Sunday, July 21, 2002
A new era at the Emmy’s - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- This past Thursday, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences revealed their nominations for the 54th Annual Emmy Awards. The Emmy’s are a coveted award in American television, and in the major categories it turned out to be a surprising list of nominations. All the trade papers Friday had stuff on how Six Feet Under, the macabre HBO drama, was the top nominee garnering 23 nominations. This is the first year, in about four where HBO’s other top show The Sopranos hasn’t been in the running. The David Chase Mafia drama did not air new episodes in the last year, thus was deemed ineligible. With the perennial nominee out of contention, HBO pushed their other hit Six Feet Under, and it worked. Not only does the Alan Ball (late of scripting the film American Beauty) show lead nods for a program, HBO leads with the most nominations. With 93 nominations over all, it’s clear some of television’s most honoured work comes from the cable outlet.
For years in the Drama Series category the constant nominees would include ER, The Practice and Law and Order. The last two notwithstanding, you’d also find NYPD Blue. In the last two years, the trophy’s been won by The West Wing, who with Law and Order return as nominees this year. Two new nominees bow in this category. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, now the most popular drama on network television today (sorry ER), gained a nomination for its star Marg Helgenberger last year. This year, though Helgenberger is not nodded, the show is in the important Drama Series category, and in competition in a total of six categories. Incidentally, Law and Order, though a consistently high quality show scored only two nominations overall. The absence of The Practice in any major Emmy contention is probably blamed on the fact its presence in the first place was mind-boggling to some. There could be no possible justification that it was nominated last year, yet CSI wasn’t. Also, the Academy got tons of criticism that the David E. Kelley drama had won two best drama awards, yet The Sopranos hadn’t.
For Comedy Series, the nominees are: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, Sex and the City and Will and Grace. For the first time in its nine years on the air, Frasier is not nominated. For six years it won the award, and only in the last three has the award gone to other shows. Those shows were Ally McBeal in 1999, Will and Grace in 2000, and last year’s Sex and The City win. Friends was last nominated in this category in 1999, and since hadn’t been nominated, which sort of reflected the declining interest the show was getting from the critics. Now that the show has been resurrected in a way, it’s interesting to see Friends, back in the running. Malcolm in the Middle, FOX’s acclaimed sitcom, was bumped and that should be interesting to note too. Friends notwithstanding, shows that get bumped from nominations rarely make it back, see ER, NYPD Blue and Ally McBeal. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a critic-popular comedy that airs on HBO. It’s creator and star is the same Larry David remembered for helming Seinfeld. I’ve yet to see the show myself, but thinking about how David was so much a part of Seinfeld’s magic, I’m sure it’s good, thus the nomination here. Note also that Enthusiasm only got two nods. Missing in the list, though considered to be shoo-in nominees: Malcolm, Scrubs and The Bernie Mac Show.
Bernie Mac, unlike Zach Braff, did get a Lead Actor in a Comedy Series nomination. He joins Kelsey Grammer, a multiple Emmy winner as Frasier; and perennial nominee Ray Romano. Last year’s nominees bumped include Frankie Muniz of Malcolm in the Middle, and winner Eric McCormack of Will and Grace. McCormack, did a hilarious double take when he realised he wasn’t nominated right there on the podium as he was announcing the nominees Thursday morning with Laura Innes. Rounding out the list with Mac, Grammer and Romano, are the two boys from Friends, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry. In the Lead Actress in a Comedy Series their other Friend Jennifer Aniston was nominated, alongside two-time winner (including last year) Patricia Heaton, and former nominees Malcolm in the Middle’s Jane Kaczmarek, Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and The City and Will and Grace’s Debra Messing.
The Friends nominations are an interesting note to the Emmy’s this year. Since the show debuted, the six stars of Friends have been submitting their names for the best supporting awards. Lisa Kudrow did well gaining two Emmy’s, whilst David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston were merely nominated. It’s a gamble to submit oneself into the lead from a supporting category, though this year it paid off. Both Perry and LeBlanc have never been nominated, this year they are. It’s something that Allison Janney did mind you. She’s copped two Emmy’s back-to-back as a supporting actress on The West Wing, this year she gains a nod for lead actress.
