Writes Ann Hornaday, in "Michael Douglas as Ben Franklin? You bet your britches.
In ‘Franklin,’ Douglas portrays the iconic founding father as an 18th-century rock star with a dash of Gordon Gekko swagger" (WaPo).
But your main question might be, What streaming service do I need? It's one I don't have: Apple TV. Is this at the level where you'd subscribe to a new service? I'll test it by watching the trailer. The first few seconds of atrocious sound effects (music?) are so off-putting to me that I immediately hit the pause button, but I'll keep going for the sake of this post....
The sound and the editing are so annoying. The dialogue is underwritten and obvious, like notes taken by a bored high school kid in American History class. Douglas delivers many of these lines to a very cute boy-actor who seems to be there so "Franklin" can speak his thoughts aloud. I say "seems," but I know who the kid is supposed to be — Temple Franklin, the unacknowledged out-of-wedlock son of the out-of-wedlock son that Ben Franklin acknowledged.
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47 comments:
But… he’s “insanely right” for the role!
Douglas sounds like he is doing a cartoon voice. Plus wayyyyyy to much bad CGI.
I need him to look just a little like him.
Apple TV has a very small catalog and you get 3-months free with most Apple purchases, so the standard approach is to wait until you buy an Apple product and then power watch them until the trial period runs out.
Playing someone with a well-known look without trying to look like them is risky as it interferes with the audiences’ suspension of disbelief. My main concern with Michael Douglas is not so much the face as the body. Franklin was a frumpy guy and I think a handsome actor would undermine how much he was carried by personality.
Paul Giamatti—that’s who should play Franklin.
Douglas delivers all the trailer lines in a sort of weird, deliberately slow, stilted voice, almost a monotone. I haven't ever read anything about Franklin's voice or speech patterns, but the image of him that I got from school was that he was kind of a kook and a maniac, not a particularly grave or grand personality (unlike, say, Washington). Compare with Tom Wilkinson's portrayal of Franklin in the HBO John Adams miniseries, which has more of the manic edge I associate with Franklin.
Being Hollywood and all, I'm surprised they didn't cast a black trans woman.
Althouse writes, "But your main question might be, What streaming service do I need?"
Rather than what? the better question is why? Instead of paying the already obscenely wealthy Apple corporation even more, why not read one of the dozens of Franklin biographies already written some of them in the public domain and free to download from many sites and archives, particularly the Benjamin Franklin autobiography titled simply Autobiography on account of Franklin inventing the entire literary genre by its publication.
Treating Franklin as a rock star is a categorical insult to the greatest and most influential figure of the Enlightenment because there is hardly an actual rock star whose career is not entirely antithetical to reason or enlightenment.
I have Apple TV and like it. I think I subscribed because of "Ted Lasso", but have also enjoyed "Pachinko", "The New Look", "Schmigadoon!", and "The Big Door Prize" (and probably more that I can't remember right now). It's worth the subscription just to watch "Ted Lasso". I've started some other shows, but didn't finish them. Apple shows that I've seen seem (to me, who knows nothing about producing TV shows) to be made well, even if they don't all appeal to me.
I don't think Franklin was nearly as cool and hip as people today like to think he was. I get the impression he was pretty serious guy. The fact that he was extraordinarily accomplished and completely self-made must have given him an aura of confidence, but the image of him as some kind of colonial-era Hugh Hefner seems highly unrealistic. Maybe he was somewhat more libertine than most of his peers, but he was still a product of the age in which he lived. Not a "rock star," IOW.
The dialogue is underwritten and obvious, like notes taken by a bored high school kid in American History class. Douglas delivers many of these lines to a very cute boy-actor who seems to be there so "Franklin" can speak his thoughts aloud
Most of this crap, AI couldn't do worse. But on the other hand, you often learn more about writing from bad writing than from good.
@tim maguire 11:24: Bingo Also, he did a pretty decent job of portraying John Adams, if I recall.
"... why not read one of the dozens of Franklin biographies..."
I agree that reading biographies is much better than watching these shows. I've read more than one Franklin biography and I've read his autobiography, but I might want to watch a TV series and I certainly would if it's as good as the HBO series on John Adams (which I'm rewatching).
I just read thousands of pages of Theodore Roosevelt biography and would enjoy a high quality TV series about him.
