Occasioned by the premiere of The Playboy Club on NBC and Pan Am on ABC, the folks at the Canadian Broadcasting Company thought they wanted to talk about the sudden burst of nostalgia for the sixties, and invited me to appear on their prime time talk show Connect with Mark Kelly, to, ah, connect my thoughts to Mark Kelly’s. I was a little downbeat, I think, but I really didn’t agree with the premise of the segment. I don’t think there’s a sudden burst of nostalgia for the sixties. I think there’s an ongoing flood of copycatism. If one show about the cool sixties can be a success, why can’t another one–a stupider one, for that matter–also be a hit? Why not, indeed? But I kind of doubt anybody’s going to watch these shows. They seem to be all about the past; Mad Men, of course, is all about the present. (Thanks to Ken Smith for snagging the video from the CBC websitea.)
JMal CBC from Kenneth B Smith on Vimeo.