This, but more D.C.!

Looks like D.C.'s real-life Royal Tenenbaums are getting a dose of, well, Chas Tenenbaum: The Hollywood Reporter writes today that HBO has tapped Ben Stiller to star, direct, and executive produce a comedy pilot penned by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. The show is titled All Talk:

The project, which is being billed as “politically, religiously, culturally, intellectually and sexually irreverent,” revolves around the daily and life-altering dramas of a Jewish family in Washington, D.C. Emmy winner Alan Alda is currently in negotiations to join Stiller in front of the camera, marking what would be his first series regular role since M*A*S*H. The pilot is tentatively scheduled to shoot this fall.

You'll remember that Stiller starred in Wes Anderson's 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums, about an affluent clan of maladjusted overachievers in New York City. Jonathan Safran Foer is esteemed for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and grew up part of an affluent clan of apparently well-adjusted overachievers in Washington, D.C., along with his brothers Franklin Foer, the former editor of The New Republic, and Joshua Foer, the author of the 2011 book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Hopefully the show isn't too autobiographical; the rules of comedy might demand some Andersonian later-life disappointment.

Bad news, though: All Talk won't do its principal shooting in Forest Hills, where the Foer Bros. grew up, nor anywhere else in D.C. "[HBO] had expressed some interest in filming," says Lesie Green, the spokesperson of D.C.'s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development. "The bottom line was they were looking for an incentive and we just couldn’t give them what they wanted."

Another upcoming HBO show set here, Veep, was in and out of the District late last year for exterior shots. Green says the Film Office is hoping that All Talk will do something similar: “We’re hoping to get a few days.”

The King of 14th Street: David Montgomery profiles Busyboys & Poets/Eatonville owner Andy Shallal in Washington Post Magazine, cycling through the restaurateur's background (Iraqi-born son of a diplomat, worked in a pizza shop as a kid) and the emergence of his art-cum-activism-cum-culture business model. Montgomery engages and more or less diffuses two of the criticisms frequently lobbed against Shallal—that he's misrepresenting or even exploiting the imagery of the Harlem Renaissance that drives his Busboys chain, and that his restaurants at 14th and V streets NW is both a holdout against gentrification and a driver of it. Read the article. And then read Tim Carman's award-winning, slightly gonzo Washington City Paper profile of Shallal from 2009—in which Shallal attempts to hire a top toque for Eatonville via a Top Chef-like contest. Things end not swimmingly.

Today on Arts Desk: More reviews from Capital Irish Film Fest. More Sleigher!

So where are they filming this week? According to the Film Office's site, today they're scheduled to shoot on Constitution Ave. NW between 12th and 14th streets until 11 p.m. And on Saturday the show is doing driving shoots all around town—including close to the Vice President's Residence at Observatory Circle.

You'll remember—and the D.C. Film Office is happy to remind you—that back in July, Mayor Vince Gray visited Hollywood and met with HBO executives. At the time, Arts Desk's Benjamin R. Freed wrote:

The three D.C. officials also sat down with HBO to discuss the possibility of basing more of Veep's filming in Washington. [Film Office spokesperson Leslie] Green says the face-to-face meeting greatly improved the likelihood of that happening, based on an HBO executive telling Gray and [Film Office head Crystal] Palmer that their visit "clearly shows D.C. is engaged more than ever in attracting production."

Out of the gate, the show has a lot going for it: Its creator is Armando Iannucci, the Scottish director behind the merciless political comedy In the Loop, and its channel is HBO, which probably means Veep will be very funny, very smart, and not especially feel-good. (That one of its executive producers is the New York magazine columnist Frank Rich leaves me agnostic.) But does the show's Mary Sue-ish premise strike you as more appropriate to, say, the first season of Felicity?:

Centers on former Senator Selina Meyer who finds being Vice President of the United States is nothing like she expected and everything everyone ever warned about.

But nope, it was nothing like that, says Dischord's Alec Bourgeois. "It's not as juicy as it seems," he says over email. "Minor Threat clears plenty of stuff—some of it never runs, some of it does and no one notices."

