Year End List: Fuel for Inspiration, 2006

When I sat down last year at this time, I didn't have a bad head cold. And I seem to remember being not quite as tired. I hadn't just spent a few weeks dealing with a family member's illness. And, of course, like everyone else, I'd yet to see Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears' vee jay jay.

My 2006 was very different from my 2005. I worked for multiple vendors this year, doing a bit of animation, a bit of comedy development, and a lot of rewriting. I passed a milestone -- a show I co-created was greenlit and shot, an experience that sometimes felt like passing a kidney stone. But that's the magic of show business.

I continued to learn oodles about my craft, not just from working it in the trenches, but from pros like Artful Writer and Jane Espenson and Ken Levine. 2006 was also the year that the Canadian screenwriting conversation got more interesting. Alex has been plugging along, of course -- he had his great new TV writing book out in 2006 -- it told me some stuff I knew already but forgot and stuff that I'd never even thought to consider-- but this year the Canadian side was joined by Will and Jim and I discovered a bunch of other blogs from CanTV types, like David Moses. And we managed to infect a civilian. And the next generation's going there too. Writers. You can't shut us up.

Sitting down to write a best of list can be considered a cliche right up there with posting the cat. But I soldier on for the same reason I did last year: because inspiration is precious, and it needs to be celebrated for what it it is: fuel. Wait. I said it better last year. (Damn head cold.) Okay, I'm just going to quote myself:

But amidst all that in the year, there's fuel. Fuel exists all around us; it's writing that makes you learn and writing that makes you want to write. For me, I recognize and love writing regardless of media -- it inspires me in the same way, it makes me want to work in the same way. So if I'm going to to a year-end list, by its very definition it needs to be cross-disciplinary. So then, in no particular order, here are ten written works that inspired or fueled me this year

So. Let's get going. This is, of course, in no particular order. An exhibition, not a competition. So Please. No Wagering.

1) Ten Minutes at The White House Correspondents Dinner

Okay, you've seen this picture, I'm sure. And most of you have probably seen the thing on YouTube, so I won't link to it again. I'm simply going to run a few edited excerpts below:

Madame First Lady, Mr. President, my name is Stephen Colbert and tonight it's my privilege to celebrate this president. We're not so different, he and I. We get it. We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book.

Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works. Every night on my show, the Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, OK? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term..

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias...

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will.

And on, and on, and on.

By now the story is well known. The people in the room didn't laugh. Bush looked tight-lipped and peevish. The mainstream media pronounced it a flop, and spilled all sorts of ink over Bush's lame sketch with a Bush impersonator. Then YouTube made the video a sensation.

The writers for Colbert and Daily Show are simply the finest political comedy writers working today. It takes a lot to satirize America. For most of the world, America is already so self-satirizing that it's hard to get a toehold to say anything beyond the obvious. (The French, for instance, seem to do a particularly poor job.) But when you unpack the turns of phrase in the remarks Colbert delivered that day, you see the unsheathed knife. The United States was so far through the looking glass that it took someone wrapped in the flag and form of FOX News to pierce the bubble of truthiness surrounding the woefully out of touch chief executive.

It is always thrilling, and dangerous, and courageous to speak truth to power. But the grenade Colbert threw into that room wasn't just to Bush. I think things changed that day too -- the mainstream media looked bad. They reported as they always do, but this time, the people got to see it for themselves, and they saw the bias caught out and exposed.

The rest of the year, to me, played out in ripples from Colbert's speech. When they went after Clinton on FOX News, people didn't buy it. Even those who reported Clinton as "peevish" had to be quaking, knowing that the people were going to judge it for themselves. In years to come, some measure of shame will be reserved for the media, that they didn't stand up to this President until the poll numbers told them that maybe it was Ok to do so. Colbert's incendiary satire was thrilling to behold. Months later, it still is. For all we know, it's the only time Bush has ever been criticized to his face.

2) Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind. There was something so pleasant about that place. Even your emotions have an echo in so much space.

It's only two minutes and fifty eight seconds long. And it gets the "Hey Ya!" award. Dead people tapped along to this song. And yet at its core it's bruising, tough, and sad. But the beat.

Writers all want to be rock stars. It's just the way it is. When I sweat and toil over thirty or fifty pages, part of me wishes I could come up with just three verses and a chorus like that. The album that followed, the tour which I saw this summer -- all of the kudos they've received are well worth it. But this three minutes? Crazy.

