FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| TELEVISION I was warned by some folks at CBC that Ken Finkleman was a bit of an ass: temperamental, uncompromising, a tortured artist with an iron fist. When I was late for a phone interview with Mr. Finkleman to discuss the recent release of his often-brilliant series The Newsroom to video, I was warned by his publicist: "If he's acting mad about the late thing, please blame it on me." I called. He put me on the speaker phone. "Does the speaker phone bother you? I'm just trying to eat my lunch," he said. "I'm also looking at a pornographic book." Hell, he wasn't so bad after all. "I've only lost my temper once," he later explained. "That was when someone brought over the wrong dress. But the job wasn't as hard as it sounds. Television is not a democratic process, anyway." To write, direct, produce and star in Canada's only critically acclaimed sitcom, you would have to be as unapologetic as Ken Finkleman. The Newsroom was an unexpected, scathing and hilarious look at the guts of television news and the manic people within it - successfully filmed with a fly-on-the-wall documentary feel that only added to the absurdity of the show's characters. The Newsroom has been knocked for its blatant borrowings from HBO's Larry Sanders Show, as well as its continuous CBC navel gazing (did anyone who didn't work in a newsroom find The Newsroom funny?), but the short-lived series was a fresh slap in the face for a nation that adores news. In one memorable scene, David Cronenberg visits the news set to plug his new film, Crash, only to answer question after question from the self-absorbed anchor (Peter Keleghan) about exploding heads in Scanners. Now that Finkleman has walked away from The Newsroom (prematurely, according to fans) to pursue other projects, I ask him if he feels the same way as Cronenberg did every time he is forced to talk about the old show. "I suppose I do. I've moved on and some might not like that," he barks through the phone. "I'd had enough of that - too much of anything gets dull after a while. If I was some kind of writer on staff, it would be different, but I didn't want anything to get stale. I also ran out of things to write about." The Canadian-born Finkleman spent over a decade writing in Los Angeles before coming back to take a bite out of his homeland. He had a few paying gigs - most notably writing Madonna's flop film, Who's That Girl, and writing/directing Airplane 2: The Sequel. But with more provocative projects like The Newsroom, as well as his most recent mini-series for the CBC called More Tears, Finkleman has found a secure home in satire. And he's damn good at it. "There's an oppression of people who don't seem to be aware of all these anti-life forces packed in TV shows, cars, software - everyone is speaking the same language, saying everything is so wonderful. The possibilities out there are so depressing that with that comes satire. That's what I do." With that, I left him to his pornographic book and a secret project he wouldn't disclose. "It will be good. The next one won't be about the media. I'm moving away from that. But I've got a couple of projects on the go." |
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