A Tale of Two Movies

When I started this blog, I wrote a bit about why I don't really have a desire to write movies.

A little screening downtime this weekend just served to illustrate the great, gaping divide...and also maybe the way out of it.

First, let's take the case of two movies that have only one thing in common: they both kind of tanked at the box office.

The first film I watched last night was The Island. Now, if you go to Defamer or sites like that you can have all sorts of fun tracking the hubris and disappointment of Director Michael Bay. He pretty much managed to blame everyone but himself for the film tanking -- including his two pretty leads, Ewan (I like motorcycles and showing my pee-pee) McGregor and Scarlett (I can barely believe I look like this either) Johansson, for not being big enough stars.

In the extras on the DVD, pretty much the first thing Bay says in the selling of his craptastic opus is: "I tell the writers, when you come to an action sequence, just write "action sequence" because I KNOW ACTION." (I know I just put that in quotes, but it's actually a paraphrase. I can't be bothered to go put the DVD back in to transcribe what he actually said. I assure you I've got the spirit of it right.)

Therein, of course, lies Bay's problem. The Island is noisy and dumb and takes an intriguing concept and runs precisely nowhere with it. There's tons of Bay's trademark helicopters, and flipping cars and ersatz-Zimmer score -- but the action sequences he enthusiastically talks up are so forgettable you tend to forget how they started even before they're finished -- not a good sign.

There's a short doc on making the action sequence that's workmanlike and joyless. Bay takes credit for one highway chase that involves metal, barbell-like railroad axels coming off a truck and wreaking havoc...I guess this is held up as the example of what he can come up with -- the reason why any of the three credited writers on the film should just write "action sequence" and be done with it.

It's not as good as the one in Matrix Reloaded. That's it.

Meanwhile, all the wonderful implications of the story are never explored -- even for a second. There's a scene where Ewan McGregor's clone looks up his "sponsor." There's no exploration of what it's like to come face to face with your doppelganger -- the moral, ethical, or just creepy reality of it. The clones are deliberately kept in the dark about sex. So of course, toward the end of the movie we have a lovingly photographed and utterly empty sex scene between the two leads. And boom. We're onto the next thing. This is first sex for two people who never knew what sex was. And the treatment it gets amounts to: "that thing you do with your tongue is amazing."

Later in the film, they put a bunch of clones into an oven for incineration. It's treated as an action beat -- will Ewan save them in time? Of course he does. And blip -- that's it -- there we go -- a natural allusion to one of the most horrific things humans have ever done to other humans -- and it's played as an action beat. Boom. Next.

We learn that all this is precipitated by Scarlett's "sponsor" being in a bad car accident. They're going to harvest all her organs. The issues of life, death, the choices and morality of living and dying -- none of them even glanced off -- except as the setup for another action beat. Cause you know, Bay knows action.

The Island's story area is intriguing and timely -- crossing all sorts of current debates both medical and ethical. But you've forgotten the movie before it's even over.

Then I plugged in The Weather Man. I watched it ... I liked it but didn't love it. But I couldn't stop thinking about it as I fell asleep. The more I turned it over and chewed on the themes of what I'd written, the more I appreciated Gore Verbinski's film. The humanity in the performances from Nic Cage, Michael Caine, and Hope Davis got to me.

The next day I plug in the DVD and watch the extras. And the first one is all about the writer, Steve Conrad. How he came up with the script. Verbinski and the Producer talking about the simplicity of the words -- and how much they loved what was on the page. The movie is the script, they seemed to say. I couldn't believe what I was watching, especially after Bay's self-contratulation. Was this actually credit being given where it was due? In...Hollywood?

The other docs -- on the cinematography, the music and the characters, the direction and the approach show the keen respect for the other artisans involved in pulling the movie off. So it wasn't just a celebration of the writer. The extras, though spare, went to great pains to illuminate the collaborative nature of the film. But I found it amazing and unusual that the writer was included in that.

But why should it be amazing?

One film still has me thinking. One had me forgetting it before it was over. And the latter, sadly, says way more about the state of film today than the former.

