his affair with Mattie (and other women in the later installments) but approves wholeheartedly because she knows that letting him have his extracurricular activity with Mattie only serves the couple's ultimate goal and doesn't pose a threat to her position. Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) begins that way early in the U.S. House of Cards, but as the series develops she exhibits jealousy. showing up at Zoe's apartment, interfering with part of Underwood's legislative agenda and even leaving D.C. to renew an affair with a former lover, a famous photographer (Ben Daniels). Presumably, the part required beefing up in order to get someone of Wright's caliber to agree to accept it in the first place. Claire also gets her own sideline with story strands involving the charitable foundation that she runs whereas Elizabeth Urquhart basically serves as Francis' adornment at party and sounding board at home but little else.Both versions equip our FUs with henchmen named Stamper to help him carry out the more unseemly parts of his schemes, though the portrayals as well as the job titles come off quite differently in each country. In England, Urquhart's underling, Tim Stamper, comes across as quite a weasel in the hands of actor Colin
Jeavons. Tim Stamper functions as the Assistant Whip for the Conservatives in the House of Commons until Urquhart succeeds at ascending to the position of prime minister and Stamper moves up to Chief Whip. Later, unhappily, Urquhart moves him to the post party chairman. The British Stamper not only gets his hands dirty with delight, he also overflows with ambition himself and it costs him in the end (part of which may have been necessitated by Jeavons' decision to retire from acting after completing the second installment, To Play the King). The American Stamper gets a new first name — Doug — and does show signs of conscience even while he performs Underwood's errands. Doug Stamper serves as the House Majority Whip's chief of staff and holds no elected position. Michael Kelly, who most people will recognize him from many roles on television and in film, doesn't get down and dirty with the same glee that Jeavons does, but Kelly creates a different persona and plays him well. Odds are, depending how many seasons House of Cards continues, Doug Stamper either will turn on his boss or become a liability to him.
The one area besides production design where the U.S. House of Cards bests the British original comes from the actor who portrays Underwood's actual victim and how the U.S. version fleshes out his character in the first place. Before I began this piece, I issued a spoiler warning, but the U.S. House of Cards doesn't make it a secret that Underwood's deviousness takes a lethal turn, thanks to some of its promotional posters, and the very first sequence of the series gives viewers that impression by showing Underwood putting an injured dog out of its misery with his bare hands but making it clear that he isn't doing it to be merciful. In the British take, even though the first installment only consists of four 1-hour installments, it doesn't
let the audience know that Urquhart's manipulations include murder. In the BBC version, the first life that Urquhart literally takes with his own hand belongs to Roger O'Neill (Miles Anderson), the P.R. consultant for the Conservative Party whom Urquhart gets to use his girlfriend, Penny Guy (Alphonsia Emmanuel), to seduce Foreign Secretary Patrick Woolton (Malcolm Tierney), one of Urquhart's competitors for the prime minister post. Unfortunately, O'Neill loves Penny as much as he loves cocaine and when she dumps him when she realizes O'Neill used her, O'Neill becomes a wild card that Urquhart can't trust. To make sure nothing comes out that damages FU's plan and reveals his role in the Woolton revelation, Urquhart spikes O'Neill's coke supply with rat poison, assuring Mattie who figures out he did it that he was just putting O'Neill out of his misery.
Overall, the American ensemble beats the British one. Granted, the U.S. version provides nine extra hours to fill with juicy parts for actors to the BBC's mere four, so the original lacks the room to develop many characters in depth so it's easy to see how Ian Richardson steals the show. Kevin Spacey, in addition to his aforementioned accent problem, shares time with a lot of great performers in parts large and small. On top of those mentioned already, Sebastian Arcelus, Reg E. Cathey, Kathleen Chalfant, Nathan Darrow, Sandrine Holt, Boris McGiver, Larry Pine, Al Sapienza, Constance Zimmer and Gerald McRaney all put in appearances. We also get three actors familiar to Treme fans in parts of various scope: Mahershala Ali, Lance E. Nichols and Dan Ziskie. The M.V.P. of the entire cast though turns out to be Corey Stoll, so great as Hemingway in
Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, as the U.S. equivalent of Roger O'Neill. Instead of a P.R. guy, Stoll plays Pennsylvania Rep. Peter Russo, a divorced father of two with a penchant for drugs, booze and sex, despite his deep feelings for and relationship with his chief of staff Christina Gallagher (Kristen Connolly). For those who only know Stoll from Midnight in Paris, he'll be unrecognizable. In the short number of episodes though, he takes Russo through the largest journey of any character in the series, battling to sobriety and attempting to believe in himself, unaware of his status as a pawn in Underwood's game (both Underwoods, actually), until it's too late. Stoll makes Russo the only character that the audience develops any sympathy for at all. Though Russo behaves badly, his mistakes all flow from his personal weaknesses. He doesn't do things maliciously the way that Underwood and other characters do. When he commits wrongs, it's because he can't control himself. Underwood always stays in control, even if unexpected events force him to improvise. You feel bad for Russo when he can't
stand up for himself and acts against his own interests and those of his constituents, just to be Underwood's toady and pay him back for covering up an incident when he got caught drunk with a prostitute. You get a sense of where this comes from a in a couple of brief scenes involving Russo and his hospitalized mother (a great Phyllis Somerville) that gives you insight into Russo and makes you feel sorry for the man at the same time it provides some wickedly dark humor. When he begins to turn himself around, you develop a rooting interest for him to succeed (even though having seen the U.K. version first, I figured what fate awaited Russo, though the U.S. changes the manner of his inevitable death at Underwood's hands slightly differently). Though the U.S. House of Cards contains a lot of great acting, no one comes close to turning in a performance as wonderful as Stoll's and no character gets as much development and detail as Rep. Peter Russo.Since the British House of Cards only ran four hours, it had a sole director, Paul Seed, and writer, Andrew Davies. Davies and Seed returned to the same roles on the second installment, To Play the King, but Seed's directing work consists almost entirely of British television. Davies wrote the third and final part, The Final Cut, but Mike Vardy took over helming duties. Similarly, his directing work stayed restricted to British TV. Davies' writing extends to film including the screenplays for Circle of Friends, Emma, The Tailor of Panama, Bridget Jones's Diary, the 2008 feature of Brideshead Revisited and the 2011 version of The Three Musketeers directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
While Beau Willmon had a hand in writing most of the U.S. episodes, he also had a staff of writers who either contributed or turned in their own episodes. On the directing side, Fincher started the series off by directing the first two episodes while James Foley directed the most at 4 episodes and Allen Coulter, Carl Franklin, Charles McDougall and Joel Schumacher helmed two each.
