TCA Press Tour: 'Hung's' mystery continues

Inquiring minds at the HBO session of Thursday's press tour want to know: Why haven’t we seen Ray’s “winning tool” yet? After all, viewers see plenty all of Sookie, and then some, on the network’s “True Blood.”

“We have not shown his penis -- yet,” said executive producer Colette Burson, who tried to explain why a shot of his most marketable asset hasn’t made its way onto the show. “It’s the perfect penis. It’s perfect for everyone who comes into contact with it.”

In other words, they don’t want to let anyone down. Not yet, anyway.

Set in Detroit, “Hung” revolves around a middle-aged gym teacher-turned-gigolo who struggles with his remarried ex-wife (Anne Heche), raising two teenagers and working with his female pimp on the side.

Jane Adams, who plays his pimp, Tanya, said she recently sat next to Terrence Howard on a plane and told the actor about her new role. Howard was Oscar-nominated for having played a pimp-turned rap star in 2005‘s “Hustle & Flow.”

“He had a lot to say,” Adams said. “And then I realized, ‘You know, this has nothing to do with Ray and Tanya.”

“Hung” and has been compared to like-minded series -- “Weeds” and “Breaking Bad” -- that revolve around characters dealing with their midlife crises in unconventional ways. But producers said that Ray’s secret work moonlighting in the sex trade is almost beside the point.

“Being hung has informed his life to a degree…so it seems an accurate [title for the show],” Burson said. “But it also seems to us, on a certain level, like an existential state. He is hung.”

And on that point, the series’ star Thomas Jane doesn‘t think that Ray’s crisis is a laughing matter. “I don’t consider it a comedy. I’m not going to play something for laugh. I’m going to play it for real,” he said.

“But I’ve heard it’s funny.”

In fact, although Ray sells sex, producers say nudity wasn’t discussed while they were trying to cast for the lead role. “It was always about how they did the dung beetle speech,” executive producer Dmitry Lipkin added.

“I had to go into another room to change so I wouldn’t hit anyone in the eye,” Jane offered.

As for why he took the role, the star deadpanned, “The hours are always a consideration. How much money I’m going to make. Those are the first things.”

But, seriously, “I thought it was a really clever idea,” Jane began, but wound up summing up: “It’s all …fate and luck, man. There is no reason this show should be good. It should be bad. It’s about a guy with a big [penis who has sex with] people for money!”

-- Denise Martin

Photo: Jane Adams and Thomas Jane in HBO's "Hung." Credit: HBO

TCA Press Tour: ‘Seinfeld’ reunion comes together on new season of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’

After years of saying no to the idea of a “Seinfeld” reunion, Larry David told reporters why he conceded and wrote a reunion into the upcoming season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”:

“I always said no. We would never do that, it’s a lame idea. And then I thought it might be very funny to do that on ‘Curb.’ And I kept thinking about it, and started to think of different scenarios. I called Jerry, and Jerry was game. I called the others, and we did it.”

But why would on-screen Larry do the reunion? one reporter asked.

'Entourage': Independence day

It’s summer, folks, and that means one thing: The "Entourage" boys are back in town. Last time we saw them, Martin Scorsese had swooped in to save the down-and-out Vince by offering him the lead in his upcoming “Gatsby.” And while I had hoped that Scorsese would make another cameo appearance, this fun, engaging sixth season premiere picked up, alas, after the movie had already been filmed. Vince and his crew are flush with money and possibility and back to living large, moved back into their ginormous mansion in L.A. (with a two-year lease, no less) and riding high on the movie’s positive pre-opening buzz. Much like the titular protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, Vince and his crew have transformed themselves (once again) into made men.

It’s independence day for many characters in this episode: Vince has asserted his own position in the driver’s seat and on the A-list — he has an appearance on Leno and a test to get his driver’s license the same day — but E himself has also been weighing his options around town. And by that, I mean he’s been sleeping around with a slew of women. Apparently now that he’s a hotshot manager who rolls around in an Aston Martin, E’s had no shortage of ladies who come a-calling. And from the looks of it, he likes them young. None seem to hold his interest as much as ex Sloan, however. Particularly when she insistently rings her way back into the picture with an offer to sublet a friend’s house that’s much too good to refuse. Anyone else see these two getting back together in the near future? The way that she hedged her way back into E’s life, challenged him to get his own place, abruptly asked about his dating life, and then relented to his advances and invited him up for a drink gives me the sense that their romantic entanglements are far from done.

