"Women are making great strides in all professions, and I hope that I can draw inspiration from them and keep doing it in mine."

Some know her as True Blood's sassy Southern ginger Arlene Bellefluer, while others fell in love with her as The Good Wife's deceptively ditzy Elsbeth Tascioni. But Carrie Preston also has her hands in directing and producing through her independent film company Daisy 3 Productions. What's more, Preston shadowed True Blood director Scott Winant on the finale episode, as she is critical of the dearth of female directors in the male-dominated industry and hopes for a future as an episodic director. I had a chance to chat with Preston about her history with True Blood, winning an Emmy, women in the industry and that now-famous pool table sex scene.  

Will you tell me about the audition process for Arlene? How did you go about getting that part?

Luckily it was a simple process for me because I had worked with Alan Ball right before they started casting the pilot. I was doing a film that he wrote and directed called Towelhead (2007), and so I met him on that, and it was while we were on Towelhead that he asked me what I was doing next. I said "I'm not sure," and I asked him, and he said, "Well, I'm doing this vampire pilot for HBO, and I might have something that you might be interested in. So they sent the script over, I read it and I honestly didn't know what character he was talking about - because it didn't appear to be that I was right for Arlene physically. I thought "Hmm. I wonder which part he means" And they said "It's Arlene." I thought, "Well, OK. I certainly understand women like Arlene. I grew up in the south. So, I went in and had one audition with Alan and the casting directors, and they put me on tape, and he went to HBO and said, "This is who I want for Arlene. And they said, "OK." So, it was the least amount of hoops I'd ever had to jump through to be a series regular on a television show. Usually they make you do many, many auditions for many, many people. I was very fortunate that it was the right fit at the right time  

Wow! It must be really gratifying to have someone of Ball's status trust you and appreciate your work so much as to do that ... 

  It was highly flattering and humbling and exciting because he's someone that I've admired as a writer and a creator. I was a huge Six Feet Under fan, American Beauty fan, plus we're both from Georgia, so it was a nice southern connection as well.



OK, speaking of Georgia. I notice now that your voice has a bit of a southern flare, but nothing like Arlene's. What does that voice come from? Are you imitating anyone you know in real life?

I grew up in Macon, Georgia, so I know a lot of strong southern women like Arlene. I'm not doing anybody in particular because Arlene is a pretty singular person. The writers have created a very specific woman there, but I guess it's an amalgamation of women that I've known over the years and I try to honor them in the best way I can with her and feel blessed that I've gotten to play her for seven years.  

Speaking of Arlene and even Elsbeth, although this is a silly question, I wonder if you could tell me about their dazzling red hair. Was that from your life or commissioned by the show [True Blood]?

I was born blonde and was doing roles that required me to be in the blonde world for many, many, many years and then True Blood came along, and I remained blonde for the first three seasons in a wig. The character calls for being a redhead, but I was involved with other projects at the time that we shot the pilot, so I couldn't dye my hair. And then I just decided that I was ready to move on from the wig, because the wig is limiting. There's not a lot you can do with it, and it was sometimes uncomfortable to wear a wig for upwards of 14 hours a day. So, I waited until they had a moment in the script ... a time bump that was like a year or something, and all of us changed our looks up a little bit once that happened. It was then I decided that would be a good opportunity to go wigless and dyed my hair. And I haven't looked back. It's been great.

Lovin @BauervanStraten and @TheRealAnnaCamp #SDCC2014 at the @EW lounge #EWComicCon pic.twitter.com/bDJJVs5q4U
— Carrie Preston (@Carrie_Preston) July 26, 2014

I would get in trouble with some of my friends if I didn't touch on The Good Wife, which you won an Emmy for, congratulations. I'm curious: how did you hear about your nomination?

I was out walking my dog (Chumley, he's a rescue: a Maltese/poodle mix, we think ... a 7-pound adorable mutt), and I really had not known that the nominations were coming out the night before and someone sent me a text that said, "Good luck tomorrow!" And I was like, "On what?" And then like "Oh, the nominations. Well, we'll see." You know, I wasn't holding my breath. And then I was out walking my dog in New York, and I got a text from somebody who said "Oh my god, I'm so proud!" and I thought, "OK, well that must be the nomination." And then my publicist called and told me that I'd been nominated. And then the phone calls started coming in and it was really exciting, and I was really not expecting it when you're a guest [star]. There's hundreds and hundreds of people who are also guests, so it was pretty extraordinary to be singled out in that way and then to actually WIN was ... I already felt like I had already won.

Chumley is the best person I know. Hands down. #NationalPetDay pic.twitter.com/gIe333ZKKJ
— Carrie Preston (@Carrie_Preston) February 20, 2014

You know, when you think about it, it is really astonishing to win the guest category given that the immensity of the competition!

You think about every episode of every television show that has at least one if not two or five guests in every episode. So it's a lot of people. I was pretty amazed that my peers wanted to single me out in that way.

 I was wondering if you could speak about the differences between the production cultures of both True Blood and The Good Wife. What's most different?

On True Blood they take a lot longer to shoot an episode. It's not as prescriptive as far as shoot days at the network. The network generally on a drama will say they're shooting it in eight days, and they will usually do double up unit on a couple days and may stretch it to 10, but usually they try to keep it in the eight range. Whereas True Blood, our episodes ... it's very hard to track because everyday they're shooting two units which means there're scenes from one, two, three, sometimes four episodes at once. It's hard to tell how many days that takes, but sometimes people will do that math and it will end up taking 21 days to shoot an episode spread out over a month. So, it's very different as far as scheduling goes. Network generally tends to go from one episode to the next, so they're sequential. True Blood will juggle several at once to accommodate people's scheduling and location scheduling and all of that. I don't know how the ADs on True Blood were able to make that work - and the producers. It is a real feat that they're able to pull that off and get the episodes in the can.

This is how we feel about #TrueBlood ending.. @realchrisbauer @AdinaPorter @patriciabethune @TrueBloodHBO pic.twitter.com/HKVy5vokA4
— Carrie Preston (@Carrie_Preston) July 8, 2014

Since you've worked for both cable as well as network shows, I'd be curious if you've ever been a part of any conversations had with executives or if as actors you're aware of the network notes passed onto producers.

The actors usually are not privy to those conversations, although for the finale of the show, True Blood, I was shadowing the director, who is one of our directors who has been with us since the beginning, Scott Winant, because I am a director as well, and so I wanted to really see what it was like from soup to nuts how our show gets made. [her dog barks] Oh, I'm sorry. He heard something out in the hall. He's very protective of me! So anyways it was very interesting for me to see how things happen on True Blood, and go into the preproduction meetings and see how many meetings go into one stunt or one scene in one location, and the care and the detail and the amount of people that are utilized to make one moment work on our show, is something that I didn't fully, fully, fully grasp and experience until I did that shadowing. It was really amazing, and I learned quite a lot about how much prep goes into a show like True Blood.

