Wild Palms

Wild Palms
Wild Palms main cast (listed below)
Created by	Oliver Stone, Bruce Wagner
Starring	Bebe Neuwirth Angie Dickinson Dana Delany James Belushi Kim Cattrall Robert Loggia Nick Mancuso Not Shown: David Warner Ernie Hudson Ben Savage Bob Gunton
Country of origin	USA
No. of episodes	2-part miniseries
Production
Running time	270 minutes
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	May, 1993 – May, 1993

Wild Palms is a six hour mini-series, which first aired in 1993 on the ABC Network in the United States. From its beginning, "Wild Palms" was conceived as an Event Miniseries, with a limited amount of episodes.

Produced by Oliver Stone, and Bruce Wagner — who was also the writer — Wild Palms was a sci-fi drama about the dangers of brainwashing through technology and drugs. It was based on a comic strip written by Wagner and illustrated by Julian Allen first published in 1990 in Details magazine. The cast included several famous actors/actresses.

Plot synopsis

It's the year 2007 in Los Angeles, Harry Wyckoff (James Belushi) is a patent attorney and family man. His wife Grace (Dana Delany) is a formidable suburban housewife and mom who also owns a chic Melrose Avenue boutique. Grace is the daughter of impossibly tony and youthful Josie Ito Angie Dickinson, a socialite radiant with charisma (and with an agenda of her own). Harry and Grace have two children: little Deirdre has been a slow developer, yet to speak a word, and elder son Coty (Ben Savage) — a television addict — has just got an acting job on a new sitcom, Church Windows, alongside fabu superstar and fashion icon Tabba Schwartzkopf (Bebe Neuwirth). However, Wyckoff is plagued by strange dreams — of himself being pursued by a rhinoceros, and visions of a strange tattoo of a palm tree.

Things begin to unravel one day when Wyckoff is visited by a former lover whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years, the alluring and enigmatic Paige Katz (Kim Cattrall). Paige comes to Harry asking for his help in tracking down her son Peter, who disappeared five years earlier. But Paige works for the Wild Palms Group, which Wyckoff's firm is going up against in court. His meetings with her invite suspicion from both sides, leading to a promised promotion being removed, and Wyckoff leaving his job.

Luck comes Wyckoff's way when Paige introduces him to her boss, Senator Anton Kreutzer (Robert Loggia), the founder of the Synthiotics religion, and the inventor of New Realism — a philosophy which is not well described but has something to do with a form of virtual reality which Kreutzer has developed at his company Mimecom. Kreutzer's plan, he claims, is to use this technology at his television station — Channel 3 — the same station where Wyckoff's son is now acting. Church Windows will be the first show to air in this method, where the action will take place in living rooms across the country, and people will be able to interact with the reality. Out of nowhere, the Senator offers Wyckoff a job as head of the business department at Channel 3, which he accepts.

However, all is not well in the world. In a restaurant with his old college friend Tommy (Ernie Hudson), Wyckoff sees another patron forcibly dragged away by a group of men. Strangely, no one else pays any heed to it. Wyckoff witnesses similar events happening with police around town. Though disturbed by this, Harry has no feelings of empathy for the victim, but finds himself "rooting for" the attackers, without knowing why. When Coty goes to stay with Josie, she asks if he has had "the rhinoceros dream." When he responds that he has, she tells him to keep it secret, since it means he is special.

Then, in Grace's presence, Deirdre utters her first words: "everything must go." The peculiarity of this is furthered when Senator Kreutzer tells Wyckoff of a group called the Friends who killed his father shortly after the man had a fire sale, with a banner saying "everything must go." At a dinner party, Grace and Wyckoff run into Tabba and her "consort," Tully Woiwode (Nick Mancuso). Tully is there with his sister Maisy, whom Harry recognizes as the woman who had been dining with the man who was abducted in the restaurant. When Wyckoff confronts her, she denies this.

Wyckoff continues to be stunned by the bizarre occurrences going on around him. Grace sinks into depression over what she fears is a relationship between her husband and Paige; she and Wyckoff separately learn about the two political groups: the "Friends," and their enemies, the pseudo-fascist "Fathers," who had been known to steal the children of their enemies. Grace comes to fear that Coty is not her son, but one who was put in his place when her real son was abducted.

