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Action aired from September 1999 until December 1999 on FOX.
One of television's periodic attempts to build a comedy around a thoroughly despicable leading character, Action delighted critics but turned off audiences during its short run in 1999. Peter ( Jay Mohr), the head of DragonFire films, was an obnoxious, morally corrupt Hollywood producer. Suave and self assured, he insulted everyone and laced his language with obscenities-the more vulger ones were bleeped out, while the mild ones were left in. Sex and backstabbing were everywhere. Not surprisingly, each episode opened with the disclaimer, " Portions of Action may be inappropriate for younger viewers."
Peter's arrogance seldom got him what he wanted. As the series opened, his latest release slow torture, was proving to be a $150 million bomb. Wendy( Illeana Douglas) was a former tv child star who was now a high-class hooker, and who so impressed Peter with her honesty and film instincts that he gave her a development job with the studio. Also seen regularly were Stuart( Jack Plotnick), Peter's well meaning but incompetent head of production; Uncle Lonnie( Buddy Hackett) his cheerful limo driver; Adam( Jarrad Paul), the former tv writer whose script was going to be made into DragonFire's big summer movie, Beverly Hills Gunclub; and Bobby( Lee Arenberg), the billionaire studio owner who had married Peter's former wife Jane( Cindy Ambuehl). The gay and well-endowed Bobby often called meetings when he was naked so that he could cow his underlings with " the magic of his organ."
Among the real stars appearing as themselves on this wild parody of Hollywood were Keanu Reeves, salma Hayek, Sandra Bullock( who beat Peter up after she discovered he was selling nude videos of her), David Hasselhoff ( taking bids on himself at a charity auction), and Scott Wolf ( who was told he too short for the movie role he was pitching).
Action was pulled from the FOX schedule with 5 episodes still unaired, these appeared the following summer on the FX cable network. During the course of these episodes, Peter had a heart attack and was pronounced dead, but miraculously recovered and returned to his ruthless ways.
An Article From Time Magazine
Mirror Images
Monday, Aug. 16, 1999
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
A measure of great art is how it sheds light on the existential burdens shared by all humankind. For instance, the deep pain you suffer when someone swipes your reserved space in the studio parking lot. That this particular human tragedy surfaces in two new series--Showtime's Beggars and Choosers and Fox's forthcoming Action--is emblematic of Hollywood's new favorite subject: itself.
"Our business interests everyone," says Action executive producer Joel Silver. "Everyone has two businesses--their own and show." On that assumption, a slew of new, recent and planned programs is offering behind-the-scenes takes on TV (Beggars, ABC's Sports Night, and Kilroy, a sitcom George Clooney is developing for HBO) and the movies (Action, the WB's new Movie Stars and AMC's mini-series The Lot, premiering Aug. 19 and 20). In an ingenious stunt-casting move, ABC's It's Like, You Know... features former Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey as--former Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey.
If this is industry self-love, though, it's tough love. While TV has turned the camera on itself from The Dick Van Dyke Show to The Larry Sanders Show, the current mirror gazing is not just more insider-oriented but harsher. Rob Petrie's foibles were along the lines of tripping over the ottoman, not buying a $250,000 screenplay from "the wrong Jew" in a case of mistaken identity, as Jay Mohr's smarmily obnoxious producer, Peter Dragon, does in Action's pilot. Beggars, a sharp satire set at the fictional bottom-tier network LGT, updates Network for broadcast's era of decline. Action and Beggars compare show business, unfavorably, with prostitution and the Mob. Meanwhile, the clever but self-important Sports Night treats its topic with the laugh track-eschewing gravity of M*A*S*H--though one rarely bleeds to death on a sportscast. The one exception to this self-flagellating trend is the tepid family sitcom Movie Stars. It's Growing Pains with agents.
Narcissistic or not, the shows raise obvious Peoria-play questions. Movie Stars had a relatively strong start amid weak summer competition, while Beggars' ratings have not taken off, despite fairly positive reviews. Action, however, will prove a big test. It's got notice for bringing pay cable's profanity to broadcast, but another risky import is the deep-insider view that worked for Larry Sanders' select, limited audience. (Creator and executive producer Chris Thompson, who was executive producer of Sanders, originally intended Action for HBO.) While Action could be the best fall comedy in an anemic field, and Mohr plays Dragon with an intriguingly baby-faced venom, looming over the show is the ghost of the short-lived Buffalo Bill (1983-84), which also portrayed a loathsome media figure (Dabney Coleman as a TV talk-show host). But today's fans, who can spout weekend box-office grosses like football scores, fancy themselves insiders, fascinated with and cynical about media. Action, says Thompson, will appeal by "confirming America's worst fears that people in show business are the crass and venal destroyers of the culture and consumed by self-interest."
Which may be just what we want to hear. In essence, these shows say about the famous what soap operas say about the rich--that they're no better than we are, probably less happy, possibly less moral. Audiences today have a love-to-hate relationship with Hollywood and the media; we've supported Beavis and Butt-head's meta-media sarcasm and David Letterman's roasting of TV bigs. It's a short step from a late-night joke about CBS chief Les Moonves to the name dropping that has become easy punch-line fodder on even bland fare like Movie Stars ("Any movie where you throw Jeff Goldblum down a flight of stairs is a good movie"). These references flatter us by confirming that we're the sort of hipsters who would knowingly chuckle at them, that we're the quality audience for quality shows, unlike Hollywood's ordinary pap--an argument tailored to the upscale demographics that programmers covet. What's more, insiderism appeals to, well, insiders, which means attention from colleagues and critics. In its newfound introspection, Hollywood may be talking to itself. The question is whether the rest of us will listen.
--With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles
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