How sad are we that it's over?? "@_smoyer : ran into @Carrie_Preston @TrueBloodHBO #trueblood #truetotheend #tbs7 pic.twitter.com/1KCk4B8nBQ"
— Carrie Preston (@Carrie_Preston) August 1, 2014

Are you interested in directing for television?

Yeah definitely! I love television, I love being on TV, and I love being a part of the television culture. I feel like we're in a very exciting time for television, and yet I also feel like there aren't enough women directors. I have worked with very few women directors, and I have done a lot of television. I find that disappointing, and I understand how that happens ... because [television] is a bit of a man's world. I really believe that the best person should be doing the job; I just feel like sometimes women don't get the opportunity because the decision makers are men and they probably just feel more comfortable with other men.

At the @ew photoshoot #SDCC2014 pic.twitter.com/RLYQQ9BtUI
— Carrie Preston (@Carrie_Preston) July 26, 2014

 

So, is it that there's a hesitancy to even let women in the door, even when they might be the best person for the job?

Television is a lot of networking and who you know. So, a lot of people are hiring people that they know, that they've already networked with, and so there's a lot of -- a bigger margin of error for women. Sometimes if a woman comes on and directs and it didn't go 100 percent right, then the assumption is that "OK, well see, women can't do it." So there's a smaller margin of error ... I think that scares them. At the same time I feel like I'm respected as a director and producer and actor, and I haven't felt any great amount of chauvinism thrown my way other than what you experience as a woman in the world. I would like to continue to learn more about it and hopefully be able to do some episodic directing myself. The same thing happens in our business that happens in the rest of the world. We're just having to continue to break the glass ceiling. Women are making great strides in all professions, and I hope that I can draw inspiration from them and keep doing it in mine.  

Were there any aspects or story lines for your character you wished had been more explored?

No, I am very pleased with the evolution with Arlene. She starts off one way, and then she's a completely different woman at the end of seven years. That is what you want as an actor: a journey, an arc, someplace to go. I feel like the writers really built my character over the years, and I'm very very happy creatively with where it ended up. I wouldn't presume to come up with story lines, I really trust the writers.







I just know so many people have wondered where your [character's] kids have gone.

The amount of years that have passed have been fewer than the amount of years those actors have aged. I mean the little girl was seven or eight when we started, and she's 15 but in the script she's supposed to be 11 or 12. They needed to minimize that, plus they had so many parts to serve. The one character that I wonder is Mikey [Arlene and Terry's baby]. What happened to Mikey Where's Mikey!? Even when we had scenes with Coby and Lisa recently ... I tweeted "Mikey is taking a nap" because I don't even know where Mikey was in that situation. I think it's just a matter of casting and logistics having kids on set.


So, about Sunday's episode "May Be the Last Time." You had a now-famous sex scene with a vampire on a pool table. I was wondering because I don't think I've seen it discussed in any great detail, the mechanics of shooting such a scene. Would you be willing to tell us what that process was like for you?

We were really well taken care of by Simon Jayes who was the director of that episode. Simon was also our A-camera operator the whole run of True Blood. So, I know him really well; he's been photographing all of us for seven seasons. To have him move up into the role of director was really great, and I felt very comfortable with him. I knew that he was going to shoot it in a way that made myself and Riley [Smith] feel comfortable. That's the whole thing; that's the way they talk to you You meet beforehand, and they talk you through it. And you talk to them about what you're comfortable doing, and you come up with a game plan, and it's like choreography. When you look at it that way, it's like doing a dance or a fight choreography. You break it down that way and it comes a lot easier because nothing is surprising. You meet ahead of time, walk through it and talk through it You don't go through the actual actions until the cameras are there. They clear the set; only the necessary crew is there so that you don't feel like you're being watched -- self conscious in that way. There's nothing romantic about it because obviously there's people around, and you're breaking it down and doing many different angles and camera set ups. So it is something ... you know it's going to be edited together, so you just shoot it in pieces. We shot that scene and we shot the scene where we danced together on the same day. That was a 12-13 hour day. That scene had two different parts: the part where he comes into the bar and scares me, and then we had the part by the pool table. Those took eight or nine hours I would guess. Actually the part at the pool table didn't take that long because there weren't a lot of setups or a lot of angles - they didn't have to do a lot of relighting.



As far as shooting goes, were there any scenes we didn't see you wished we had?

But we did have one part that didn't make it in the cut that we shot on another day. I was sorry it didn't make it in the cut but it was just for time. There's a lot of stuff that the fans have no idea we do that, just for time reasons, can't make it into cut because they have to cram a lot into that 57 or 58 minutes. There was a moment where we shot the POV of vamping [having sex with a vampire]. So when he picks me up and takes me over to pool table, we shot a whole section with a green screen, and the camera's on my face, and they blew a fan on the back of my head to make my hair fly, and then the camera sees me go "OOoohhh!!" and start giggling. So the audience would see what it would feel like to actually be vamped. It was really fun and funny, and it was a big setup with a green screen and cameras -- a fan. I sat sort of on a stool and they shot over Riley's shoulder onto my face. It was really fun to shoot - I have photos ... they ended up not putting it in the cut but that was a whole separate day.



Now that the show is wrapped, I'm curious: Did you keep anything from the set?

 I did keep my Merlotte's uniform, so I have that, and I have a menu from Bellefluer's. We filled out these forms to make requests for certain things from the set, and we were led to believe that we were going to get those. And then we found out that ScreenGems and Warner Bros. took everything and [I gasp]. Uh-huh!! So we were like "Wow!, that was quick ... Screen Gems and Warner Bros. stole our set! There was a sign in the bar that said "Homemade pies" that the production designer had designed and they had built it and made it: homemade pies and there was a slice of pie. It just for me was something that really captured the whole Arlene taking over the bar and turning it into Bellefluer's and she had a case of pies. It felt right, and it was a real cute and looked like it was old fashioned that hung in the back of the bar. I really wanted it. I don't think the fans would even see it.



Admittedly, it was pretty difficult to find.

And what would you say is your experience with fans? What do they mean to you?

Luckily, people love Arlene, and they like to laugh with her and they think she's funny. But they've also really appreciated all the more dramatic things that have happened to her, and they all are very supportive of her journey. So, I get a lot of really positive feedback from people out in the world and fan mail. I just experienced Comic-Con for the first time and that was wonderful to have that large crowd of people cheering for all of us. People stop traffic to yell something at me out the window, "Arlene I LOVE YOU! So, it's been a really great experience."

One of the many fun offerings at the #Trueblood premiere party 2nite. Maybe this tattoo should be real! pic.twitter.com/plrZlgxo9Z
— Carrie Preston (@Carrie_Preston) June 18, 2014

(Head shot photo credit: Shawn Flint Blair). Special thanks to Professor Christine Becker.

