‘Ballers’ on HBO aims to be rare sports-themed series with winning game plan

Jeff Daly/HBO/TNS
Dwayne Johnson, left, and John David Washington in Episode 3 of “Ballers.”

‘BALLERS’ Where: HBO When: 10 p.m. Sunday Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17) By Greg Braxton Los Angeles Times The record-breaking ratings accompanying the tsunami of recent sports blockbusters, from the NBA Finals to the Stanley Cup playoffs to the Triple Crown to the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao bout, proves one of life’s most undeniable truths _ America is stricken with sports fever. But despite the phenomenal behemoth of live athletics on TV, it’s a whole other ballgame when it comes to the prime-time scripted arena. Comedies and dramas set in the sports world during the last few decades have not had winning records. Among the numerous losses are FX’s boxing drama “Lights Out,” USA Network’s football comedy “Necessary Roughness” and ABC’s baseball family comedy “Back in the Game” with James Caan. Even “The Bad News Bears,” a hit in theaters, struck out on the small screen. And despite its critical acclaim, “Friday Night Lights” never drew a large audience. The new HBO show “Ballers” seeks to end the losing streak, counting on the current sports frenzy, sharp writing and the massive appeal of former wrestling star turned leading man Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. “The Rock.” The series, starting June 21, centers on a former football player (Johnson) at a crossroads between getting his own life together and being a mentor to current football players caught up in the bling and adoration of the game. “Ballers” joins two other sports-related series trying to score points with viewers. Starz’s “Survivor’s Remorse,” about a young basketball star who signs a multimillion-dollar contract and moves with his family to Atlanta, has moved into its second season (LeBron James is an executive producer). And DirecTV is taking its chances with “Kingdom,” which is anchored in mixed martial arts. HBO is putting heavy muscle behind “Ballers,” aware that series anchored in sports are not always slam dunks. “We went in knowing this is a high bar,” says Michael Lombardo, president of programming for HBO. “Given the amount of time sports spends in the collective consciousness of this country, it’s been an area that people have been less successful in mining on a fictional level.” Although HBO’s “Eastbound & Down” and FX’s fantasy football romp “The League” have devoted followers, many others have wound up in the loss column. Casualties in the last few decades include “Playmakers,” ESPN’s 2003-04 drama about a fictional football team (the NFL was openly critical of the portrayal of drug use, infidelity, racism and homophobia on the show, which lasted 10 episodes), CBS’ baseball series “Clubhouse” and HBO’s horse racing drama “Luck.” Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said scripted series just can’t compete with the accessibility and adrenaline of live sports. “There are lots of great sports movies,” he said. “It’s not hard to tell these stories in two hours, but it’s harder to do in a longer form. We’re still waiting for the first great sports series, like ‘The West Wing’ was the first great series about politics.” Robert Wuhl, who starred in and produced “Arliss,” a HBO series centered on a pro sports agent that became known for its cameos of famous athletes, says the many writers of sports shows do not fully develop characters and situations. They typically tell their stories from the point of view of the fan, “and the fan only cares about one thing,” Wuhl points out. “Winning and losing.” “Ballers” packs more edge than most sports-related series. Filled with raunch, outrageous behavior, debauchery, women in bikinis and coarse language, “Ballers” plays like a revamp of “Entourage” spiced with flavorings from “Arliss,” which aired on HBO from 1996 to 2002. The producers of “Ballers” emphasize that even though the show is set in the world of sports, it is not a so-called sports series. There are no big games. Even though the names of real teams are used (Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys), the majority of the action takes place off the field. “It’s about the short life span of a pro player, where the highs are so high _ the comps, the women, the lifestyle,” Lombardo says. “But the minute it ends, there’s no second act. And the show looks at how hard that is. There’s no rule book on how to deal with that. It’s the journey of a man and his life after football.” Of course, “Ballers’” MVP is Johnson, who has had a significant career after wrestling. The series begins only a few weeks after the opening of his summer earthquake epic, “San Andreas,” which has brought in more than $120 million domestically at the box office, and a few months after “Furious 7,” which had a box-office take of more than $350 million. “Dwayne gets the sport, and he loves the sport, and he has enormous charisma,” Lombardo says, and the close timing of the recent films and the series is a clear positive. “At the end of the day, though, in our experience, what that will get us is that people will be interested in tuning in. What our job is will be to get people to stick with the show, and you don’t get that just with star power. You get that with viewers being engaged with the stories and the characters.” Though the excitement and glamour of sports have often been tough for TV producers and writers to mold into scripted series, some shows have effectively utilized athletics as a device for humor or drama. ABC’s “Sports Night,” which premiered in 1998 and lasted two seasons, focused on the chaotic behind-the-scenes dynamics of a nightly sports cable news show. “Coach,” starring Craig T. Nelson as the put-upon coach of a fictional college football team, was a viewer favorite during much of the 1990s. (NBC has announced it is reviving the series, with Nelson again starring.) “The Game” on BET centered on the women involved with the players on a fictional San Diego football team. Lack of authenticity has been one problem faced by sports-related series. For legal and practical considerations, fictional teams are used in most series, distancing the story from reality. “Sports documentaries are more popular than ever,” said Courtney Cox, a former ESPN producer. “People don’t want to watch the fake version. When they see fictional team names, that’s the tip-off that it’s not real. There’s no connection to real life.” “Ballers,” however, is set in NFL reality _ the Miami Dolphins are prominent. Some of the outrageousness on-screen, including drug and alcohol use, may give league officials pause, particularly since the NFL is not involved with the production. The makers of the series are hopeful that viewers connect with the euthenics of the hero’s emotional journey. “It’s not about playing ball, but we think football fans will love it,” Lombardo says. “We think football owners will love it.”