Douglas is handsome, has tons of charisma, and is a charming guy in general. He'd make a good drinking buddy and a world-class wingman...his 'rejects' are likely runway models.
But he is not a great actor. His best stuff is light. Check out 'The Kominsky Method' with Alan Arkin and other really good actors. Paul Reiser is fantastic and unrecognizable but for his voice...
'I just read thousands of pages of Theodore Roosevelt biography and would enjoy a high quality TV series about him.'
Teddy was a legitimate badass. Our modern presidents are eunuchs in comparison...
Franklin was bad ass but a way better investor than Gordon Gekko…more like a rebel Sheldon Cooper with a touch of Warren Buffett…
I'm annoyed with Apple TV buying the rights to occasional MLB games, so that they are essentially blacked out to me. That's enough for me to avoid them. "Greyhounds" might have gotten me to watch. This new show will not.
I've seen the upcoming trailers on Apple TV and my gut has said from the first glimpse that (a) it's a bad take, and (b) as much as I like Michael Douglas (and his father), I don't see the fit in this role. At all. I'll give it a try, but if it annoys me early on, it'll be done.
That said, I could not at first manage Paul Giamatti as John Adams. Having read a couple of books on Adams and books on others that had anecdotes and references to Adams, I had this vision of Adams in my head. I had his voice, his mannerisms. And then 'Miles' from "Sideways" is suddenly in this costume...well...at first I didn't like it at all. But it got better as it went on. I still think they could have cast it better, but Giamatti was hot at that time. Don't get me wrong. I've always loved Giamatti as an actor. I just thought he was miscast in that role.
What I need to get to is the mini series version of "A Gentleman in Moscow", one of my favorite current era books.
PS- I think one of the standards for playing a Founding Era gentleman is the great Anthony Hopkins playing an aged John Quincy Adams in the movie, "Amistad".
“The first few seconds of atrocious sound effects (music?) are so off-putting to me that I immediately hit the pause button, but I'll keep going for the sake of this post....”
Sounds like “All Cats Are Grey in the Dark” by the Joy Buzzers has finally landed in a soundtrack!
I have Apple TV as part of the Apple One subscription. There are good shows like "Ted Lasso", although even that one had to check the usual political correctness boxes from time to time.
Lately it's gotten just as twitchy as the other services, with ads for other shows before an episode starts, the binge-watching automatic play of the next episode while watching credits, etc.
As far as historical accuracy, the current "Manhunt" series presents Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as clean-shaven. Enough said.
Howard da Silva as Franklin in the film of "1776" will, for me, be terribly difficult to replace.
It's worth the subscription just to watch "Ted Lasso".
The first season and the first half of the second season were fun.
Then it evolved into absolute woke garbage. I've never seen a series fall so far so fast.
It was a dumpster fire...
Franklin should be the founding father that most 21st Century Americans feel most sympatico with. Didn't own slaves, liked money and wine, women, and song. Scientific, inventor, and not too religious.
He was admired by the other founding fathers. Douglas suffers from the same problem most Hollywood leading actors have, he can't express Franklin's high intelligence and Douglas is too slow-footed verbally to be a wit.
Richard Dryfuss might have been a better fit. I'm trying to think of a witty, intelligent, living Hollywood actor and that's the best I could come up with. Its a tough role to cast.
Betwitched always had Ben Franklin popping in. The TV actor played him well, in my opinion. But then I was only 10 years old when i watched it.
The typically thoughtless excuse in the theatrical and cinematic for clothing a historical figure in the mental and emotional trappings of the contemporary audience is relevance, that particularly nasty Marxist shibboleth that has eroded and scoured the landscape of American education like a post-glacial deluge. I daresay that no one who has seen the musical Hamilton has learned anything entirely true about Alexander Hamilton, though a few were stimulated enough to discover a few inconsequential truths about that consequential life -- for example, it is possible to be born in Jamaica and not be in the least degree black.
Through Amadeus, Peter Shaffer did the same disservice to Mozart 45 years ago, and last year Netflix damaged the foundations of the West by means of the travesty, Queen Cleopatra. Now, we have Apple TV's "Franklin", that may be helpful and intellectually stimulating for its audience, or not if it falls into that same bottomless pit of relevance. The hullabaloo about Michael Douglas's makeup isn't encouraging. Judging by the existing life portraits, Franklin's forehead was less vaulted than the actor's, so what the fuck is the Post's Ann Hornaday on about? Killing democracy with more darkness, as usual.
