Wild Palms

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Wild Palms
WildPalms cast.JPG
Wild Palms main cast (listed below, L to R)
Created by Bruce Wagner
Written by Bruce Wagner
Starring Nick Mancuso
Bebe Neuwirth
Angie Dickinson
Dana Delany
James Belushi
Kim Cattrall
Robert Loggia
Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes6
(4 in original airings)
Production
Executive producers Oliver Stone
Bruce Wagner
ProducerMichael Rauch
Running time285 minutes
Production companiesIxtlan
Greengrass Productions
Original release
Network ABC
ReleaseMay 16 (1993-05-16) 
May 19, 1993 (1993-05-19) [1]

Wild Palms is a five-hour miniseries which was produced by Greengrass Productions and first aired in May 1993 on the ABC network in the United States. The sci-fi drama, announced as an "event series", [2] deals with the dangers of politically motivated abuse of mass media technology and virtual realities in particular. It is based on a comic strip written by Bruce Wagner and illustrated by Julian Allen first published in 1990 in Details magazine. Wagner, who also wrote the screenplay, served as executive producer together with Oliver Stone. The series stars James Belushi, Dana Delany, Robert Loggia, Kim Cattrall, Bebe Neuwirth, David Warner, and Angie Dickinson. The episodes were directed by Kathryn Bigelow, Keith Gordon, Peter Hewitt and Phil Joanou.

Contents

Plot synopsis

In the United States in the year 2007, the right-wing Fathers dominate large sections of politics and the media. A libertarian movement called the Friends opposes the government, often making use of underground guerrilla tactics. The Fathers' leader is California Senator Tony Kreutzer, who is also the leader of the Scientology-like Church of Synthiotics and the owner of the Wild Palms media group. Kreutzer's Channel 3 TV station is about to launch Church Windows, a VR sitcom that projects characters into viewers' homes using a system called Mimecom.

Harry Wyckoff is a successful patent attorney on the brink of becoming a partner in the law firm where he works. He has two children with his wife Grace, a perfect housewife who also owns a boutique. His 11-year-old son Coty has just been cast for Church Windows, while his 4-year-old daughter Deirdre has been mute from birth. His mother-in-law is the chic socialite and artist Josie Ito, a woman of strong will and numerous connections. At night Wyckoff is plagued by strange dreams of a rhinoceros and a faceless woman who has palm trees tattooed on her body.

One day, he is visited by Paige Katz, a former lover during his college days. Paige asks for his help in tracking down her son Peter, who disappeared five years earlier. Paige is closely associated with the Wild Palms group, which Wyckoff's firm is going up against in court. Wyckoff is passed over for promotion due to the seeming conflict of interest. After this, he gladly accepts when Kreutzer offers him a high-paying job at Channel 3.

In the wake of his new career, Grace becomes alienated from him and attempts suicide. To his dismay, Harry learns that Coty is actually the son of Kreutzer and Paige and that her search request was a plot to bring him and the Senator together. Coty becomes not only a TV star but also — due to his privileged upbringing and personal ruthlessness — a high-ranking member of the Church of Synthiotics. Josie turns out to be the Senator's sister who disposes of potential rivals with the same violently brutal means as her brother. Her only weak point is her affection for her estranged husband Eli Levitt, Grace's father and leader of the Friends.

Kreutzer plans to marry Paige and tries to get hold of the Go chip, which would enable him to become an immortal living hologram. He uses all means possible to acquire the chip, but Paige is disgusted by his methods and gives information to the Friends. Harry discovers that Peter, a boy who has connections to the Friends, is his real son who was taken away by the Fathers shortly after his birth. Kreutzer, who suspects Harry of collaborating with his opponents, has him tortured, and kidnaps Deirdre, while Josie strangles Grace.

Harry joins the Friends and uses his access to Channel 3 to broadcast a Mimecom recording of Grace's murder that causes a social uproar. Synthiotics facilities and the campaign offices of Kreutzer (who is now running for president) are attacked. The Fathers try unsuccessfully to defuse the situation by killing Eli and broadcasting a fake video that depicts Harry as Grace's killer. Josie is brutally killed by a former victim, Tully Woiwode. Kreutzer finally manages to get hold of the Go chip and has it implanted, but not before it is secretly altered by Harry and Peter. Kreutzer reveals to Harry that he is his biological father, then loses cohesion and dissolves into nothingness. Harry and Paige rescue Deirdre from Coty, and they drive into the sunset.

Episodes

ABC aired the miniseries over four consecutive nights. Episodes 3 and 4 were originally combined into a two-hour broadcast:

Cast

Cameos

Production

Oliver Stone had originally planned to film Bruce Wagner's novel Force Majeure, but then decided to film Wagner's comic strip Wild Palms, published in Details magazine, instead: "It was so syncretic. It was such a fractured view of the world. Everything and anything could happen. Maybe your wife isn't your wife, maybe your kids aren't your kids. It really appealed to me." Wagner referred to his creation as "a sort of surreal diary […] a tone poem", set in an "Orwellian Los Angeles". ABC agreed to finance the project on a budget of $11 million, but, remembering the eventual decline of David Lynch's Twin Peaks , insisted that the series had "a complete story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end". [2] [9] Filming began in July 1992.

