Over the years, as a creative person I've struggled to try to define myself in a specific style or field.
Over the years I've been a musician, an actor, a comic, and a writer. But in the end, I'm not really adept at any one field, and at the ripe age of 40 years old I'm finally okay with that. I admire the artists I list below for the years of hard work and dedication they have applied to their chosen crafts. But that was never the path for me. I'm a dabbler, and that's a creative endeavor in its own right, or at least it can be.
1. The first artist I'm discussing is comedian Ricky Gervais.
Mr. Gervais is best known in the United States for creating the British version of television program The Office. But in England he's been a radio personality for many years. His programs began being edited into podcasts in 2006 which brought his unique style of comedy to the rest of the world. In 2010, these podcasts were edited down further into an animated series by the cable network HBO.
His humor contrasts with both the expectations we've developed about comedy over the years and with the method we expect that humor to be performed. The vast majority of humor for the last several decades both in film and television has centered on a performer that the audience will relate to and even like. In fact many situation comedies focused on nice, inoffensive characters and actors and avoided any real abrasive humor at all.
Programs as different as "Friends" and "Growing Pains" relied on the audience tuning in each week to visit familiar pals more than huge belly laughs. Ricky Gervais, in an interview on British radio once said a prospective script he had written for an American program before he produced "The Office" was returned to him with the criticism from the producer that it was "too funny for American TV". It wasn't "too highbrow" or "too intellectual", it was "too funny". The very idea that a comedy could ever be "too funny" is like a safe being "too secure" or a medicine being "too effective"-"I'm sorry Dr. Salk, but it seems your vaccine prevents ALL the polio. We were looking for something that lets some of the less dangerous polio through. If it cures them completely people just won't buy it..."
Another area in which we have come to expect the humor we view to be homogeneous is in the way it is performed. The main character is always sane and well adjusted and the rest of the cast is a bunch of bloody loonies. It just has to be that way. Gervais turned that on its ear.
His role of David Brent changed the sitcom idiom by putting a buffoonish lout in the forefront. While animated roles such as Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are dolts to be sure, they both quickly dropped the more prickly elements of their personalities. David Brent never did. He stayed a mean spirited idiot for the entirety of the series. Gervais resisted all attempts to make his character "grow" or "evolve" which is industry jargon for "make nicer" (On a side note, Brent's counterpart on the American version of "The Office" Michael Scott has softened over time). Few other comics have been able to successfully sustain a career using such an unlikeable public persona.
And it his public identity, since he is known in England (and now abroad) for his radio broadcasts where he mercilessly ridicules his on-air cohort Carl. This is now going on over ten years fans have been tuning in to listen to this abuse. The only reason it's bearable to all but the most misanthropic listeners is that deep down we know it's a joke. He actually likes and respects Carl, and Carl knows that while his surreal asides drive Gervais to distraction, they are still mates when the microphone is off.
The Ricky Gervais Show- Monkey News
This is a discussion between Ricky and his on-air cohorts Stephen Merchant and Carl Pilkington. The humor stems from the ridiculous ideas that Carl tries awkwardly to relate. However they all need each other for the bit to work. Just a collection of Carl's ramblings might be interesting in an odd, random sort of way, but the trio discussing them so earnestly (and the absolute joy the inanity gives to Ricky) is what makes this so funny to me. The contrast between the earthbound Gervais and the space cadet Pilkington is hilarious.
2. The second creative person I'm featuring is Alex Ross.
Ross is a painter famous for his portrayals of well known cartoon characters. he has done artwork in other fields, but it's his renderings of comic book figures that he is best known for. He has been painting these cartoon images for around twenty years now. While he has done many comics on commission his most successful pieces have always been of classic figures from the golden and silver age of comics.
One reason I have such an affinity for his work is that the painter and I grew up during the same era. We were both nerds in the 1970s. He later transferred the images from that pop culture to his own art-work, and it became both nostalgic and cutting edge. This level of skill by a cartoonist was unusual, as the comic medium has required its illustrators to work more
He uses a photo-real style to bring the subjects to life. This bizarre contrast of the realistic and the fantastic has always been unsettling to me, but at the same time inspiring. He is so focuses on the realistic portrayal of these iconic figures he uses models without any heightened musculature or augmentation: no steroids or implants allowed in his studio! So these figures are in many ways mundane. But the actions he captures them in are often extraordinary.
He has at times worked in long-form story-telling, releasing three fully painted series, "Marvels", "Kingdom Come", and "Uncle Sam" with other writers. These works have been generally well received by fans and critics, and are all still in print.
"Marvels" introduced his painting to the general comic-buying audience. Written by Kurt Busiek the original four part series was not really noticed by the public. Marvel comics felt there was something there that could find an audience and re-released it as a softcover trade paperback. As a single product, readers began to appreciate it an its story about a photo-journalist who covers the history of the Marvel comic super-heroes from the sidelines.
This re-print was a sleeper hit in 1994, and soon Ross' style of realistic impossibility became hugely successful. Fans wanted more of this series, with more focus on then-popular characters. Unhappy with the format, Ross chose to leave Marvel and take his wares to DC, who owned the most iconic characters in comic book history.