In the final assessment, the U.S. House of Cards moves fairly well except at times when it feels as if it stuffed itself with too many character and plot strands and an episode set at Underwood's reunion at The Citadel that, while OK, feels and plays like filler. The U.K. House of Cards comes off as far more efficient, even if most of the characters aside from Richardson's Urquhart prove far less compelling. In the second and third parts, they do at least give him actual adversaries, which make things slightly more interesting, but in the end all the British House of Cards episodes always belong to the great Richardson and his rich and delicious
performance. One really bizarre viewing experience for me came from the miniseries — which aired in 1990, 1995 and 1996 — incorporating Margaret Thatcher's fictional death. She died in the miniseries as I watched it before she died in real life earlier this year. Part of the subtext is that Francis Urquhart wants to break Thatcher's record for serving as prime minister longer in the post-WW2 era. One other thing that makes the British version slightly better than the American take is that the first installment ends with a great cliffhanger mystery that plays out over the course of the next two parts. The new House of Cards leaves us with reporters hot on Underwood's trail about Russo's "suicide," but it doesn't come off nearly as intriguing as the British version. I'm also curious where the U.S. version goes next. It obviously can't follow the storyline of the British To Play the King since we don't have a constitutional monarch and a newly sworn in Vice President Underwood wouldn't run into conflict with a recently crowned king. Presumably, that tension will present itself with his new boss, President Walker. It's a shame that Ian Richardson isn't with us anymore and that the third British House of Cards installment resolved the Francis Urquhart character. It might have been fun to see U.S. President Francis Underwood face off against British Prime Minister Francis Urquhart. I'd probably root for Urquhart, if only because he doesn't have that corny and awful Southern accent.Tweet
Labels: 10s, 90s, Books, Fiction, Fincher, Hemingway, Netflix, Robin Wright, Shakespeare, Spacey, Television, Treme, Woody
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Monday, May 20, 2013
Prison of My Dreams
By Edward Copeland
As I snap the cuffs on Will Smith's wrists, I try to look stern and sympathetic simultaneously. "I take no pleasure in having to do this, Mr. Smith, but it's for your own good as well as the good of the public. Hopefully, your stay will be a short one." I'm taking Smith to serve his sentence in the Copeland Penitentiary for Bad Film Ideas. The actor received a summary conviction with the recent announcement of his interest of remaking Sam Peckinpah's classic Western The Wild Bunch. We had no choice. Trying to do a new version of such a revered film would be bad enough, but when you read the details that explain it would be a modern version involving the DEA and drug cartels, it sounds as if it's only stealing the title. We couldn't risk this debacle-in-development from getting to pre-production. Smith needed to be jailed until he regained his senses.
Now, if Smith breaks quickly, his sentence should be short since this idea didn't originate with him. Warner Bros. has toyed with the idea of a remake for more than a decade with various names such as the late director Tony Scott and stars such as Tom Cruise mentioned. If it were possible to put an entire studio into permanent solitary confinement, I would do it. Johnny Depp, pictured above being taken the prison to serve his time, had a longer time behind bars when he announced his intention to make a new version of The Thin Man and to take on William Powell's trademark role of Nick Charles. Thankfully, that talk disappeared once we locked up Depp for awhile and he hasn't mentioned it since. It's great that Depp loves The Thin Man — but the original remains and people should watch it. (If only the prison existed before Gus Van Sant got his cuckoo idea of doing a shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho in color.)
Look at the case of something that happened before the Copeland Penitentiary opened when Russell Brand remade Arthur with Brand in the Dudley Moore role and Helen Mirren taking over for John Gielgud. It sounded like a bad idea on paper, looked more horrendous when commercials and trailers appeared and received mostly bad reviews. (I did enjoy that the original in 1981 grossed more than the remake's budget which flopped badly.) What disturbed me was that the original Arthur never received a DVD release in the proper ratio and when the remake came out, they released a Blu-ray that forced you to get it with its awful sequel Arthur 2: On the Rocks.
Therein lies the dangers of remakes of great films. With technology constantly changing and money always an issue, at some point they'll start leaving us with the fresher versions, assuming that younger audiences won't know or care to see the classics. I'd try to talk them into how much money they'd save if they just re-released older films to theaters without having to spend all that money on new movies, but they won't go for it. Besides, making movies cost WAY too much to make and see today and the best stuff gets made on television anyway.