---

Barbara Rosenblat's storied career includes time served on Broadway (pioneering the role of Mrs. Medlock in the Tony-winning The Secret Garden, among multiple others), more film and television roles than you could throw a pie at (Law and Order: SVU, Veep, Girls), and a nun-scattering behemoth of an audiobook career: she's narrated nearly 500 titles and even has an e-book on the subject.

But you probably know her best as Orange is the New Black's Miss Rosa, the husky-voiced, curmudgeonly, terminal cancer patient who comes up for air just long enough to pluck a "tit hair" or knock off a bank. This week, I spent an hour chatting with Rosenblat about everything from Miss Rosa's future to her poignant fan letters and from Jodie Foster's interest in aforementioned tit hair to what piece of the set currently resides in her freezer. It was quite a chat.  

Reader beware, spoilers follow.  

TCM: Going back to the beginning, how did you originate the character of Miss Rosa Cisneros? How was she presented, and how did you proceed?

BR: After my general audition, they called and said: "We'd like to offer you the part of Miss Rosa."
And I said, "Great! Who is she?!"
"She's a prisoner."
"Oh, does she have a last name?"
"No idea."
"Where's she from?"
"Don't know."
"Um, what's she done?"
"Not a clue."
"OK! [beat] Alrighty then."
"And she has cancer."
"Really, what kind?"
"We don't know. Oh, and by the way she's bald. Will you shave your head?"



I wasn't even sure she was Hispanic, and yet in the first large scene that I had, I'm in bed in my cell; I was discussing how things are in prison with Piper (Taylor Schilling), and Nicky (Natasha Lyonne), and Anita (Lin Tucci), and at one point one of the lines said, "I could have been la jefa" which in Spanish means "chief."

So, I thought, "OK, so she's Spanish. Alright. Good!" Being a dialectician by trade and an actor by trade ... I created a bio for [Miss Rosa] internally.

When my agent called me up and said "We're going to do her backstory," I thought, "Oh my goodness! I'm going to matter! I'm going to find out where she's from."

Turns out she's Cuban, but I didn't know that until season two.


TCM: So you probably contributed a lot to the development of her character?

BR: Yeah, I guess so! The producers eventually brought in Josh Turi, an "astonishingly brilliant special effects makeup guy," as Rosenblat calls him, to save her hair through the rigorous application of a bald prosthetic piece, so realistic it fooled actors working closely with her on the set. Beth Fowler (Sister Jane Ingalls), once even congratulated her on having a perfectly-shaped head.

BR: It took three hours every time to apply. I think we eventually got it down to two and half, which was a lot of fun at half-past dark in the morning.

They have to paste my hair down so that it looks like it's just painted brown as opposed to having any hair on it. So it's flat, flat, flat, flat, flat before you can begin the process of putting on this very sheer bald cap and beginning the process of fitting it to the face and fitting it to the other piece that attaches to the rest of my neck, and start all that airbrush work with a million colors. He covered my eyebrows and put fake eyebrows on, put little veins and beauty marks. It looked utterly authentic!

I worked when it was very cold; I also worked when it was very hot. It was such a delicate operation; in the warm weather I was followed around by PAs with umbrellas so I would keep my head away from the sun. Otherwise I would get little breaches like behind the ear or whatever, and he would constantly be coming around to patch me up. Because it's a delicate thing!

But you can't be the slave of the silicone, it has to serve you as an actor. I remember various occasions during the hot summer months when we were shooting up at Rockland doing some exteriors. I sweated so much underneath my bald cap at the best of times, even though I look dry and bald, underneath it's Niagara Falls! Every now and then he would have to mend a breach - but before he did that, he would take his fingers and milk my head! Other actors would be standing by while you see this [makes whooshing sound] of shit coming out of my head, and they would go, "Ew!" That was horrible, [she laughs] the things we do for our art!

It takes another hour to get out of the thing because it takes about three or four different solvents to remove all of that from my hair. And that's a process in and of itself. And then I have to go back to the makeup area where they would wash that cement out of my hair and blow dry my hair!

It wasn't very pretty, but everybody respected the work so much.

TCM: Let's talk about the episode "Lesbian Request Denied." Jodie Foster directed that; what kind of direction did she give you specifically ...

BR: She's up for an Emmy for that very episode ("Lesbian Request Denied")! I remember there was a scene where I'm plucking tit hair in the cell, and it's kind of disgusting; this is how we have to look out for ourselves in prison.

There's none on my head but I'm plucking it from my tits. OK? Fine. That's what I read in the script. So, I get into makeup, another three hour process on a cold morning, then I get a message from one of the PAs (production assistants) that Miss Foster would like to meet me and have a chat.

I said, "Uh oh. What did I do?"

So, I go to a private room and there's Jodie Foster. "Hi, I'm Jodie. OK, I'd like to talk about that cell scene where you're plucking ... tit hair. I just want to see where we're gonna go with this. Where I'm gonna have the camera, how revealing it's going to be and what not."

And then she starts to remove her sweater, and she's showing me ... you know ... her rack ... up to a point, and she's saying, "Well you know, I'm thinking, this would be appropri ... because if I have the camera over here, then we'll shoot it from this way. And then we'll see this much, and then you can ..."



And I went, "Great, terrific! Whatever brings the viewers in, I'm happy to do it. Whatever you want to do is fine by me." And I'm thinking to myself, I'm standing here, looking like a terminal cancer bald patient in prison garb and I'm talking to Jodie Foster who is taking her sweater off. This is amazing.

We did the scene; she shot it; she was terrific; it all went well apparently. I finished kind of early because I wasn't involved in the stuff they shot the rest of the day and so I went back into makeup, Josh spent 40 minutes getting the appliance off my head. Makeup and hair washed the rest off my head. Blow dried my hair. Put on some lipstick. Put on my glasses. Put on my earrings. And I walked back to video village, where the director sits watching the scene, and in a little break in the proceedings, I tapped on her the shoulder and said, "Thank you, it was a pleasure working with you." She turned around and went "Bahh! Who is this?! Oh my god, Barbara!" And I realized, she'd never really met me ... She gave me a big hug and that was that.

TCM: Fast forwarding to the end of the second season, how did you find out you would have the last word literally and metaphorically (you potato with eyes):

BR: When I found out about it, I ran into the bathroom, shut the door, and screamed for five seconds. "ME?! Are you kidding!? ME!? Oh my god!"


I had a sense that I would be more pivotal this season after I found out they were doing my backstory. But I didn't know where they were taking it. And I recall a couple of very uncomfortable encounters with Vee (Lorraine Toussaint). They were just a couple of short days; I still spent three hours getting that bald cap on my head, but you know they were these not-very-nice moments. There were a couple of them, like when I told her, "You are a very rude woman," and I thought to myself: This can't end well. [she laughs] But that's all I knew!


[she just remembers] I did get a phone call from the production office a few weeks before we shot it asking if I knew how to drive a van ... And I said, "Uh, yes. And?"

"No, that's all. Thanks. Great."