In the lead drama acting categories new nominees include Jennifer Garner for Alias (she won a Golden Globe earlier this year), and Rachel Griffiths and Frances Conroy both of Six Feet Under. They face former supporter Janney in The West Wing, and another nominee, third year running, Amy Brenneman of Judging Amy. In the male lead category Martin Sheen is the only holdout from last year. He’s yet to win, and joining him are Michael C. Hall and Peter Krause of Six Feet Under, Kiefer Sutherland for FOX’s 24, and the cable outfit FX’s drama The Shield star Michael Chiklis. Chiklis, starred in the ABC drama The Commish which was filmed in this town.
Other notable nominees in other categories include: Kenneth Branagh for the A&E telepic Shackleton, Sir Michael Gambon who portrayed Lyndon Johnson in the HBO film Path To War and Albert Finney as Churchill in The Gathering Storm. These three are nodded in the Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie category. Finney’s co-star, Vanessa Redgrave is nodded in the actress category alongside former Oscar nominees: Angela Bassett (who played Rosa Parks), Gena Rowlands (Wild Iris) and Laura Linney (Wild Iris). Also nominated with these ladies is Gwyneth Paltrow’s own mum Blythe Danner (We Were The Mulvaneys).
The supporting acting awards in the miniseries/movie category also reflect some notable nominees. For Supporting Actor, you’ve got some time Vancouverite Michael Moriarty (James Dean), Alec Baldwin (Path To War), Don Cheadle (Things Behind The Sun), Oscar winner and pops to the newly divorced Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight (Uprising); and this year’s Oscar winner for best supporting actor, Jim Broadbent (The Gathering Storm). The actress award is filled by: Stockard Channing, who’s also nominated for The West Wing (The Matthew Shepard Story); Oscar winners Angelica Huston (The Mists of Avalon) and Sissy Spacek (Last Call); former Oscar nominee Joan Allen (The Mists of Avalon), and Dame Diana Rigg (Victoria and Albert). Dame Diana of course is remembered for being one of TV’s The Avengers.
David Letterman’s Late Show got four nods to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’s three. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart took three nods too. Stewart is nominated for best performer on a variety program, alongside Sting and Billy Joel for music shows both did; and Wayne Brady and Ryan Stiles for Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Brad Pitt and Michael Douglas are nominated for their guest spots on Friends and Will and Grace, respectively. Susan Sarandon, nominated last year for a guest on Friends, is nominated this year for her guest starring turn in Malcolm in the Middle. She’s joined by multiple Emmy winner Cloris Leachman, who starred on the same show, and Glenn Close who spotted on Will and Grace.
Other notable names nominated are: Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg for producing the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers; Ridley Scott, the director of Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, for producing The Gathering Storm; and the late John Frankenheimer, who took two posthumous nods for producing and directing the HBO film Path To War. Mark Rydell, who directed On Golden Pond, is nominated too for producing the top movie nominee at this year’s Emmy’s, the TNT biopic, James Dean.
The Osbournes, MTV’s megahit is nominated in the Non-Fiction (Reality) category alongside PBS’ American High and Frontier House, TLC’s Trauma: Life in the ER, HBO’s Taxicab Confessions, and another HBO series, Project Greenlight, which boasts producing credits for Oscar winners, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Who’d have thunk the boys from Beantown squaring off against Sharon Osbourne!
The reality landmark Survivor, finds itself not with Ozzy and Co. Rather it’s nodded for the Emmy for Special Class Program. With it are AFI’s 100 Years... 100 Thrills: America’s Most Heart-Pounding Movies, the I Love Lucy 50th Anniversary Special, TLC’s Trading Spaces, and The West Wing: Documentary Special.
Non-Fiction Special (Informational)’s nominations are notable too. The Human Face with John Cleese is up against James Lipton’s Inside The Actor’s Studio, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company, HBO’s tribute to September 11th In Memoriam: New York City, 9/11/01; and the remarkable documentary CBS aired 9/11, by the French filmmakers Jules and Gedon Naudet.
And for writing, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan shares a nomination with Tom Fontana, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick among others. They scripted that star-studded telethon held after September 11th, America: A Tribute To Heroes. Speaking of September 11th, one will recall last year that the Emmy show had been cancelled and rescheduled, and it was only in late November opposite the World Series did the Emmy’s air. Academy Chairman Bryce Zabel promises that this year, “no cancellations.” And looking at the nominees it’s all very different, in more ways than one.
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