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Labels: 10s, Cruise, Depp, Gielgud, Hitchcock, Mirren, Peckinpah, Remakes, T. Scott, Television, Van Sant, W. Smith, William Powell
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
How many kids look overweight in this photo?
By Edward Copeland
One of my favorite memories involving the late, great Mike Wallace on 50 Minutes occurred when he interviewed people about the possibility the tobacco companies had the capability for lit cigarettes to stop burning if it sensed that the smoker had ceased to actively puff on it, the idea being that it would prevent people from falling asleep with a lit cigarette and starting a blaze as they slumbered. Activists accused the tobacco companies of refusing to do this because of the costs and Wallace asked the activist, "What about personal responsibility?" The outraged man replied, "We must protect the stupid consumer." I get the sense that could be the attitude of the makers of The Weight of the Nation as well. (My attitude always has asked, "Why should we protect the stupid consumer?" We should set more traps. That's evolution at work. Thin the herd.) On the official web site for The Weight of the Nation project, a new "fact" appears about every six seconds or so (including ones I questioned and/or debunked in Monday's review of the series' first two parts). Surrounding these informational nuggets of type include rectangular buttons above that lead you to either watch the films or take action, the familiar Twitter, Facebook and Google+ icons to the
right, four photos and graphics below describing related activities and, finally, to the left a blood-red arrow emblazoned with the word FACT pointing at the constantly changing message in the middle of the page. Now, if I had a full-time staff of investigators and unlimited time, I could have all these assertions, none of which come with a source, checked and verified as to their accuracy. Unfortunately, it's just me, my computer and my very limited stamina doing its best to fight my M.S. fatigue. Since Part Three of The Weight of the Nation concentrates on "Children in Crisis," I thought I grabbed one of those "facts" relating to that subject. Remember, we don't have any sources — we're supposed to take their word for it when they say, "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese." I'm going to dig further since my first response relies solely on anecdotal evidence. Asking a dozen or so acquaintances with children in that age range who attend schools in all parts of the country and in different economic circles as well, not one reported an uptick of heavyset kids in their child's school with the exception of one parent in Tulsa, Okla., who said that in her child's grade, she didn't see it, but she'd noticed heavier kids starting about third grade. That's it. Otherwise, parents would report one kid with a weight problem here or there, but certainly not a third of the students. Part Three, "Children in Crisis," debuts tonight on HBO at 8 Eastern/Pacific and 7 Central followed by Part Four, "Challenges," at 9:10 Eastern/Pacific and 8:10 Central. As with the first two parts of The Weight of the Nation, the films will play on all HBO platforms and stream free on HBO.com. One curiousity before I start. For some reason, "Children in Crisis" happens to be the only segment that doesn't list Kaiser Permanente as a partner in the opening credits. I wonder why. Get to work, media.
Doing a Google search for the phrase "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese" directed me quickly to the site that provided some of the other "facts" that rotated on and off The Weight of the Nation web page. It turns out to be the Childhood Obesity Facts page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's online section on Adolescent and School Health, which lists a variety of subjects under its Health Topics index including the next immediate page, Nutrition, Physical Activity, & Obesity. Like well-trained journalists (and unlike documentarians — or at least the ones responsible for The Weight of the Nation), scientists tend to cite sources when they make declarations and each of the assertions they make in the graphic below come with numbers that refer you to footnotes that explain where they got their information. Now, not only did the makers of The Weight of the Nation decide that saying something with authority negated the need for verification, they also had no qualms about dropping or changing words that didn't suit their purposes.
CHILDHOOD OBESITY FACTS GRAPHIC FOOTNOTES
1. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Lamb MM, Flegal KM. Prevalence of high body mass index in US children and adolescents, 2007–2008. Journal of the American Medical Association 2010;303(3):242–249.
2. National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States, 2010: With Special Features on Death and Dying. Hyattsville, MD; HHS; 2011.
3. National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Disease and Conditions Index: What Are Overweight and Obesity? Bethesda, MD: NIH; 2010.
4.K rebs NF, Himes JH, Jacobson D, Nicklas TA, Guilday P, Styne D. Assessment of child and adolescent overweight and obesity. Pediatrics 2007;120:S193–S228.
5.Daniels SR, Arnett DK, Eckel RH, et al. Overweight in children and adolescents: pathophysiology, consequences, prevention, and treatment. Circulation 2005; 111; 1999–2002.
6. Office of the Surgeon General. The Surgeon General's Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation. Rockville, MD, HHS; 2010.
The complete phrase "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese" actually reads beneath Childhood Obesity Facts on the CDC page, "In 2008, more than one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese." Of course, government health entities can't agree. As I reported yesterday, The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health which itself falls beneath the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, while agreeing with the CDC's findings that "Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years," also commented that, "Children have become heavier as well. In the past 30 years, the prevalence of childhood obesity has more than doubled among children ages 2-5, has tripled among youth ages 6-11, and has more than tripled among adolescents ages 12-19. However, recent data suggest that the rate of overweight in children did not increase significantly between 1999 and 2008, except in the heaviest boys (BMI for age greater than or equal to the 97th percentile).