E’s not the only one branching out.

Disillusioned with the American dream? Get 'Hung.'

The first thing you should know about HBO's new series "Hung," which begins airing tonight, is that it's not just a show about a guy with a big penis who decides to become a gigolo. No siree.

According to its wife-husband co-creators, Colette Burson and Dmitry Lipkin, "Hung" is about the fraying of the American dream and the battered resiliency of the middle class. It's about the former golden boys and golden girls of high school being forced to navigate midlife's tricky shoals. It's about the lip-smacking ironies of extreme gender reversal, and how they can affect the dynamic between a couple.

And it's about that eternal Freudian brain-teaser, 'What do women want?' (Hint: It's not just roses and Godiva chocolates.)

Even so, Burson and Lipkin concede, for writers like themselves it's intriguing to get inside the mind and skin of Ray Drecker, the aforementioned, hugely well-endowed main character in "Hung," played by actor Thomas Jane. "It's a really weird personality type, these guys with huge penises," Burson reflected recently. "It's like they won some lottery."

Read the full story.

(Photo courtesy HBO)

Review: 'Hung' on HBO

Clearly the Obama administration needs to address the issue of teacher salaries and fast. On AMC's " Breaking Bad," Bryan Cranston is playing a science teacher making meth, and now we have Thomas Jane as Ray Drecker, a high school basketball coach turned male prostitute in HBO's "Hung."

Both are men of middle age who find themselves undone by fate -- Cranston's Walter White has cancer, Ray's wife has left him and he's lost his home to fire -- and a lack of ambition. Both are angry at a world that seems to have reneged on earlier promises so, with their personal landscapes scorched beyond recognition, they become, essentially, survivalists, reaching for whatever talents they have to create their own lawless, post-apocalyptic society. Recession-era Mad Maxes.

This is not to say that "Hung" is simply a sexed-up version of "Breaking Bad." Certainly there are similarities, but the same river runs through "Weeds": the belief that the old economic system is broken, that a decent living cannot be made through decency.

Read the full story.

Review: 'True Blood'

HBO's vampire dramedy “ True Blood” returns Sunday night for a second season of gore and guts and breasts and buttocks. The action may take place in the South, but the show itself is truly set in a place called Premium Cable.

Read the full story.

(Photo courtesy HBO)

'True Blood' is back

The bomb that shattered the living room left carnage in its wake. The floor is slick with blood, tattered bodies litter the room, entrails dangle from the ceiling and an unrecognizable mass of goo stuck to the wall erratically spurts jets of mauve blood.

"I'm gonna ask everyone to clear the set who is not actually dying on it," yells Scottie Gissel, a first assistant director for HBO's hit vampire series " True Blood," which launches into its second season of sensational Gothic gore and lusty, undead romance next Sunday. (Viewers will see the scene of explosive destruction that Gissel is stage-managing late in the season.)

On this sunny afternoon, the cast and crew work in overdrive on a gloomy, fog-soaked soundstage at the Lot on Santa Monica and Formosa. They labor with the assuredness of a project vindicated. After getting off to a rocky start critically last fall, "True Blood," based on the books by Charlaine Harris and created by Alan Ball, who created "Six Feet Under" and wrote "American Beauty," steadily built its audience to emerge as HBO's most popular show in recent years, with an average of 7.8 million viewers watching each episode by the end of Season 1.

With a fervent fan base, including nearly half a dozen fan-run websites that HBO -- in a forward-thinking approach to managing public opinion -- actively fosters, "True Blood" is hoping to prove with its sophomore season that even in the "Twilight" age of vampire overkill, it can maintain its success.

Read the full story here.

(Photo courtesy HBO)

Review: 'Into the Storm'

It's difficult to imagine a braver or more ambitious project than “Into the Storm,” which premieres on HBO Sunday night. To tell the story of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the years of World War II and the months that followed is enough to freeze a screenwriter's heart. Add to that the task of living up to its predecessor, “The Gathering Storm,” which starred Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave and -- well, you see where the bravery comes in.