Aaron Ashmore becomes real ‘Killjoy’ in new Syfy series

Steve Wilkie/Temple Street Releasing Limited/Syfy/TNS
Hannah John-Kamen in the new Syfy series “Killjoys.”

‘KILLJOYS’

9 p.m. Friday, June 19, Syfy

By Rick Bentley

The Fresno Bee

No one can say the Ashmore twins can’t take a beating.

Shawn Ashmore took some major licks as part of the Fox series “The Following.” Now his older brother (by one minute), Aaron Ashmore gets battered and bruised for the new Syfy series “Killjoys.”

“Mom doesn’t like when we get beat up but that’s what’s out there,” says Aaron Ashmore, who has has been part of several TV series heavy on action, including “Warehouse 13,” “Lost Girl” and “XIII: The Series.”

Now, he’s part of the cast of “Killjoys” where he plays bounty hunter John Jaqobis. He works with Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen), a leader who can gain your trust or beat you up with the same grace and speed. The other part of the team is D’Avin (Luke Macfarlane), John’s brother and former prisoner. They work in the Quad, a distant solar system on the brink of war.

“The Quad is a world with three moons and each one looks very different. Even the lighting is different on each moon, with one being very blue and gritty to another that is very light and warm. The one thing that’s the same is that there’s a lot of poverty and injustice,” Ashmore says.

It all comes together to make “Killjoys” a bit of “Guardians of the Galaxy” and part “Firefly” with its blend of strong heroes, comedy and action.

It’s not a coincidence Ashmore’s back in another genre series.

“I have done a lot of genre type shows that include action, adventure and violence. I like making those kind of shows because I’ve always been a big fan of the genre,” Ashmore says.

The Canadian actor became a sci-fi geek when he was young, sparked by his love of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and reading fantasy books. He was drawn to the layered stories that deal with topics that might be off-limits in more mainstream entertainment.

And, there’s one more thing that makes the genre watchable to Ashmore.

“Good stories always have a sense of humor,” Ashmore says. “It doesn’t feel like the characters are three-dimensional unless there is some comedy. We have tried to bring that to this show.”

And it’s Ashmore who’s bringing it.

John-Kamen is the brains of the group, while Macfarlane’s character is the renegade. Ashmore’s character is the one who is most likely to offer a funny quip in the face of danger.

Another plus for Ashmore is that John-Kamen’s character is so strong. He wasn’t aware that the series was created by Michelle Lovretta, the creative force behind “Relic Hunter” and “Mutant X,” two other series with strong female leads.

