10 best picture nominees will mean cuts in the Oscar telecast
Don't fret about getting ready for that close-up.
Ten best picture nominees will likely be bad news for sound mixers, costume designers and others in low-profile categories who were dreaming of a little TV time during next year's Oscars.
The awards show telecast will have to change dramatically, one person close to the production suggested. While no decisions have been made, there's little chance the ABC television network, which broadcasts the Oscars, would expand the ceremony's three-hour running time. If the show is going to run highlight reels from an additional five films without losing the commercials (and those aren't going away),  there's only one option: Move other awards out of the prime-time show.
Likely candidates are, of course, the categories that already appear early in the show and get the shortest acceptance speeches: sound mixing and editing, makeup, art direction and the short films -- animated, documentary and live action.
-- Meg James and Ben Fritz
Photo: Kunio Kato accepting the animated short film Oscar for "La Maison en Petit Cubes" at the 2008 Academy Awards in March.
The intriguing 'Virtuality' doesn't deserve to be lost in spaceBelow is a review/feature on Fox's "Virtuality," which airs Friday. Below the article is the text of an interview with Michael Taylor, who co-wrote "Virtuality" with Ronald D. Moore (both Taylor and Moore worked on "Battlestar Galactica"). Toward the end of the interview, we also talked about "Caprica," which Taylor now writes for. "Caprica" is a "Battlestar Galactica" prequel series that debuts on Sci Fi (soon to by Syfy) in January. There are no spoilers in these pieces regarding either show.
"Virtuality" (7 p.m. Central Friday, Fox; three and a half stars) does what a television pilot is supposed to do: It piques the viewer’s interest in what will happen next.
But there’s a caveat that goes along with that recommendation. The two-hour pilot for “Virtuality,†an adventurous and savvy story about 12 travelers on a commercial space mission, is probably all we’re going to get. Fox is airing the pilot but has not ordered a “Virtuality†series.
So is this complex and intriguing film worth watching, knowing that the questions that percolate through it will likely never be answered? The answer is yes, if you’re a sci-fi buff and/or a fan of the show’s creators, Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor, who are veterans of the acclaimed “Battlestar Galactica.â€
Otherwise, the answer is maybe. Though I think “Virtuality†works as a character drama, as an observant commentary on our technology-obsessed culture and as a mystery-thriller, I don’t want you to spend your precious free time on it if you think you’ll end up frustrated with its lack of resolution. So it’s your call.
It would be easy to grumble about Fox’s call; the network chose to pick up the satirical “Glee†for next season, but not “Virtuality,†which is an ambitious meditation on truth, self-deception and the nature of reality. Yet we must not forget that Fox has committed to a second season of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse,†an equally dense meditation on identity, morality and the nature of exploitation.
But broadcast networks have always had an uneasy relationship with anything that features space ships, and though both Moore and Taylor wrote for a variety of "Star Trek" series, "Virtuality" is much more comfortable with ambiguity than that TV and film sci-fi franchise typically has been.
“It’s true, there are a lot of layers†to “Virtuality,†Taylor said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a little more challenging than your typical network fare. But it’s a pilot. … It’s laying out the situation. We had planned for it to become a streamlined, thoughtful but adventurous and fun showâ€"something of a thriller.â€
In “Virtuality,†Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as Commander Frank Pike, the leader of the crew of the Phaeton, which works for a business consortium that is offsetting the cost of the expedition by making the astronauts star in a reality show about the journey. To escape the ever-present cameras scattered throughout the ship, the crew members often escape into their “virtual reality†headsets, which allow them to interactâ€"sometimes in surprising waysâ€"in fantastical settings.
“Virtuality†deftly lays out the relationships among the characters, who range from the tough Sue Parsons (Clea DuVall) to the canny ship’s therapist, Roger Fallon (James D’Arcy). All these characters carry not just the hopes of Earth, which is in the grip of an environmental crisis, but their own emotional baggage and neuroses. And the ship itselfâ€"or at least its virtual reality programsâ€"are not exactly functioning as planned.
Though Ritchie Coster is instantly interesting as second-in-command Jimmy Johnson, not all of "Virtuality's" characters stand out, and there are a some overwrought moments and less interesting segues. But the generally well-paced film is impressive in the way it builds toward a tense conclusion even as it explores the nature of role-playing in a technology-obsessed world.
