Word: show-biz
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There's a show-biz reason for the money focus: Deadliest Catch and its offspring have competition elements, with work crews keeping score by dollars earned, loads hauled, etc. Like Survivor, they have overdramatic narratives and editing. (Guess what? Most doctors don't look like McDreamy either...
...have two things in common. One, they take place in L.A. Two, they are all clichés. Frey has less fear of cliché, or of sentimentality, or of stating the obvious, than almost any other writer I have ever read. He literally writes as if he personally discovered that show-biz people are fake, homeless people can have hearts of gold, love can bridge any divide, and people go to L.A. to watch their dreams...
That's where Rob Barnett discovered them. A show-biz guy who had worked at MTV and VH1 before spending two years at the helm of CBS Radio, Barnett had decided to become a Web-video impresario. He found Big Fat Institute while looking for someone to design his website. You Suck at Photoshop "was hysterical," Barnett recalled recently. "I was instantly engaged and e-mailed them: 'WHO are you?' In 38 seconds, I get a response: 'Who are YOU?' We started flirting." The e-mail led to phone calls and an invitation to visit Barnett in New Jersey...
...Shine a Light isn't the record of a unique event, so it's not on the exalted level of The Last Waltz. But it has its own fascination. The film is less about the music than about the dedication of show-biz troupers--about doing your job, year after year, as if it's your joy. Jagger and Keith Richards, no less than Ethel Merman and Henny Youngman, have the veteran performers' love of pleasing an audience with routines that used to be antic but are now antique. By now, surely, they have performed Satisfaction more times than Judy...
...seems ageless and indefatigable--strutting, singing, hopping around in a fish tail, cavorting under a 3,200-lb. (1,450 kg) headdress of pink feathers. Showgirl, a slick $10 million production, replaces Céline Dion's elephantine extravaganza with the unique Midler mix: sass, heart and a show-biz salesmanship that's been irresistible since her early days as an icon for gay men only. "Thirty years ago, my audiences were on drugs," she says. "Now they're on medication." Her fans have aged, but Midler is still incandescent, and the new show, written by Eric Kornfeld and choreographed...