"Kingdom Come" was a series he painted along with writer Mark Waid. It tells the story of the final battle that the DC Comics super-heroes have with a younger more violent generation of super-humans. While this series was much more commercially successful, it highlighted both Ross' strengths and weaknesses: Stunning visuals but stiff motion and stilted and rigid story-telling.
Still considered a seminal work in comic history, it pointed Alex Ross more in the direction of poster artwork and covers for other series. In fact he only produced one more fully painted comic series:
"Uncle Sam" was a series Ross did with writer Steve Darnell. Published by the DC Comics imprint "Vertigo", and suggested for mature readers, the series told the story of a manwho became the personification of the American symbol Uncle Sam and was forced to witness the way that his image had been distorted and misused over the course of American history.
Much darker in tone than his previous works, "Uncle Sam" was not the sales success that "Kingdom Come" had been, but its nonlinear time-line was much better suited to Ross' limitations as a storyteller. Hailed by some critics as Ross' best work, it was still be-fuddling to many readers and those who considered themselves "comic book critics" had the same difficulty deciding if they liked it or not and like-wise ended up largely ignoring it.
3. The third artist I'm describing is John Mortimer, and English writer and lawyer.
He's best known in America for his long running series "Rumpole of the Bailey". The legal drama was juxtaposed with a brilliant domestic satire.
John Mortimer was a practicing attorney in England when he was approached to write some teleplays for a program called "Play For Today" in the early 1970s, an anthology program that served as a try-out for possible ongoing series.
Mortimer had contributed a script for the series "Wednesday Play" in 1968 about a divorce trial, "Infidelity took place" where the couple wanted to stay together but legal separation was beneficial from a tax perspective. This introduced Mortimer's style of legal drama in which the clients motives are never what they seem, which is a stark contract to the American court-room dramas such as "Perry Mason" or "Law and Order" (Or it's predecessor "Arrest and Trial") where the defendant just wants to be exonerated.
When he started work on his "Play For Today" script, Mortimer shifted the focus to criminal law (few lawyers in England at the time were specialists, most practicing both criminal and civil law) and took for inspiration the various old barristers he encountered wandering the halls of the London courts. These were colorful, caustic figures both witty and world weary, and they always seemed to have a touch of the anarchist about them.
The prototypical lawyer on television previously would have been presented as a man of high character and little flaw. Even Clarence Darrow, who was immortalized as Henry Drummond in Robert Edmond Lee's play and film "Inherit The Wind", while a man of some eccentricities had no visible faults. But Mortimer's cranky barrister did.
Horace Rumpole smokes too much, drinks too much, and is really only alive while he's in the courtroom. He doesn't defend his clients out of a keen belief that they are innocent, but for the thrill he takes in cross examination and defeating smug prosecutors. He duels with Judges and policeman on the stand and while he strikes a comic figure on the streets of London, in its courtrooms he is a giant.
At home he ignores, and often ridicules his wife Hilda, who in turn bellows and bullies him. In his office he is unpopular with his peers who loathe his smoking and seedy sort of clientele. But they in turn all come to him with some problem or other because they know he's the best at what he does, even if it isn't politic to be seen with him.
These other characters begin as somewhat two-dimensional, but flesh out over time. They became a necessity once the program was picked up to be an ongoing series. It was in the writing of his first serial that Mortimer realized every Rumpole story really needed three elements: A legal plot, an office plot, and a home plot.
The first episodes written covered what Mortimer believed would be the end of Rumpole's career, and covered a period of ten years. In fact, Mortimer intended to have him die at the end. But by the time they started to work on that final installment, Mortimer felt he had just scratched the surface with the character. Knowing the network wouldn't agree to produce another series entirely of flashbacks, Rumpole got a stay of execution. The series went on to be very successful for the channel ITV, and a loose agreement to bring the show back in the future was made.
But before the second series of episodes would be produced, Mortimer began publishing the character in book form. First he adapted the teleplays he had written into prose, he then began to work the other way. The prose stories were so successful Mortimer began writing follow ups to them before the television program could return to production. He found that order to be more difficult however, and disliked trying to adapt to television the stories he concocted for print. So once the show returned to semi-annual production, Mortimer would write the teleplays first then adapt them to prose second. This enabled him to have all the disagreements about what they could afford to shoot, who they could get to play which guest role, and all the producers' input before the book buying public got to see them. He would never again work "in reverse" although he would occasionally write stories in prose that he never intended to produce for television.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the actor Leo McKern who immortalized the character on screen. He gave the role his own unique flair and made him a deeper, richer character even before Mortimer did. Known for some smaller part in science fiction programing (particularly "The Prisoner")before, Rumpole became his signature role. Whether it was delivering a witty rejoinder or showing surprising tenderness to his long-suffering spouse, McKern gave him depth and verve.
But this is primarily about the author John Mortimer. His ability to contrast what the traditional legal drama had done for decades with the type of sensibility he wanted.
Rumpole tames "The Bull"
Rumpole and "She Who Must Be Obeyed".
These Two brief excerpts from the television serial illustrate how the two contrasting worlds were so deftly combined. Rumpole is a law series, a comedy, a mystery, and most of all a romance. Only a true dabbler could have ever given us that!
