"Iconoclasts"
Sundance Channel
Thursdays 10 p.m.
If I told you that 12 of the most "fearless and relentlessly innovative forces of our time" were going to be on TV, would you be shocked? If I told you these people were "innovators, rule breakers and ground shakers," who would you expect to be featured? If I called them "iconoclasts" — would you guess they were political dissidents? Religious teachers? World leaders?
Well, you'd be wrong. While the publicity language of a new six-part series entitled "Iconoclasts," airing tonight, uses just those words, "iconoclast," in television vernacular, seems to actually mean "person with high-profile and/or famous occupation." Which is strange, because when I asked my computer what the word meant, Microsoft Word: Mac Version X defined "iconoclast" as "somebody who challenges or overturns traditional beliefs, customs and values." That's beliefs, customs and values, mind you.
But let's not gripe too much about the language of television marketing. (We can save that energy to gripe about the language of political marketing later.) Each installment of the documentary-styled interview series casts one younger "iconoclast" with an older "iconoclast" for a one-hour conversation about work, life and success spliced with a bit of interviewer and interviewee back-story.
The first segment, airing tonight, pairs actor Samuel L. Jackson with retired basketball player Bill Russell in the rainy setting of Russell's Seattle home. While Jackson's status as an iconoclast is open to debate (does playing lots of angry characters count?), the opening installment of the program does a good job of explaining what makes Russell interesting, if not important — and it's not just because he lead the Celtics to win 11 NBA championships in 13 years. Hailing from the segregated South and exuding a comfortable, good-natured charm in the show, "Iconoclasts" makes good use of old footage to shed some light on what it meant both to Jackson, and to the 1960s and '70s, to have Russell be both a successful basketball player and a black man.
It's easy to overlook the artificiality of the staged meeting because the two men interact so naturally. They tease. They laugh. They actually seem to get along. And while the footage of them playing golf is incredibly boring, it helps make it possible to overlook Jackson's cockiness when his genuine admiration for the quick-to-laugh Russell seeps through. It even becomes almost possible to overlook the ridiculousness of the show's tagline, because as a document to the real friendship of two men, as a discussion of race's role in success and as a conversation about contemporary celebrity, the show is quite insightful. Iconoclastic? Not at all. But worthwhile nonetheless.
The second installment, however, does not have the advantage of a staring duo so naturally compatible. Airing Nov. 24, the second hour features former Gucci Creative Director Tom Ford interviewing contemporary artist Jeff Koons in his New York mega-studio. Somehow, when the two creative men sit face-to-face and talk "candidly," their interaction seems more like a Christopher Guest-directed segment than a discussion between two of today's premier "rule breakers and ground shakers." Like Guest's most satirical mockumentary subjects, Ford and Koons take themselves far too seriously and speak with a self-importance so wholehearted it would be hilarious if it wasn't meant in ernest.
It's hard to see Koons as an "innovator" when the only other artists he discusses are the twentieth century's most over-hyped (Marcel Duchamp is mentioned five times, and Andy Warhol, mentioned three times, is referred to only as "Andy"). Ford, who says again and again that he wants to know if Koons actually believes in his art or is merely espousing "bullshit" exudes a fashion industry ethos that itself smells fecal. At one point, he agrees with Koons that childhood is the ideal time for artistic appreciation and states, with awkward gravity, that when you're young, "the experience of blue can just excite you." Right. The experience of a former fashion guru touring a studio while asking questions straight out of an Introduction to Modern Art textbook, however, probably won't excite you. The glimpse of Koons's studio is fascinating (he makes blow-up dolls out of metal!), but the discussion he has with Ford exposes nothing personal, nothing compelling and nothing profound.
The series, produced in part by Robert Redford and airing on the Redford-funded Sundance Channel has potential to float a few sober character studies into the sea of televised hype. But with episodes featuring "rule breakers" like Renée Zellweger and Sumner Redstone, the well-intentioned series could just as easily sink. If only more time had been spent finding compatible pairs instead of piling adjectives into the show's cheesy publicity language. If only some time had been spent finding actual iconoclasts.
— Joey Rubin (joey at flakmag dot com)