This response made me laugh so uncontrollably, I asked Rosenblat all about the van scene so I could take the time to compose myself.

BR: It was shot in a couple places. Some of it outside Kaufman Astoria [Studios] in four degree weather, which was SO cold. You know those little pad things they give you, you rub them together and they get warm? I think I went through forty of them in four hours. I was sticking them on my tits and the back of my neck, everywhere to keep me warm while we were shooting both the interiors and the exteriors.

You know that moment at the end where I morph into my younger self? The director had me behind the wheel. And then I would jump out of the van so that she could jump in and try to get the exact same position as me. We did this back and forth and back and forth. And they had a fan blowing on her (it was four degrees!) and me, I don't need a fan because nothing blows through anything on my head. And the poor thing was freezing to death!



But it was terrific - so brilliantly done.

While OITNB has received numerous accolades for its representations of women, women of color, and a rainbow of queer identities, few articles have covered the complexity of Miss Rosa's identity as a cancer patient. Indeed, there really isn't a lot of dimension to most televisual representations of people living with cancer. Mostly, characters with cancer wander onto and off of sets of various shows flattened out as either tragic victims or heroic overcomers without much characterization. Both are really two lazy sides of the same generic coin. Don't be fooled: Their only goals are to emotionally manipulate the audience and make the lead characters feel equal parts shitty and inspired. They are rarely characters unto themselves.

With one of Miss Rosa's first lines, "Thank god I got cancer. No one fucks with cancer," it was clear early on that Miss Rosa was going to be an exception. (One person, Andrew Cray, Tweeted: "hilarious b/c I was the only 1 'allowed' to laugh (I have/had cancer)!"



TCM: There's a lot of complexity and texture added in the second season that fills Miss Rosa into a more fully-developed, humanized character not limited to or defined by her body. Do you ever hear from people who have somehow connected with your character in that regard?

BR: I was astonished at the number of people who wrote to me precisely in that regard. I was very touched and moved.

Here's one: "Hello Barbara Rosenblat ... I'm 16 years old and live in Ohio. I have never wrote an email to any actor, actress, friend, or close relative, but I feel I needed to send my first email because of such a touching acting role you were a part of in Orange is the New Black. I have never in my life have been so impressed with acting that I was moved to write this to you.

"Firstly, I would like to say the makeup and design of your character was flawless. I really thought the background of it was so interesting. Miss Rosa had a background of crime and love and then leads up to how the character had gotten caught and sent to prison. I have thought about this in detail and cannot figure out why, but, your character really made me think about my grandma. Or as I called her, my nonna, Italian for grandma.

"My nonna pased away [last July] and it was the saddest day of my life because I had lived with her and had been very close to her my whole life. She died of B-cell lymphoma cancer. I had begun to realize episode to episode how negative your character took having cancer. And how it psychologically got to her until she drove out of the prison. This made me realize that when my nonna had cancer, she was very positive and hopeful that she would be alright. I never really appreciated how much strength it must have taken for her to be hopeful at such a sad time for her.

"I wrote this to tell you what an amazing job you've been doing. And I'm very excited to see you next season. But most importantly, playing such a powerful role that showed me such a huge show of strength my nonna had that I overlooked in her last few months of fighting. If this role would have been played by anybody else, I might not have made the connection with my nonna. Now that I watched the show and made the connection, wow was my nonna in a similar spot to that lady! And then thinking, "I don't remember my own nonna ever saying negative things like that" was a huge eye opener for me, and I'm very grateful. Again, thank you very much for showing this crucial detail to me from my nonna's fight. And again, excited to see you next season again."

TCM: Wow. That must mean so much to you.

BR: You have no idea. No idea. [she takes a moment] And various people have written similar things. But this one really got to me because he's 16, you know? And she meant a lot to him. And I seem to have helped him understand a part of his relationship with his grandma that wasn't quite clear for him. And that touches me.

TCM: I know another big moment for you was the New York City Pride Parade, of which the OITNB float was the most popular.

BR: Oh my god, I felt like the fricken' pope! It was divine! There were six of us, they had cars for us all. I had a wardrobe nightmare. I said to my driver, "Can we stop at Macy's because I forgot to put earrings on, and I don't go out of the house without earrings."

I got my little clip-ons, jumped back in the car, and we went to the staging area. And there was this float and it looked like prison laundry! [she laughs] It was so great to see everyone because we all get along so well. It's so lovely, there's so much love in this company it's astonishing.

All these people were coming by and saying, "Oh my god, Miss Rosa, Miss Rosa! Can we take a picture!?" And they all knew it was me! I knew my dimples would give me away and they have.

I've gone to the gay pride parade over the years because it's the best parade in the world! It's so crazy and fun, and this is where it all began all those years ago at Stonewall. And so it was quite an honor to be asked.

It was sensational. There were these screaming hordes, all these fans, they were flinging roses at me! It was incredible. The noise, the yelling, the love! We're bouncing up and down and screaming and posing and waving. It was such a thrill, I was just ... I'm lost ... I don't know what to say to you. It was the biggest thrill of my life!

I love the appeal of this show across so many demographics. I think that Jenji Kohan pushes more envelopes than Staples!

TCM: Even if you don't return (though I hope you will), what endures for you from the show so far? What will you take with you from your experience?

BR: I think the thing that was most heartening for me is, after we finished season one, and they called me back for season two, and you see those guys behind the camera, those directors who know your work, your fellow actors who trust you, people you've grown with in this production. And they look at you and they hand you stuff because they think you have what it takes to deliver for them. And that level of trust to show me as an actor is probably one of the greatest gifts you could ever give me.


TCM: I teach classes on television at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and my students are all very interested in the Netflix model, releasing entire seasons at once. Do you have any thoughts on that?

BR: You know everyone binge watches OITNB (she was at Disneyworld when season two dropped). I can't imagine what bleary-eyed faces were showing up to work on Monday morning. It all comes out and you watch as much or as little as you want. And I liken that to ... Can you imagine handing a child a recently-released Harry Potter book and saying, "Merry Christmas! And by the way, you can read three chapters tonight. And then you have to put the book down. And then pick it up next week and you can read three chapters and then put the book down." And so on. He would look at you like you're crazy!

Binge watching is not unlike taking a book that you love and staying up 'til dawn with it.

I've been recording audio books for a long, long, long, long time. When you think that you can take me on long journeys or for a stay at a hospital or while you're working, nobody is going to stop you from listening to as much as you want to listen to when you have that thing in your possession. And this has finally translated into television. It's astonishing.

Jenji has made something so incredible and delicious, it's like Lay's potato chips, you can't just watch one episode. It's mind-bogglingly addictive. And it's exciting for me to a part of something that means so much to so many people around the world. It's not like regular TV. It has an extra-special meaning for me because it's such pioneering television.


TCM: Did you keep anything from the set?