“It’s really exciting because of the relationship between my character and Hannah’s. There’s not really a romantic interest between the two, but a real bond of friendship,” Ashmore says. “They are just two people doing their job, which I think is really cool and really interesting.”

There’s also a family element with his character’s brother being part of the team. Their relationship is nothing like the one he has with his acting brother. The bigger issue is that his TV series character and his on-screen brother have been estranged for nine years. Now, they are trying to deal with this new family of three while chasing the bad guys.

Syfy has ordered 10 episodes of “Killjoys,” and it will continue if the ratings are good enough. Another successful show might change how Ashmore gets recognized. His work as Jimmy Olsen in “Smallville” continues to get him attention despite the show ending in 2011.

“”Smallville still looms big for me probably because it was such a massive hit internationally,” Ashmore says. “It seems weird because ‘Smallville’ seems like such a long time ago.”

HBO has big night planned Sunday

Lacey Terrell/HBO/TNS
Colin Farrell in “True Detective,” Season 2.

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“True Detective,” 2.5 stars, 8 p.m. Central, Sunday

“Ballers,” 2 stars, 9 p.m. Sunday

“The Brink,” 2 stars, 9:30 p.m. Sunday

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By Gail Pennington

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

HBO has a big night planned for viewers on Sunday, serving up two premieres and a big return in an attempt to make sure nobody feels the loss of “Game of Thrones,” which ended its season last Sunday along with “Silicon Valley” and “Veep.”

But the satisfaction is limited. Season 2 of “True Detective” is as slow as molasses, and just as dark, in its first hours. And while the two new comedies that follow, “Ballers” and “The Brink,” have their moments, neither provides a lot of laughs.

In its first season, “True Detective” gave us movie stars (Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson) slumming, plus oddball humor and a weird, twisty crime. Only Harrelson’s all-in performance as quotable philosopher-cop Martin Hart really held up through all eight episodes, but “True Detective” creator Nic Pizzolatto deserved all the acclaim he got for essentially reinventing “Dragnet.”

Season 2, again written entirely by Pizzolatto, starts fresh, anthology style, with a new setting (Southern California) and new crime.

This time, the cast is even more star-heavy: Vince Vaughn as a white-collar criminal, Colin Farrell as a police detective with a drinking problem, Rachel McAdams as a sheriff’s deputy with family complications, and Taylor Kitsch as a motorcycle cop with anger issues.

The first hour is taken up mainly with introductions, and the characters rarely interact.

Vaughn, as Frank Semyon, tries to push a land deal through. Farrell, as Detective Ray Velcoro, struggles with a bullied son who might not be his and hits people whenever he gets a chance. McAdams, as Ani Bezzerides, confronts her father, leader of a mumbo-jumbo retreat, for his neglect. Kitsch (Riggins on “Friday Night Lights”), as CHiP Paul Woodrugh, rides fast and gets suspended.

Only in the final scene do three cops come together, after a grisly discovery beside a Los Angeles highway. That gets the plot rolling, but even so, it’s both a struggle and a bit of a yawn.

Following “True Detective” is “Ballers,” a sports comedy (dramedy is more like it) that’s as loud as its lead-in is muted.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, as a former NFL star trying to reinvent himself as a financial manager for young players, is outstanding, easily the best thing about “Ballers.”

Johnson’s Spencer Strasmore has a lot to deal with. His own finances are pinched, and he’s reluctant to lean on friendships to get clients. Plus, despite his outward good cheer, he’s in pain from an old injury that has him gobbling pills.

Spencer wants to help young players avoid the mistakes he made, but they are almost universally self-destructive, seemingly determined to live fast and die young.

The most talented, and biggest problem, is Ricky Jerret, (John David Washington), whose fists fly too readily and land him in hot water early on. Rob Corddry plays Spencer’s jerky boss at the financial firm.

Set in Miami, “Ballers” is good at showing both the shiny high life of professional athletes and its dark, sad underbelly. But if you’re looking for laughs, keep looking.

