“Southern Charm”
Cocktails for Peter Pan
by Jamie Jobb
second of three parts
Lance Loud may have been the first reality tv weirdo, but the star of “An American Family” (1973) and LGBT icon has nothin’ on Whitney Sudler-Smith. Whitney (pictured left) grew up amid Virginia privilege, studied at Oxford and Paris, lived in Hollywood long enough to learn the ropes before returning to the South to catch southern hospitality with its pants down.
"Southern Charm" is Whitney’s cheeky soft-scripted Bravo TV show based upon another kind of altered "reality" altogether: breakfast cocktails, morning work avoidance, lunch cocktails, afternoon work avoidance, road-trips, dinner cocktails, evening work avoidance, party-time, plus the occasional campaign fundraiser gala.
Whitney’s peer-driven storylines are set in fine mansions and townhomes, beachfronts and country clubs, pop-up boutiques, white-linen cafes, off-the-wall bars … life “South of Broad” seems an ongoing frat party in Charleston, South Carolina -- a quaint town also caught with its pants down. Yes, the same charming Charleston with its recent floods/church burnings/shootings/racial mayhem which reflect a more somber side of life’s coin than this tv show will ever dare admit.
Sudler-Smith is chef-du-gumbo for “Southern Charm”. A Hollywood writer/director/producer/ actor best known for his natty documentary “Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston” (2010), he also directed “Torture TV” (2002) and “Bubba and Ike” (1998) on film before concocting his reality show for tv. Now facing a possible third season, “Charm” must be considered his casual-chic masterpiece.
Really, what was a very gifted young man to do once his Hollywood gold failed to pan out? Go back home to The South and pan for it there!
Whitney is a seemingly shy multi-talent who can produce, direct, act and play guitar. Listed in International Movie Data Base, he’s “a player” of sorts, certainly in his Mom’s new hometown of Charleston. He seems very wise, as a filmmaker, to have realized that he could cast his loopy Peter Pan “friends” most of whom seem bred to drink and celebrate their celebrity in this very intoxicated “reality show” with humble ratings and a cult following.
It’s not hard to find where the underplayed Whitney gets his sardonic chutzpah. That would flow from his socialite art-patron canine-collector mom: Patricia Altschul. Fascinating, aloof, passionate, dismissive, alluring, a belle who strictly maintains certain cocktail hours, Patricia claims to have dismissed more than one butler for botching her martini.
A fascinating straight-talking restored beauty who knows her context from her subtext, she grew weary of Wall Street/Hampton high life, so she retired to her manse in Charleston, a stately Greek revival on Montagu Street known locally as the Isaac Jenkins Mikell House with just under 10,000 square feet which was more than enough canvas for her pal Mario Buatta to flex his interior design palette.
Who wouldn’t want to tea with Patricia!?! Wisely, Whitney has cast her as our all-knowing aly, a sarcastic voice of reason, a one-woman Greek chorus in the midst of all this Dixie silliness. Bred for top crust, she’s a center of calming sanity in this hurricane “reality” series otherwise chock-full-o-nuts.
Head Nut is Whitney’s apparent best friend Thomas Ravenel (pictured right), who plays the show’s lit fuse. What writer could ever invent a character with the beleaguered backstory and trainwreck trajectory of Thomas Ravenel? Short resume: Congressman’s son, Citadel graduate, real estate mogul, polo jockey, political failure, ex-con. Ravenel hails from Deep South DNA, his folks being famous French Huguenots. Given his pedigree, it seems odd that one privileged man be this civically clueless, although it's understandable that he'd feel persecuted.
Also known as "T. Rav", this unsinkable self-righteous “southern gentleman” seems to have reinvented his own self, more than a couple times. The show lays out his burdens for the world to see: his polo ponies, pricey properties, cocaine bust, prison time, State Treasurer resignation, failed U.S. Senate campaign hindered by his hothead wannabe wife and unwed mom of his baby girl.
Kathryn Calhoun Dennis (pictured left) plays The Scorned One quite well, perhaps not as an “actor” but as a character type. The show’s Red-Haired Vixen, she too has Deep South pedigree: Kathryn is a direct descendent of a famed state senator and a former U.S. Vice President. When we first see her folks’ plantation, the camera lingers on a mis-hung shutter dangling beside a window. At the time T.Rav took her away from there, Kathryn was barely old enough to drink.
It’s not difficult to imagine Whitney Sudler-Smith as a direct descendant of Sophocles and Charlie O. Finley who’s repackaged Greek tragedy as a ball game for modern times by joining this pair of clueless star-crossed lovers. We can assume Kathryn and Thomas are not just simply couples-counseling failures, but are Whitney’s friends set in motion in front of his cameras.
Cameran Eubanks - whose previous “reality” experience was on “Real World: San Diego” - acts as de facto narrator for the show and advisor/mom for the cast, although she’s single in season one while working in real estate from home with her own mom. Season two finds her married, but still serving as Head Grown Up in corralling these cool Charleston cats.
Cameran is bound to her best bud Shep Rose in the lead Peter Pan role, although Shep gets support from his stand-in Craig Conover, the outsider who grew up in Delaware and plays the lesser Peter Pan. Shep can afford the attitude, his trust fund buoys his spirits. Meanwhile wannabe attorney Craig must work which is clearly not his style. Both are drinking buddies, although Shep takes a fatherly attitude toward the uppity hung-over Yankee. That’s what we like about The South: eternal paternal fraternization.
The show’s remaining character slot changed from season one to season two. Jenna King, a vivacious and opinionated fashionista, carried a lot of storyline in season one, but did not return. Her rough country style seemed to rub this show’s dander the wrong way, so Jenna ran off to LA. In season two, she was replaced by a more genteel southern belle, Landon Clements, who was returning to Charleston after her messy divorce in LA.
“Southern Charm” proves again that without actual writers, a reality television show is left in the hands of story-producers and editors who fiddle with shades of meaning in post production. Any close listen to these episodes also proves the composer Mia Sable adds lots of subtle commentary with her little beats which punctuate particularly troublesome moments and story gaps.
Another affront to the writers’ room is the character “confessional”. Those moments from reality tv where characters sit and face the camera to "level with us" in their own words -- thereby narrating the story forward and providing subtext, while breaking the fourth wall to become our “friend” all at the same time. It’s a sly tv trick most of us don’t notice despite the sloppy green-screened interviews on “Southern Charm”.
But there’s more to it, from a production standpoint: these interviews allow editors/producers to cover gaps in story they may have missed while shooting the “reality” scenes.
By having a character comment after a scene they didn’t get, they can use other footage to cover the same emotional beats in the scene while the interview soundtrack covers the missing information in the character's own words. Thus, the editors suggest the story rather than documenting it. Or as one story producer put it “We approximate the reality we failed to shoot.”
Face-the-camera confessional moments are so ubiquitous they’re now being incorporated into hard-scripted network sitcoms, particularly "Modern Family". Actors for that well-written ABC-TV hit seem to have permission to glance at the camera for comic effect at any time during a scene ... breaking the fourth wall momentarily when the time seems right to each individual actor. These unscripted moments are set up by the confessionals between scenes, which are paradoxically scripted.
“Southern
Charm”
Links:
Until Bravo renews this program, the best way to catch it is through the links below.
No comments:
Post a Comment