$_- The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, January 27, 1999 Rafkin to speak to film students Can television go without sex?' By Chris Cousino TV/New Media Editor What do Opie, Barbara Eden's navel, "Charles in Charge" and Brooke Shields have in common? None other than television and one of its most prolific Emmy-winning directors, Alan Rafkin. Rafkin, a veteran director whose resume includes Alan Rafkin Angell Hall G115 Tonight at 6 p.m. - such landmark comedies as "M*A*S*H," "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Murphy Brown" has been in the tele- vision industry for more than four decades. Today, he visits the University to speak about his experiences, much chroni- cled in his Courtesy o Joan Lauren The Hartford Courant Can television go without sex? Of course not. TV lost its innocence a long time ago. From the raging hormones that drive The WB's "Dawson's Creek," to the nonchalant bed-hopping of Fox Broadcasting's "Melrose Place" to the bare bottoms that must inevitably pass muster on ABC's "NYPD Blue," it's clear that prime time is no place for vir- gins. True, there are some safe havens where one can be "Touched by an Angel" on CBS or take refuge in "The Wonderful World of Disney" on ABC. But those are increasingly the exceptions. Sex has cachet in TV. It's traded like currency for ratings. It no longer merely suggests itself into sitcoms and dramas with innuendo and double entendre. It is an insis- tent, central and relentless force in the medium, one heavily influ- enced by the red-light district of cable and the anything-goes pres- sures of the video market. There's no turning back now - not if you're running a major broadcast network trying to stem the tide of audience erosion. A little sex on TV? That's like being a little pregnant. That may explain why Scott Sassa, the new president of NBC Entertainment, called for "less of an emphasis on sex" rather than outright abstinence when he out- lined his "aspirational" vision for NBC in an address to TV critics at the 1999 Winter Press Tour. Even "less sex" seemed a bold proposal given the state of the TV union. It certainly got the attention of reporters. "Think about 'Cheers,' of the unresolved sexual tension you had in that show," said Sassa, referring to that classic sitcom's Sam-and- Diane dynamic. OK. We're thinking. But NBC is the network that brings us "Friends," "Veronica's Closet" and "Just Shoot Me," three sexually active and, more signifi- cantly, three top-rated shows. As a result, Sassa, good inten- tions or not, found himself imme- diately qualifying his remarks, if not backing away from them alto- gether. "I want to be clear," he said. "I'm not saying 'no sex.' OK? I am saying 'less sex,' and it depends on the type of show it is. 'Friends' is a show that's targeted for 18- to 49- year-olds. It's about single people that live in New York. They will come into situations where they meet people and they have sex with people." There's a place for "Friends," said Sassa. But, he said, too: "What I don't want to do is to give notes to producers of shows we have in this kind of forum. It's really about - in some cases - (how) we use sex to get an easy laugh or sex as an easy promotion- al hook, and we need to be careful with that." So was he promoting restraint as opposed to chastity? Hard to tell. "Sex in situation comedies and things like that is a device that's important and, for the most part, when sex is used in a smart way, it works out OK," he said. In some cases, however, it's clear, "We could use a few more words in between 'Hello' and 'Would you sleep with me?"' Sassa said. "Balance," the NBC executive went on. It's all about balance, Courtesy of Fox Broadcasting The characters of "Melrose Place" are known for their bed-hopping antics. K Alan Rafkln recent autobiography, "Cue the B3unny on the Rainbow" In "Cue the Bunny," Rafkin hops through numerous backdrop stories from the sets he worked on and describes his disgruntled childhood to his beginnings in live television, pitfalls in film direction, to the pre- sent day in which he currently directs episodes for "Suddenly Susan" and "Veronica's Closet." The autobiography actually began as an idea ushered in by Rafkin's family after he retired from the industry in 1996. As he wrote the book, Rafkin feels, "It did take me on a different path. I just was doing it. Its taken on a life of its own." By the end of the book, Rafkin explains that it isn't time for him to retire, which has currently led him to working with actress Brooke Shields and her NBC sitcom "Suddenly Susan." Shields, Rafkin said, "is a fabulous young lady. She's a great boss and a great