This rate, though, remains alarmingly high. Statistics show about 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19, or 1 in 6, are obese. Further, the latest data continue to suggest that overweight and obesity are having a greater effect on minorities, including blacks and Hispanics.". Sadly, while I've been so kind about researchers citing sources, neither the CDC nor the NIH comes up with one for the 30-year statistic. I decided to take the 30-year question to Google and I found the answer in a posting on an HHS site on childhood obesity by the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. Obviously, whoever penned this did not begin his or her professional life as a writer. I didn't attempt to clean it up. It reads, "Overweight and obesity in children are significant public health problems in the United States. The number of adolescents who are overweight has tripled since 1980 and the prevalence among younger children has more than doubled. According to the 1999-2002 NHANES survey, 16 percent of children age 6-19 years are overweight (see Figure 1). [1], [2],[3] Not only have the rates of overweight increased, but the heaviest children in a recent NHANES survey were markedly heavier than those in previous surveys." Hallelujah, we've come back to our good friends at NHANES and this link goes to their report. though this assistant secretary needs some help with adjectives, at least he or she included footnotes.HHS CHILDHOOD OBESITY FOOTNOTES
1. Childhood is defined for the purposes of this paper as 6-19 years of age
2. Overweight and obesity are used interchangeably and are defined as a BMI on or above the 95th percentile for gender and age (BMI-for-age). Downloaded from here. Accessed: February 2005. These terms have different connotations for adults.
3. National Center for Health Statistics. “Prevalence of Overweight Among Children and Adolescents: United States, 1999-2002” Downloaded from here. Accessed: February 2005.
Aside from my anecdotal evidence, which admittedly doesn't account for much, I keep coming back to several questions. First, why do the same organizations conduct and release studies that contradict other studies they've conducted? While the press material says that this project took four years to assemble, that doesn't mean they couldn't make last-minute changes if needed. What if one of the interview subjects or experts passed away in the interim? I bet that they would have been able to note that sort of thing. However, they go with
this 30-year figure, provided by the CDC's NHANES group covering 1999-2002 and released in 2005. Then, in a New York Times article by Tara Parker Pope published May 28, 2008, that same NHANES group from the CDC, which conducts its surveys continuously and revises results accordingly, releases findings that cover a wider sample — 1999-2006 — to the Journal of the American Medical Association that The Times said, "Childhood obesity, rising for more than two decades, appears to have hit a plateau, a potentially significant milestone in the battle against excessive weight gain among children.…The most recent data is based on two surveys — one in 2003 to 2004 and one in 2005 to 2006 — that included 8,165 children ages 2 to 19. In that group, about 16 percent of children and teenagers were obese, which is defined as having a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile on United States growth charts.…(T)he good news is that from a statistical standpoint, obesity rates have not increased since 1999. Estimates for the number of children who fall into the overweight or obese category also have remained stable at about 32 percent since 1999.…In fact, the number of children who fall into the obese category decreased from 17.1 percent to 15.5 percent between the 2003 and 2006 surveys, but the decline was not statistically significant. So the researchers combined data from both surveys to enhance the statistical strength of the numbers." Good news makes lousy scare tactics, so the documentary hung on to the older, more pessimistic numbers. The other thing that bugged me about that 30-year number
is that it covers my adolescence. I've been honest about myself — I wasn’t remotely in shape. There were people heavier than I was, but there were a lot more who weighed less. More importantly, the big concern at the time wasn't that teens could be eating their way to an early grave — the major worry was the possibility of teenage girls puking their way to an early grave. How is it that in the same era where eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia dominated the spotlight, supposedly adolescents grew obese? Those images of the pencil-thin models still permeate the media. Do adolescent girls today ignore them? Are they packing on pounds out of spite? Something just doesn't make logical sense, especially since you still hear cases about it and in another New York Times article, this one from 2008, again by Tara Parker Pope, she reported on normal-weight teens who "feel fat." Her first three paragraphs read as follows: "At a time when much of the Western world is focusing on obesity problems, even teens who are at a healthy weight may develop a distorted body image. That’s what German researchers found after surveying nearly 7,000 11- to 17-year-olds, asking them to describe their bodies. Options included far too thin, a bit too thin, just the right weight, a bit too fat and far too fat. About 75 percent of the kids fell into the normal-weight category. However, half the normal-weight girls and a quarter of the normal-weight boys still described themselves as being too fat." When I read that, do you know what, of all images, popped into my head? Greg Kinnear's overbearing father trying to guilt his young daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) out of ordering ice cream when they stop at a restaurant along the highway in Little Miss Sunshine. Sometimes, the well-meaning concern for people's health does seem to cross the line into bullying behavior.Before I move on to some segments of "Children in Crisis" that most people will agree presents ridiculous situations, I need to backtrack to an issue that I didn't get a chance to cover Monday (but which gets mentioned so often throughout The Weight of the Nation that I bet some stressed-out college students already employ the word for use in a drinking game. Before I piss people off with my conspiracy theory on that subject though, I feel compelled to raise two more of the unsourced "facts: that appear on the series as well as its web page. Let's start with this doozy of an uncredited bit of information.I think I'll bring back their little arrow.
Some experts project that by 2030, between 32% and 52% of American adults may be obese.