On that last day of shooting, I had to get into my Miss Rosa garb and bald cap like every other day, but at the end of the day ... I went back to makeup and I said to Josh, "Josh, just carefully remove this bald cap, just very carefully, because I'm taking it home." And he said, "Are you kidding?" because normally, it just looks like a piece of evidence, you know?

You just want to throw it away. It's either that or have a piece of roast pork since that's what it looks like at the end of the day. But I said, "Well, cut it off, carefully. And I'm going to put it in a little baggy and stick it in my freezer." I don't know why. I thought maybe one day may I could sell it for charity or something, I don't know. But I thought I just want to have a little chunk of it as a reminder of Miss Rosa.

TCM: Wow! [I laugh] So you've got Miss Rosa's head in your freezer?!

BR: [concedes] I have Miss Rosa's head in my freezer.

[she's embarrassed] I don't know what it sounds like; it probably sounds really macabre?

TCM: It's one part macabre, two parts sentimental and sweet. It's hysterical that you have Miss Rosa's head in your freezer.

BR: Well, it's not her head. It's her scalp. [she laughs] I just wanted to have it. I just hope I don't mistake it for giblets when I'm making soup.

I look at it every now and again and I think, "Really? Really, Rosenblat? This is what they're gonna find when you're dead? Is this weird thing in the back of your freezer?!" Oh, god.

TCM: Barbara, will we see Miss Rosa next season?

BR: Hand on heart, I have no idea. Because no one's told me.







Special thanks to Connie Soendker Anderson and Wendy Morris.
Visit BarbaraRosenblat.com.

Originally published by The Huffington Post, 11 September 2013.


Jeanne Robertson is contagious-contagiously funny! When this 6-foot-2-inch-former Miss North Carolina (50 years ago!) was told she'd gone viral (on YouTube), she joked, "I don't think so, I've had all my shots?!" But the metaphor is fitting, y'all: I spoke with a long Southern drawl for a good two weeks after our first encounter, which raised more than a few eyebrows in my state of Wisconsin.

On a rare visit north of the Mason Dixon line, Jeanne performed her one-woman show at the beautiful old Orpheum Theatre in the tiny town of Galesburg, Illinois. I, of course, arrived late for our meeting-constantly braking for Illinois' endless supply of cleverly-hidden patrol people. I raced into the lobby of her Holiday-Inn Express frantically searching for a quiet place I could find to interview her on camera. Although the sitting room promised aesthetics, country music blared from a speaker behind the front desk, and so I reluctantly moved on to the breakfast nook, dragging studio equipment behind me like an overwrought caddie and struggling to fit through doors.

The breakfast nook was quiet and dark but windows promised natural lighting behind their heavy blinds. It was empty except for a single hotel housekeeper who stood two inches from the television with her arms crossed. She was tapping her foot with annoyance as it failed to spring to life and side-eyed me as I shuffled in. "Are you going to be using this room?" I asked, gingerly, hoping somehow she'd learn of my interview and beg to assist on production. "I'm on my break. When this TV works I'm going to watch television," she informed me, and, turning away she added, "and it's going to be loud."

Witnessing as she haphazardly stabbed at buttons on the "clicker," I felt some confidence she wouldn't have success, and so I began re-arranging tables with one hand as I dialed Jeanne's phone number with the other. The hotel had reeked of drabness-the 50 shades of brown that was the carpet matched the bored personalities of much of the staff. They moved through the motions lifelessly without an abundance of crises to excite their attention in the tiny town, and so this made the television incident all the more poignant because things weren't supposed to go wrong.

I-myself-was already annoyed at the hidden patrol people, my tardiness, and this "over-it" housekeeper. I was edging toward fury as I dragged tables from here to there across the carpeted floor of the nook, until something stopped me: My arm muscles relaxed, my knees weakened, and my stomach pushed up a giggle as the booming Southern voice reached around the corner and tickled my ear. "Ohhh ma goodness will ya have a look at that un-yoo-zhall little puppy! What's his name?!"

When I peeked around the corner, it was as if everything had changed. As when Dorothy opened the door on Oz, the sepia tonality had readjusted into vivid color and something in the air made everything feel lighter. Jeanne stood smiling at a new family of guests as front-desk employees gathered around to join in her warmth. The once-annoyed housekeeper looked downright bashful as Jeanne sashayed by, greeting her with a smile and a simple, "Hey 'thare'!"

Somewhere between quizzically furrowing my eyebrows at the housekeeper and Jeanne striding confidently toward me with an outstretched hand, I "got it." So many of the most famous quotations are about this moment. Jeanne's own, "Smile; have a sense of humor, and accept the things you cannot change," paired beautifully with Toni Morrison's " Does your face light up when [people] come into the room?" to create for me a new realization: Do I bring my humor and colorfulness into the room to "infect" others with joy, or do I bring my burdens into the room to bear upon the people already there?

Although we don't say so, in my experience smiles and laughter are even more contagious than yawns, and so the metaphor of "virality," when it comes to viral videos like Jeanne's, falls short of illustrating the power of joy and happiness. We have so many words to articulate the sickness and negativity one body can infect upon another, yet so few for such a welcome contagion as Jeanne brings-as I will strive to learn to bring myself. She didn't enter the room with a sense of entitlement, expecting to be received in any particular "positive" way. She instead brought it with her, sprinkling little pieces of sunshine into the lives of people she passed along the way.

This lesson I gleaned was strengthened later that evening as I watched Jeanne greet guests both before and after her show. The hundreds of patrons were drawn to her, many sharing stories of their own left-brained family members or rehashing some of their favorites of her own. Words failed others who stumbled through stories to illustrate how her humor helped them struggle through some of their darkest hours. She hugged those people and assured them she was just as grateful for them as they for her.

Although Jeanne is hysterical and a magnificent speaker, she assures audiences that her life isn't much different than theirs. Humor is all around, and if you look for it, you'll realize that so much of the funny we miss is shrouded in expectation. Had I been pulled over by one of those patrol people or had that housekeeper's television set suddenly switched on, I would have expected everything to fall apart. But at the end of the day, everything would still have been okay. So, a little while later, when her vacuum did whirr to life, I couldn't help but smile and think how funny life can really be. She really was contagious, and I can verily say, I caught a "Jeanne" and laughed.

-- Limited tickets are still available for Jeanne's one-woman show at the Alabama Theater in Birmingham and the Cobb Energy Center in Atlanta, celebrating her 70th birthday. And her "Jubilee Year" of winning Miss North Carolina.

"People say, 'Jeanne, what do you want for your birthday?' And I say, 'If you're 70, you don't want anything. You want to get rid of stuff!'" So Jeanne and her crew are asking instead, for guests to bring a new, unwrapped toy for Toys for Tots.

Jeanne has many other public appearances coming up-and-she is available for private speaking engagements, so hire her. Really. Here are a couple long clips from my interview with Jeanne, the first, our general overview with "unusual questions" and in the second, Jeanne accepts the Regional Dialect Challenge. Keep smiling!