kid." "Suddenly Susan" isn't the first show with a headline actor or actress that Rafkin has beenat the helm of. Since the '60s, Rafkin directed the likes of such poignant Hollywood talent as Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Donna Reed, Patty Duke, Bob Newhart, Gary Shandling and Andy Griffith. Working with such a multi- faceted combination of performers has given Rafkin a high respect for the talent. "I think acting is a very noble profession," Rafkin said. "The Andy Griffith Show," one of the high points of Rafkin's career, boasted a strong ensemble with the likes of Andy Griffith, Ron Howard, Jim Nabors and Don Knotts. Rafkin said Knotts is "what you see is what you get. He's just a very sweet man." Knotts and Rafkin also worked together in the feature films, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" and "The Shakiest Gun in the West." However, Rafkin's feature film career never took off, though his films did fairly well at the box office. "I have no gripes about it," he added. Rafkin flourished in the medium of television, winning an Emmy in 1982 for an episode of "One Day at a Time." In the '90s, he has worked on "Coach," "Friends" and "The Jeff Foxworthy Show," along with "Suddenly Susan," which he will continue to direct next season. As he so aptly put it, Rafkin said, "I'm having a lot of fun doing it." "We're not trying to create a Family Channel here," Sassa said. But in an era of immediate grat- ification, the scales have tipped so far in favor of sex, it's difficult to believe that sex will somehow pull itself back under the covers in Hollywood even if many viewers around the country long for the days of "Father Knows Best." "We do not live in a three- or four-channel environment as we did in the '60s and '70s"' said Sassa. "We have to have different programs." But at the very least, he said, "Within shows that are supposed to be family shows, we need to be responsible." Of course, NBC's new family drama series "Providence," broad- cast Fridays at 8 p.m. EST, man- aged to have its lovely lead, Melina Kanakaredes, strip down to her panties and bra for all to see as she stepped into a shower - where she caught her boyfriend soaping up with another man. And the other broadcast net- works don't seem inclined to fol- low Sassa's lead - modest though it is. Fox's "Ally McBeal" is all but obsessed with sex - right down to erotic finger-sucking. The lead character on The WB's "Felicity" got a graphic how-to lesson on condoms in a recent episode. And every season, it seems, more and more shows find a reason to shoot a scene or two in a strip club. So maybe Sassa was sassing us. Or kidding himself. It's difficult to believe sex will pull itself back under the covers in Hollywood. Sundance is obsessed with Obsession Read Weekend, etc. Magazine. Los Angeles Times PARK CITY, Utah - Like God's pure snow, which traditionally arrives in this skiing town just in time to delight nature-starved movie- goers, obsessive behavior in general and sexual obsessiveness in particu- lar have blanketed the Sundance Film Festival. And don't think that hasn't been noticed. The first screening of "American Pimp," the Hughes Brothers' candid and dispiriting documentary look at what they call "the most mythical figure in black culture," created a scene of such bedlam that festival- goer/heart throb Ben Affleck, among others, was nearly trampled in the uncaring crush to get in. The scene was only marginally calmer at "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story," an erratic documentary look at the life and career of someone schlockmeister Jerry Springer eager- ly introduced to his TV audience by trumpeting, "This woman had sex with 251 men in 10 hours." Dressed in a severe black tunic and jeans, the self-possessed Chong told the post- screening audience that her career in pornography was partly motivated by a desire to "break down gender stereotypes, stereotypes of the porn chick as a bimbo, a coke-addicted victim." Master documentarian Errol Morris ("Fast, Cheap and Out of Control," "The Thin Blue Line") is no stranger to obsession, or to Sundance, for that matter, a place he says he prepares for by "spending 72 hours in a meat locker with people I don't like, and all of them have cell phones." Morris was in Park City before Sundance was Sundance, debuting his first feature, the pet cemetery- themed "Gates of Heaven," at the Egyptian Theater back in 1978. "There was a snowstorm, I was staying in a Godforsaken condo and I only had a small idea of where it was located," Morris remembers. "I had to hitchhike back there, and I was I picked up by people who'd been in the theater and had hated the