[Ads-l] "showrunner" in Being the Ricardos

[Neal Whitman]

My wife and I watched the show last night, and to the list that now 
includes "showrunner", the verb "gaslight", and these items from Ben 
Schmidt (copied from an earlier message from Jesse Sheidlower):

* postproduction
* 'timeline' of a pregnancy
* the 'female perspective'
* having a 'corporate retreat'
* 'keep a low profile'
* a woman's 'physicality'.

I will add the biz-speak idiom "circle back".

Incidentally, it took me a while to be willing to watch the show, for two reasons. One was that I had already listened to Season 3 of the podcast "The Plot Thickens," which covered most of the material in the movie in more depth, more accurately, and more chronologically:https://theplotthickens.tcm.com/season-three/

The second reason was the fact that the title was "Being the Ricardos":https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/gerund-movie-titles-revisited/

Neal

On 12/28/2021 12:52 PM, dave at wilton.net wrote:
> I don't recall this one being mentioned in the other threads discussing the "Being the Ricardos." But Tony Hale, in the character of Jess Oppenheimer, refers to himself as I Love Lucy's "showrunner." (He was executive producer and head writer, which in modern TV parlance would make him the "showrunner.")
>   
> But the OED only has the TV sense from 1989. It has a "rare" more general sense of one who runs the show from 1958. This latter sense fits the era, but I can't seen Oppenheimer using that sense to refer to himself. Desi Arnaz, as history and the rest of the script makes clear, was the the guy "running the show." (Arnaz essentially invented the modern television show, including the concept of reruns, syndication, live studio audiences, shooting on film for showing in multiple time zones instead of live broadcast, multiple cameras, and the independent production company. He was an entrepreneurial genius.)
>   
> I just watched it last night. A superb performance by Javier Bardem as Arnaz, but otherwise an unremarkable show.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org