Wild Palms

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Wild Palms

Wild Palms main cast (listed below)
Format Sci-Fi Drama
Created by Bruce Wagner
Starring Bebe Neuwirth
Angie Dickinson
Dana Delany
James Belushi
Kim Cattrall
Robert Loggia
Nick Mancuso
Country of origin USA
No. of episodes 5
Production
Producer(s) Oliver Stone, Bruce Wagner
Running time 270 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel ABC
Original run May 16, 1993 – May 19, 1993[1]
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Wild Palms is a six-hour mini-series, which first aired in May 1993 on the ABC network in the United States. Written by Bruce Wagner, who (with Oliver Stone) was also the executive producer, Wild Palms was a sci-fi drama about the dangers of brainwashing through technology and drugs. It was based on a comic strip written by Wagner and illustrated by Julian Allen first published in 1990 in Details magazine. The mini-series starred James Belushi, Dana Delany, Robert Loggia, and Angie Dickinson. The episodes were directed by four people known more for their feature films: Kathryn Bigelow, Keith Gordon, Peter Hewitt, and Phil Joanou.

Contents

[edit] Plot synopsis

 The plot summary in this article is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the content. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. (July 2008)

Harry Wyckoff is a successful patent attorney in 2007 in Los Angeles, living with his wife Grace, a formidable suburban housewife and boutique owner, and their two children: Coty, television addict and upcoming sitcom actor, and Deidre, a slow developer who has yet to speak a word. Grace's mother Josie is a socialite radiant with charisma. However, Wyckoff is plagued by strange dreams in which he is pursued by a rhinoceros and visions of palm trees.

One day, he is visited by a former lover, Paige Katz, who asks for his help in tracking down her son Peter, who disappeared five years earlier. As Paige works for the Wild Palms Group, which Wyckoff's firm is going up against in court, their meetings raise suspicions and cost Wyckoff a promotion. After this, he gladly accepts the job offered to him by Paige's employer, Senator Tony Kreutzer, as head of the business department of his television station Channel 3, though he is puzzled by the Senator's role as the founder of the Synthiotics religion and philosophy of New Realism.

Kreutzer plans to use a new virtual reality technology developed by company Mimecom in Channel 3 broadcasts, so that the action will take place in the living room of the viewers, who will be able to interact with the actors. The first program of this format will be Church Windows, a sitcom including Wyckoff's son.

However, all is not well in the world. In a restaurant with his old college friend Tommy, Wyckoff sees another patron forcibly dragged away by a group of men. Strangely, no one else pays any heed to it. Wyckoff witnesses similar events happening with police around town. Though disturbed by this, Harry has no feelings of empathy for the victim, but finds himself "rooting for" the attackers, without knowing why. When Coty goes to stay with Josie, she asks if he has had "the rhinoceros dream." When he responds that he has, she tells him to keep it secret, since it means he is special.

Then, in Grace's presence, Deirdre utters her first words: "Everything must go." The peculiarity of this is furthered when Senator Kreutzer tells Wyckoff of a group called the Friends who killed his father shortly after the man had a fire sale, with a banner saying "everything must go." At a dinner party, Grace and Wyckoff run into Tabba (a co-star of their son) and her "consort", Tully Woiwode. Tully is there with his sister Maisy, whom Harry recognizes as the woman who had been dining with the man who was abducted in the restaurant. When Wyckoff confronts her, she denies this.

Wyckoff continues to be stunned by the bizarre occurrences going on around him. Grace sinks into depression over what she fears is a relationship between her husband and Paige; she and Wyckoff separately learn about the two political groups: the "Friends", and their enemies, the fascistoid "Fathers", who had been known to steal the children of their enemies. Grace comes to fear that Coty is not her son, but one who was put in his place when her real son was abducted.

Wyckoff slowly discovers that the Fathers, led by Josie, the Senator and Paige, are developing a grand plan involving the Mimecom technology, and that the Friends — one of whom is Grace's incarcerated father, Eli Levitt, are trying to fight back.

From this start, a deadly web of intrigue, betrayal and murder surrounds Wyckoff.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Influences

This section requires expansion.