While "The Gathering Storm" portrayed Churchill struggling to stay solvent, influential and married, "Into the Storm" shows him at the height of his powers. It's hard to beat Finney, but Brendan Gleeson (last seen as one of "In Bruges' " lovable hit men) does his level best, setting his jaw in that signature grimace of confidence, making sweeping decisions without pause and delivering speech after speech designed to keep spines straight and hearts bold all over the little island he loved so well.

While Gleeson pours himself into that iconic voice (at times a bit unintelligible to the American ear), the strength of his Churchill radiates from the eyes, which in private moments shine darkly with sorrow, doubt and occasionally fear. The same man who promptly rejects the suggestion that Britain negotiate with Mussolini and Hitler with the words "nations that go down fighting, rise up again; those that surrender tamely are finished," holds in his mind not the pillars of power but the image of a man who once wished him luck.

Read more: Review: 'Into the Storm'

-- Mary McNamara

Photo credit: Susan Allnutt / HBO

HBO's 'Alzheimer's Project' series explores the disease

Alzheimer's disease doesn't leap to mind as a subject likely to draw many TV viewers, much less draw them for a four-part series. But it's tough to turn away from HBO's exhaustive and bracing look at the illness through the lives of people enduring it and the scientific breakthroughs that could change everything.

"The Alzheimer's Project" marks the third time HBO Documentary Films has made a focused attempt at public health education. In 2000, there was the Peabody Award-winning series "Cancer: Evolution to Revolution," followed by the "Addiction" series in 2007.

About 50 million people accessed the "Addiction" series via TV, the Internet and a companion book, series producer John Hoffman said, a number that HBO executives considered staggering. So producers quickly looked for other health issues that might warrant a series that could fill gaps in public health education and help raise money for scientific research.

"The question was where is there a need?" recalled Hoffman, who helped produce all three series. "Where is there hope in the public health area, but where is there a lack of knowledge? And it kept coming up that Alzheimer's was the area where great advances were being made, and at the same time we had a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety."

"The Alzheimer's Project" debuts tonight with the film "The Memory Loss Tapes," which features seven patients in various stages of the disease. Joe Potocny, a 63-year-old computer genius, blogs through the onset of Alzheimer's disease, noting wryly that he helped invent DVDs and now gets lost in his own front yard. Yolanda Santomartino, 75, lives in a nursing home and befriends her own reflection, believing it to be a new resident named Ruth.

HBO filmmakers gained access to the world's top Alzheimer's researchers and to families during some of the most vulnerable periods of their lives, even capturing the death of 77-year-old Cliff Holman, a retired Alabama TV show host.

"I thought of it as short stories about forgetting," said HBO Documentary Films President Sheila Nevins, executive producer of the series. "To me that show was really a lesson in caring if nothing else and oddly not as depressing as everyone expected it to be. The love of some of these people is quite extraordinary."

Read more HBO's 'Alzheimer's Project' series explores the disease

(Photo courtesy HBO)

Maria Shriver finds a community in 'The Alzheimer's Project'

Everything changed for Maria Shriver in the summer of 2003. Her husband announced he was running for governor and later won. She lost her job as an NBC News anchor as a result. Her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, had a stroke. Finally, her father, Sargent Shriver, the founding director of the Peace Corps, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

"It was one of those periods where I was like, 'Whoa, what's going on?' " Shriver said, shifting on the plush sofa of a Beverly Hills hotel suite.

As a way to cope, she wrote a children's book about the disease -- "What's Happening to Grandpa?" -- and went to HBO documentary film powerhouse Sheila Nevins to plead with her to adapt it as a film. It took three years, but Nevins eventually relented.

Shriver was named an executive producer of "The Alzheimer's Project," a position far less integral to its four films than if she had been reporting the story for NBC News but one that gave her broad influence. She suggested the film "Caregivers," for instance, and accompanied filmmakers on interviews with top scientists for the "Momentum in Science" segments. Shriver hosted "Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am?," which airs Monday night, ad-libbing several candid revelations about her experience watching her father succumb to the disease.

Her celebrity status has played a significant role as well. HBO's Nevins suspected the attention the documentaries already have received is to Shriver's credit.

For Shriver, though, "The Alzheimer's Project" has given her a worthy cause in which to channel her pain.

Read more Maria Shriver finds a community in 'The Alzheimer's Project'

(Photo courtesy Getty Images)