He watches the computer monitor over his son's shoulder as web-embedded images from his life scroll across the screen interluded with tributes typed over a jarring green background spattered with stars. He's a father, a husband, and a teacher, the headline announces; he's Walter White, and he's "in trouble. It's lung cancer."

As Walter White, Jr. (Junior), presents his website to his father, his mother, and his aunt, the immediate sense emoted is touching: Walt's face reveals his admiration, his adoration, and his deep-seeded pride in what his son is able to accomplish given the limits of the Cerebral Palsy that restrains him. But when his aunt whispers out the link to the site, "SaveWalterWhite.com," Walt's countenance quickly changes from honored humility to tentative panic: "Uh, wait a minute. You're not asking for money, are you, son?" he questions. "Ye-yeah, that's the whole idea" ("Phoenix").

Although Walter White stumbles in and out of wealth at the hands of villains and crippling betrayals, he is driven by an ego that will not allow him to accept financial help from others, and his son's "little website" is no exception. "This was all his idea. He worked so hard on it; just let him help. You can't ask him to take it down," Skyler, Walt's wife says. "Skyler, it's charity," he answers, grimacing as if the thought sickens him. "Why do you say that like it's some sort of dirty word?"

Of course, the frequent utterances of the website address throughout the episode and others to follow piqued the interest of viewers, curious to see if such a site really existed and delighted to find that it did. The real website of the same address is an exact reproduction, including Walt's biography, his lessons, and what he means to Junior, all in the type face Comic Sans.

There is even a donate button at the bottom of the page, same as in the show, except instead of redirecting to a PayPal address to offer visitors a chance to give to Walter White himself, the page redirects to a donation page sponsoring the National Cancer Coalition (NCC), vastly smaller than the more well-known American Cancer Society but with better ratings.

After the episode's premiere, the website delivered more than a million unique visitors to the NCC's website, a huge surge for the medium-sized North Carolinian charity, and in the three years since the episode aired, continued clicks from the site have filled a donation pool of more than $125,000, about 5,000 of whom find or continue to visit the site every day.

NCC president and chief executive officer Robert Landry told me he was just as surprised to learn about the website as I was. "We (NCC) did not know [creator Vince Gilligan] had done this at the time. We are not connected to the show or AMC. Then, AMC developed the site and linked it to our site, which we happily discovered when we noticed the site traffic hugely spiked," Landry told me. "Can you imagine the efforts we would have had to go to and the expense to direct such a large number of people to our cause?" For the NCC, nothing more than a link on a fictional website delivered staggering results for the charity, becoming an example of a new, unintended breed of cause marketing that charity workers and media industry professionals are beginning to champion, Cause Placement.

Philips McCarty, founder and principal of Good Scout, along with Erik Lokkesmoe, founder and principal of Different Drummer, coined the term "Cause Placement" as "the accurate and authentic integration of cause into entertainment content in a way that is mutually beneficial, and ultimately, good for society."

"Our priority is to help social good initiatives and organizations connect with the games, music, movies, books, television and theatrical shows, and personalities. In many ways we are the Match.com for non-profits and entertainment content. The opportunities really are endless," says McCarty.



While continued technological advances make 3D aesthetics feel more and more like reality, "quality" audiences are beginning to demand a fourth dimension from their media choices: Are they doing good? In a culture of growing political and cultural sensitivity, Millennial audiences especially are questioning the greater cultural relevance and footprint of the ever-growing television, music, and film choices available to them.

Since media choices abound from network, cable, and now even online distributors, viewers are no longer constrained by a lack of products to choose from, and are becoming more loyal to options they think are not only entertaining, but doing good. The strategy of Cause Placement (think product placement) allows media producers to weave in their own activist and/or charitable goals without abrupt PSAs or overwhelming plot points that cloud their narrative goals.

The quality cause placement, then, works because it rewards fans who do the work to uncover it and share what they have revealed with others. Had Breaking Bad relied on a post-show statement by one of the actors supporting the NCC (as is often done in network dramas), the actual results may have been vastly different. The clever cause placement reached the right viewers, buoyed the right word-of-mouth strategy, and resulted in more than a million unique clicks to the site as well as more than $125,000 in donations. Most telling of all, people felt good about watching Bad precisely because they felt it was doing good work.

One viewer, for instance, was particularly moved discovering the placement: "I am crying savewalterwhite.com is an actual website and it has the pictures of walter jr's message and it's set up for donations and everything but if you click to donate it sends you to the national cancer coalition and you can actually donate for real people i'm serious there are tears streaming down my face." Another pointed to the show's use of the cause placement as a marker of its quality, "Holy shit! www.savewalterwhite.com ACTUALLY EXISTS?!?! This show keeps getting better and better!"

According to a joint study performed by Achieve and Johnson Grossnickle and Associates, 75 percent of Millenials made a financial gift to a nonprofit organization in 2011, some of which was "in response to an emotional reaction." The study also found that Millenials were loyal to nonprofits and when nonprofits built strong relationships with them, they were compelled to act as fundraisers; indeed, more than 70 percent reported raising money on behalf of nonprofits. Even though the majority of Millenial donations were gifts of $100 or less, reaching Millenials is perceived as an important strategy precisely because they are so well connected and likely to share information about responsible charities with their networks, as the fans above had done on Tumblr when they discovered the donate button on SaveWalterWhite.com.

Realizing that their work was a viable and rich area for doing good, McCarty and Lokkesmoe teamed up to create the first ever annual Cause Placement event last year in D.C. The interactive presentations carrying the subhead "Entertaining Good," brought together more than 200 foundation representatives, industry professionals, agents, managers, and publicists interested in the opportunities that new cause marketing strategies could open.

"[We started] thinking about how we could integrate causes into content in a way that was far more powerful and purposeful than just gala fundraisers or red carpets," Lokkesmoe explained. "We see it as a seamless, integrated approach that begins early on - at scripting, in the recording studio, in the green room, on set, in the draft. It cannot be a tactic to market content to an existing affinity audience; too many partnerships are 'window-dressing.' It has to ring true for the audience."

This year's "Entertaining Good" event will take place October 10 in New York City and includes presentations from HBO, Warner Bros., MTV, WME, and dozens of others. Sevenly, The Non-Profit Times, and Conscious Magazine are sponsors. Limited tickets are still available. Breaking Bad's finale episodes premiere August 11 on AMC.

Help support the NCC, donate today.

"Some people might say, though, that the gay rights movement has come such a long way. It wants everything all at once, and it just doesn't happen that way!" --Carol Costello, CNN



I didn't give the FLOTUS heckling much thought until I ran across CNN Newsroom anchor Carol Costello's condescending interview with CNN analyst LZ Granderson. In the video, Costello mentions Obama's rising popularity, but, as Costello dismissively puts it, she's still subject to hecklers. In this introduction, we've a clear sense of how Costello will approach these "hecklers" throughout the rest of the interview, as if they are nothing more than nuisances who don't know their place.