The business of the wig or peruke is another grievous example of reinforcing myths in the name of relevance. Franklin sat for three life portraits. In only one of them, the last one painted in 1778 by Joseph Duplessis while Franklin was doing his stint as America's minister to the court of Louis XVI, which shows him wearing only his natural hair long and receding. The other two depict the great man wearing the typical wigs of the time. In the earliest portrait, painted sometime between 1745 and 1750, Franklin is shown as the young and successful printer, journalist, and almanac compiler wearing a somewhat out-of-fashion full-bottomed style. Then in 1767, he is depicted by David Martin wearing a more contemporary hairpiece of the time. Why Franklin chose to eschew the customary periwig when he presented his credentials in Versailles is not known for certain. In some accounts, his wig was either damaged or lost in the voyage to France. However, given the wigmakers and hairdressers doing business in and around Versailles acquiring a replacement even at short notice should not have been difficult. (It is said that the entire business of Versailles beyond the precincts of the royal establishment itself, was entirely devoted to the dressing, feeding and lodging of the aristocrats and diplomats not actually living within those gated walls.) Then there are other accounts that claim Franklin had developed an allergic dermatitis aggravated by the buckram and powder, which strike me as too "just-so" for veracity. I believe he intended to make a profound statement to the decerning by going au naturel into the king's presence. The French ruling class expected the Americans to be nothing but jumped-up rustics who would try and miserably fail to fit into their sophisticated, supercilious world of manners over substance. By playing to his strengths of mind and character, Franklin hoped to confound their expectations and win them over by his boldness and honesty. Behold, Frenchmen, a peasant from the American wilderness, a proud bluestocking able to defeat you all at your own game. And he succeeded brilliantly, but not without help. Look into the career of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, if you're curious.
Another famous painting has helped cement the image we associate with Ben Franklin, the caricature, and that's John Trumbull's 1819 "Declaration of Independence", a work every bit of inspired dramatugy as David's "Tennis Court Oath". People tend to think of it as journalism -- by that I mean honest journalism, not the mendacious travesty practiced by WaPo, NYT, CNN, and other dens of iniquity -- by it's really a dramatic mise en scène. Turnbull shows Franklin in 1776 Philadelphia dressed like Franklin years later in France. What he really wore on his noggin was deemed unremarkable by his fellow delegates most of whom wore powdered perukes over closely cropped natural pillage, therefore likely a similar wig.
Ben Franklin's autobiography is a terrific read.
He was probably the most interesting of the founders since he was so accomplished in so many different areas.
John Henry
Severance on Apple TV is pretty interesting
Teddy was a legitimate badass. Our modern presidents are eunuchs in comparison...
When Congress said "Not just no, but HELL NO!!!" to his 1906 request for a secret political police, he just went ahead with Charles Bonaparte and created it anyway. It is now called the FBI.
Is this the kind of badassery you have in mind? Do you really think we need a national political police force?
I much prefer the badassery of Calvin Coolidge who demonstrated it by largely leaving the American people to get on with their lives. "Largely" at least relative to most politicians.
John Henry
I'm surprised they didn't cast a black actor as Franklin. Like my homie did with the founding fathers in Hamilton.
Or better yet, a black, MtF transgender.
John Henry
"As far as historical accuracy, the current "Manhunt" series presents Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as clean-shaven. Enough said."
As for beards, I'm willing to cut Hollywood a bit of slack. The 1860s were a problematic time as far as American chin whiskers go, almost as disastrous as today with all the soi-disant hipsters sporting facial hair as if not shaving was an accomplishment. Stanton's growth took years of inattention without regard to a shooting schedule. Therefore, an actor who reads well and applies his talents subserviently to a director's will is worth consideration regardless of his grooming regimen. One can either let him enact the script faithfully sans barbe or turn him over to the makeup artists and risk the fate visited on the otherwise excellent "Gettysburg", which was nearly spoiled by Tom Berenger's whimsical whiskers. (Okay, excellent despite the horrible, insulting, deserving-of-death-by-flaying performance by Martin Sheen as General Lee.)
Gary Oldman would kill it.
That picture makes him look like my grandmother.
Excellent new 2 part documentary on Steve Martin now on Apple TV.
@tim mcquire/Abbie - Giamatti is unquestionably brilliant, but because he captured John Adams so well ("He's obnoxious and disliked, Did you know that?") I couldn't finish watching HBO's John Adams. Hard to get past that memory.