As for the implications both religious, ethical, and philosophical suggested but not dealt with in The Island, I guess I'll just have to go back to Battlestar Galactica to get a taste of that.

Yup. I'm fine with TV. More than fine.

But I did enjoy The Weather Man.

The Room is Safe -- But For How Long?

Somehow I missed this yesterday.

Sometimes vulgarity is not just acceptable but necessary in the workplace, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday as it threw out a sexual harassment case by a former assistant on the "Friends" TV show.

The justices, ruling 7-0, agreed with Warner Bros. Television Productions that trash talk was part of the creative process and, therefore, the studio and its writers could not be sued for raunchy writers' meetings.

The court added that no jury would believe the writers' assistant was the target of harassment during profanity-laced meetings.

"The record discloses that most of the sexually coarse and vulgar language at issue did not involve and was not aimed at plaintiff or other women in the workplace," Justice Marvin Baxter wrote

It's actually a very good thing for shows being better rather than safe and predictable.

The social dynamics of the Writers' Room may be inscrutable to outsiders, but it's absolutely necessary. When this subject came up on this blog before, a couple of commenters took the line that a writers' room should be subject to the same rules as any other workplace. I said then, and believe now, that that's utter horseshit. I'm relieved that all 7 justices on the California Supreme Court agreed.

If you really want to know why, read Ken Levine on the subject.

Just a taste:

Writers Rooms are not for the faint of heart. It is not the Queen’s Tea in there. Sitcom writers on multi-camera shows like FRIENDS work under enormous pressure. The writers see a runthrough at 4:00 and must fix the entire script that night, even if it means throwing out the script and writing a new one. They must identify the problems, come up with the solutions, and have the new draft ready first thing in the morning. Tough luck if the muse doesn’t come, or you’ve got the flu, or worse, had Laker tickets. And you face this daunting task essentially every night for 22 weeks.

To relieve that pressure and kick start the creative process, comedy writers need to be free to say ANYTHING. And considering we’re all neurotic, self loathing, insecure, still pining for that girl from Junior High, and funny our escape valve tends to be material that makes “The Aristocrats” joke seem PG. The only rule is everything and everyone is fair game…even YOU. The best way to prevent others from taking a shot at you is taking the shot yourself. A writers room is the only place in the world where the winner of a dick measuring contest is the one who has the smallest.

Ken's full post is here.

The Luck (and the Bacon) of the Irish

Erin go Burn.

There are very few times I ever find myself wishing away my Irish heritage. I'm cool with it, even if it does come with crushing Roman Catholic Guilt. But on days like today, when the sunburn is just sizzling -- just from sitting outside -- well, you gotta wonder. Now before you start in with the "haven't you heard about the thinning ozone dummy?" and the "serves you right for not putting on sunblock?" helpful admonishments -- know that I did search out and source my bottle of Coppertone, only to find that it expired in November 2004. Then, last night, I decided to go straight for the sunburn meds, but they expired in Jan 2005. Dear Vaseline Intensive Care with sweet, sweet aloe: you are my only friend.

Sunburn makes me sleepy. So last night I actually got about 10 hours sleep -- complete with some strange sweating out the toxins dreams.

Yesterday on the street I heard two teenagers talking about the Israel-Palestinian conflict (I know, I was kind of impressed too, initially.) One called it the "infantada." He thought he was pretty smart. I could tell.

That stuck with me. Slightly amusing, in an awful way.

Then last night -- no word of a lie -- I had a dream about the infantada. It was awful. All these angry, suicidal babies -- killing themselves in a religious frenzy all for the promise of 40 new nursemaids when they went to heaven.

"Oh look at him, he's so cute! How old is he?"

"11 months"

"11 months? Oh that's just precious...look he's holding a rattle!"

[Foreshadowing: he's not holding a rattle.]

"Has he started talking yet?"

"Just a bit."

(The baby mumbles something unintelligible.)

"What was that? What?"

Baby: (in a teeny, teeny voice) AllahuAkbar.

"Oh my God, that's not a rattle!"

And... SCENE.

Seriously, I have to stay out of the %$#%ing sun.

