Wild Palms

In the United States in the year 2007, the right-wing "Fathers" dominate large sections in politics and in the media. A libertarian movement, the "Friends", opposes the government, often making use of underground guerrilla tactics. The Fathers' leader is California's Senator Tony Kreutzer, who is also the leader of the religious sect "Church of Synthiotics" (similar to Scientology) and owner of the "Wild Palms" media group. Kreutzer's TV station "Channel 3" is about to launch "Church Windows" - a new televion format, which creates a virtual reality on the basis of popular shows like sitcoms, using a new technique 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 moonlights as a boutique owner. His 11-year-old son, Coty has just been cast for the new "Channel 3" series while Deirdre, his 4 year old daughter has been mute from birth. His mother-in-law is the impossibly 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 a former lover of his college days - the alluring Paige Katz. Paige asks for his help in tracking down her son Peter, who disappeared five years earlier. Paige is closely associated with Kreutzer's "Wild Palms Group", which Wyckoff's firm is going up against in court and their meetings raise suspicions, costing Wyckoff his promotion. After this, he gladly accepts when Kreutzer offers him a job at "Channel 3" with a much higher salary.

In the wake of his new career, Harry's wife 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. Meanwhile, Coty not only becomes a child TV star but also - due to his privileged upbringing and personal ruthlessness - a high-ranking member of the "Church of Synthiotics". Grace's mother turns out to be the Senator's sister who disposes of possible rivals with the same violently brutal means as her brother. Her only weak point is her former marriage to Eli Levitt, leader of the "Friends" and Grace's father (with whom she is still in love).

Kreutzer tries to get hold of the "Go chip", which supposedly will enable him to become a living hologram with unlimited power when it is combined with his hologram technology, mimizine drug, and synthiotics. He uses all means possible to acquire the chip but disgusted by his methods, his fiancé Paige 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 his daughter Deirdre, while Josie throttles her own daughter (Grace) to death.

Harry joins the "Friends" and works to broadcast a recording of Grace's murder. The broadcast causes a social uproar. "Synthiotics" facilities and the campaign offices of Kreutzer (who is running for president) are attacked. Even a transmission of a fake video that shows Harry as Grace's murderer, and the secret execution of Eli can't stop the upheaval. 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, just before he loses cohesion and dissolves into nothingness. As Coty - now the leader of the "Fathers" - finds his followers dispersed, Harry, Paige, Peter and Deirdre escape the chaos. Desipite this, Harry knows he must "go back" and lead the "Friends" against their enemies.

ABC aired the miniseries over five consecutive nights:

• 1993-05-16: Everything Must Go (approx. 90 minutes) - directed by Peter Hewitt
• 1993-05-17: The Floating World (approx. 45 minutes) - directed by Keith Gordon
• 1993-05-18: Rising Sons (approx. 45 minutes) - directed by Kathryn Bigelow
• 1993-05-19: Hungry Ghosts (approx. 45 minutes) - directed by Keith Gordon
• 1993-05-20: Hello, I Must Be Going (approx. 45 minutes) - directed by Phil Joanou

• James Belushi as Harry Wyckoff, a Beverly Hills based patent attorney and later, CEO of the Wild Palms group.
• Dana Delany as Grace Wyckoff, his wife, suburban housewife and owner of Hiroshima, a retro fashion boutique.
• Ben Savage as Coty Wyckoff, their 11-year-old son, a child actor on the verge of a breakthrough to stardom.
• Robert Loggia as Senator Tony Kreutzer, former sci-fi author, founder of the Wild Palms group, and of the Synthiotics cult.
• Angie Dickinson as Josie Ito, Grace's mother, a celebrated interior decorator with numerous connections and secrets.
• David Warner as Eli Levitt, Grace's father, former History professor imprisoned for terrorism. Founder of the "Friends".
• Kim Cattrall as Paige Katz, PR director of the Wild Palms group and Kreutzer's fiancée, she and Harry have past history together.
• Ernie Hudson as Tommy Laszlo, Harry Wyckoff's childhood friend, an eccentric entrepreneur who is also a closet homosexual.
• Nick Mancuso as Tully Woiwode, infamous and popular visual artist and toast-of-the-town, Tommy Laszlo's secret lover.
• Bebe Neuwirth as Tabba Schwartzkopf, Academy Award-winning actress who befriends Grace, and is part of the Wild Palms group.
• Aaron Michael Metchik as Peter Katz, a street urchin with mysterious connections with Harry, Grace and the "Fathers".
• Brad Dourif as Chickie Levitt, Eli Levitt's son from another relationship. Virtual reality boy genius and technology wizard.
• Charles Hallahan as Gavin Whitehope, Harry's associate at the Wild Palms group. Reformed alcoholic and Synthiotics devotee.
• Robert Morse as Chap Starfall, erstwhile pop star reduced to lounge singer status until the Wild Palms group "revives" him.
• Beata Pozniak as Tambor, the Wyckoffs' dutiful au-pair.
• Bob Gunton as Dr. Tobias Schenkl, Harry's psychiatrist upon whom he confides everything that is going on in his work and home lives.
• Rondi Reed as Eileen Whitehope, Gavin's wife, a "Lady-who-lunches" who also alerts Grace to a danger in her own home.
• Charles Rocket as Stitch Walken, a stand-up comedian who is also a surreptitious agent of the "Friends".
• Eugene Lee as Lt. Bob Grindrod, a corrupt detective of the LAPD under contract to the Wild Palms group.
• François Chau as Hiro, Grace's childhood sweetheart from her years spent in Japan, and an enemy of Kreutzer.
• Monica Mikala as Deirdre Wyckoff, Harry and Grace's silent four-year-old daughter, who gets kidnapped and used as a pawn later on.

• Cyberpunk author William Gibson has a cameo appearance as himself. When the author is introduced as the man who invented the term Cyberspace, he remarks, "and they won't let me forget it".
• Wild Palms producer and film director Oliver Stone also has a cameo. In a fictitious interview he appears as himself and comments on the release of files pertinent to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, revealing that the theories in his film JFK were right.
• Wild Palms director Kathryn Bigelow has an uncredited cameo. She plays the character Maisy Woiwode.

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][3]

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 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.[4]

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.[4][5]

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.

Reviews of the series were mixed.[3]

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."[6]

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."[3]

Readers of the British trade weekly Broadcast were much 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.[7] TV Guide also blasted it, offering the interpretation that Oliver Stone was condemning television while covertly lauding cinematic films. 

• Wild Palms was released on VHS cassette in the UK by BBC in 1993,[8] where it aired between November 15 and December 7 the same year.[3]
• It was released on CLV laserdisc in the U.S. in March 1995.[9]
• It was released as a Region 4 DVD in Australia in 2004, a Region 1 DVD in the U.S. in 2005 and a Region 2 DVD in the UK in 2008.
• A blu-ray release by Kino International is scheduled for July 20, 2020.[10]

• Wild Palms at IMDb
• Complete index of The Wild Palms Reader on Locus magazine's website