Actor James Belushi compared the series (among others) to the British TV serial The Prisoner , and stated: "It's very tough, very challenging—a lot of viewers probably won't dig it." Dana Delany suggested that viewers should "let it wash over you, enjoy each scene, and by the end it'll make sense". Robert Loggia compared it to the Elizabethan play The Duchess of Malfi and the ancient Greek tragedy Medea . ABC, bound to make sure that viewers wouldn't lose attention, had a supplemental book, The Wild Palms Reader, published and offered a telephone hotline with the show's initial run. [2] These measures notwithstanding, Stone considered the atmosphere to be more important than the storyline. [10]

William Gibson later stated that "while the mini-series fell drastically short of the serial, it did produce one admirably peculiar literary artifact, The Wild Palms Reader" (to which he contributed). Both Stone and Gibson called Wagner the creative force behind the series. [10] [11] The Los Angeles Times reported that although Stone was "touted heavily in the promotion for the miniseries as executive producer," he "served primarily as a script and casting consultant to Wagner once the project earned ABC's go-ahead." [12] [a]

Production design

The United States of the year 2007 as depicted in the series shows a strong influence of Japanese culture, such as in dress and interior and exterior design. Holograms of Miss Alabama and girl group The Supremes even bear Japanese facial features.

Other interior details show the influence of Scottish designer and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928). Deliberately anachronistic elements include 1960s cars (like Studebaker police vehicles) and Edwardian fashion. [12] [15] Cerruti 1881 provided costumes. [16]

The futuristic Los Angeles of the series is two environments, the "Wilderzone" inhabited by the city's poor and the world of its rich. Some of the "Wilderzone" scenes were shot in burned-out stores destroyed during the 1992 riots. Camera filters were also used to distinguish the two worlds: brown to make the destitute areas look smoggy, blue to make the elite characters seem to be breathing cleaner air. [12]

Supplements

Soundtrack album

In addition to Ryuichi Sakamoto's music score, [17] [8] a number of 1960s rock and pop songs [12] and classical compositions could be heard in the series. On the 1993 released soundtrack album, the following songs were included besides Sakamoto's music:

The following songs and compositions can be heard in the series but are not featured on the album:

Books

A book, The Wild Palms Reader, was published by St. Martin's Press before the series aired. It included time lines, secret letters, and character biographies. ABC, concerned that viewers might get "hopelessly lost in the tangled story line", [2] arranged for the primer to be published. It also included writing supposedly from the "world of the series". Contributors included:

While the comic series was published in book form in Germany, the Wild Palms Reader was not. Instead, a novelization, written by German dime novel author Horst Friedrichs, was published under the title Wild Palms.

Themes

ABC President Ted Harbert said to a journalist about the series, "Are we aware that it's about TV and mind control? Oh, absolutely. That subject is a particular favorite of mine." [13]

Reception

Reviews of the series were mixed. [9] Bruce Wagner summed up the response in America: "the East Coast critics in the highbrow press loved it – in fact the New Yorker said it should have been shown on the big screen – but I've also spoken to people who couldn't follow it at all. Some were mesmerised, and some just turned off. Still, my electrician loved it, and he's from Bosnia." [15]

The New York Times critic John J. O'Connor called Wild Palms a "truly wild six-hour mini-series" resembling "nothing so much as an acid freak's fantasy, drenched in paranoia and more pop-culture allusions than a Dennis Miller monologue." He described it as "rich and insinuating as a good theatrical film, albeit harder to follow" and concluded, "You wanted something different? Here it is. And Wild Palms also happens to be terrific." [1]

Ken Tucker in Entertainment Weekly stated that "in its length, scope, sweeping visual tableaux, and over-the-top passion, Wild Palms is more like an opera than a TV show." Comparing it to David Lynch's Twin Peaks, he decided that "unlike Peaks, which started out brilliantly lucid and then rambled into incoherence, Palms sustains its length and adds layers of complexity to its characters. It also has something crucial that Peaks did not: a sense of humor about itself." [18]

By contrast, Howard Rosenberg in The Los Angeles Times panned the show severely, calling it "this punishing six hours of gibberish... this cosmically pretentious, self-important, imitative goulash about technology incestuously screwing over the very humanity that created it... this bizarre, symbol-slogged piffle". He acknowledged "surface similarities" to Twin Peaks, but felt that a more valid comparison was to Lynch's disastrous Dune : "Although Frost and Lynch employed a myriad of confusing artistic and literary feints to tease and have fun with "Twin Peaks" viewers, even at its most obtuse that series dribbled out a seductive whodunit... that kept you hooked. "Wild Palms" offers nothing comparable to compensate for its suspenseless, unfathomably fragmented, laboriously eked-out plot." [17]

Mary Harron of the British Independent suggested that viewers "forget about the message, and about what the rhino means. Wild Palms should be watched like opera; for its gorgeous images, its emotional set-pieces and its high style." [9]