Costello makes a dismissive grimace when she reports the cause of the heckler, Ellen Sturtz: The LGBT community is not protected from workplace discrimination.

Both of these moments seemed strange coming from an anchor on a series called Newroom, but Costello's condescending views on the heckling are crystalized later in the interview: "Some people might say, though, that the gay rights movement has come such a long way. It wants everything all at once, and it just doesn't happen that way!"

Let's be clear. Costello is among those "some people." Let's also be clear that Costello's remark is shameful and embarrassing: She suggests that equal rights groups should be happy with the glacial march toward progress and equality (a trajectory that, if you will notice, is mostly related to marriage equality). "It wants everything all at once, and it just doesn't happen that way!"

Yes, Carol Costello. The LGBTQ community wants equality all at once. You can bet we will demand it. And to suggest that we should be satisfied with the successes we've had (namely the march toward marriage equality, which isn't a high priority for many LGBTQ activists) in the past few years as adequate and that we should essentially stop rocking the boat is to suggest that the fight for equality has a timeline. And not only a timeline but a proper venue for that timeline.

I've seen many comments saying things like:

"Yes, well, it was just disrespectful..."

"It was in a room with children..."

"The First Lady doesn't set policy..."

"It wasn't fair..."

"It was the wrong time and place..."

These arguments are confusing to me, because where is the time and place to make demands of our leaders? Where do civil rights happen?

But these weren't just outbursts. They weren't just hecklings. Sturtz was not making demands of Michelle Obama; she was making demands of an American public -- the same public that Michelle Obama in part represents as an American symbol. The FLOTUS is a political being and constantly inserts herself into politics. Heckling her at a public event is not an individualized attack any more than throwing a pie in Anita Bryant's face was in 1977. It's not about the people themselves but what (or whom) they represent.

The "gay lobbies," as they have been affectionately called, do not in fact represent the voices or concerns of all members of the LGBTQ communities, many of whom have different priorities than marriage equality. These include attention to issues like poverty (queer youth homelessness), social services (denied coverage to transgender people), institutional negligence (prison rape), workplace inequality, etc.

When the rhetoric of "gay equality" is tied uniquely to "marriage equality," we have people like Carol Costello reporting its successes and figuring "gay equality" is a Supreme Court decision away from coming to fruition. But, again, gay equality and gay advocacy groups do not always have the needs and concerns of the other LBT and Q folks prioritized.

And so I ask again: Where do civil rights happen? Should the folks at the Stonewall Inn have waited for their day in court to argue for rights? LGBTQ activists have a long history of these so-called inappropriate disruptions, because we also have a long history of silencing. Before a mainstream "gay lobby machine" became a permanent fixture in Washington, D.C., gay rights activists had to disrupt the status quo in order to overcome that silencing. How else were they supposed to draw attention with a media moratorium on their issues? These were often called "zaps," public demonstrations designed to confront or embarrass a public figure while calling attention to human rights.

These zaps and other inconvenient "out of time and place" protests are precisely the reason something like marriage equality is now so close to passing, because they brought into the public consciousness a previously ignored or silenced conversation. We cannot and should not presume that equal rights will be fought and won by following a tried-and-true and convenient timeline, because that has never happened.

To be sure, our current fight toward marriage equality is built upon the backs of these zaps, on the crust of Anita Bryant's "fruit" pie, and on the receiving end of the shouts by a powerful public figure into the face of a woman demanding equality before she dies. No one should take for granted inconvenient activism and all it has made possible, least of all the gay community and the Obamas.

So, yes, Carol Costello, we want it all at once.

Last year, TechCrunch turned the social media circus on its side by reporting that Facebook was strongly considering integrating a "hate" button ahead of their IPO to boost interactions with the site. Scores of Facebookers, Tweeters, and Tumblrs alike took to their profiles to praise, debate, and/or protest the move by the social media giant because of its inevitable impact on our increasingly corporate-controlled culture.

Those in favor argued that integrating such a button would tear an already-polarized world to extremes, bringing unnecessary bullying, fighting, and negativity to a cyberspace and social media sphere long overrun by hate.

Those in support of the button believed it would give them a platform from which to publicly air their grievances with big businesses, political leaders/political movements, celebrities and media products, as well as to encourage a culture of "talking back" to those in power.

But all was for naught: TechCrunch fabricated the story as an April Fool's Day Joke fooling thousands of readers. To quote T.S. Eliot, April is the cruelest month!

The debate did, however, open up a new cultural conversation: What are the benefits of a public display of hate, and how able are we now to display it? After all, the "like" button, incorporated across-the-web two years earlier, protected the interests of corporations, allowing them to market their products to an even wider audience while stifling would-be boycotters and isolating protestors to uncentralized pocket groups without much exposure.

Marginalized and subjugated communities have long taken to the streets in protest. Feminists, black civil rights leaders, and gay liberation fronts have historically had a vested interest in publicly protesting problematic media, protected by a first amendment right to free speech in the public sphere. Their "hate" was inconvenient, a problem for businesses and politicians (and their customers/constituents) in brick and mortar establishments who had to physically walk past and confront the protest to perform their daily duties.

But the social media sphere, and Facebook in particular, has changed all that, moving causes and protests to online forums and to cyberspace. Here, seemingly "public" spaces (like Facebook and Twitter) are for the most part actually "private" spaces owned not by governments that must answer to the people, but to private corporations that must answer to their shareholders. Speech in these private spaces is not protected and can, indeed, be censored at will as businesses and Facebook itself sees fit. Indeed, the voices of the inconvenient can be silenced with a few clicks.

If Facebook has integrated itself so well into our lives that it now decides elections, and if we now take to "the Facebook" instead of "the streets," as our modern-day public square, what does it mean when such displays of hate and protest aren't equally incorporated into the Facebook platform? What information is lost when we can't see the number of "dislikes" a company has? And how can we, as media and culture researchers-as cultural historians-write about the present?

Last summer, for instance, Chick-fil-A Chief operating officer, Dan T. Cathy fueled a firestorm with several statements indicating that the brand did not support marriage equality and argued that those who "have the audacity to define what marriage is about [were] inviting God's judgment on our nation."

As Cathy's statements erupted into a news media maelstrom, Facebookers "liked" Chick-fil-A's page at alarming rates, giving a false sense of support for Cathy's comments by silencing statistics that would show how many "unlikes" the comments encouraged as well as how many "dislikes" and even "hates" would have been generated as well. Of course, what followed was also a stampede of posts by those in favor of marriage equality, but it would be impossible to know how many were posted given a business' ultimate control over its page, including the ability to delete comments and ban users.

In other words, quantitatively speaking, while we can more or less measure the positive impact of a media event on a business, a media product, a political movement, or a celebrity, those same statistics are not available to measure the negative impact of the same event making it impossible to find acceptable metrics with which to measure hate-to understand and make sense of our world where hate is a key human response.