So Very, Very Wrong.

Some days you just feel wrong, you know?

Pulling into Nazareth

Is "The Weight" by The Band, the perfect song? This is a song that you can hear 10 times a day on terrestrial radio. It's on XM right now. Normally I'd resent that. But I don't. I love this song. I can listen to it anytime. Anywhere. I never get tired of it, and I always sing, (when I can) the line about "put the load right on me" (and also, if we want to get into full disclosure, "Wait a minute, Chester," and "take Jack my Dog."

Is it just me?

BTW, in the time I took to type this, it's now "Feel So Good" by Richard Thompson. ("I feel so good I'm going to break somebody's heart tonight.")

That works too.

"Naked Man Dies in Field of Horses..."

The plotline to the pilot episode of Law & Order: UK

Lee Thomson makes me laugh. Read his full comment in the thread here.

Opening Pandora's Box: Canadian Casting

I say this because I'm genuinely interested, and because it's probably good intel for the future. To non-Canadians, apologies, this is probably boring. But I know there are a lot of sneaky sneaky Toronto-Montreal-Vancouver production people reading this, so here's my question:

In your experience, which Canadian casting agents give you the same old-same old, and are there any who go the extra mile to bring in fresh new talent?

I remember heartily that in all my years of doing Fringe theatre in Toronto, I never once saw a casting agent in the audience.

Comments -- anonymously, if you like -- below. (I'm going to change the settings to allow anonymous comments, just for this subject. But I'm also turning on comment moderation, which means I have to approve all comments. No sense gettin' all libel-y)

O Carmela Where Art Thou?

I'm nursing two of my least-favorite things in the world today: a story that doesn't work (yet) and a sunburn. (Damn you, fair-skinned Irish genetics!) So I'm giving over the blog today to a mysterious commenter named mmm mmm good -- (who actually isn't so mysterious to me. His comments were just too good to leave in commenter's ghetto.) Here's his take on the whole Casting/Carmela Problem Imbroglio.

So, I read both your’s and Lee’s column and here are some thoughts: Does Law & Order follow the British way of thinking? Should Dick Wolf be offered a seat in the House of Lords? Dick has a perfectly formulated, easily digestible show concept that he has franchised ad nauseam (that’s Latin by the way). And, you know what? It still friggin’ works! AND he has flipped and fired more faces on that show than any other show I can recall; people are still watching. Is it the quality of shows that is the problem here? If a show is solid, if the characters are written with passion and wit, won’t that pull people in regardless of the face on the screen? Why does it work in the UK but not here in the land of the maple leaf and poutine?

Look, I am an actor and I get tired of seeing the same faces as much as the next guy but if they have the talent, I don’t really mind. I mean in Canada you really can’t find a much more talented actor than Eric Peterson. In his age bracket the man shows more versatility, from Drama to Comedy, than most. Nicholas Campbell is persona more than a versatile actor; I believe him when I see him. He is always the same, but I believe him. I don’t mind seeing these actors work over and over again. I get jealous as hell, but I don’t mind as long as they are working on a good show, in interesting stories and sputtering forth witty dialogue. That being said, in a case like Robson Arms, where the entire cast of Corner Gas basically has a reunion on a different set, we are just being shown a dazzlingly minuscule amount of imagination from the network. Also, I think the network, producers and casting directors are just scared, stressed and lazy.

Putting a show together is so hard sometimes. You write and write. Finally get a development deal, then a thumbs-up from the network. Then you hire the army necessary to shoot 13 or so episodes. Money is flying out the door the moment you flip on the green light. And then it comes to making decisions on casting. The producer is stressed and tired of getting notes from the broadcaster. He/She has hired a casting director to give him faces; to make the words come alive off the page and onto the screen. Time is money and frankly my experience is that casting directors in Canada are very poor sales people. They need to sell the faces and they don’t. They just present the ones that have worked before, hoping that those faces will continue to solve their problems for them as quickly as possible. The producer is freaking out while watching audition tapes because phone calls are coming in from the network, directors, assistant directors, location managers, accountants etc. ALL EVERYONE WANTS IS FOR SOMEBODY TO SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS. Finally someone says: “Hey Eric Peterson, he’s good, give him the role.” Thus, the casting circle is complete. If that casting director can’t sell any other face but Nicholas Campbell or Eric Peterson than it’s castings lack of passion and the producers lack of imagination and endurance that are to blame. Am I putting a lot of pressure on casting? Yes. It’s their job. If they get passionate to sell a new talented actor then it’s most likely that a producer, just looking to get the thing done, will cast them.

