Intestinal Bloggage

Okay, let’s try this again. As those of you who read my clumsy first blog know, I am brand new to this form. But as I stumbled to find my way, it was my assumption that this forum is for smart and interesting people to kind of say “here’s what I’m thinking about today”. Now although I won’t claim to be either smart or interesting, I had hoped that the manner in which I organized my thoughts was at least pleasantly diverting. However my wife Amy’s review of my first post was not exactly a rave. As a Huffington Post fan, she reacted with incredulity, asserting that this was not the place for my neurotic ramblings. She maintains that this is a destination for exploring more serious issues. So, here’s my attempt to both write from a place of total self-obsession as well as social relevance.

As I mentioned before, I executive produced a new television series called “Starved” that premiered on FX last night. It is a dark half-hour comedy about four friends who are all battling eating disorders. The show received some wonderful reviews from Time Magazine, People Magazine, TV Guide, the Associated Press, the Hollywood Reporter, the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle. We also got killed in a few places too. But hey, humor is subjective, so I wasn’t too surprised. However what I really wasn’t expecting was the hysterical reactionary outcry from certain so-called leaders in the eating disorder recovery movement. Without naming names or organizations, there was a call to boycott our show. Now despite the fact that the effort seemed ill defined and poorly organized, plenty of people in the entertainment community slapped me on the back and congratulated me on the free publicity. However I was somewhat less enthralled, largely because I believe that our show is a thoughtful portrait of a group of very damaged but very human characters. The show’s creator/auteur Eric Schaeffer and I both have a deeply personal perspective on issues of addiction, recovery, eating and body image and I am very proud of how truthfully that perspective is portrayed.

As a lifetime lover of comedy, I have always been most attracted to the monologues of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor and classic TV shows like All in the Family and M*A*S*H. All smart and insightful as well as brilliantly funny. Never afraid. Never simplistic. Could one make a case that Archie Bunker made racism attractive to a mass audience who might have identified with him? Sure. Could one have said that to portray his bigotry in a comedic fashion was to undermine the importance of the social issue? I guess. But I just don’t get that kind of thinking. It seemed obvious to me that we could successfully mine comedy out of the struggle to achieve victory over eating disorders in a dysfunctional culture of both body consciousness and gluttonous over-consumption without making light of the overall seriousness of the issue. From my way of thinking, humor that achieves truthfulness does not trivialize... it humanizes. I think most people get that and I tend to regard those who don’t as somehow genetically flawed... like people who have retinitis pigmentosa... or who enjoy grits. The bottom line is that we set out to produce a show that is honest, funny and good. The fact that we’ve gotten such polarized strong reactions leads me to believe that we did. I guess only time will tell. But I am grateful for this opportunity to aspire to the achievements of my heroes who pushed a few buttons while making people laugh along the way. Kind of like what I hope to do here on the Huffington Post. Okay Amy, is this more like it?