As an audience researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I do a lot of work to analyze the way in which people engage with television shows, storylines, or actors to see how they are interpreting such texts and how they are informed by them or make sense of them in their day-to-day lives.

For instance, in one study conducted last year, I learned that rural gay men completely isolated from "gay culture," often found and watched The Oprah Winfrey Show in order to identify with gay guests and reframe the notion of homosexuality as a sickness to one of homophobia as a sickness. Many of these same men, however, felt the need to "come out" because rhetoric on the show suggested being closeted was to be lying and inauthentic to the truth of yourself. Several of those viewers then decided to come out, even when it could and did pose physical and emotional danger or even homelessness.

Another study (conducted during the first season of Glee) found that many gay male viewers rejected Kurt's character as an offensive stereotype, and would have preferred to not have such a representation at all as opposed to the one offered. In response, Glee producers ushered in several more gay characters in the following seasons to create a spectrum of masculinity.


And a forthcoming study, also on Glee, found that bisexual and queer viewers are continually devastated by the show's privileging of "coming out" storylines that encourage a "gay or straight" binary. Much like with Oprah's fans, these viewers are critical that the show is teaching parents and youth alike an either-or sexuality where trans and bi identities are delegitimated.

Much early audience work looked at fan engagement with shows to get a sense of how people were watching media. But this method left out a range of spectatorship practices for those who might watch programs inactively or decide not to "hate-watch" shows or not watch them at all for specific "anti-fan" reasons. The people over at Ring Wing Watch, an organization dedicated to "monitoring and exposing the activities of the right-wing movement" so we don't have to, are a good example as well as the gay and bisexual viewers of Glee mentioned above.

So, after years of studying who (s)he "likes," we now want to study (s)he who "hates" but given the extensive limitations to finding those people outlined above, we turn to qualitative research aimed simply at talking to people about what they watch, what they don't watch, what they love, what they hate, and why. We want to study the "anti-fan" every bit as much as we study the "fan."

A small Kansas carnival, 1905: From the four corners of the earth, acts to delight, to thrill, and to mystify. There’s a fire breather, a strong man, a stilt walker. A mammoth hot-air balloon looms in the distance and beyond that clouds promise a wicked storm. A magician cowers in his wagon after a young paralyzed girl begs him to walk again. She naively believed in his powers, as did her parents and all the good, simple-minded Kansans in attendance.

A knock on the door reveals the magician’s sometimes-love, Annie, who has come to tell him of her engagement–to see if he wants her back.

“You could do a lot worse than John Gale, he’s a good man,” Oz explains. “I’m not. I’m many things, but a good man is not one of them. See, Kansas is full of good men: church-going men that get married and raise families. Men like John Gale; men like my father, who spent his whole life tilling the dirt, just to die face down in it. I don’t want that Annie; I don’t want to be a good man. I want to be a great one.”



So begins the story of Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, but its tale isn’t new. Everyone is trying to get out of Kansas, to get the heck out of Dodge [City, Kansas]; to get over the rainbow. And it’s no wonder, really, given what the pictures show.

Hollywood is baffled by Kansas and represents it as a simultaneously old-timey homeland as well as a sideshow of rural curiosities. Audiences watch their screens with wonder as Kansans willingly endure the plight of their harsh geography. These voyeurs know their visit to the prairie will be brief, and they’ll delight in retelling its banal but bewildering splendor: men tilling dirt just to die face down in it.

Kansas has become a carnival unto itself.


All black and white photography is abstract. Likewise, when Kansas is represented, monochromatic or not, it’s always an abstraction from an urban reality, and one saddled with disaster:

It could be something like a tornado (The Wizard of Oz, Oz the Great and Powerful, Greensburg), or a meteor shower (Superman, Man of Steel [upcoming]) that destroys your town and leaves you battling an unending parade of hybrid alien “supers”(Smallville). Maybe you’re attacked by nomadic American vampires (Near Dark), renegade Indians (Custer, Four Feather Falls), or just good old-fashioned aliens (Mars Attacks!).

If you’re lucky, you might only have to face down the occasional bandit (Gunsmoke, Winchester ’73, Dodge City, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, etc.), or mobster (Prime Cut, The Ice Harvest), or time traveler (Looper), or errant supernatural being (The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog).

If you’re not so lucky, you’ll be confronted with domestic homicide (In Cold Blood, Murder Ordained) the American Civil War (Dark Command, Touched by Fire: Bleeding Kansas), the Great Depression (Paper Moon), racial segregation (The Learning Tree; Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff), nuclear catastrophe (The Day After), or the subsequent post-apocalyptic world (Jericho).
But more often than not, yours will be a crisis of identity. Dorothy, Superman, Oz: As queer figures unable to assimilate, they struggled through the exceedingly mechanical, zombie-esque homogeneity of Hollywood’s Great Plains, where idle-minded Kansans are born and die without living–a spectacle so unspectacular, it’s a kind of curious queer rurality. But Hollywood’s representations of Kansas go far beyond the mere trope of the rural vs. the urban. Kansas is at once more sinister as it is more sympathetic.

In the pictures, Kansas’ story is one of Bildungsroman, where a character completes a coming-of-age moment, a transition from naiveté to maturity that often involves leaving the state in one capacity or another.

It is only in so doing that they too will learn of Kansas’ banal allure. Superman doesn’t become the Man of Steel until he leaves his small farming community to help those who really need him in Metropolis. Oz doesn’t understand the power of goodness and the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio until he crash lands in his future kingdom. And, sure, Dorothy heads back to Kansas, but does so knowing that on the other side of the rainbow is a splendid world of technicolor with yellow brick roads, giant lollipops, and a wicked witch who skywrites.

Dorothy’s unyielding pursuit to return to banality only proves Hollywood’s rule: Something’s the matter with Kansas. Its bearded ladies and conjoined twins, its dog boys and elephant men, all dressed over to appear as paeans to normativity. But their queer particularity shows at the seams, and queerer still is that they’re all willing participants in their own spectacularization. They all want to be in Kansas where they could be meteored, bombed, abducted, or tornadoed at any moment, and “isn’t that queer?!”

As a gay Kansan (and I’m talkin’ tumbleweed Kansas) with a weakness for Judy Garland, few people can identify with Dorothy’s journey more than me. Given the nature of the film, I should think it would surprise some of you to hear that The Wizard of Oz is a highly cherished icon-cum-commodity for the Sunflower State. We have regarded it as a great love story to Kansas. But it’s not really, is it?
It isn’t Oz, the munchkins, the witches, or even the eccentric Emerald City dwellers that are queer to the “mass audience” of the film. Not really. The world they know is in color; it’s filled with good and evil, and often draws those lines based on appearance. The world of wonder, then–the queerness of The Wizard of Oz–was always in the telling of Kansas–it was always on this side of the rainbow. There really is no place like home!