The other new HBO comedy is “The Brink,” a political satire with Jack Black heading a cast that includes Tim Robbins, Pablo Schreiber, John Larroquette and Aasif Mandvi. The creators, brothers Roberto and Kim Benabib, have suggested that, if the show succeeds, each season will deal with a different political crisis around the world, one sending us to “the brink” of destruction.

First up, the crisis is in Pakistan, where Black is serving in the foreign service under Secretary of State Robbins, a drunken lout whose sex fantasies involve his own death. Black’s Alex Talbot couldn’t care less about politics, or Pakistan; he just wants to score drugs. And speaking of drugs, Navy pilot Zeke “Z-Pak” Tilson (Schreiber) is scoring them from his ex-wife back home and selling them to his shipmates.

Via his driver (Mandvi, who is wonderful), Alex gets information that might save the world, if he cares enough to follow through. When you think about it, that’s funny.

All three series, of course, are full of nudity, sex and strong language. This isn’t TV; it’s HBO.

‘Winter is here,’ Kit Harington warned us, before ‘Game of Thrones’ finale

Helen Sloan/Courtesy HBO/TNS
Kit Harington in season 5, episode 9 of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Mary McNamara

Los Angeles Times

Oh, Kit Harington, you were there, and I was there, and you never said a thing. Certainly not during our chat on camera in March, when you shook your head over the high body count of fellow “Game of Thrones” cast members and smiled just as if you didn’t know you were joining them.

But not even off camera when I joked about all the hair rumors _ how you had been spotted with short hair, prompting some to believe your character, Jon Snow, was dead.

“Really?” you said, looking at me as if I should really find better things to do than read GoT blogs.

But maybe there were hints, as there always are when something has ended even though no one says the word. You spoke of Jon ruefully, as if he would never learn the ways of the world, and compared him to his father, who also died for his beliefs.

It’s easy to read between the lines when you know what you’re looking for.

“Winter is here,” you said of Season 5. And now we know, you weren’t kidding.

Here are a few other bits and pieces from our conversation before the knives came out:

Will Jon Snow ever get off the Wall?

I don’t know. The one time he could have left _ there were a couple times _ he could have gone down to try to avenge his family, and he could have left with Ygritte, and he didn’t, so it’s going to be pretty hard to tear him away from the Night’s Watch now. He’s grown there. … It’s going to have to be some sizable event to drive him south.

Has winter come for Jon Snow?

I think it comes this season. It’s a phrase, more a metaphor really. You’ll see winter arrive quite strongly this season. … If you watched the first episode, everyone is at the darkest place they’ve ever been in, their lowest point. It only gets darker from there.

What do you know and when do you know it in terms of your character?

The funny thing is that everyone involved in “Thrones” knows what’s going to happen before the actors do. So you turn up for your horse riding assessment, and Camilla, the horse mistress, is giving you knowing looks, and winks and suggestions because she’s had all the scripts and we never get them _ we get them a couple weeks before we start.

This season that was just done was really fascinating; it drifted from the books. There were so many elements about it that were new. We had to sign off on things and hand back the sides at the end of the day. It all got very “Star Wars.”

Has anybody had to work backward from a death scene?

Yeah, I think people have, and it is a little bit annoying. Ideally, if you do die on “Thrones,” you want that to be the last scene you film, but it doesn’t always work like that.

Is this the season Jon Snow becomes a man?

This is the season he becomes a politician. He has to start thinking up here (head) and less in here (heart). He has to learn to be a strict politician, he has to learn to be brutal, he has to learn to make huge sacrifices and give away some of his inherent goodness to get to where he wants to be. And I think that’s something his father wasn’t prepared to do.

No, and he dies for it.

And he died for it. And I think Jon’s slowly learning that.

Do you have a new ally, or are you a loner all the way through?

I think the cliche to attach to Jon is “It’s very lonely at the top.” Poor Jon. He’s always lonely.

Video game music comes to concert hall

Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times
Video game composer Tommy Tallarico at his home in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., on May 5. His “Video Games Live” concerts have reportedly sold more than 1 million tickets and been performed by symphonies in the U.S., Europe, China and the Middle East.