Passion, I guess, is the key. This industry is soul destroying at times. It eats happiness like I eat free salty peanuts at the pub: mindlessly and compulsively. The only thing that will win out in this process is passion - Producers, Directors and Casting people who are passionate enough to make quality shows and take the time to cast them properly. To beat back the howling banshees at the door demanding that they hurry up and JUST DO IT. Make something of quality. At every stage demand passion, precision and excellence and I think the faces, the words and the vision will come. Hopefully, the audience will show their gratitude by watching.

Mr. Good does put a lot on casting, and I agree that a lot of times casting doesn't push. Nobody in Canada really pushes -- that's pretty much the national trait (they just snipe afterward.) It amazes me that most Canadian Agents I meet aren't as outgoing or forceful as me. (Except my agent. Glenn rocks.)

There's a lot of talk here about creating and building stars -- but bizarrely, though we have that machinery in place more than ever now -- it seems like you can't shake a broadcast licence without an ET clone falling down -- including Global's ET Canada -- the whole star thing just doesn't seem to take, unless they're people who appeared on a show with "Idol" in the title.

But for the number of times I've heard from actor friends of mine, "you're the director's no. 1 choice" only to see them lose the part to the same 12 people, I still think there's a failure of imagination at work here.

There really aren't any consequences in Canada. In L.A., you don't want to be the one who passes over the next big thing...in Canada, no one's looking for the next big thing. They'd just rather wait til L.A. finds them and then talk about how Canadian they are.

Slings & Arrows deserves a lot of credit...why? Because they cast Rachel McAdams when she was nobody. And as a result, they got their whole first season of shows starrring...ta da...Rachel McAdams!

Eric Peterson deserves everything he gets. He's a fine, versatile actor, and he does stage and screen equally well...and is different in those parts, as Lee describes. But surely there's more, isn't there?

Bi-Pondal Musings on Casting and Character

UK Scriboblogger Lee Thomson took up the question I posed at the end of my post on Billable Hours & The Carmela Problem and thoughtfully answered it. You can read the full post here. But allow me to steal a bit.

In fact, separating actor from character is something we've become very practised at in the UK, not because the available pool of talent is so small we have to reconcile ourselves to familiarity, but because we love to demystify celebrity. Personally, I blame panto - one day you’re Gandalf the White, the next, Widow Twankey, chucking sweets at screaming kids. As long as one performance is sufficiently different from the other, it doesn't matter if they come days apart. Of course, it takes a very skilled actor to create this differentiation, but that's the point isn't it, and the contradiction; the best actors, and the most recognised, are those who excel at making themselves anonymous. Their anonymity is the key to their employment, and the barrier to their marketability.

This is a very interesting point, and I think it very much illustrates the difference between the cultures. In Britain, a lot of actors get training in the theatre, and are practiced at building their characters from the ground up. So you can bounce from show to show, and fall in love with that character, and appreciate the range of what they do next.

Unfortunately, here in Canada we tend to hew more to the American tradition, of casting the same actor to play roughly the same kind of part over, and over, and over again. Mark McKinney doesn't stretch too much from role to role. He's always recognizably McKinney. Similarly, you can usually count on Nicholas Campbell to play a certain type. We keep casting the same actors in roughly the same kinds of roles. No wonder we can't tell the series apart.

Thinking of it, it seems our most tenacious shows are those that find ways to outlive their casts and develop their own personalities. Doctor Who has had ten leads now, and who knows how many companions. The door doesn't finish closing on one set of Spooks before the next lot come in. Taggart hasn't had a character called Taggart in it since 1993. And yet tune into any of these, or Eastenders or Coronation Street for that matter, and you pretty much know what you're going to get. Compare lists of regulars in Casualty, The Bill, and Monarch of the Glen over three year intervals, and you'll see few repetitions. But the shows survive, and remain identifiable.

