HBO jumps in with slavery and porn
Larry David is also back with new ‘ Curb Your Enthusiasm’
The following are highlights from the Television Critics Association’s summer preview of upcoming shows.
HBO program chief Casey Bloys acknowledged the network erred in how it released news of an upcoming series, Confederate, that contemplates present- day slavery.
Last week’s announcement of Confederate, which imagines a successful Southern state secession and the continuation of slavery to the present, drew an immediate online backlash.
“HBO’s mistake was that we would be able to announce an idea that is so sensitive and requires such care and thought on the part of producers in a press release. ( That) was misguided,” Bloys said Wednesday.
Critics objected on many fronts, including the show’s intention to depict slavery as a legal institution and that two white men, David Benioff and D. B Weiss of Game of Thrones, would be running the series. Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman, who also will write for the series, are black.
Bloys said Confederate would not depict slavery in a stereotypical manner: “The producers said they’re not going to do Gone With the Wind 2017. It’s not whips and plantations. What they envision is what a modern- day version of slavery would look like.” – Bill Keveney
MISOGYNY SELLS
Premiering Sept. 10 on HBO, The Deuce traces that moment in New York City in the ’ 70s when sex — and porn — went from “dirty pictures” and “bad behavior” to a billion- dollar industry.
James Franco plays twin brothers — one a hard- working bartender, one a gambler in debt to the mob — while Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a veteran prostitute turned would- be filmmaker. Their paths cross in Times Square, and in the burgeoning sex trade.
Creator David Simon says he chose 1971 because that’s when it became legal to make and distribute sex films. And he chose porn because the industry changed our culture, and because it allows him to look at larger issues, from capitalism to police corruption to abuse of women.
“The product is really human flesh,” Simon said. “It’s objectified women, and in making it into a billion- dollar industry, there’s something really telling in who gets paid and who gets left out. … It was waiting for us. This is what we consume as a society.”
The prostitute Gyllenhaal plays suffers abuses that many will find hard to watch, and that’s fine with her. “There is a huge amount of misogyny in the world. I think we thought we were in a better place than we are. Here we have an opportunity to pick it up and put it on the table. … If you don’t put that on the table and take a really hard look at it, nothing will change.” – Robert Bianco
MORE ‘ CURB’ COMING
Larry David, the Seinfeld co- creator who’s made the improvised HBO comedy a hobby, is back for a 10- episode season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, premiering Oct. 1, that includs many of the old gang: Jeff Garlin ( The Goldbergs) as Jeff, Larry’s sometime manager; Susie Essman as Jeff’s foul- mouthed wife; and JB Smoove as pal Leon. Guest stars Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Lewis and Bob Einstein are also back, along with Cheryl Hines, Bryan Cranston, Lauren Graham, Jimmy Kimmel, Nick Offerman, Elizabeth Banks and others. Why bring it back now? “Why not?” David says. “I’m not a misser ... but I was missing it. And I got tired of people asking me, ‘ Is the show coming back?’ I couldn’t face that question anymore, and I didn’t want to say, ‘ No, never.’”
He won’t get specific about the arc of the new episodes, but the new crop takes place six years after the last. And judging from clips shown, David continues to mock everyday foibles: Annoying airplane seatmates, soap pumps and neighbors. And “TV Larry is about a quarter of an inch away from real Larry,” David says.
– Gary Levin