3) Life On Mars

Most of the goodness I have to say about this series from Kudos Entertainment can be read in this post, and maybe this one, too. I have always had a secret yen for time travel stories, mainly because they're so hard to do well. From its inventive cross-pollination of the Twilight Zone and The Sweeney, to transcending the jokes about not having cellphones by Episode Two, Life On Mars was fresh, yet familiar. And sorry guys, but that's the business we're in. Every once in a while you can push the audience toward something they've never seen before. But most of the time, our job is to serve up something that feels like they understand it -- and then blow their minds with the differences. Life On Mars did that for me. And apparently, for David E. Kelley, too. Can his American version ever capture the spirit of this show? I guess that's something we have to wait til 2007 to see.

4) "My Name Is Hiro Nakamura, and I'm from the future."

And I have an enormous fucking sword. Exhibit A.

Yes, it's kind of the same idea as X-Men. No, if you're a comics geek, this is nothing really that new. Yup, the stripper mom plot is easily the least satisfying plot thread. But from the pithiness of "Save the cheerleader, save the world.." to those amazing twist endings (Future Hiro with sword was cool...Claire on the autopsy table was just...just...wow) Heroes is a perfect example of how a TV show becomes a hit when everything clicks: characters are cool, production is slick, marketing was on the ball -- with everything from Hiro's blog, to the comic book, to running those three episodes back-to-back before Ep.4 aired -- NBC knows exactly what it has, here. Note to Canadian networks: this is what popular looks like.

5) Critical Mass

I spent a lot of time on this blog yakkin on Canadian TV. It's a messed up industry to be sure. But one thing that's going to help is good print writers who tell it like it is. Canada sometimes suffers from having a very snobby culture that worries about things like The Giller Awards and The Governor General's awards -- for books that, yes, people will read -- but in fractional numbers compared to those who will watch a show on TV that's a flop. Everyone talks about Intelligence underpeforming. But even if only 250 000 people watch it a week, I'm going to guess that's a whole hell of a lot more than will ever buy Vincent Lam's Giller Winning book. (at least in Canada, and certainly in a week.)

The point is not to pooh-pooh Canada's literary scene. But with TV as the dominant art form that most people consume, you can continue to treat it as wallpaper or filler, or you can get serious about it. U.S. papers have learned this. Canada's been very late to the party.

John Doyle of the Globe and Mail is deadly serious about TV, and that's made a huge difference in the discussion of the medium in this country. His love for TV comes from a pure place -- he even wrote a book about it. His writing is trenchant and thoughtful. He's fast becoming for TV in Canada what Jay Scott was for Film. It's a shame that the Globe keeps him behind the firewall. But sometimes you can..uh...search and get around that. Shh.

Jaime J. Weinman, on the other hand, is a guy who just writes very thoughtful things about TV in general. He's got a depth of knowledge about old tv, movies, cartoons that's always entertaining and thoughtful, both on his "TV Guidance" blog on Macleans.ca, and on his own blog. It's daily reading for me, and I always learn something.

6) Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Sarah Vowell was the one who first cottoned me onto one of the strange quirks of the American history geek. Everyone goes through an "obsessed with Lincoln" phase. Mine never ended.

Kearns Goodwin published this intriguing biography that I've been reading on and off for months. It's a profile of the contenders for the Republican nomination in the 1860 Presidential election. Sounds like a snore, I know. But it's not. Because, of course, that's probably the most important election in U.S. history. After a period of drift in the Presidency, a do-nothing phase that did nothing to dampen the fires that led to the Civil War, Lincoln inherits a fractious country, after a bruising nomination fight.

He's the man nobody expected, a complete compromise candidate. And all three of his challengers thought they were the better man. Now...here's the lesson for today, kids. Lincoln brought them into his cabinet: New York Senator William H. Seward became Secretary of State, Ohio Senator Salmon P. Chase went to the treasury, and Missouri State House Representative Edward Bates became Attorney General.

What follows is a fascinating portrait of a leader who was always pragmatic, and who slowly and surely won over every one of his rivals. It's a book that can teach you a lot about dealing with conflict, management, and vision. It's the kind of book that shows us just how denuded our stock of great leaders has become.

Then again, it's the kind of book that maybe, just maybe, could convince a few people to demand better. I don't care how challenging the road ahead is. America's own Civil War's got trump.

Oh, the short version: Lincoln listened to people with differing views, and let it inform his position. Imagine that.

The book's out now in paperback.

7) Battlestar Galactica's Podcasts

The show itself is great, of course. Everyone's written that already. But if you're a writer, BSG offers so very much more. Weekly Podcasts from Exec Producer and showrunner Ronald Moore discuss the writing choices regularly, while they're fresh. Often, he's watching the cut of the episode just completed, so unlike the distance that attends most commentaries, he remembers and can discuss specific choices. And he's merciless when he thinks they might have bobbled something. When was the last time you heard that on a commentary?