“The way we live our lives now, we spend so much time on the Internet. We relate to people [that way], we find boyfriends and girlfriends on dating sites, we interact on social networking sites, we watch videos, we’re saturated with media,†Taylor said. “I think the point of this show was to examine, not in an intellectual way but in an interesting, fun wayâ€"what does that mean? Where is that taking us? I think like a lot of ... good science fiction, you’re [allegedly] writing about the future but you’re really writing about the present.â€
Though there is a chance -- a very small chance -- that "Virtuality" could spring back to life at Fox, other possibilities for the show have been explored, notably a new home on Sci Fi or a partnership deal with DirecTV. But so far, those journeys of network exploration have come to naught (and Taylor was unaware of any concrete plans for a DVD release).
Yet it's hard not to imagine that if HBO, AMC or FX were to do a space story, this is the kind of sophisticated, thoughtful and quietly irreverent show they'd commission.
For Taylor, who is now a writer on Sci Fi's upcoming "Battlestar Galactica" prequel series, "Caprica," "Virtuality" was "an ideal show" to work on after the "broad political tapestry" of "Battlestar."
"It seems like it casts a wide net -- it's a reality show, it's a virtual reality show -- but to me, it's a chance to tell a very focused story about a handful of characters," Taylor said.
Photos above: Gene Farber as Val Orlovsky, Jose Pablo Cantillo as Manny Rodriguez, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Frank Pike; Coster-Waldau. Photos below: Omar Metwally as Adin Meyer, Coster-Waldau; Ritchie Coster as Jimmy Johnson; Clea DuVall as Sue Parsons.
Below is an edited and condensed version of my interview with Taylor. Questions are in bold type, answers are in regular type.
The people on the ship are on a journey but the show itself has been on quite a long journey too.
Yeah, a longer journey, it feels like. The six months or two years or whatever -- however long it took to make the thing -- it does feel like we should have reached another planet. We have encountered new life forms that were unfamiliar to me.
I liked "Virtuality," but I also thought it was maybe too serialized or complicated, possibly, for where a broadcast network was willing to go. What do you think changed Fox's mind about this project or made them nervous?
It's kind of a mystery. We basically did what we set out to do. We did the show we pitched. They loved the script and all that. There was still, at the very beginning, not hesitation but -- with us, they're getting into an unusual arena for them. Similar to Joss and "Dollhouse" [in some ways]. I'm not sure if they got more than they bargained for from us or they never quite knew what they were doing [with the show].
Ron has also pointed out that this is a difficult, conservative time for networks. They're trying to find their footing in a changing landscape, which their own cable channels have helped change. They're trying to find what works and there's a lot of quick judgments. But that's often been the case with network television.
[The cut that Moore and Taylor sent to the network in the winter is about 13 minutes shorter than the cut that will air on Friday -- they were asked to expand "Virtuality" so that it would fill a two-hour running time.]
I think it works well at two hours. It's not perfect in this version, there are things we would have loved to have reshot. When you [expand] something up to two hours as quickly as we did, you realize there are other issues, pacing -- things that you would normally fix if you had the wherewithal. But we're still really proud of it.
To answer your original question, it's hard to say what Fox's thing was. I look at a show like "Glee" [which was picked up to series around the time "Virtuality" was not] and I think, here's a guy [Ryan Murphy] who is doing something he truly cares about, and it's about something. But I also -- I don't want to disparage another show -- but I also see characters that seem to be kind of cookie-cutter to me, that I've seen many times before. It seems flatter to me.
As [Fox entertainment president] Kevin Reilly put it, he thought ["Virtuality"] was a very nifty show but he thought that it was a little "dense," that was a word he used. It's true, there are a lot of layers to the show. It's a little more challenging than your typical network fare. But it's a pilot. It's getting its feet on the ground. It's laying out the situation. We had planned for it to become a streamlined, thoughtful but adventurous and fun show -- something of a thriller.
It's interesting all this stuff we're talking about, because it seems like there's another case study like this in what happened to "Dollhouse." Fox wanted the show to be a certain way and it kind of went that way for the first half of the season. But then the show was renewed because people -- including the network -- really responded to what he did in the second half of the season, which was more serialized and dense and challenging. It's like, they want what they want 'til they realize want something else.
