Movies Made for TV--or Marketing?

People in Hollywood love rooting for their brethren to fail, but some took particular glee as anemic ratings dribbled in last week for two heavily promoted miniseries, CBS’ “Shake, Rattle & Roll” and NBC’s “The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns.”

Cheering loudest (if anonymously) were many TV veterans who have come to view the network made-for-TV movie with growing disenchantment. Some blame the federal government, maintaining that deregulation of television cleared the way for networks to run roughshod over independent producers, exercising a level of control over the $1-billion-a-year movie business that has helped homogenize the end product.

Nothing raises more ire among these dissidents than projects like the two aforementioned miniseries, which seem to place marketing ahead of material and promotional opportunities ahead of storytelling.

“Leprechauns” was merely the latest in a series of special-effects extravaganzas with which NBC has enjoyed remarkable ratings success, derision from TV critics notwithstanding. Unfortunately, this one appeared to have been ordered based on computer visuals and stunt casting (Whoopi Goldberg as the Grand Banshee!) without reading a script. That waft of cynicism even tickled the nose of Jay Leno, prompting the home-team host to ridicule the program on “The Tonight Show.”

“Shake, Rattle & Roll” was a more insidious marketing enterprise, not only aping NBC’s miniseries “The ‘60s” and “The Temptations” but designed to cash in on CBS’ ownership of dozens of radio stations that could be used to promote both the miniseries and a CD tie-in.

Producers see equal creative bankruptcy in the “me too” mentality of multiple movies surfacing based on the same premise. This includes competing projects about “The Partridge Family,” a pair on the life of Muhammad Ali, and a trio about Mary and Jesus, which will thus qualify as the greatest story ever told . . . and told . . . and told.

At the same time, major networks rarely demonstrate a willingness to explore truly daring territory, preferring to stick with instantly recognizable names and concepts.

Susan Lyne, executive vice president of movies and miniseries at ABC, summed up her strategy by saying: “Every single movie that I pick up has to be able to stand on its own. I have to be able to promote it in a 10-second promo.” Small wonder so many future ABC films are biographies, including Ali, Audrey Hepburn, the Beach Boys and the Three Stooges.

Yet while the major networks cut back on movies--relying on series and newsmagazines to establish their “brand”--cable networks are effectively using the genre to define themselves.

Showtime and TNT are following in Home Box Office’s footsteps, garnering acclaim for such movies as “The Baby Dance” and “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” Other channels--including MTV, VH1, A&E;, even Nickelodeon--are expanding into this arena as well.

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“Cable is doing provocative, quirky types of movies that you can’t do anywhere else,” said producer Dan Paulson, whose latest Showtime film, “Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story,” premieres Sunday. “In features, you’re making movies for 16- to 26-year-old males. Cable is a haven for more sensitive, intelligent movies.”

“Gift of Love” does have a teenage boy in it, but instead of being dismembered by a supernatural killer, he donates a kidney to save his ailing grandmother, played by Debbie Reynolds. It’s the kind of movie that doesn’t provide whiz-bang effects for a promo, a trait indicative of Paulson’s last Showtime effort, “A Cooler Climate,” a middle-aged “chick flick” with Sally Field and Judy Davis.

HBO, the winner of seven consecutive Emmys for outstanding movie, keeps charting its own novel path. Next year’s lineup, for example, includes “The Last of the Blonde Bombshells,” starring Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian Holm and Leslie Caron--hardly a marquee destined to bring out the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” crowd.

“They’ll take chances, that’s the great thing,” Paulson said regarding the pay channels. “They don’t rely on ratings, and they don’t have to open with a huge box-office weekend.”

In the eyes of some, the freedom to employ such an art-house approach makes comparisons between network and cable fare amount to apples and oranges.

“Cable is niche programming,” said Howard Braunstein, whose company produces movies ranging from the networks to VH1’s recent Ricky Nelson biography. “They can play directly to their identity.”

Premium services can also undertake topics broadcasters shun. HBO’s “If These Walls Could Talk II” will examine the lesbian experience in America, after the first “Walls” tackled abortion. Having broken ground with movies about homosexuality (“That Certain Summer”), AIDS (“An Early Frost”) and incest (“Something About Amelia”), the major networks generally avoid such themes today, fully aware that many advertisers grow skittish at the mere whiff of controversy.

Still, commercial constraints alone don’t explain what has happened to the TV movie; rather, producers cite greater network interference in the creative process, as well as reluctance to tackle any subject that can’t be synopsized on a postage stamp.

This tide has inspired some producers to take refuge in less turbulent waters. Marian Rees, whose 10 “Hallmark Hall of Fame” productions include the Emmy-winning “Love Is Never Silent,” fled to public television, where she is turning such classic stories as Willa Cather’s “The Song of the Lark” and Langston Hughes’ “Cora Unashamed”--into movies that will air next year as part of a new “American Collection” on “Masterpiece Theatre.”

“At the networks, it’s very tough for all of us who try to tell stories,” said Rees, who formed a nonprofit entity, American Literature on Television, to oversee the projects. “The question now is not what is the story, but a demographic discussion about who is the audience. . . . The shifts are all toward how to maximize a global market.”

Though newer venues have created some hope, the TV movie will remain a source of frustration until the networks determine its place for them in a 200-channel world. In the interim, if the coming onslaught of biblical epics succeeds brace yourself for “Judas: Before the Kiss” and “Dark Apostle: The Untold Story of Judas.” They don’t exist yet, but should one become a reality, the other is almost certain to follow.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.