Author: Jonathan Bernstein

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Lady Gaga’s opulent, eye-popping “G.U.Y” video is a prime example of what the singer does best: complete sensory overload. During the eleven-minute clip, the self-directed video filmed in California’s palatial Hearst Castle depicts the singer as a broken bird wounded and left for dead by money-hungry men in suits. It shows her resuscitating the comatose bodies of Jesus Christ, Ghandi and Michael Jackson. It features synchronized swimmers, massed oiled troops of undraped male extras and Bravo’s reality czar Andy Cohen smiling shirtlessly down from the heavens.

The video also makes room for the stars of Cohen’s most durable franchise, the Real Housewives. Five featured players from the Beverly Hills iteration, Lisa Vanderpump, Yolanda Foster, Carlton Gebbia and Kyle and Kim Richards show up lip-syncing and pseudo-strumming instruments. Two Housewives, Kyle Richards and Lisa Vanderpump, herself a veteran of the classic 1983 ABC video “Poison Arrow”, accompany Gaga as she wreaks homicidal revenge on the corporate clones who left her face down in the dirt at the outset of the video.

How did they get the job? What was Gaga like as a director? And how did the famously volatile Housewives stand being around each other. The Hollywood Reporter got the low down from Lisa Vanderpump and Kyle Richards.

How were you approached to be in the video?

Kyle Richards: Bravo contacted me and said you’ve been asked to be in a video. We had to sign a non-disclosure agreement before we found out who it was. I was so curious and then when I saw I was completely blown away.

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Lisa Vanderpump: I had a pretty rough time on Housewives this year to the point that when they came to me and asked me to do it, I said, “Let the others do it. I’m not having a good time with the other women.” Then they said, it’s Lady Gaga. I have a bit of a history with her because she’s been supportive of Vanderpump Rules, she’s even tweeted about it and that’s a big deal when you’ve got 40 million followers. But I spoke to Andy [Cohen] and said, “I don’t feel up to spending the day with these other women, they’re just too mean and bitchy.”  Next day, the phone rings and a voice says, “Hi Lisa,it’s Lady Gaga” and I said, “Right, and I’m Winston Churchill.” Suddenly, Andy was in the background going, “Lady Vanderpump meet Lady Gaga.” I said I’d do it but on one condition. I want backup. I want the Giggster (Giggy, her trademark Pomeranian). She said, “I’d love to have the Giggster in it.”

This is Gaga’s first time directing a video. How did she do?

Richards: I was so impressed watching her direct. She’s an absolute artistic genius and perfectionist. It was a huge production but she’d take the time go over and make sure the swimmers were okay. She was just professional and hands on from A to Z.

Vanderpump: She’s very much in control. It wasn’t like she was a shadow director in any shape or form. It’s hard to understand that she’s, what, 28 years old? To me, that was mind-blowing. This is a much older head on very young shoulders.

Was she aware of your TV personas?

Richards: We talked a lot about the show and as we talked, I was thinking, “I can’t believe she watches our show and knows all about my life.” There was one scene in the video where it was just Lady Gaga and me and she looked back and said something like, “This is just like what happened in that scene with Mauricio.”

Vanderpump: She’s very Bravo-aware. She’s right in the center of pop culture and Housewives  is very much of the culture. I think you’d be surprised how many people watch it, people come up to me that  I think would never watch our hot mess. I think the First Lady even said she watches it.

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Did she communicate a clear idea of what she wanted from you?

Richards: She wanted us to feel and look beautiful and fierce. There was one scene where I kill a man. She was like, “I want you to whip that ponytail even more. Go back and really exaggerate your head-flipping. I was like, “Whatever you say. Even if I get whiplash, it’s okay. Lady Gaga told me to do it.”

Vanderpump: To get me into a lace bodysuit, there’s not many people I’d do that for. I’m 53 years old, for God’s sake. She said, “This is what you’re wearing.” I looked at this thing and it was lace head to toe lingerie. I thought, “Jesus,” but then I thought, “Okay, you’re Lisa Gaga.”