Well, if the authoritative "some experts" employed the tried-and-true scientific method of prediction, this undoubtedly must be a fact, right? I've seen the slimiest political campaigns offer up more solid attribution for a claim than that. I attempted the Google trick again, inserting the exact phrase but all that came back was The Weight of the Nation site, Going vaguer, I typed, "U.S. adult obesity rate in 2030." That hit the mother lode as a seemingly endless array of recent news stories, blogs and marketers covered the announced result, though each place had a slightly different take and not one that I read mentioned a range between 32% and 52%, though I might hazard a guess as to where they came up with that. The Los Angeles Times used this headline on its May 8 story: 42% of American adults will be obese by 2030, study says with a lead-in below it that read, "Though the rate of the last 30 years has slowed, it's far from leveling off, and it's going to get expensive, say experts at the Weight of the Nation conference in Washington." Now that's intriguing. The conference from which the documentary series took its name admitted a slowing a week before The Weight of the Nation aired. The makers of the documentary did have time to add this fresh statistic, but not to acknowledge the slowing rate in the growth of obesity that has been occurring since prior to the start of production on the series. The body of the L.A. Times story by Melissa Healy said, "The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts
said (May 7).…The sobering projections also contained some good news, the researchers said: Obesity's growth has slowed from the record pace of most of the last 30 years. If those trends were to continue, 51% of American adults would qualify as obese in 2030. Study leader Eric Finkelstein, a health economist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said…(t)he forecast took into account a host of factors thought to influence Americans' eating and exercise habits, including the cost of groceries, the prevalence of restaurants, the unemployment rate, Internet access and the price of gas. Most important was the aging of the population, which tends to nudge many overweight adults into the obese category — and to push many of those who are already obese into "severely obese" territory. The number of severely obese Americans is expected to grow from about 5% today to 11% in 2030, the study said. The findings are based on data collected from 1990 through 2008 as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a survey by the CDC and health departments in the states." We now know someone from Duke University led the study using CDC numbers, but incorporating lots of factors the usual NHANES doesn't take into account. Where the documentary concocted the 32$ to 52% range remains a mystery, especially the 32%. The 52% could at least be a typo.Tweet
Labels: 10s, Documentary, HBO, Television
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Monday, May 14, 2012
The weighing is the hardest part (for analysts)
By Edward Copeland
The inimitable Samuel Clemens, better known to readers everywhere as Mark Twain, said many memorable things in his lifetime, but I've always been partial to his definition of the three types of lies. In the unlikely event that you're unfamiliar with Twain's list, his troika consisted of lies, damn lies and statistics. That statement came to my mind quite often as I watched the epic documentary project that HBO begins airing tonight, The Weight of the Nation, concerning the "obesity epidemic" in the United States. The series marks a collaboration between HBO and the Institute of Medicine in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and airs in four parts over the next two nights. Additionally, three episodes for families have been set for the
next three Wednesdays. The project, which also includes a dozen bonus shorts, a web site, a social media campaign and a book, all produced in partnership with The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, a huge "not-for-profit" health care consortium whose tentacles integrate both the insurance business with physician-owned hospitals. I'll give most involved in this massive undertaking the benefit of the doubt that they mean well (especially HBO, which will allow free viewing of the program across all its platforms such as HBO.com, HBO GO, etc.) and truly fret over this "epidemic" that threatens the health of the nation far into the future unless we change our habits. Having spent nearly a full decade trapped in a Kafkaesque journey through this nation's health care system, I look skeptically upon most medical things, so while some of the series' points make logical, common sense, at the same time documentaries that don't even attempt to provide alternative points of views — if only to knock them down — trouble me. At that point, the label documentary seems less appropriate and I feel the outer letters of the word propaganda trying to crawl into my brain via my ear canal. It doesn't help in this day and age when simple computer archive searches turn up contradictory facts and statistics coming from the same organizations touted as authorities in this series. Now, you could easily presume that I've watched this ambitious venture with a jaundiced eye and a biased mind and you might be right. However, if those capable of rational thought have been paying attention to the world around them — whether that lifetime spans decades or just the first steps in a cognitive journey — having and honing that trait of suspicion probably serves a person better today than at any recent time since the media's morphing into little more than dictation machines, regurgitating as "facts" anything sources hand them, without vetting the information first. Fact checkin' — they don't need no stinkin' fact checkin'. Part One: "Consequences" debuts tonight on all HBO channels and services, including free streaming on HBO.com at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific/7 p.m. Central followed by Part Two: "Choices" at 9:10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific/8:10 p.m. Central. Now, don't misunderstand my intentions — this review of the first two parts of The Weight of the Nation today and parts three and four on Tuesday will not end with me endorsing a diet of Big Macs and intravenous Dr Pepper. I'm not against living a healthy lifestyle or exercise — I know I'd be walking if I could — but it's important to remember that the people who assembled this project have an agenda. It might be a noble agenda, but it remains an agenda, one in which anything that might contradict the message they want to convey won't be heard. That's what bothers me. I'm not an expert in the field, so I can't thoroughly debunk and verify everything, but I'll do what I can because in the time since I first got sick, before anyone diagnosed my multiple sclerosis and the years that followed, I've experienced a lot of the health care system first-hand. As a result, I know that the biggest mistake that all health care providers as well as this documentary series make occurs when they treat every patient as if he or she comes from a cookie cutter. That's why no two sets of fingerprints are alike. No two people match up exactly and the attempt to generalize can lead to delays in correct diagnoses, misdiagnosis and risks to people's lives. Neither a country nor an individual's health can be managed by rote and, to some extent, that message underlies The Weight of the Nation. When I began having my symptoms, which started with difficulty walking, my excess poundage became the prime suspect and my primary doctor referred me to a cardiologist. Keep in mind that my blood pressure always runs in the low to normal range, my EKG results tested fine and my blood sugar level gave no indication of diabetes. He referred me to a dietitian. I changed my diet, exercised, lost 100 pounds — and the legs got worse. It took a total of two years and several doctors before we found the right neurologist who diagnosed the M.S. — and a previous doctor still tried to get me to return to re-take a test with him that had proved negative when I'd already fired him. Before I get too far off track, I do want everyone to remember this: NEVER BE AFRAID TO FIRE YOUR DOCTOR. Remember, they are the employee, you are the employer. Most of them need a swift kick in the ego now and then anyway. The whole reason I began this part of the discussion had to do with a 1988 New York Times Magazine article by Robin Marantz Henig I found about doctors rethinking the treatment of mild cases of hypertension. It wasn't so much the content of the article that I found particularly relevant, but I loved the old saying she attributes to some physicians discussing the issue because it fits here as well: "If you give a kid a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail."