In The Times , Stephanie Billen wrote, "Despite over-the-top villains (Angie Dickinson as Harry's sinister mother-in-law), this is intelligent designer sci-fi which wonderfully exploits our technophobia", [19] while David Flusfeder called it a "Gripping futuristic soap". [20]

The Daily Telegraph was positive about Belushi's work in the lead role, and the technical aspects, but disliked the show's fundamental ethos: "By linking the television moguls of the future with a conspiracy to kidnap children, and with random and brutal arrests on the streets, the scenario spiralled out of control into one of those Big Brother fantasies in which all power is centralised and all evil emanates from a single source. There's nothing wrong with Big Brother fantasies per se, but they do need to be developed with a certain intellectual rigour if they are to carry conviction. All we got here was paranoia." [21]

Readers of the British trade weekly Broadcast were even more negative, calling it one of the worst television shows ever exported by the U.S. to the U.K. It placed fourth on their list, exceeded only by Baywatch , The Anna Nicole Show and The Dukes of Hazzard . [22] TV Guide also blasted it, offering the interpretation that Oliver Stone was condemning television while covertly lauding cinematic films. [ citation needed ]

Ratings/Share

Night 1: #24, 12.3/20 [23]
Night 2: #45, 9.7/15 [24]
Night 3: #32, 11.0/19
Night 4: #42, 9.9/17

Home media

Notes

  1. According to The New York Times , after a pitch meeting with ABC Stone left to shoot Heaven & Earth in southeast Asia, leaving Wagner to write and produce Wild Palms with minimal interference from the network. [13] [14]

References

  1. 1 2 The Sunshiny Menace of "Wild Palms", review by John J. O'Connor in The New York Times, May 16, 1993, retrieved 2012-02-01.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Svetkey, Benjamin (May 14, 1993). "ABC's new "Wild Palms"". Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved April 25, 2018.
  3. "TV Sunday Evening". NY Daily News. New York City, New York. May 16, 1993.
  4. 1 2 "TV Monday Evening". NY Daily News. New York City, New York. May 17, 1993.
  5. "TV Tuesday Evening". NY Daily News. New York City, New York. May 18, 1993.
  6. "TV Wednesday Evening". NY Daily News. New York City, New York. May 19, 1993.
  7. Leedham, Robert (November 6, 1993). "Stone's Cold Soap". The Guardian . p. B18.
  8. 1 2 Conrad, Peter (November 7, 1993). "Land of surgical smiles: Peter Conrad braves the visual blitz of 'Wild Palms', a new series by Oliver Stone that starts next week on BBC2, and finds poolside life in 21st-century LA overheated". The Observer . p. C2.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Television: Never mind reality, just revel in the kitsch: 'Wild Palms' began as a cartoon strip, now it's a mini-series with a major twist, article by Mary Harron in The Independent, November 7, 1993, retrieved 2012-02-18.
  10. 1 2 Aus dem Land der Alpträume, interview with Oliver Stone (in German) by Catherine Mayer in Focus 50/1993, December 13, 1993, retrieved 2012-02-03.
  11. Where the Holograms Go, entry in William Gibson's Blog, July 22, 2006, retrieved 2012-01-29.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Weinstein, Steve (May 9, 1993). "It Melts in Your Mind: With the exotically demented 'Wild Palms,' the network that brought you 'Twin Peaks' again hopes to turn TV on its side". The Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 2, 2025.
  13. 1 2 Meisler, Andy (May 16, 1993). "...And the Shadowy Figure Who Dreamed It Up" . The New York Times . Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  14. Mathews, Jack (January 17, 1993). "ON LOCATION: The Vietnam War's Other Side". The Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  15. 1 2 Muir, Kate (November 13, 1993). "Barking up the right tree: Wild Palms left America confused – will Britain understand?". The Times . No. 64800. p. S1:3.
  16. see: the Closing credits of Wild Palms Episode 1993-05-16
  17. 1 2 Rosenberg, Howard (May 14, 1993). "'Wild Palms': Mind-Melting Techno-Babble". The Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 2, 2025.
  18. Wild Palms review by Ken Tucker in Entertainment Weekly, May 14, 1993, retrieved 2012-02-01. Archived 2017-09-05 at the Wayback Machine
  19. Billen, Stephanie (November 13, 1993). "New arrivals from Los Angeles and Baltimore". The Times . No. 64800. p. S1:15.
  20. Flusfeder, David (November 13, 1993). "Home and far away". The Times . No. 64800. p. S1:2.
  21. Davidson, Max (November 15, 1993). "Twin Peaks moves to LA". The Daily Telegraph . No. 43047. p. 18.
  22. News about Wild Palms from IMDb
  23. "Broadcasting & Cable" (PDF). www.worldradiohistory.com. May 24, 1993.
  24. "Broadcasting & Cable" (PDF). www.worldradiohistory.com. May 31, 1993.
  25. Classification of the VHS release by the British Board of Film Classification.
  26. Laserdisc details from IMDb
  27. "Wild Palms Blu-ray".