The four Housewives first show up in the video as a band playing instruments. Was there jockeying for position over who sits where or who plays what?

Richards: When Lisa and I shot with [Gaga] alone she told us we were going to be playing a girl band and I said, “Oh, can I please play the guitar?” I’d been taking lessons, I’m a frustrated rock star. So they gave me a guitar. I know how to hold it. I know the right key… not the key. See how professional I am?

Vanderpump: Gaga gave me a tambourine. That’s the only instrument I could be trusted with.

What do you think of the finished product?

Richards: Wow, it’s art. It’s beautiful art.

Lisa, did you get on with the other women?

Vanderpump: I had to, really. One wasn’t there and that was Brandi Glanville. So that was a bonus. You can quote me on that.

Twitter: @jbpeevish

Michael Becker / FOX

If one were to cobble together a list of pros and cons relating to the just-concluded third go-round of The X Factor, the latter column would cast a long, sad shadow. The chemistry between the judging panel, while a little less zombified minus the wordless, baffled presence of Britney Spears, still had the spontaneity of diners at a crowded restaurant forced to share a table with strangers. Then there remained the wildly over-styled and choreographed production numbers, the thunderous backing tracks, the repellent musical theme weeks, the massive disconnect between the caliber of performer competing on the show and the torrents of praise lavished upon them.

It’s no wonder the ratings plunged this year, hitting a mid-run low of 3.46 million and causing Fox COO Chase Carey to publicly label the series “a disappointment to date.” Even the implacable Simon Cowell is showing signs of stress, making bullish announcements about a fourth season long before the network has made such a commitment and teasing a radical new approach, by which he means, if he gets a fourth shot, his producers will frantically scramble to come up with a bold new concept to make The X Factor different from all the other competing singing shows.

Except that it already has. There may only be a single entry in the X Factor plus column, but it’s a significant one. The show may lack viewers, charm, chemistry and anything approaching a sense of fun, but look at its just-crowned winners and there is hope for the music-loving masses.

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Alex & Sierra, a Mumford & Sons-era Sonny & Cher from Daytona Beach, seemed like gimmick casting at first: a lovey-dovey real-life couple who couldn’t keep their hands or their eyes off each other and whose voices entwined just as naturally and intimately as their fingers. Next to the hysterical, over-emoting moppets, flung-together robo-vocal bands and last chance rockers thrust onto the show’s big shiny stage, Alex & Sierra existed in a different plane from everyone around them.

Then something magical happened mid-way through their run on the live shows. Where previously they’d been forced to coo their way through Cowell-mandated material, like One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” and “You’re The One That I Want” from Grease, suddenly they developed a spine and an identity. Their choice of song shifted towards Of Monsters And Men, Ed Sheeran and Sara Bareilles. You could see exactly what sort of records they could make. Unexciting records, but records that had a potentially big built-in audience.

They were also inviting in their mystery. It was easy to watch them and wonder, what was really going on? Are they always that happy? Did Alex, who was clearly the svengali of the two, enjoy the way his partner’s confidence blossomed during the series, ultimately winning her the lion’s share of the praise from the judging table? Was he going to pop the question and make an honest woman of her on live TV? Like them or not, they brought their own world on stage with them.

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Now compare Alex & Sierra to the champions crowned by the other two singing shows, the programs with double the viewers. Tessane Chin won The Voice this week. She’s a passionate, powerful, technically flawless singer with little discernible personality — in other words, exactly what The Voice loves — while a most recent winner of American Idol was another technically flawless singer: Candice Glover. Who, you ask? Exactly.

Idol‘s season 11 Philip Phillips, faired better, but lest we forget that he came to the show a cool truculent music snob who openly looked down on the series then proceeded to rearrange classic songs until they were unrecognizable and drag out Dave Matthews deep cuts. He also refused to exploit the kidney disease that saw him inches from death’s door, probably to the consternation of producers.