The Dischord spokesperson says "HBO actually asks all the time. What is more surprising is that they actually used it."

The label has a reputation for turning down parties that ask to license its materials, but Bourgeois says it's unfounded. The label simply "insist[s] on strict fairness and respect for the music."

Don't think about using a Minor Threat song in a killing-spree scene, for example, and be prepared to pay up. "The general policy is that we clear most independent productions as long as the context isn't offensive or demeaning to the artist/song in some way. Major studio stuff gets a lot more scrutiny—we insist on 'most favored nations' agreements—which means if The Rolling Stones are getting $50,000 then so is the Dischord artist." He adds, "each band has different criteria for what they do or do not accept—Fugazi pretty much only works with indie productions, Minor Threat accepts more stuff but insists on clearing the context, etc. It's a mixed bag."

What do companies say when Dischord asks for fair pay? Sometimes they back off, sometimes they don't. But "There is often a notion that independent artists should be kissing the ring of anyone willing to give them 'exposure.' The fact is that major studios often seek out 'cool' indie music because (1) it helps give street cred to their projects and (2) they have to pay next to nothing for it. Obviously we reject this notion."

Paul McCartney: He makes everyone else looks like a major underachiever.

My colleague Jonathan L. Fischer reported yesterday that local band Tennis System is leaving D.C. for sunnier pastures in L.A. Can't say I blame them. The band's playing a farewell show at the Rock & Roll Hotel March 4.

As was widely reported yesterday, TBD is undergoing a major revamp. Again. But, troopers that they are, they keep on keepin' on. Today Ryan Kearney reports, via the Baltimore Sun, that Julia Louis-Dreyfus will be in town shooting the HBO pilot Veep for a couple of days, although most filming will take place in Baltimore.

Paul McCartney never ceases to amaze. He's composed a work for the New York City Ballet called "Ocean's Kingdom," which will premiere at the company's fall gala on Sept. 22, with other performances to follow. What can't the former Beatle do?

Vogue reviews the just-finished Fashion Week in London. In a season of traditional British fashions–think tweeds, plaids, and Argyles–many designers upped the ante by commissioning the work to traditional mills in Scotland.

For those of you who are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, hope you got your Oscar ballots in before voting closed yesterday. I still have yet to see the favorite for best picture, The King's Speech.

Eunuch! If you watched the season two premiere of Bored to Death last week, then that exclamation means something. If you didn’t, then you might be feeling a little awkward right now.

SPOILER ALERT

The episode was all about dropping major obstacles in the cast’s path. Ted Danson’s George Christopher is dealing with the takeover of his magazine, Zach Galifianakis’ Ray Hueston gets dumped by Leah, and Jason Schwartzman’s Jonathan Ames needs to break into a dominatrix’s brothel and erase a hard drive so that a sub-loving NYPD mountie doesn’t lose his job. There are also frequent sidebars about the characters’ sexual dysfunctions and proclivities. Readers of Ames’ works, such as The Extra Man and The Double Life Is Twice As Good, already know that he is a complete and total freak. Though there were certainly elements of that in the first season, in this new season Ames seems to be flaunting his sexual explorations even more brazenly (Clue: Imagine an “S&M snorkeling outfit” and the safety word “eunuch”).

Unfortunately, there’s just too much going on for half an hour of television, even if this is HBO. As elements keep getting piled on to the screen, you just want to yell “Cut” and start screaming for a rewrite. Ames crafted one of the most intriguing alt.universes out there with the first season of Bored to Death, but his latest offering is just too far reaching and unfocused. Hopefully, now that the stage is set, Ames will remember that moderation and focus are a good thing when it comes to making television, even if that doesn’t apply to his fictionalized sex lives. Fingers are crossed.

