The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, February 23, 2015 — 6A

‘Big Bang’ director 
talks hit CBS show

Mark Cendrowski 
discusses science’s 
role in TV series 

By ALEX INTNER

Daily Arts Writer

Late on Friday afternoon a 

group of students gathered in 
1400 Chem for the opportunity 
to have Mark Cendrowski answer 
their questions. Cendrowski, most 
famous for being the lead director 
on the well-known TV series 
“The Big Bang Theory,” spent two 
hours with students, answering 
their questions about what it was 
like to work in the highest-rated 
comedy on television and in the 
TV industry in general. 

After talking about the large 

mix of concentrations in the 
room (the event was advertised 
to people from everyone from 
film majors to Physics majors), 
Cendrowski discussed how the 
physics community has embraced 
and loved the show. The set also 
has intense conversation about 
science. Neil DeGrasse Tyson 
was on the show right after he 
debunked Pluto and got into a 
heated debate with members of 
the crew about the subject. He 
was also proud of how the show 
has led to a renewed interest in 
physics at universities across the 
U.S.

In an interview with The 

Michigan Daily, Cendrowski also 

discussed why he prefers to keep 
the mood on the set light when he 
directs. 

“We play games all the time. 

We don’t just come in and make it 
the drudgery of work and make it 
like a factory,” he said. “If you’re 
having fun it’s easier to make 
people laugh.” 

Cendrowski spent most of the 

event discussing his role in “The 
Big Bang Theory,” everything 
from the production process to 
tales from the set. These included 
some individual stories about 
working with a few of the leading 
actors. He spoke about his lengthy 
conversations 
with 
Johnny 

Galecki about his character, how 
great he felt when Jim Parsons 
thanked him in his Emmy speech 
and how uplifting it was to watch 
Kaley Cuoco blossom as an actress 
during her eight years on the show 
(she was only 20 when it started). 

One of the highlights of the talk 

was when he touched on some of 
the guest stars that appeared on 
the show. When he mentioned 
working with comedy legend 
Bob Newhart, Cendrowski said, 
“I can’t believe I got to tell him 
what to do.” One of the best was 
the story of what happened when 
Stephen Hawking appeared in 
the season five episode, “The 
Hawking 
Excitation.” 
They 

didn’t know that he would be on 
the show until two days before 
going to Caltech to film the scene. 
Hawking actually did all the 
dialogue himself, using a motion 

sensor in his glasses to speak. He 
also attended a run through two 
days later, where he saw Simon 
Helberg’s character, Howard, 
do an impression of his voice 
(Helberg apologized profusely 
afterward.)

Most 
importantly 
of 
all, 

Cendrowski talked about how 
much he loves working on the 
show. 

“It’s an actual dream for what 

any 
director 
goes 
through,” 

Cendrowski said. “To (be) on 
a hit show that is funny, that 
people still talk about, that wins 
awards, it’s got all the elements. 
And, there’s nice people. There’s 
no prima donnas on the show. 
They have been friends since 
the beginning; they support one 
another; they’re there for one 
another and they’re professional. 
There’s nothing more you can ask 
for.”

In the interview, Cendrowski 

shared why he loves sharing his 
experience with students like he 
did at the Q&A event. 

“To me, it’s so invigorating,” 

Cendrowski said. “I love giving 
back. I love the idea of (it), 
because I was in their seats one 
time myself … I realized there’s 
an appreciative value. I hear it 
from all the teachers saying the 
kids really appreciate it, someone 
from the real world, someone 
from this school that has made 
it. They are hopefully as an 
inspiration from them to do the 
same thing.”

‘Hot Tub’ sequel a 
mindless experience

By LAUREN WOOD

For The Daily

After the success of the first 

“Hot Tub Time Machine,” it’s easy 
to assume that the sequel would 
know just how 
to use its big 
budget 
and 

array of stars to 
come up with 
a 
predictable 

but 
likable 

movie. 
This 

assumption 
would 
be 

wrong.