To start my review of the series' actual content on a positive note, I must admit that the behind=the-scenes team that worked on The Weight of the Nation assembled a slick, attractive product. In fact, they implement so many charts and graphics, it's as if the original USA Today had come to life. "Consequences" serves, more or less, as an overview of issues that later installments explore in more depth.
It rattles off statistics that its various experts will reiterate time and again, which does make parts of the project redundant and repetitive at times. Out of the gate, part one did teach me something I didn't know: that a man named Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian mathematician, astronomer, sociologist and statistician who invented the infamous Body Mass Index formula in 1835. Quetelet grew notorious for applying probability laws to social issues and generally discounted the concept of free will, alienating him from some scientists. His formula, amazingly still used today, takes a person's weight (in kilograms) and divides it by the square of their height (in meters). A person who registers a BMI of 18.5-24.9 would be considered healthy, 25-29.9 get categorized as overweight and 30 or higher earns the label obese. Only, not everyone thinks that relying on an index created 177 years ago by someone who figured chance into his equations (which isn't done today) might be outdated — especially when the formula fails to distinguish between fatty and lean tissue. This issue isn't raised in The Weight of the Nation. This raises a sore subject for the CDC because it went apeshit when two separate studies not only questioned the BMI but the idea that all overweight people suffer the same health risks as everyone else came out at the same time as the CDC planned the first Weight of the Nation conference in 2009 (What probably galled them the most was that one study found publication in The Journal of the American Medical Association). ROTE DIAGNOSIS OR BUST! Press articles on the studies and the BMI proliferated."Consequences" stays very busy tossing out its statistics at the viewer. According to the collective weight (pun intended) of its gathered experts, more than 68 percent of American adults fit the definition of being overweight or obese. Now, neither the documentary nor the experts who appear within it offer up data to show how exactly they calculated this figure. The U.S. finds it hard to get rock-solid Census figures every 10 years and the form fails to inquired as to the weight of every member of a household (as if it could be confirmed with
100 percent accuracy that the person answering the questions knows the truth or tells it if they do). Not everyone visits a doctor regularly — you might remember a couple of years ago a huge political fracas over trying to get affordable health insurance for the citizens of this country — so they can't go by that. Besides, I believe there happens to be something called doctor-patient confidentiality, so your physician better not be unloading information to just anyone unless you give permission. Good grief, I've had to sign enough forms verifying that I'm familiar with HIPAA. All those signatures damn well better not have been for naught. So — where did this 68 percent figure originate? I began with everyone's favorite free search engine — Google. (In reality, I'd love access to Lexis/Nexis, but they cater to corporate clients and since I live on Social Security Disability, $200 a month would be a steep price for me to pay.) After typing in "68 percent of Americans are overweight or obese" and winnowing out the NPRs and other news stories who just repeated the statistic without asking any questions as to how anyone arrived at it, I located a site that identified the source of the number. On the site of The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is a division of the National Institutes of Health (one of the partners in making The Weight of the Nation), itself a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, Google led me to a page labeled Why Obesity is a Health Problem. Under the heading Adult Obesity Rates and Statistics, it read, "According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) (2007-2008), approximately 68 percent of adults are overweight or obese, with 75 million adult Americans considered obese." Now, we're getting somewhere. We know it came from surveys conducted four and five years ago. Now, I just have to find that survey. Isn't this fun? It's like being a private eye, only in public. This page also offers the statistic I'm going
to come back to later beneath the heading Childhood Obesity Rates and Statistics where it says, "Children have become heavier as well. In the past 30 years, the prevalence of childhood obesity has more than doubled among children ages 2-5, has tripled among youth ages 6-11, and has more than tripled among adolescents ages 12-19. However, recent data suggest that the rate of overweight in children did not increase significantly between 1999 and 2008, except in the heaviest boys (BMI for age greater than or equal to the 97th percentile). This rate, though, remains alarmingly high. Statistics show about 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19, or 1 in 6, are obese. Further, the latest data continue to suggest that overweight and obesity are having a greater effect on minorities, including blacks and Hispanics." Now, when I read this, I felt compelled to jump the gun a bit because, on this official government site run by a division of the NIH it says clearly, "recent data suggest that the rate of overweight in children did not increase significantly between 1999 and 2008, except in the heaviest boys (BMI for age greater than or equal to the 97th percentile)." Nowhere, in any of the four parts of The Weight of the Nation, including part three, "Children in Crisis," which airs Tuesday night do they bother to mention this little nugget. As I said at the outset when I expressed my concerns, if some data doesn't fit the message they seek to deliver, it wasn't going to be mentioned. That did not come from a newspaper, a rival scientific journal, a blog or any anecdotal evidence I might have offered. It came from the same government institution that helped create this project and lent experts to speak. That's when it gets disturbing. It might be a lie of omission for a noble cause (as opposed to lying to get us into a war), but it remains a government lie all the same in a way, though presumably they didn't have final edit. The two organizations listed as the actual authors of The Weight of the Nation and not just "associates" are HBO and The Institute of Medicine. 