By Jeffrey Fleishman

Los Angeles Times

He’s an impresario with a little-boy streak. He plays a guitar shaped like a sniper rifle, keeps pirates by the pool and is one of the world’s leading composers of video game music. He can rhapsodize for long stretches about Bugs Bunny, Spider-Man, Rocky Balboa and Beethoven, whose bust, draped in a scarf, looks over a piano in his home in the hills of San Juan Capistrano.

“If Beethoven were around today he’d be a video game composer,” said Tommy Tallarico, who has worked on more than 300 titles, including “Mortal Kombat” and “Knockout Kings,” that have about $4 billion in sales. “Video game music is the most unique in history. When you play a video game, that character is you. His music is the soundtrack of your life.”

Music’s power to evoke warriors and imaginary galaxies struck him as a boy when he saw “Star Wars” in a theater in Springfield, Mass. The soundtrack by John Williams was mesmerizing. “I said, ‘Who is this guy?’ I read about him and how he was influenced by these Mozart and Beethoven guys. I checked out a copy of Beethoven’s greatest hits from the library and it changed my life. I sat down with Symphony No. 9 and tore apart every note.”

Tallarico, who has no formal musical training, has spent the last decade bringing two contrasting worlds together. His “Video Games Live” concerts have reportedly sold more than 1 million tickets and been performed by symphonies in the U.S., Europe, China and the Middle East. Orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, have sold out concert halls to gamers, mostly young men who spend countless hours traversing fantasy-scapes and virtual battlefields.

“Folks come up to me after the shows and say, ‘Tommy, when are you coming back?’”

A swift man with a sly laugh, Tallarico, a cousin of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, adds a bit of carnival flash to the often staid classical scene. Struggling with fewer subscribers, shrinking donations and questions of how to compete with on-demand entertainment, many orchestras have been experimenting with innovative programming even as purists fret that classical music is straying from tradition to appease trends and fashions.

“We’re trying to find the sweet spot that transcends generational differences,” said Susan Webb, marketing director for the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, which last month performed a “Video Games Live” show in which audience members dressed up as their favorite characters. “We love our musicians in their tuxedos, but this takes it to a whole new level in reaching out to younger, tech-savvy audiences.”

Orchestras these days can no longer rely on the likes of Brahms and Mahler to fill seats. At the same time, video game music has become increasingly sophisticated. The bleep-bleep, blip-blip days of “Pac-Man” and “Space Invaders” are, like the Cold War and Woodstock, ancient history. Scores for “World of Warcraft” and other games call for strings, woodwinds, brass and choruses _ whirling scales for an industry whose franchises rival Hollywood’s.

“It’s not the solution to the underlying problems of orchestras, but it’s a way to reach out to an audience not usually associated with classical music,” said Emmanuel Fratianni, a Los Angeles-based classically trained pianist who conducts and composes video game music. “It’s impressive and intimidating for gamers to step into this (concert) world. But will they come back for a Beethoven or Mozart? That’s our goal. We need to blur the lines a little more to expose the gamer to Tchaikovsky.”

Classical music, including Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” has been featured in video games for years. In 2011, the London Philharmonic Orchestra released “The Greatest Video Game Music,” which Rolling Stone called the year’s “weirdest hit album.” The CD included music from “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” and “Angry Birds” and was followed with a sequel.

“I find it heartening that gamers have found classical music,” Martha Gilmer, chief executive of the San Diego Symphony, which performed “Video Games Live” last year. Merging classical music with pop culture is reminiscent of early 20th century cartoons, notably Walt’s Disney’s “Fantasia,” which featured music by Bach, Schubert and Stravinsky.

Gilmer added that like the classical masters, the best video game composers understand melodic lines and the varied colors and textures of clarinets, flutes and other instruments. Played by a full orchestra, today’s video game music, she said, takes on an “epic proportion” that could inspire gamers to return to the concert hall. “Live music has great impact,” she said.

But Tallarico, 47, who grew up listening to Jerry Lee Lewis, believes many orchestras view the world through antique lenses. He composes his scores with computer software, and his concerts are kaleidoscopes of rising mists, extraterrestrials, warriors, heroes, spacecraft careening through solar systems, all to thrumming cellos, heralding French horns and spiraling flutes. Audiences stand and cheer.