The 
film 

opens 
by 

showing how far the group has 
come since we’ve last seen them, 
interviewing them on an “E! True 
Hollywood 
Story”-style 
show 

and cleverly skipping over the 
often awkward summary that 
sequels can be bogged down by. 
We learn that the group of friends 
has managed to use their previous 
trip to 1985 for profit and fame, 
with Lou (Rob Corddry, “The 
Daily Show”) creating a number of 
famous inventions, such as Google 
(here called Lougle), Nick (Craig 
Robinson, “The Office”) wrote hit 
songs like “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and 
Adam, (John Cusack, “Being John 
Malkovich”) who is not present in 
this film, apparently on a trip of 
self discovery after he wrote a best 
selling sci-fi novel about a hot tub 
time machine. Only Jacob (Clark 
Duke, “Greek”) is still struggling 
to find his place, acting as a 
butler to Lou in his New Orleans 
mansion. At a party in that 
mansion, Lou is shot (in the dick, 
of course) by a mysterious figure 
in a tuxedo, and the group must 
time travel in to find the killer and 
prevents Lou’s death.

The movie’s start is colorful and 

fast-paced, demonstrating a fresh 
self-awareness. The characters 
are stupid and weird, and the 
actors know this and attempt to 

play to it. But this can only take a 
film so far, and once the inventive 
premise of a group of friends who 
can do whatever they want in a 
hot tub time machine wears off 
(due, in part, to a serious over-
saturation of dick jokes) “Time 
Machine 2” loses any credit its 
few original moments grant it.

The appeal of the charismatic 

cast offers the film some respite 
but not nearly enough to keep its 
audience engaged. At first, Adam 
Scott (“Parks & Rec”) adds some 
much needed innocence to the 
group, but after a few scenes his 
character is overpowered by the 
repetitively crude hive mind, 
and Scott’s sarcastic bite is lost. 
The film does a disastrous job 
navigating the line between brash 
and clever humor that is the basis 
for many R-rated comedies. And 
the jokes themselves are not only 
tiresome in subject matter but 
rehashed ad nauseum.

For a film that relies so heavily 

on mindless humor, the actual plot 
line is unreasonably complicated. 
The group is transported into the 
year 2025, but this is the future 
of an alternate present, and to 
save Lou from being shot in 2015, 
they must find the person who is 
going to later use the hot tub in 
2025 to go back and shoot him for 

something his past self did in the 
future … I think. Even the diagram 
drawn into thin air using the 
impressive futuristic technology 
doesn’t offer enough clarification 
to the storyline, and it’s easy to 
tune out between the tiring jokes 
and complex plot structure.

If I wasn’t already perplexed 

enough by this movie’s unfunny 
treatment 
of 
funny 
jokes, 

repetition of failed ones and 
labyrinthine plot, the ending 
scenes are what really convinced 
me that “Hot Tub Time Machine 
2” has got to be some sort of social 
experiment about our tolerance 
levels for good actors in awful 
movies. With very little lead up, 
the film goes sentimental and 
shifts from 100 percent bro humor 
to a 100 percent unexpected life 
lesson about appreciating others 
and learning to take risks on 
love. Ellie Goulding kicks in out 
of nowhere and there’s a lot of 
solemn, unironic making-out 
between the friends and love 
interests we haven’t seen since 
the opening scenes. Whereas 
the film had been hanging out 
in the realm of worst comedies, 
it jumps dimensions (sans hot 
tub) and decides to inhabit the 
realm of overplayed love stories 
as well.

PARAMOUNT

V-necks deepen but the plot doesn’t.

Rosie O’Donnell’s special 
is ‘Heartfelt,’ personal

By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK

Daily Arts Writer

The phrase “comic relief” has 

never carried more weight than it 
does in Rosie O’Donnell’s recent 
HBO 
Docu-

mentary, 
“A 

Heartfelt Stand 
Up.” 
Gracing 

the 
spotlight-

ed 
stage 
for 

the first time 
in 
20 
years, 

O’Donnell 
(“The 
View”) 

has a new pur-
pose 
for 
her 

comedy: 
to 

inform women 
about the signs 
and symptoms 
of heart attacks, drawing from her 
own nearly fatal attack in 2012. 