Howard da Silva was the perfect Franklin, though.
On Apple TV, I agree with actual items that 'severance' is really good and I wish they would get to their second season. ' for all mankind: is also really good and several seasons. The first season of 'Ted lasso' is wonderful.
Ben Franklin was a devoted open water swimmer and was much maligned for the unusual activity. He did claim it is what put so much lead in his pencil.
"Is this the kind of badassery you have in mind? Do you really think we need a national political police force?'
For the purpose of investigating national crime it made sense. But democrats weaponized it, so now it should be disbanded.
I was thinking more of this:
On October 14, 1912, former saloonkeeper John Schrank (1876–1943) attempted to assassinate former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt while he was campaigning for the presidency in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Schrank's bullet lodged in Roosevelt's chest after penetrating Roosevelt's steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech titled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual", which he was carrying in his jacket. Schrank was immediately disarmed and captured; he might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed. Roosevelt assured the crowd he was all right, then ordered police to take charge of Schrank and to make sure no violence was done to him.
As an experienced hunter and anatomist, Roosevelt correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung; he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
The biggest problem with TV watching today is that so much content is exclusive to specific streaming services. It doesn't make sense to purchase a streaming service just to watch one show.
I will reserve judgement on Michael Douglas' performance as Ben Franklyn, because I haven't seen it. But Howard da Silva's performance of Ben Franklin in the movie 1776 will always be my favorite. It has the right amount of wit, wisdom, self-deprecation and humanity.
Scorsese has or is filming a TR biopic starring DiCaprio...that's along with the Jesus and Jerry Garcia movies he's making.
Shake that sugaree and carry a big stick. Amen.
Franklin lost a son at age 4 to smallpox. Franklin himself had been inoculated but had not been able to have it done for his son before illness struck. He remained a proponent of inoculation all his life.
Blogger Joe Smith said...
For the purpose of investigating national crime it made sense.
Possibly. But there were already 2 other agencies, marshals and secret service.
The Bureau of Investigation (later the Federal Bureau of Investigation) was founded specifically to investigate political activities, most of which were legal. J Edgar got it into crime fighting for the PR because he realized political persecution was a bad look for Federal govt.
But the FBI has always placed a high emphasis on mostly legal but disagreeable political activities.
It was founded for that reason and has more than a century of focusing on that.
Can anyone point me to the act of congress, approved by both houses and signed by the president that authorized the establishment of the FBI? Plenty of acts funding it. Where is the act establishing it?
John Henry
John Henry
If you buy an iPhone/iPad or some other major Apple device, you'll get a free 3 month AppleTV+ sub thrown in. Plenty of time to milk its best shows.
Slow Horses; Pachinko; Severence are all gold. There's probably more since my last freebie.
can Douglas make air baths become popular?
We have Apple TV+ - I think it is bundled with our iCloud data plan - and for the most part I have enjoyed it, they have produced several high quality series. I would recommend:
Pachinko - multi-generational family history exploring the experience of Korean immigrants in Japan. I really loved this show, it had great characters and performances and beautiful sets and costuming. Looking forward to season 2.
Slow Horses - outcast British MI6 agents and their drunken but resourceful leader, Jackson Lamb, played brilliantly by the great Gary Oldman. This is a fun show. 3 seasons online, 2 more in production.
Severance - strange but interesting show about a future where people can technologically separate their work and personal lives. Season 2 coming.
Silo - dystopian science fiction about humans forced to live in an underground silo due to some global catastrophe. Season 1 had a brilliant ending. Great leading performance by Rachel Ferguson.
The Crowded Room - murder/crime mystery starring Amanda Seyfried and Tom Holland.
Masters of the Air - the third series about WWII from Hanks and Spielberg, about the 100th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force in Europe. Apple picked this up after HBO passed on it several years ago due to its very high projected cost. I thought it was a worthy companion to Band of Brothers with great performances and incredibly accurate and detailed sets, aircraft, and air combat scenes, without using any real aircraft. Very faithful to the real people and history in the book.
I did not find the previews of Franklin or Manhunt - about John Wilkes Booth - to be very good. I agree Giamatti would have been great as Franklin but he's already fixed in my mind as John Adams. Oldman would have been a good choice.
They should have cast Andrew Daly.
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