That's the thing. They hire people like Joss and Ron and to a lesser extent me, and they try to impose their vision of what it should be. As Ron said, when we were in our one-day recutting of the thing -- "We like this." Why don't they just let people do what they do? Have a little faith. "Dollhouse" was a case in point. The show was less adventurous, less engaging than it could have been [at the start], but certainly the second half, when they loosened the reins and let Joss do what he does -- the show bursts and pops.
[We talked about "Virtuality's" various online promotions, including its two Facebook pages and the character summaries Taylor wrote for "The Edge of Never," which is the name of the reality show within "Virtuality" and also the name of a site about the Fox show.]
If there's a chance that a lot of people might tune in to watch this on a Friday night in the summer [laughs] then what the hell. If in the end it's just a failed pilot, that's a sad way to look at it, but then again, it's on television.
I thought I heard there was some contractual thing, that the network had to show the pilot on air?
I thought there was a contractual thing, but my lawyer says there's not. I'm mystified. I don't actually know the deal on that.
Do you know anything about a DVD release?
That is would be a reasonable assumption but there's been no official word on that either.
[We talked about possibilities for the show living on beyond the pilot -- there's still a chance, albeit a small one, that Fox could pick it up. Taylor said Sci Fi really liked the show and "there was talk" of that network picking it up, but for budgetary reasons, it appears that Sci Fi can't pick it up. There was talk of a partnership with DirecTV, but DirecTV had "spent all their coin" on an NBC co-production of "Friday Night Lights," Taylor said.]
There are some people online saying, "Write to Fox, write to Sci Fi," and I totally encourage that.
Has there been any approaches made or interest from any other networks?
That I'm not aware of.
It's interesting to me, it kind of felt like, if FX or Showtime were going to do a sci-fi show, it would be something like "Virtuality." But then again, even the more adventurous cable networks are having to think a little harder about how much they let shows be serialized. What would "Virtuality" have been like going forward?
The first season in particular, I think we wanted drive. We imagined a fairly tense kind of thriller, not unlike [a classic mystery novel], or the tone of "Damages" came to mind, though I've only watched the pilot of that show. But something really propulsive and tense. Shows like "24" do pretty well, and I can't imagine anything more serialized that. We would have split the difference [between serialization and non-serialized elements] somewhat.
Maybe it's because I watched "Caprica" around the same time that I watched "Virtuality," and "Battlestar" was coming to a close at that time too-- but it struck me that all of these projects contain this question of, What is real? What's real and what's a projection of our minds and our fantasies? Would it be fair to say that that's an issue that all of these shows explore?
It definitely is. And "Caprica" as we develop it, it's moving more into the arena of "Virtuality," just because it's something of interest to Ron, to myself and the rest of the writers.
When we were working on "Virtuality," some people said, what's the difference between virtual reality and a holodeck? [Both Moore and Taylor worked on various "Star Trek" TV series, which featured holodecks for crew recreation.] And it occurred to me and Ron as well, that here's the difference -- this is in your mind. The way we live our lives now, we spend so much time on the Internet. We relate to people [that way], we find boyfriends and girlfriends on dating sites, we interact on social networking sites, we watch videos, we're saturated with media.
In a way it seems like we're already living in "Virtuality." I think the point of this show was to examine, not in an intellectual way but in a really interesting, fun way, what does that mean? Where is that taking us? Those are some of the same concerns that are in "Caprica." Where is technology taking us? Robotics is one thing that's in "Caprica," but the common ground [between "Virtuality" and "Caprica"] is the virtual lives that we lead, where we are online, connected to other people. That is the thing that is already changing us and will change us even more.
I think like a lot of science-fiction shows, or good science fiction, you're writing about the future but you're really writing about the present. With "Galactica," I think the resonance was mainly political. That's what resonated most strongly with people. It was very much a show of the time, in some ways spurred by 9/11 [and the aftermath of that event].
"Virtuality," why it seems so fresh and different -- it was pushing into a new sphere. It's concerns were less political than technological, [it is] exploring the effects of technology on culture. And not just examining in terms of virtual reality, [which is] the metaphor for a heightened Internet. There's a reality show on the ship as well. The way NASA's going, you can see maybe private funding being one of the ways they go in the future. Why wouldn't the astronauts have to sing for their supper?