Then...Then... Moore went and upped the ante, by doing something that I just can't believe he did. Over the summer he posted a long, long series of three podcasts that were actual recordings of the BSG writers room, as they worked out the end of Season 2. You may still be able to get them on the Sci Fi Channel site, but you can definitely get them under Podcasts on Itunes.

The first writing room I was ever in was the first writing room I was ever in. If you're starting out now, you can get a headstart by listening to these podcasts. In fact, if you don't, you're kind of retarded.

Moore is a secret evangelist. He wants TV writing to be better, and he wants it to be more open. The guy's taken it in the neck from some crazy Sci-Fi fans, and I still fear for his wife, who seems to have waded into the online BSG community with gusto. But there's no question that as showrunners go, Ronald D. Moore is the man. He's the guy taking care of all the people coming up who want to learn how to do this. Go. Let him teach you. (This should probably be called the Joss Whedon award.)

8) Spike Lee: When the Levees Broke

I can't even say anything about this documentary. Just...it's on DVD. Go buy it. It makes me want to go back to Documentary writing.

9) Shining City by Conor McPherson

I only got down to Broadway once this year, and saw three shows. The Faith Healer was fine. The production of Sweeney Todd was everything everybody says it was, but it was this lovely, affecting little ghost story about people at a crossroads that really packed the punch. Everybody's putting it on their ten best lists of Broadway. Oliver Platt's accent may have slipped from time to time, but his grief and the long monologue he delivers is a tour-de-force. And Brian O'Byrne, for the second year in a row, delivers a tightly focused and tremendously affecting performance. (The photo at right is by the NYTimes' Sarah Krulwich.)

It's hard to describe a Conor McPherson play if you haven't seen one. Luckily, they read well. They ooze humanity, in the way that live theatre is supposed to. I probably can't say it better than Ben Brantley did in his review in the NYTimes. So I'm going to defer to the cold and just quote him:

The anguish and inadequacy with which these people approach the basic art of conversation give "Shining City" an almost unbearable air not only of poignancy but also of familiarity. At some point watching it brings to mind one of those moments when you realize that the awkward, raw-looking, unhappy person you've just glimpsed in the shop window across the street is nobody but yourself...

Like much of Mr. McPherson's work, "Shining City" is a ghost story, literally as well as otherwise. At its heart is a tale told by a widower, John (Mr. Platt), a middle-aged businessman who turns out to be the first patient of Ian (Mr. O'Byrne), who has recently left the priesthood and set up practice in downtown Dublin. John's most immediate problem — the one he does and does not want to talk about — is that he keeps seeing his wife, Mari, who died not long ago in a car crash. The sight of her has so terrified him that he has abandoned the house they shared and taken up residence in a bed and breakfast.

In these visions, he says, "her mouth is open like she was trying to. ..." The sentence trails off. What was Mari trying to say? Even when she was alive, communication between her and her husband was close to nonexistent, although he now wonders if the mere fact of her living presence wasn't as close to human connection as life allows.

John's meetings with his dead wife aren't all that different from the other encounters described and enacted in "Shining City." In Ian's conversations with the play's two other characters — his girlfriend, Neasa (Ms. Plimpton), and Laurence (Mr. Scanavino), a scruffy young father who is hard up for cash — and in his subsequent sessions with John, patterns of unheard voices, of isolation and displacement, keep repeating themselves.

In terms of construction, "Shining City" is as close to perfection as contemporary playwriting gets. As elliptical as the conversation is, there's not a word or pause that doesn't feed the work's theme or its interconnected, disconnected stories. The same is true of even small physical details, like the malfunctioning downstairs buzzer in Ian's office building, and what turns out to be the most shocking ending on Broadway. And, no, I won't say anything more about it except that Mr. McPherson has found an inspired alternative to those inadequate tools of communication called words.

Those damn words, you see. They haunt us so, because they're all we have. And they're never enough.

10) This American Life's Podcast

Because sometimes other people's words can make you forget how your own are never enough. (Available at Itunes, and at thisamericanlife.org.)

So that's it. Looking back, I'm aghast and ashamed at how little I read in 2006. I love novels, yet there wasn't one this year that knocked my socks off, which now seems like tremendously wasted opportunity. Oh well. Add that to the resolution pile.

A Happy and Safe New Year to You All. I'm going to spend the next couple of days packing, cleaning, writing, and trying to get rid of this delightful lung butter. See you in the future.

For my 2005 list, click here.