Well, the word on the street is that 'Unscripted' has been canceled, and it's not hard to imagine why. The pseudo 'reality' show meant to offer the inside scoop on the hard road to stardom never really garnered much of an audience, and, with little to no plot or storyline to speak of, never provided much of a hook to keep viewers interested. This is George Clooney's second stab with the sorta-kinda-reality show genre on HBO--the first, 'K Street,' which Clooney co-produced with his buddy Stephen Soderbergh, tried to meld fictional drama in a DC lobbying firm run by real-life power couple Mary Matalin and James Carville. The show attempted to bend genres by combining actual current news stories with fictional subplots, presumably to expose the behind-the-scenes action leading up to public news events. One problem: could there be anything less interesting to watch than the lives and doings of a bunch of hyper-neurotic DC lobbyists? Answer: the lives and doings of aspiring actors trying to break through in Hollywood.
'Unscripted' again tries to give us an improvised take on 'reality,' with real struggling actors (Krista Allen, Bryan Greenberg, Jennifer Hall) splitting time between humiliating auditions, the occasional, small-time acting gig, and an acting class taught by the ridiculously pretentious and egocentric Goddard Fulton (Frank Langella), who pontificates about the 'craft' of acting for a roomful of desperate sycophants trying to pretend that art has something to do with their desire to be famous and make easy money. Langella is a fantastic actor, but his Goddard is easily the worst thing about 'Unscripted,' boring the audience to death with idiotic speeches about artistic integrity for a bunch of people who would do back flips from one end of the Sunset strip to the other to be cast in a commercial or a soap opera. Though I'm sure Goddard has his real-life counterparts who are just as serious as he seems to be, the performance is unintentionally funny to the point of being embarrassing.
The series had its moments--the best story-line was held by Allen, Clooney's one-time girlfriend, a stunning beauty trying to be taken seriously as an actress after spending the first half of her career modeling for men's magazines and doing soft-core porn. Allen's is a classic dilemma, and while we don't necessarily feel sorry for her, her humiliation at being unable to find a job that doesn't require her to take her clothes off is palpable.
The main problem, though, is that people outside of LA and New York--i.e., the audience--don't care about the inner workings of Hollywood. It's no secret that Hollywood is a viper's nest and that aspiring actors face a lot of rejection and humiliation before they get lucky, if ever. We just want to be entertained. And given the fact that there's a war going on right now, it's hard to take a bunch of actors feeling sorry for themselves too seriously.
Clooney deserves to be complimented for attempting to translate the current public obsession with unscripted reality programming into a new film-making genre. But thus far, the projects seem to be overwhelmed by self-importance and humorlessness. Clooney's pal Mark Wahlberg seems to be having better success with 'Entourage,' a far less intelligent version of the behind-the-green door genre, probably because that program seems to be more comedic in nature. Perhaps one day Clooney will be able to pull this pseudo-reality thing off more successfully, but it's unlikely after the failure of 'K Street' and 'Unscripted' that he'll get another chance any time soon.