Taking the medical statis-

tics into account, 52-year-old 
O’Donnell shouldn’t have sur-
vived. She recounts that on a hot 
mid-August day in New Jersey, 
O’Donnell assisted an overweight 
woman out of her car and soon 
afterwards felt searing pain in her 
upper arms. Dismissing the pain to 
overexertion, she brushed it off — 
until her state worsened. Her skin 
scorched “hotter than I ever felt 
during menopause,” her muscles 
ached with overwhelming exhaus-
tion, her reflection was a clammy 
ghost and nausea made it impos-
sible to stomach anything that her 
then-wife, Michelle Rounds, gave 
her. Yet like many women before 
her, O’Donnell refused to call 911 
on the grounds that she didn’t 
want to cause a scene or snatch 
the emergency vehicles away from 
someone who “really” needed 
them. 

So she popped some aspirin 

(which ultimately saved her life) 
and stayed home, waiting over 50 
hours until finally checking into 
the E.R. At that point, O’Donnell 
had 100 percent blockage in her 

left descending artery (nicknamed 
“the widow maker” of coronary 
disease) — and she had lived a 
whopping 40 hours longer than 
any patient had before. 

“I didn’t know I had a heart 

attack, and I thought maybe the 
reason I didn’t die was because 
I have a public voice and I can 
share the facts with everybody,” 
O’Donnell reflects in “Heartfelt.” 
In the aftermath of her heart 
attack, 
the 
infamously 
brash 

banterer had a sort of humbling 
revelation — though she had a 
demanding lifestyle, a strained 
relationship with her wife and 
children as well as a genetic history 
of cancer, she survived. To spread 
the word, O’Donnell decided to 
do what she does best — standup 
comedy. Only this time with a very 
real, very serious undertone.

The question is, should these 

tasks be combined? Can a stand up 
act really be heartfelt? The fact is, 
comedians love to joke about death 
and near-death experiences. Dark 
comedy makes the audience just 
uncomfortable enough to make it 
a relief to laugh, knowing it’s all 
a hoax — like when Betty White 
played the grandmother in “The 
Proposal” who faked her death to 
expedite her grandson’s wedding. 
As cynical as it sounds, death can 
be funny if it’s not personal.

For O’Donnell, however, it is 

personal. In her hour-long stand-

up act, the comedienne wears 
her heart on her sleeve — no pun 
intended — as she talks about 
the struggles of raising five chil-
dren (she had the fifth, a toddler, 
“Because I have four teenagers”), 
the excitement of falling in love 
again with Rounds (who proved 
that “lipstick lesbians” actually 
do exist), as well as her ongoing 
obsession with Barbra Streisand. 
Though O’Donnell is known for 
her abrasive opinions and knee-
jerk comebacks, she somehow 
becomes more human under the 
spotlight, her eyes watery with 
memories of her children when 
they were “delicious” babies. This 
doting mother act quickly snaps 
back to farce, though, with a long 
rant about circumcision. 

Somewhere between explod-

ing about her eldest teenager’s 
sex life and remembering the 
ups-and-downs of her whirlwind 
romance, O’Donnell finds her 
somber purpose in the act’s final 
20 minutes. Though she tries to 
balance the severity of the issue 
with her trademark sarcasm, there 
is something off about her story. 
Because on a stand-up stage, it’s 
hard to tell farce from reality. 
Death becomes the joke and the 
joke becomes death, blurring the 
lines of where to laugh and when 
to listen. Comic relief certainly 
lightens the issue — but should 
heart disease be taken lightly?

HBO

She puts the lotion on the skin.

Visit the Daily Arts blog at www.michigandaily.com/the+filter.

TV INTERVIEW 
FILM REVIEW

TV REVIEW

D

Hot Tub 
Time 
Machine 2

Rave and 
Quality 16

Paramount

B-

Rosie 
O’Donnell: 
A Heartfelt 
Stand Up

HBO 
Documentary

Available on 
HBO GO