The very fact that we don't regard actors as key to a show's national adoption, and that they have the freedom to stretch their wings is a good thing. Although it can sometimes result in unwelcome overexposure (Ross Kemp, Neil Morrisey, Amanda Holden, I am most definitely not looking at you), the ability of actors to move around, be in three shows a year, not stick at anything for long, is what has allowed some of our best loved and culturally resonant shows to develop their defining characteristics.

True enough. Maybe the problem is not coming up with resonant concepts. In the UK, low episode orders mean you're going to lose cast members no matter what you do. But the characters, when they're introduced, are indelible and different -- like the shows they inhabit. Whoever is in the current cast of Spooks/MI-5 - the important thing is that the show treats espionage in the post 9/11 era in a far more adult, nuanced, and unique way than any similar show in the USA or Canada would ever dare to attempt.

I still think the fact that we cast the same 12 actors hurts us...but maybe it's the symptom, not the cause. The symptom is casting the same old same old instead of looking for the new face...but the cause is bland, safe, and interchangeable concepts that don't demand a fresh, bold, and indelible characterization.

Anyway, go read Lee.

Seriously, Dude, What About Brian?

Well, first of all, I'm reasonably certain that he has, in the words of the adorable toddler daughter of a friend of mine, a buh-gina.

Simply put, after two episodes I can say with a crushing degree of certainty that this Brian character is not like any man -- straight or gay -- I have ever met in my life.

Seriously. Who is this guy? He's not from Mars.



Let's look at the evidence:

• He lets a crazy woman who he's broken up with after dating for just two weeks force him out of his house.
• He's totally single, totally unencumbered, and he kvetches about sleeping with two women in a 24 hour period. The only dilemna he would reasonably face in reality is this: Do I tell all my friends one-by-one, or gather them together and tell them all at once so I don't risk one of them finding out from someone else besides me?
• When the best-friend's-fiancee tries to assuage her kissy-kissy guilt by setting him up with her friend... Sorry...I mean ambushing him...he does not immediately call bullshit. He just sits there and takes it.

There's a hundred more. But you know, why bother? You can see what they were going for here. This was all set and bothered to be ABC's next Grey's Anatomy. The problem is, unlike that show, this one's supposed to be set around a man.

And it's not.

It's set around a woman's fantasy projection of how men should be.

This is exactly what I was talking about in The Eyeballs of Men.

Except for the asshole-best-friend character, all the women are in charge in their relationships. The women drive the stories. Now, that in and of itself is the dynamic in a lot of relationships, but it's not something you're going to get men to watch.

There's an interesting study floating around about the kinds of shows men watch. And it's very revealing. Men tend to identify with main characters who have a code...who do what they think is right, even if that brings them into conflict with society, or the law. Tony Soprano. Greg House. Vic Mackey. You know another character a lot of men I know relate to? Nate Fisher. No kidding. Frustrating, maddening, scream-at-the-tv Nate. Narm Nate. Because in his own way, he's doing the same thing. He's doing the best he can with the cards he's been dealt -- and even if he doesn't make the right choices, he's trying. That is something men can relate to.

Not. Brian.

My sister emailed me the other day. She lives in Washington now, and I don't see or hear from her all that much, so her emails are always a real pleasure. She saw Brian. She liked it. She Brian was hot. And he is hot. Or, to put it more accurately...he is pretty.

Brian is the prettiest woman on the show.

It should come as no surprise that the creator of What About Brian?, Dana Stevens, is female. But lest you think I'm going down some chauvinist road here -- I'm really not. Yes, I recognize that if the male characters on Brian are wishful-thinking stereotypes, it's no different than the flat wife and girlfriend roles male screenwriters have written for women for years. But the reality is that you don't have to be a gender, to write a gender. Larry's Party by the late Carol Shields nails men. John Irving's A Widow for One Year feels like it was written by a woman. James L. Brooks wrote Holly Hunter's character in Broadcast News and it was beautiful and true. Sex In The City and Desperate Housewives are shows that women have flocked to because those characters resonated with them. Both shows were created by gay men.

