meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
The Treatment

Fenton Bailey, Nick de Semlyen, and Cheryl Pawelski on The Treat

The Treatment

KCRW

Arts

4.6639 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on The Treatment, Elvis sits down with producer and writer Fenton Bailey to discuss his book ScreenAge: How TV Shaped our Reality, from Tammy Faye to RuPaul’s Drag Race. Then, writer Nick de Semlyen dives into the action hero era in his latest book The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage. And for The Treat, Grammy-winning producer Cheryl Pawelski talks about a fateful night of music that propelled her career. 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:13.0

It's The Treatment.

0:15.4

It's the Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell.

0:16.9

Fenton Bailey has been so busy that it's kind of astounding that the creator of so many

0:22.6

different television shows and films has had time to write a book. I wouldn't even have time

0:27.4

to read a book if I were him. His book is Screen Age, How TV Shaped Our Reality from Tammy

0:32.6

Faye to Ruffa Paul's Drag Race. It's always a pleasure to have him here. So often in the book, you started

0:39.3

off talking about reminding us that Andy Warhol once wanted to do something that would have been

0:44.4

basically the bedrock of things like Big Brother and other kinds of reality shows to ending the book

0:53.4

of the Oscars, which, as you remind us,

0:55.5

has always been a reality share. Yeah, I think reality has sort of quietly been television's

1:03.7

killer application. And, well, I guess coming on for a hundred years since it was sort of

1:09.5

discovered as a medium, I think it's taken that long for it to discover itself or find its groove.

1:16.3

It's also so much for you about these kinds of things that people didn't take seriously

1:20.7

end up so much in the way shaping your life.

1:24.7

There's a great section early in a book where you write about seeing the naked

1:28.9

civil servant and just watching John Hurst's betrayal of Quentin Crisp and how that moment had an

1:36.4

impact on you. I think, you know, we are all sort of children of the screen age and who we are

1:43.9

has actually, yeah, it's shaped by our DNA and our parents and the way we're

1:50.0

brought up.

1:51.0

But I think increasingly, the screen is also kind of shapes who we are.

1:57.3

And so a lot of my key memories are sort of memories of watching things, you know,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.