Before I begin my quest to unravel the methodology used for The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (which, from here on out, despite my training to avoid using obscure acronyms, I will refer to as NHANES), I wanted to delve deeper into The Institute of Medicine, since, unlike the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, isn't a branch of a larger governmental agency. According to its own web site, The Institute of Medicine describes itself as, "an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public. Established in 1970, the IOM is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which was chartered under President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Nearly 150 years later, the National Academy of Sciences has expanded into what is collectively known as the National Academies, which comprises the National Academy of Sciences*, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Research Council, and the IOM. The IOM asks and answers the nation’s most pressing questions about health and health care." I put the last sentence in bold since my blog's style places quotes in italics and the institute italicizes that sentence on its web site. Changing it to plain type just didn't underscore the emphasis it attempts to make. (*NOTE: The link to The National Academy of Sciences on the institute's page doesn't work. I had to find it by going through the link from the National Academies site.) Additionally, the Institute of Medicine boasts that, "Our aim is to help those in government and the private sector make informed health decisions by providing evidence upon which they can rely. Each year, more than 2,000 individuals, members, and nonmembers volunteer their time, knowledge, and expertise to advance the nation’s health through the work of the IOM. Many of the studies that the IOM undertakes begin as specific mandates from Congress; still others are requested by federal agencies and independent organizations. While our expert, consensus committees are vital to our advisory role, the IOM also convenes a series of forums, roundtables, and standing committees, as well as other activities, to facilitate discussion, discovery, and critical, cross-disciplinary thinking." So, though the institute isn't connected officially to the bureaucracy, much of its work gets funded by taxpayers. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to discern how much. If you click on the studies link though, you will discover
that the Institute of Medicine proves quite eclectic in the issues it researches. Back to the investigation about NHANES. Turns out that the CDC conducts those surveys. On its site, they describe the surveys like this: "The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. The survey is unique in that it combines interviews and physical examinations." OK, that's vague enough. Doesn't explain how many people take part and how they extrapolate the 68% number from it, but let's dig further. Beneath that description a link written in blue reads, "Selected Participants." Let's click on that and see where that takes us. "Welcome NHNES Particpants," it greets us, followed by an explanatory paragraph that reads, "You, or a member of your family, may have a chance to take part in an important national health survey. The National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is responsible for this survey — The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This survey teaches us about the health and diet of people in the United States. Over the years, this survey has led to improvements in the food we eat and the health care we receive." After I stopped laughing at the idea of improvements in the health care we receive, I returned to scanning the page to see if this page would offer clues to methodology or only how to become a potential guinea pig. I have to
admit that I was intrigued that one of the frequently asked questions was "What do you do with my blood and urine samples that I consented to have stored?" On the left-hand side of the page, several links look promising. Beneath National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, they have a link for Questionnaires, Datasets and Related Documentation and another for Survey Results and Products. Below that box a list of related sites includes links to Surveys and Data Collection Systems and Research Data Center. Boy, this has started to take almost as much time for me to do as a recap of an episode of Boardwalk Empire or Treme. I decided to start at the top, selecting Questionnaires, Datasets and Related Documentation first. To paraphrase what the old knight told Indy toward the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "I chose well." The page rolled out a long list of links starting with NHANES Analytic Guidelines and including a NHANES report for 2009-2010, newer than the one in The Weight of the Nation. I'm checking the analytics first and it contains precisely what I'm looking for in terms of methodology. Unfortunately, it involves government bureaucracy, so they spell the methods out across 14 pages in PDF form. Let me add though that those pages turned out to be a delight and made me look even more askance at what these "experts" were peddling. Why do so many people feel the need to be less than forthcoming? It's not as if the agenda they push is an evil one. Eat less, eat healthier, exercise, take care of your body — sound advice anytime — but I guess they feel that Americans show themselves far too often to be too mentally deficient to hear unvarnished truth without employing scare tactics and talking down to them as if the median age of the viewer were 4."Data collected in NHANES comes from interviews, examinations, and laboratory tests based on blood and urine samples. There may also be measures taken in the home, such as dust or tap water collection. The source of a data item (interview, MEC*, sera**) is important for both assessment of quality of information and for determining the appropriate sampling weight to be used for producing statistical estimates. As with any data set, NHANES data are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors (including measurement error). Interview (questionnaire) data are based on self-reports and are therefore subject to non-sampling errors such as recall problems, misunderstanding of the question, and a variety of other factors. Examination data and laboratory data are subject to measurement variation and possible examiner effects. The NHANES program maintains high standards to insure non-sampling and measurement errors are minimized.…Despite the rigorous quality control standards, estimates produced from any data set are subject to sampling and non-sampling variation and interpretation of analysis must proceed accordingly. Data content and data collection protocols may change over time; this is another reason to read the documentation in order to understand any issues in comparability of data over time. Changes in methods may occur at any time and the user should not assume they have remained the same (especially in the continuous NHANES, conducted since 1999)."
— NHANES Analytic and Reporting Guidelines, Part 1 (last correction September 2006)
*Mobile Examination Centers **Subsample of stored serum of specimens from NHANES (1999–2000) tested to estimate
the prevalence and specificities of selected autoantibodies in the U.S. population in 2003-2004.