Influences on the production design include:[citation needed]

Synthiotics, a kind of futuristic self-help movement; founded by Kreutzer, a former science-fiction author seems to be Wagner's wicked caricature of the late SF author and Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.[2]

[edit] Episodes

ABC aired the mini-series was over four consecutive nights[1] though it was originally designed to air as five weekly episodes:[citation needed]

  1. Everything Must Go (90 minutes) - directed by Peter Hewitt
  2. The Floating World (45 minutes) - directed by Keith Gordon
  3. Rising Sons (45 minutes) - directed by Kathryn Bigelow
  4. Hungry Ghosts (45 minutes) - directed by Keith Gordon
  5. Hello I Must Be Going (45 minutes) - directed by Phil Joanou

[edit] The comic strip

Creator Bruce Wagner described the comic strip that his mini-series was based on:

"I used the cartoon as a sort of surreal diary. It was dreamlike and hallucinatory. I put my friends in it. I put famous people in it. I didn't care about the story. It was a tone poem."

Executive producer Oliver Stone explained why Wagner's Wild Palms comic strip caught his eye:

"It was so syncretic. It was such a fractured view of the world. Everything and anything could happen. Maybe your wife isn't your wife, maybe your kids aren't your kids. It really appealed to me."[3]

[edit] Reception

Three of the stars of the mini-series characterized it for Entertainment Weekly:[3]

  • Jim Belushi: "It's very tough, very challenging—a lot of viewers probably won't dig it. I shot the show for 12 weeks, looped it, watched it, and there are still things I'm not catching."
  • Dana Delany: "It's a futuristic melodrama with a dash of virtual reality. You shouldn't even try to make sense of it. Just let it wash over you, enjoy each scene, and by the end it'll make sense."
  • Robert Loggia: 'For me, the piece is reminiscent of Elizabethan blood-and-thunder plays like The Duchess of Malfi. Or a Greek play like Medea. Plays where you're dealing with incest and treachery and tearing somebody's eyes out."

The New York Times called it "terrific" and a "truly wild six-hour mini-series" resembling "nothing so much as an acid freak's fantasy, drenched in paranoia and more pop-culture allusions than a Dennis Miller monologue." It was described as "rich and insinuating as a good theatrical film, albeit harder to follow" and said to "vibrate with an inventiveness that rarely flags."[1]

Readers of the British trade weekly Broadcast were much more negative, calling it one of the worst television shows ever exported by the U.S. to the U.K.. It placed fourth on their list, exceeded only by Baywatch, The Anna Nicole Show and The Dukes of Hazzard.[4] TV Guide also blasted it, offering the interpretation that Oliver Stone was condemning television while covertly lauding cinematic films.

Wild Palms DVD cover.

[edit] Video releases

Wild Palms was released on CLV laserdisc in March 1995[5] and on VHS in multiple releases. It was released in Region 1 and Region 4 DVD format in October 2005 and in Region 2 in March 2008.

[edit] Book

A book, The Wild Palms Reader was published by St. Martin's Press before the series aired. It included time lines, secret letters, and character biographies.[3] ABC, concerned that viewers might get "hopelessly lost in the tangled story line"[3], arranged for the primer to be published. It also included writing supposedly from the “world of the series." Contributors included:

[edit] Cameos

Cyberpunk author William Gibson has a cameo appearance as himself. When the author of Neuromancer is introduced as the man who invented the term "Cyberspace", he remarks, "and they won't let me forget it." Oliver Stone also has a cameo, in which he appears as himself - being interviewed on television in 2007 - after the release of files pertinent to the assassination of John F. Kennedy reveal that Stone's film, JFK, was right. Stone also referred to "the late Jack Valenti" in the scene in the 1992 movie. Stone hired musician, body-modification pioneer, and occultist Genesis P-Orridge as a consultant for the series.

[edit] Poetry

The series includes references to the following poetry:

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c The Sunshiny Menace of Wild Palms, a May 1993 review from The New York Times
  2. ^ Wild Palms, Entertainment Weekly, May 14, 1993
  3. ^ a b c d Palms Sunday: Post Peaks ABC Brings Forth Wild Palms, a May 1993 article from Entertainment Weekly
  4. ^ News about Wild Palms from IMDb
  5. ^ Laserdisc details from IMDb

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Palms"
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