movie. They asked me what I thought, and since I had no alternative means of transportation, I said I, too, was extremely disappointed." Morris' new documentary, "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.," underlines that when it comes to depicting obsessive behavior, Morris has no peer. This strange, disturbing but never less than compelling film is sure to be one of the most provocative he has made - and for Morris, that's saying something. Leuchter first came to Morris' attention as a kind of engineering Mr. Fixit for the nation's means of legal execution, someone who believed in what the director calls "one of my favorite oxymorons, painless execution." Once he interviewed him, howev- er, Morris became aware that there were two Fred Leuchters: "Fred the self-styled execution technologist and Fred the Holocaust denier. The combination seemed overwhelming, so much so that though there were many articles written about Fred, nothing combined these two ele- ments. It was if they could not be addressed in one place, a crazy kosher idea of separating milk and meat." A self-described "obsessive char- acter in my own right," Morris was attracted to Leuchter in part, as he's been to other obsessives, because of "seeing the Everyman in them, which is a very frightening thought." Describing how Leuchter came to believe that no one was gassed at Auschwitz also fascinated the direc- tor because of his own long-standing desire to make a Holocaust film, to "find a different way into that sub- ject matter. The struggle about whether the Holocaust happened is at its heart about something very deep and disturbing, a struggle over good and evil. It's struck me many times: If history is up for grabs, what meaning do good and evil have?" A documentarian who believes if you let people alone to talk long enough, they will reveal who they really are by how they use ran= guage," Morris says that one of the themes of "Mr. Death" is "how we can convince ourselves of anything. One person I know contrasted this film to 'Schindler's List.' If that film's thesis is 'Anyone can be a hero,' mine has the far more distuo ing thesis that 'Anyone can think they're a hero."' By contrast, and even though their subject matter has an undeniable amount of intrinsic interest and at times dazzling talkers as subjects, neither "American Pimp" nor "Sex" can completely overcome the numb- ing effect of the sleazy and exploita- tive worlds in which they are set - worlds in which a complete and ter. rifying contempt for women is lingua franca. Interestingly enough, the work of exceptional actresses has been the main pleasure of the festival's fiction films so far. Tony Award winner Janet McTeer is vibrant and sassy as a free-spirited mom in Gavin O'Connor's "Tumbleweeds," and young Canadian actress Sarah Polley, mej, orable in "The Sweet Hereaft J reveals herself to be a performer of enormous skill and poise in Audrey Wells' "Guinevere." Blessed with an alive, luminous quality and the abili- ty to bring truth to every kind of scene, Polley does wonders with what might in other hands be a stan- dard transition from a socially awk- ward to a completely self-possessed young woman. .. ._ Philosophers Computer Scientists Anthropologists The National Center for Geographic Information & Analysis State University of New York at Buffalo invites applications for doctoral fellowships in a new Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Doctoral Concentration in Geographic Information Science U to 18 fellowship packages valued at approx. $22,500 per Year will be available for US citizens and permanent residents. Fellnwships include stipends of $15,000, tuition scholarships conference travel uport, and other cost-of-education allowances. Non-U citizens may be ei.yible for support through the participating academic departments. Students must apply to and be accepted by one of seven participating doctoral programs at the University at Buffalo to be considered for the program. Applications by Feb. 1 1999 preferred. Minority, female and disabled candidates are encouraged to apply. for more information, see: http://www.geog.buffalo.edu/igis, questions by e-mail to: negia-igis@geog.buffalo.edu, phone 716-645-2545, x 47 Fellowships are funded by National Science Foundation grant DGE 9870668 Geographers industrial Engineers Political Scientists Civil & Environmental Engineers The diploma you can wear. '7t Anthropology in Bordeaux a Jewish History in Prague Economics in Warsaw " Traditional Medicine in Pune Cinema in Cannes a Art History in Florence Theatre in London and much more in India. France, Spain. Czech Republic, England, Italy, Germany and Poland I