Showtime serves up empty 'Feast'

Two images from "Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints" mark Showtime's production: a white planter gruesomely impaled on a large hook by rebelling slaves, and a Frenchified Jasmine Guy unfurling her petticoats before young actor Robert Ri'chard to — as Rod Stewart once put it — welcome him inside.

Blood and sex, costumed history and beguiling Creole accents. Where else could we be besides the New Orleans of romance novelist Anne Rice's imaginings?

After sucking dry the font of vampirism in a series of best sellers, Rice sought new avenues of lurid inspiration. She again struck gold with "Feast of All Saints," which presses into service the fascinating story of semi-free people of color in New Orleans, circa 1840.

It's a fabulous framework for a lush miniseries. It has social implications, ideological grist and historical heft, plus cool scenery and plenty of opportunities for chicory-chewing melodrama.

Showtime, which debuts the two-part version from 8 to 10 p.m. Sunday and Monday, poured money into the production and has assembled — film buffs take note — what may be the largest cast of mixed-ancestry actors in Hollywood history.

The range of talent also is vast. You get old pros like Ben Vereen, Eartha Kitt, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, the great Forest Whitaker and uber-narrator James Earl Jones. Another generation includes Guy, Jennifer Beals and the sublimely subtle Gloria Reuben, and on the younger side, recent arrivals like Ri'chard and Daniel Sunjata.

So why does "Feast of All Saints" land on the screen with the dulled taste and deadly weight of a 3-week-old beignet?

The fault is bigger than one little miniseries. The same tired pall hangs over all of made-for-TV moviedom.

At the risk of oversimplification and obviousness (though if it's so obvious, why don't they get it?), the basic causes are a lack of interest in originality and the repeated sacrifice of story and character to spectacle.

Consider what's clicked with audiences and award presenters of late. Emmys just were handed out for the biopic, "Me and My Shadows: Life With Judy Garland," the real-life inspired play "Wit" and three historical dramas: "Nuremberg," "Conspiracy" and "Anne Frank."

All were deserving projects. All got good ratings. And all were grounded in fact, not fiction.

You would think a novel-based film such as "Feast of All Saints" could help remedy Hollywood's shortage of imagination.

But there's a difference between a good tale that contains history — paging Shakespeare — and one robotically pasted onto its pages. In "Feast of All Saints," the thinly sketched characters are captives of 1840s New Orleans. It's no wonder they leave the evanescent impression of soap bubbles.

Even at that, some actors are miscast. Peter Gallagher and soul queen Pam Grier seem at odds with period drama, or at least this period. The movie's dialogue is a mix of courtly hyperbole and post-Freudian insights — e.g., "I am just a father figure to you, m'sieur."

The producers also fall prey to Problem No. 2, spectacle. The action repeatedly comes to a halt as we're asked to admire slow-motion camera work, artistically applied wounds or a rustling crinoline. Performers are barely allowed time to perform; it's a rare scene that lasts more than two minutes in this four-hour epic.

In "Feast of All Saints," the Battle of New Orleans is fought with imagery and technology on one side versus acting and plot on the other. It's no contest.

Aye-yi-yi

You don't have to work hard to come up with a show as carefully devoid of insight as "I Love Lucy's 50th Anniversary Special." And CBS didn't.

Airing from 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday (KIRO-TV), this special is essentially a clip-a-thon, interrupted by comments from celebrities apparently compiled by a malfunctioning computer at In Style magazine: Roseanne, Richard Crenna, Larry King and that well-known comedic genius, Cher.

The show clips are charming, but I don't know of a recording technology that will sort them for you. Run when children Lucie and Desi Arnaz Jr. visit mom's hometown.

Kay McFadden: 206-382-8888 or at kmcfadden@seattletimes.com