Wyckoff slowly discovers that the Fathers, led by Josie, the Senator and Paige, are developing a grand plan involving the Mimecom technology, and that the Friends — one of whom is Grace's incarcerated father, Eli Levitt (David Warner) — are trying to fight back.

From this start, a deadly web of intrigue, betrayal and murder surrounds Wyckoff.

Wild Palms also stars:

• Charles Hallahan as Gavin, a colleague of Wyckoff
• Robert Morse as Chap Starfall, a lounge singer
• Bob Gunton as Dr. Tobias Schenkl, Wyckoff's psychiatrist
• Aaron Michael Metchik as Peter, a boy who assists the Friends
• Charles Rocket as Stitch, a lounge comedian
• and Brad Dourif as Chickie Levitt, Eli's son and a cripple, who has extensive knowledge of the virtual reality program.

Episodes

Originally designed to air over five weeks, complications resulted in the miniseries being screened as two installments.

1. Everything Must Go (90 minutes) - directed by Peter Hewitt
2. The Floating World (45 minutes) - directed by Keith Gordon
3. Rising Sons (45 minutes) - directed by Kathryn Bigelow
4. Hungry Ghosts (45 minutes) - directed by Keith Gordon
5. Hello I Must Be Going (45 minutes) - directed by Phil Joanou

Poetry and Songs

• "Running to Paradise," by W. B. Yeats, is quoted by Senator Kreutzer in conversation with Harry Wyckoff: "The wind is old and still at play / While I must hurry upon my way, / For I am running to Paradise"
• "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot features Kreutzer's last words "This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper".
• "Hello, I Must Be Going" by Groucho Marx (from Animal Crackers, 1930), sung by the dying Kreutzer.
• "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman is repeatedly alluded to and recited after the Fathers' demise.

Wild Palms Reader

A book published to coincide with the mini-series supposedly featuring writing from the “world of the series." Contributors included:

• Norman Spinrad - radical sci-fi writer of Bug Jack Barron & the Adolf Hitler "novel," The Iron Dream
• Genesis P. Orridge - Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle
• E. Howard Hunt - Nixon era scandal, writer of spy/sci-fi novels
• William Gibson - Appears as himself in Wild Palms and contributes some poetry to Wild Palms Reader
• Brenda Laurel - VR Guru & consultant on Wild Palms
• Lemmy - writes an anti-syntheotics song in 1997 though the Wild Palms Reader was notpub. 1993
• Spain Rodriguez - Underground 60’s comics artist illustrates the Mimecom backstory
• Hans Moravec - The science of Wild Palms, backdated to the 70’s and an email conversion between the fathers of two characters

The Production design

• The Japanese influence, Charles Rennie MacIntosh
• 1950s/1960s open-top cars (in the Wild Palms Reader - all non-electric cars have been banned after a severe emission bill leaving no smog)
• Victorian suits

Trivia

• Cyberpunk author William Gibson has a cameo appearance as himself. When the author of Neuromancer is introduced as the man who invented the term "Cyberspace", he remarks, "and they've never let me forget it."
• Oliver Stone has a cameo, in which he appears as himself - being interviewed on television in 2007- after the release of files pertinent to the assassination of John F. Kennedy reveal that Stone's film, JFK, was right. Stone also referred to "the late Jack Valenti" in the scene in the 1992 movie.
• The soundtrack was created by Ryuichi Sakamoto
• Stone hired musician, body-modification pioneer, and occultist Genesis P-Orridge as a consultant for the series.
• Synthiotics, a kind of futuristic self-help movement; founded by Kreutzer, a former science-fiction author who would seem to be Wagner's wicked caricature of the late SF author and Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Kreutzer's version of Scientology is a sect called the Fathers; as a media baron, he promotes the organization on the TV network he controls, Channel 3. Thus Wild Palms is argued to be an allegory or critique of dangers involving Scientology.

DVD release

File:WildPalmsVHS.JPG

Wild Palms DVD cover

Wild Palms was released on Region 1 and Region 4 DVD in October 2005 and on Region 2 in March 2008.

External links

• Wild Palms at IMDb
• TV.com
• Article on the actual Mimecom