“These orchestras need to hire me to produce a Beethoven concert,” said Tallarico, who debuted “Video Games Live” in 2005 at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “I love Beethoven, but I have a problem sitting through two hours of Beethoven. It’s a bunch of people on stage in tuxedos going ‘ssshhh.’ I want everyone to clap and scream when they want.”

Many musicians might wince at that notion. Video game music, after all, is a sideshow. But with dystopian landscapes, cinematic crispness and good-versus-evil narratives, game music summons worlds that speak to the fears and ambitions of an age that is at once entranced and intimidated by technology. Unlike most movies, where music is layered in after filming, music in the best video game feels ingrained in the plot.

Among the most accomplished is the score from “Final Fantasy,” composed by Nobuo Uematsu, whose youthful piano playing was inspired by Elton John. Like “Video Games Live,” Uematsu’s scores are performed by orchestras around the world in a program called “Distant Worlds.” Another popular touring show is the music from Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda,” much of it written by Koji Kondo.

Like a number of video game composers, some of whom can earn more than $500,000 a year, Fratianni came to the industry after working on music for films and TV shows, including “Breaking Bad.” In 2005, Tallarico, Fratianni, Michael Plowman and Laurie Robinson composed the game music to “Advent Rising.” The score was inspired by Italian opera and recorded with a 70-piece orchestra on a Paramount soundstage. The choral passages were sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

A review by the website, Video Game Music Online, praised the compositions for “lush orchestration, underlied by romantic piano work” and tracks that “re-inforce the atmosphere and mood of the game.”

Tallarico is a master at creating atmosphere, ever since he was a Massachusetts boy banging on the family piano or playing “Space Invaders” deep into the night. After driving across country in 1990, he said, he lived briefly under a pier in Huntington Beach and took a $4.25-an-hour job selling guitars in Santa Ana. He found a second job testing video games for what would become Virgin Interactive. “There was no such thing as a video game composer back then,” he said, adding that he started working with programmers to code music into games.

The Internet and fast-evolving graphics technology turned the industry into a global force. The music matured as well. “I could write a three-minute piece about 100 men with swords coming on horseback to a village,” he said. “It’s epic music. Violins going, timpanis going crazy, men, women and children’s choirs going. I can take it and record it in a bunch of different ways with different intensities.”

His home in San Juan Capistrano looks as if a 12-year-old with a huge bank account went wild. It includes a life-size Indiana Jones, a Spider-Man room streaked with real spider webs, a Disney room with an original drawing of Pinocchio, a framed celluloid still from a vintage 1940s Bugs Bunny cartoon, a clutch of full-size “Star Wars” characters and, by the pool, a statue of Merlin lurking near a lawn tiger bought in Las Vegas.

“These are all the things I grew up with,” he said. “I’m making a Willy Wonka section right now.”

He is surrounded by childhood images. Pictures of his grandparents, immigrants from Italy, hang in the stairway. His father, who once sold life insurance, is his chief financial officer and his brother handles merchandising. “Yeah,” said Tallarico, whose bar is filled not with liquor but with dozens of bottles of balsamic vinegar, “in typical Italian fashion I moved my family out here.”

Downstairs near a room that resembles the inner chamber of an Egyptian pyramid sits an artifact: his clunky 1975 Telstar video game console. He still plays it. He said before the first “Video Games Live” concert many people told him it would flop: Gamers don’t go to see orchestras and the evening gown set doesn’t play “Grand Theft Auto” and “Final Fantasy.”

Tallarico these days hosts many “Video Games Live” shows, playing guitar and flitting through laser lights in front of the orchestra. Some classical musicians remain skeptical.

“I can tell right away who the problems will be,” said Tallarico. “Some of the older musicians have been playing the masters for 40 years and now we come along with our video screens and fog machines and they look at the music score and say, ‘Who is Sonic the Hedgehog?’ They kind of snicker, but when they play the music they say, ‘Hey, this sounds like Carmina Burana by Orff.’”