But if it's going to resonate -- you have to push deeper. You can't fall back on stereotypes, or convenience, or wishful thinking.

I heard gossip about this pilot from someone who saw the original version, before they recast the main love interest. Canadian actor Polly Shannon was booted from the show, and the woman they ultimately cast was in. Apparently, at the same time they shaved off the more quirky reading Shannon brought to the part, they also re-shot and re-set a lot of the scenes, and whittled the edges off. The kiss between Fiancee and Brian went from a drunken smoochup back at his place -- where there's real jeopardy -- to an almost accidental afterthought in a closet. In reshooting the rest, too -- what was edgy or quirky was made ersatz and bland. They hived the edges off. All of them.

So, What About Brian? Judging by the creative direction they chose, and the dropoff in ratings from Episode 1 to 2... I think he's toast.

Because at the end of the day, I'm not sure women want to see shows built around false projections of men, any more than men do. Grey's Anatomy, remember, is about the women.

But Brian? He sure has a purty mouth. Heh.

Sad News from ZA

From Dennis Venter, one of our South African writers for Charlie Jade, comes this very sad news:

Brett Goldin, the guy who played (the O.T.T.) Terry Schachter in CJ, was murdered yesterday. It’s sad, he was a talented actor and a decent guy.

I only met Brett a couple of times in the production office for CJ, but he was definitely one of South Africa's most gifted comic actors. He took a one or two scene part in CJ and parked it. So much so that we made him up different and brought him back to play a different character a few episodes later. (as an alternate-universe, very unlikely club bouncer.)

While we were in Cape Town, he had a run of a very successful play, Bad Apple, that satirized a lot of different South African school types. I didn't go because of work, but everybody who saw it said it was a tour de force.

Brett was one of a group of actors who created a series of shorts -- "Crazy Monkey" -- that satirized the extreme/Jackass phenomenon. The spots caught on and played not just in South Africa, but on other MTV stations worldwide. They even spun them out into a movie.

It's a shocking thing when someone, anyone is murdered. And for a country still so haunted by a violent past, it's an even more bitter pill. I'm enough of a Locke guy to think that anyone we lose diminishes us all -- but when we lose someone who makes us laugh, I think the world is even poorer for it. We all need to laugh more.

You can see a memorial page to Brett Goldin by his friends in Crazy Monkey here.

Billable Hours & The Carmela Problem

Billable Hours is a new SHOWCASE series that premiered in Canada on Sunday night. It's set in a law firm, and concerns the neo-leisure (ie: slacking) pursuits of young lawyers in a firm. So, yeah, it's The Office meets Ally McBeal minus the cases in Ally McBeal.

The show stars co-creator Fab Filippo, (Queer As Folk, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Jennifer Baxter and Brandon Firla -- two faces very familiar to Canadian viewers because they do a ton of commercials -- and Dov Tiefenbach, who was, and is, the titular star of CBC's troubled yet-still-active This Space For Rent.

I won't really say too much about the content here -- I'd love to hear from any Canadians who saw it. What I will say is that I thought the Act-Outs were weak, there were plot turns (and turns back) that didn't really progress so much as come out of nowhere, and the main A-Plot was resolved through coincidence, and not any concerted effort by the main character. Reviews have ranged from Canadian-kind to middling. I think the setting is fine. The story area is as good as any other, but the scripts are not as strong as they need to be and I'm not sure they've nailed tone. In the office sitcom genre, 21st century style, there's the anarchic tone of Andy Richter's failed (but still sorely missed) Andy Richter Controls The Universe, or the more painful, small, and well-observed minutae of The Office. I'm not sure Billable Hours knows its tone yet.

Seeing Tiefenbach show up in the show, though, was the more distracting thing for me. One of the problems of doing such short orders of series is that the actors don't work for very long, so they're both free to take other series work, and pretty much have to do so because they haven't made enough money to survive for the year.