That adds another layer of observing -- what is real, what is performance? How are we in the eyes of millions? In our reality-show saturated culture, we're all stars or imagining ourselves as stars.
This, however, became one of the contributing factors to someone like Kevin Reilly saying, "Wow, the show is great, but a little dense." It's true, there are a lot of layers, a lot of things going on.
It seems to me that part of the show is a commentary about how everything these days is a commercial enterprise -- the the criterion of whether something is artistically valid becomes, "Well, did it make money?" And that whole thing -- ratings, money, commercial success-- that influences the show on the ship and how people treat each other.
It's a science-fiction television show that's also about television. It's about space travel and virtual reality and also TV. That was what was so cool about it from the beginning. While we're happy on the one hand that we get to show the pilot, as Ron once said, "My God, the potential of this thing is extraordinary, where this could go." We've imagined seasons of this show, where it could go.
For me this was an ideal kind of show after "Battlestar," [a show that was] dealing with this broad political tapestry, and focus instead on 12 characters. And that was really the essence of "Battlestar" -- the characters. That is the essence of this show -- it's a journey for these 12 people, it's mankind's journey [in a way] and it's a journey to survive and change and also of transformation.
It seems like it casts a wide net -- it's a reality show, it's a virtual reality show -- but to me it's a chance to tell a very focused story about a handful of characters.
And even without all the layers about technology and society and all that, it functions fine as a thriller/mystery. You can just watch it as that.
That's the thing. We're not interested in telling cerebral stories that are only of interest to French film magazines or something. No knock on them. Yeah, it's a mystery. It's television. It's supposed to be entertaining and engaging. It's set in space but it's kind of down to earth.
Where are you at with the writing process of "Caprica"?
We are basically writing the episodes for the first half of the [20-hour] season, and they should be done or mostly done by the time we start shooting [in July]. It's been a really cool process. It's been an organic process, similar to the way we worked on "Balttlestar," figuring out where we're going then making adjustments. I think we were all so ambitious [at first] in what we were trying to do. We thought, here's a show, there are no space ships per se, it's going to be very different. But it's also a show set technologically years in the future from where we are now. It's imagining how all that changes. We've found a way, even without space ships, to come up with some a coo,l sci-fi, visual feast of a show.
Has it changed at all, once you got in the room -- did any of the ideas change once you started hashing it out and working through actual scripts?
It certainly changed. The things that were set in motion in the pilot are all still there, it's still a story of two families, very much. It's how will artificial intelligence come about and [some stuff redacted here because it's spoilery if you haven't seen "Caprica's" pilot]. It's exciting, it's thoughtful and all that but it's also a lot of fun. If "Virtuality" doesn't go forward, that's awful, but at the same time, this show also going to be a great show.
[We discussed the two "shows within the show" that will be a small element in "Caprica." One is a "Daily Show"-type program, for which "Caprica" co-executive producer Jane Espenson is serving as a "joke staff of one," Taylor said. The other is a retro show that the show's characters view as we view "Little House on the Prairie" -- a guilty pleasure that shows daily life in simpler times. "It's a bit of 'Nick at Nite' nostalgia that everyone is addicted to," Taylor said.]
Some things [about the writing process] are the same, it's a lot of the same the people I've worked with [on 'Battlestar'] and I know where the focus is -- telling good stories and getting to know the characters and not putting limits on ourselves. And above all staying away from anything that's predictable.
On the other hand, it's different. It's a new show. I think it took a while for me to know what the first [episode] I would write would be. To see, "Oh, now I see how this show can work" as a soap opera with a science-fiction element. I think in some ways it has a lighter touch than 'Battlestar.' There's a war in the offing, 10 or 15 years down the road, yet the pilot seems less fraught. And for me, it was just finding the fun -- that's what helped me latch on to it and find it.
What's fun about it?

In some ways, the tone being a little bit lighter. We're exploring a world that's a little bit more technologically advanced than ours. It's got that virtual world, an extension of our Internet world, a gaming world. It's fun, it's stimulating, it's very close to where we are now and imagining where we might go.
I'm writing an episode now that partly reflects my enthusiasm for movies like "The Searchers" and also for games like "Grand Theft Auto," which is an interesting combination. It just feels fresh.
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Oscars Doubling Best Picture Nominees
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided Wednesday to double the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10. Sid Ganis, president of the academy, explains the move.