As most of you probably realized once the word survey appeared, the statement that categorized 68 percent of Americans as overweight or obese isn't a factual one, not in the way we say, "Two plus two equals four" and know it to be true. The survey only estimates 68 percent of U.S. adults fall into the obese and overweight classifications (based on the outdated, kooky BMI, remember). However, The Weight of the Nation never presents that possibility. In this election year, polls have exploded with alarming frequency for quite some time — and it only will get worse. Despite the endless unending onslaught, even the lazy media remembers to remind us of the margin of error. The documentary never mentions the notion of sampling errors — or methodology — or any evidence that supports that figure. They pronounce that 68 percent of Americans fall into that weight class and the discussion ends and we must accept their word as gospel truth. I imagine
that those involved didn't follow the analytic guidelines of that NHANES report. Part 1 begins in larger, bold, italic type saying, "The first and over-riding analytic guideline is that the data user, prior to any analysis of the data, should read all relevant documentation for the survey and for the specific data items to be used in an analysis." When it downsizes the type size and resorts to lightface, it adds, "Many analytic problems and misinterpretation of the data can be avoided by reading the documentation, examining the data collection protocols and data collection instruments, and conducting preliminary descriptive evaluation of the data. The documentation will indicate how the data were collected, how the data are coded and the amount of missing data." It makes me sad because these people didn't need to play this way. Michael Moore doesn't hide his point-of-view and he usually comes off making stronger cases in his films such as Sicko. The people and organizations behind The Weight of the Nation don't want to admit that they've constructed propaganda when they didn't need to do so and they end up undermining themselves. I wasn't exaggerating when I said how interesting the NHANES document turned out to be. The CDC unit used to conduct these surveys periodically and then release the results as a single set of data covering six years. Beginning in 1999, NHANES turned into a continuous, annual survey released in increments of two years. Here comes the important point, from Part 2: "For a two-year analysis, sample size is smaller and the number of geographic units in the sample is more limited…Sample size and statistical power consideration should be used to determine if a two-year sample is sufficient for a particular analysis or if 4 (or even 6) years of the survey need to be combined to produce statistically reliable analysis."
By going by the 2007-2008 figure, The Weight of the Nation not only neglects to mention the possibility of sampling errors, it ignores the survey makers' own advice to combine samples from the previous two-year or four-year samples to paint a more accurate picture. Why do I feel I'm doing more research writing this review than some people involved in the series did? Later, in Part 3 of NHANES' Guidelines, it gets serious and pulls out bold italic again.
"Because NHANES is a complex probability sample, analytic approaches based on data from simple random sample are usually not appropriate. Ignoring the complex design can lead to biased estimates and overstated significance levels. Sample weights and the stratification and clustering of the design must be incorporated into an analysis to get proper estimates and standard errors of estimates."
Just in case you missed the point so far, they raised the size of the type again when they used it as the start of Part 5.
"5. In order to produce estimates with greater statistical reliability for demographic sub-domains and rare events, combining two or more 2-year cycles of the continuous NHANES is encouraged and strongly recommended. For two-year cycles, the sample size may be too small to produce statistically reliable estimates for very detailed demographic sub-domains (e.g. sex-age-race/ethnicity groups) or for relatively rare events. The sample design for NHANES makes it possible to combine two or more “cycles” to increase the sample size and analytic options. Each two-year cycle and any combination of those two years cycles is a nationally representative sample."
Could the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey analytical guidelines be any clearer? The two-year sample, which The Weight of the Nation uses to yell fire in the movie theater about 68 percent of all Americans being overweight or obese, lacks a sample sizable enough to be reliable and without combining it to another cycle of NHANES surveys, the result can't be extrapolated nationally. Perhaps they tried that but the figures didn't turn out the way they wanted, especially since the CDC's NHANES report released in 2007, as reported by Gina Kolata on Nov. 27, 2007, in The New York Times, found obesity rates leveling off. Kolata wrote:
"Obesity rates in American women have leveled off and stayed steady since 1999, a long enough time for researchers to say the plateau appears to be real. And, they say, there are hints that obesity rates may be leveling off for men, too.
The researchers’ report, published online today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used data from the centers’ periodic national surveys that record actual heights and weights of a representative sample of Americans. Those surveys, according to Cynthia L. Ogden, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics and the lead author of the new report, are the only national ones that provide such data.
Dr. Ogden said the trend for women was “great news.” Obesity rates have remained steady at about 35 percent since 1999, a long enough time to persuade her that the tide has changed. “I’m optimistic that it really is leveling off,” she said.
Men’s rates increased until 2003, when they hit 33 percent and stayed there through the 2005-6 survey. Dr. Ogden said she would like to see a few more years of data before declaring that men's rates have stopped increasing."
As much as I would like to move on, I've burrowed so deep into NHANESland that I feel I must share the actual demographic breakdown of participants in the 2007-08 survey. They go into incredible detail and include some categories that I'll admit I don't comprehend. You can click on that link for the full list, but some highlights beyond what I've sprinkled as screenshots already.
This certainly marks a first for me. I've never had to divide a review of an HBO documentary into two parts, but I have more to say about "Consequences" (some positive things even) and the discussion of the second part, "Choices," has yet to be broached — and as a viewing experience, "Choices" ends up being the more satisfying hour.
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Labels: 10s, Boardwalk Empire, Documentary, HBO, Television, Treme, Twain
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