In Tiefenbach and This Space For Rent's case, it's a double whammy. Not only is Dov one of the ensemble of Billable Hours, but his castmate Rainbow Sun Francks is on Stargate: Atlantis. So there's Tiefenbach, a regular on one show while a second CBC venture goes for two more pilots (for a total development time of two or three years? I don't blame the guy for taking other work.)

Last year, CTV ran a comedy-drama in an apartment block called Robson Arms. One by one, every member of the Corner Gas cast showed up.

The woman who played Reena, one of the main characters in Charlie Jade, was also a lesbian bartender on Showcase's Naked Josh.

And just recently, CHUM picked up Murdoch Mysteries for a series. When they did it as a series of movies, Peter Outerbridge was the star. They're probably going to have to recast the role for the series. Why? Because Outerbridge is the main character on Re:Genesis.

Then there's former Kid in the Hall Mark McKinney...you could break your TiVo trying to keep track of the Canadian series he's in: Slings & Arrows, Hatching, Matching & Dispatching, Robson Arms, and Corner Gas (and that's just 2005!)

I think this kind of thing is a pretty intractible problem in the Canadian industry. It's tempting to put it down to lazy casting agents, and I'm sure that's part of it...you can't tell me that the same twelve people do all the commercials in Canada because there's only twelve good actors...but I don't think you can put it all down to them, either.

If you're doing short episode runs, and you're available, and you have to work, then why wouldn't you work? And actors also (rightly) fear becoming too identified with one role. So you can't blame the actors. And budgets are so tight that you can't really do more than 6 or 8 or 13 a season, so you can't blame the Producers for going with someone who they know can deliver.

But the net result is: it's impossible to build a show's identity in people's minds. How can you get a show to stand out if it stars the same people as all the other shows? Guest leads, episodic leads, sure -- but series leads? The same faces from show, to show, to show? How can that not dilute the product?

The Trailer Park Boys guys don't pop up in every other show -- and that's why they hold some sort of mystique. (their premiere, by the way, was hilarious, as usual.)

If Edie Falco showed up playing someone other than Carmela in a series, it would be promoted as a special deal -- a cool appearance...but what if she was on SVU, CSI, LOST, and BOSTON LEGAL all in a four month period? What would that do to how you saw Carmela?

Of course, she won't. Because they pay her very well to be Carmela, so she doesn't have to take everything that's offered.

Like I said -- I'm honestly not sure that there's a solution to this. I just feel in my bones it's yet another of the daunting problems we face in trying to create Canadian TV.

What about the UK, where they do lots of 6-8 ep runs. Do actors show up in shows over and over? And is that a problem for audiences trying to keep them straight?

Canada-Russia 72 Ratings

So the ratings came in. CBC's miniseries about the legendary 1972 Summit series drew 814 000 viewers on its first, Sunday night outing and 772 000 viewers the next night for part two.

The Toronto Sun's Bill Brioux, who really does have a hate-on for the CBC (Despite a couple of Fort-Dork driven emails stating the contrary, I really don't) crows about how low those numbers are. I'm not so sure. The second number is about what Prairie Giant, the Tommy Douglas movie scored on its second night, which means that though the hockey movie had fewer initial viewers, it kept a higher percentage of them from night to night.

And in a land where 1.5 million is a top rating, and where CBC has said they're shooting for a million viewers plus -- that's certainly in the ballpark -- especially for a movie that has a very skewed male appeal. (Remember, there are way more female TV viewers out there -- even in Canada.)

I think it's something for CBC to build on. I hope they keep calm and move on, rather than reverting to Chicken Little mode.

The Importance of Knowing Your Franchise

A new 1/2 hour Canadian series, Billable Hours, premiered last night, along with the new season of Trailer Park Boys. I haven't seen them yet, but I will later and let's see if there's something to say.

The other premiere last night was What About Brian? A show that I found odd and off-putting. I have some theories as to why. There's another ep on tonight, so I'll watch that and then see if I can articulate what's so...odd...about Brian.

Last week I was in a room for a series that's plotting out its second season. What amazed me, off the top, was how clearly they knew their characters and franchise -- what stories worked, what it was about, how to complicate the plots, etc.