This second season debut coincides with the release of the first season on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the release of Bored to Death’s kickass soundrack. The soundtrack includes snippets from the show between almost all the tracks, so you can continually relive the moment when Ted Danson’s character wonders aloud, “Are we too stoned? My feet feel really interesting in my shoes.”  These moments are sure to be particularly amusing to people who are as high as Danson’s character, because they almost unexpectedly pop up between songs, like the crying baby that makes its surprise appearance at the end of the Verve’s Urban Hymns. As well as Coconut Records’ (aka Jason Schwartzman) jazz noir theme song, there are top-notch tunes here from TV On The Radio, Freelance Whales, M. Ward and Zoeey Deschanel, Lykke Li, and The Explorers Club. Both this soundtrack and the first season collection are strong reminders of Ames’ potential, even if the season premiere doesn’t live up to it. 

*Elizabeth Berkley plans to write a self-help book to help boost young girls' self-esteem. Presumably it'll skip the whole section about doing a movie where you snort coke, have sex in a pool, and push the lead showgirl down the stairs so you can take her place in a topless Vegas extravaganza. Though hopefully it will reference this little "live and learn" nugget from the greatest moment in the best series that ever aired on television:

*Joss Whedon is almost probably pretty close to maybe definitely directing Marvel's latest superheroes flick, The Avengers.

*Nicki Minaj announces she's pulling out of Rihanna's summer tour to work on her own debut album. Ke$ha remains on the bill. (If the three of them recorded a song together, it'd be the best worst catchy song ever.)

*A blog called Stupid Fight determines which celebrity followers are more... well, stupid. Qualifiers for the less astute include calculating the number of excess exclamation points, "OMG"s and the like. According to some recent battles, Lady Gaga fans are dumber than followers of Justin Bieber, Insane Clown Posse's fans are more intelligent than those who tweet Green Day, and Slayer and Metallica fans are pretty evenly matched. (Rachel Maddow fans come out on top when up against Glenn Beck, and Stephen Fry's fans are pretty smart when compared to Kim Kardashian's "dumb as a bag of hammers" crowd.)

*HBO announces its newest drama Treme has already been renewed for a second season. Is anyone truly surprised this new series is also awesome?

*Producer DJ Premier says Kanye West is ditching electro and going back to pure hip-hop for his fifth album.

*Scissor Sisters announce via Twitter that they'll have a new album out at the end of June.

*That TV show about awkward singers with the high ratings and a cast of continually skyrocketing popularity came back from its hiatus last night. So if you don't want to read about Glee, I suggest you steer away from your Facebook feed.

-Since he's legally forbidden to perform comedy on television, Conan O'Brien is hitting the road this spring. He'll be in D.C. at Constitution Hall on June 8th.

-The Washington Post's Dave Malitz profiles four up-and-coming bands that will be visiting D.C. on tour. He shines some light on a few locals, too.

Baltimore City Paper profiles cosmic-voyager Dam Funk, who will be performing tomorrow at 411 New York Ave. NE.

-SPIN has made all of its back-issues available via google books. I particularly enjoyed this article, where critic Robert Christgau and Matador Records founder Gerard Cosloy argue over whether Royal Trux has the right to exist.

Wow, Barack Obama—what an inspiring figure. Do you remember how, against all odds, he got elected President way back in 2008? And then, despite an about-face in conventional wisdom re: the viability of Obamacare, how he jammed health-care reform (with a public option) through a groaning Congress in late 2009?

But 2010 was really unbelievable—after consolidating his political capital in an unlikely mid-term expansion of the Democratic Congressional majority, Obama made good on his promises to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and close Guantanamo. Then—who could have thought this was possible in the face of flagging support for the Afghan war—do you remember how he established a lasting peace agreement with Iran and North Korea before beating Sarah Palin in 2012 by a remarkable 20 points? I bet that, by 2016, he'll even figure out a way to get Israel to accept a future Palestinian state and withdraw from settlements in the Golan Heights. I mean, anything can happen—who, in 2014, thought that a workable immigration bill and a marijuana legalization plan would happen a year later? It's just like that original campaign slogan: "Yes, we can!"

Oh, right—none of this shit happened yet, but we're celebrating anyway.