Despite fanciful notions of a season four reboot, Cowell and his team are never going to get the American X Factor right. They’re Super Glued to the format’s success in other territories where it’s a camp circus aimed squarely at grandmas and over-stimulated tweens. But he should derive some small consolation — beyond his many hundreds of millions of dollars — that his show, whether it clings to life or dies with dignity, just produced a winning act that will easily outshine the competition.

Twitter: @jbpeevish

Trae Patton/NBC

The Voice star Adam Levine was pilloried last week when, after the expulsion of his singers, Judith Hill and Sarah Simmons, he blurted out “I hate this country.” His comments caused the right-wing call-out machine to rumble into action, denouncing Levine as an enemy of freedom on the magnitude of a Michael Moore or Alec Baldwin. But in rushing to smear Levine, concerned patriots like the New York Daily News completely missed the man on The Voice with the real un-American values. Mr. — or should I say comrade — Carson Daly.

To wit: on last Sunday’s edition of Oprah’s Next Chapter, which airs on the still-hard-to-locate OWN Network and was devoted to The Voice, Oprah Winfrey spent time with the coaches, sat on the spinning red chairs and celebrated the NBC show’s ratings supremacy. Then she did the thing that comes so easily to her when she talks to ordinary people and so painfully when it comes to celebrities: she asked a hard question.

Winfrey queried Daly about the show’s inability to produce a winner, or a participant, who goes on to a modicum of chart success. Daly’s response: “Oprah, when did the endgame become success? And what does it mean to be successful? What does it mean to be a breakout star? Would it be nice if one of them had a number one hit according to Billboard’s Top 100. Sure. Will it happen? Probably.”

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Let me just repeat the most significant part of that sincerely-delivered reply. “When did the endgame become success?” Words fail me. No, they don’t. In what other competitive arena would that answer be in any way acceptable? Would it be fine if the coach of the Clippers said it? An Olympic triathlete? A contestant on Masterchef?  In the country where the immortal quote, “Winning isn’t the everything, it’s the only thing” was coined, the host of a competitive singing show has bravely decided to swim against the tide.

If Daly genuinely means what he says, his attitude is refreshing. But if he doesn’t, if he was fobbing Oprah off with a carefully-rehearsed reply, then clearly handling implications that The Voice’s format has a flaw was drummed into him.

And clearly it wasn’t drummed into will.i.am. A coach on the UK version of The Voice airing Saturday nights on the BBC, Will warned British viewer-voters during the 2012 finale, “Someone won in America, I don’t know what happened to them. We can’t let that happen here.”  He was cautioning audiences against wasting their affection on big-voiced but anonymous singer Leanne Mitchell. Who then went on to win. Mitchell, released her debut album last week in the U.K. It failed to make the Top 100.

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But Carson Daly is no will.i.am. He tows the party line, incapable of even making the connection that the huge spotlight his show shines on its coaches and their giant personalities casts a similar-sized shadow over its armies of indistinguishable singers. In Daly’s mind — where success is not the endgame — the achievements of alumni from competing shows must be lies.

That’s right: propaganda spread by jealous rivals. There’s no other explanation for the instant and sustained acceptance of American Idol winners Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. Why hasn’t a Voice graduate  clung to the charts with the leech-like resilience of Philip Phillips’ “Home?” There must be a conspiracy at play (never mind that singles and albums by both Idol and Voice grads are released through Universal Music Group labels). As for the UK X Factor, a singing competition not shown over here, which has seen One Direction, Little Mix, Olly Murs, Cher Lloyd and Leona Lewis make their marks in the Billboard top 100, that must be magic.

I’m not saying taking part in The Voice is an instant ticket to a career black hole. Chris Mann has squeezed out a little niche for himself in the Josh Groban/Michael Buble market. Cassadee Pope and Rae Lynn have their supporters. But four U.S. and two U.K seasons in, it’s obvious that The Voice has an endgame. And Carson Daly’s right, it’s not success. It’s saving NBC.

Twitter: @jbpeevish