This show was a comedy. I flip back and forth in my career between comedy and drama. (I meant in the shows I write, but now that I think about it, that phrase could actually just as cleanly refer to the actual state of my career.)

The first lesson I took out of the room was this: how to use coincidence.

One of the notes you're going to get from execs all the time in Canada (maybe everywhere) is isn't that coincidental?

If you go through comedy, you're going to find a lot of coincidence. It's one of the shorthands you simply need to make plots work. And out of the discussions in this room came what I call the coincidence rule: In comedy, coincidence can always kick off a plot. It can sometimes complicate a plot. But it can never provide the solution to a plot.

If you employ coincidence as your solution, you're going to leave the audience unsatisfied -- and it's going to smack of deus ex machina -- which hasn't worked too well since the Greeks leaned on it so heavily back in the day.

The temptation to use coincidence to solve your problem can be strong. Because on first blush, it seems like a great, neat, all items tied in a bow thing. I give you Escape: The Pina Colada Song. Go. Google the lyrics. I'll wait. Now, that seems tied up nice and neat, doesn't it? But really, admit it, deep down in your bones, doesn't it suck? Just a bit? It's glib and trite, isn't it?

To put it another way:

Frasier and Niles can run into their fencing instructor who terrorized them as children in Cafe Nervosa. That's a coincidence, but it's doable. The Fencing instructor can be married to the woman who runs the publishing house where Frasier's trying to get a book published. That's fine. But Niles can't come in at the end of an episode where he's been challenged to a duel and say it's no problem because he just happened to run into their old fencing instructor, and he told Niles what he and Frasier have been doing wrong in their fencing technique all these years, so now Niles has the confidence to win the duel. Or...even better -- the fencing instructor will stand in for him in the duel.

That would suck. But...if the fencing instructor shows up and finds out that Niles' opponent has engaged a second, and the second is the Fencing Instructor's Fencing Instructor -- well...that's not solving the problem, it's a big coincidence -- but it still plays. See? Because the solution is what comes next, and involves Frasier and Niles getting out of the mess they've gotten into.

As I said, this is comedy. I think Drama is a lot less tolerant of coincidence. Even if you pile tons of them on top of each other and pretend like you're making it all a deep allegory. (Yes, Best Picture 2005, I'm looking at you.)

The other thing that I learned in this room is that there's two ways to come up with a plot. Because I'm a drama writer, too -- I tend to try to come up with a workable structure and story and then try to make it funny. That can sometimes work, especially in comedy/drama hybrids.

Far more effective, however, is to try to come up with plots and situations that are inherently funny in and of themselves. Story funny. That way, you're not working hard to hang jokes on a plot -- you're laughing because the situation or dilemna your characters are in is funny even before you come up with dialogue. Again, sounds simple... in practice, sometimes, not so much.

What doing it this way also gives you is it probably makes you aware of mining that which is unique about your franchise. This is a drama example, but I thought the nadir of the post-Aaron Sorkin West Wing era was the episode where "there's a bomb in the White House..." just because I'd seen that plot on E.R., or any other John Wells show. If the plot you're working could graft just as easily into any other show, you're probably going to have to work really hard to make it funny/interesting, and about your characters.

When you're trying to come up with a new show, or even a unique spec idea for an existing show, it really helps to try and come up with the thing that could only happen to your characters, or someone in their specific situation. That is your franchise.

And if you figure that out quickly, you can save a lot of heartache.

Finally, one other thing I learned, or at least heard said very well, last week. This was said at the University class I spoke to by one of my fellow panelists, a successful Canadian animation, children's, and comedy TV writer. On the subject of having your characters change and grow:

"Comedy characters can't grow the same way characters in a drama can..the kind of growth a character on a comedy will go through in five or six years is about the same as one season of Desperate Housewives or Grey's Anatomy."

Like I said, I'm aware of that sentiment, and have had painful meetings where I tried to explain it to people who were hell-bent on killing the comedy by having the character "learn something," but I just think that's a very elegant way to lay it out.