"Just a regular guy..."
"Good sport..."
"Good sense of humor..."
"A guy you'd want to have dinner with..."
Sure.
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Friday, May 5, 2006
Rogers' Cable PVR is Evil
Here in the Great White North, we suffer, TIVO-less.
Both Bell Expressvu and Rogers (the big satellite and cable choices in my area) have PVR based recorders, menu driven, of course -- but they're just not as smart or crazysexycool as TIVO.
Each has their quirks. The bane of the Rogers model hearkens back to the bad old days of the imprecise VCR clock. It's a slave to the schedule grid, and if the Amnets are doing their usual shuck fly bait and switch, and start a movie or tv series early or end it late, it gets cut off.
There are certain shows and networks which are the worst culprits. ABC is flat out the worst. Usually when I remember, I try to program a few extra minutes on the end of the recording. It's cumbersome and I don't always remember. But even that doesn't always work. When you have a "tape every show" setting, it doesn't remember from week to week that you want to stop taping at 10:02, not 10:00.
Anyway, all that's a long way of getting to this. Now, this might not mean a lot to you if you don't watch LOST, but I'm not into doing spoilers, so you can go find out what I'm talking about somewhere else. If you do watch LOST, you should recognize my problem immediately.
Here's how LOST ended for me this week:
Ana Lucia (Michele Rodriguez, left) says, "I just can't do this anymore," meaning kill Henry, the Other they've got stashed in the hatch. Michael (Harold Perrineau, right) nods and says, "Give me the gun. Let me do it." Ana Lucia hands him the gun. Michael says, "I'm sorry."
End of Recording.
I don't want to talk about it.
Both Bell Expressvu and Rogers (the big satellite and cable choices in my area) have PVR based recorders, menu driven, of course -- but they're just not as smart or crazysexycool as TIVO.
Each has their quirks. The bane of the Rogers model hearkens back to the bad old days of the imprecise VCR clock. It's a slave to the schedule grid, and if the Amnets are doing their usual shuck fly bait and switch, and start a movie or tv series early or end it late, it gets cut off.
There are certain shows and networks which are the worst culprits. ABC is flat out the worst. Usually when I remember, I try to program a few extra minutes on the end of the recording. It's cumbersome and I don't always remember. But even that doesn't always work. When you have a "tape every show" setting, it doesn't remember from week to week that you want to stop taping at 10:02, not 10:00.
Anyway, all that's a long way of getting to this. Now, this might not mean a lot to you if you don't watch LOST, but I'm not into doing spoilers, so you can go find out what I'm talking about somewhere else. If you do watch LOST, you should recognize my problem immediately.
Here's how LOST ended for me this week:
Ana Lucia (Michele Rodriguez, left) says, "I just can't do this anymore," meaning kill Henry, the Other they've got stashed in the hatch. Michael (Harold Perrineau, right) nods and says, "Give me the gun. Let me do it." Ana Lucia hands him the gun. Michael says, "I'm sorry."End of Recording.
I don't want to talk about it.
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Lapdogs: Why the Colbert Context Matters
Every time I (or any other blogging screenwriter) goes off on a jag writing about U.S. politics, we get emails from some people saying, "can you just get back to writing about screenwriting?"
I understand the sentiment -- I've grown pretty weary, Lord knows, of hearing Pam Anderson on Peta or George Clooney on deforestation, or Bono on Africa. (Okay, maybe not Bono on Africa.) Blogging screenwriters don't even have their chiseled good looks to fall back on.
But in the case of the Media today, and reportage of Iraq, and Bush -- I think the reason why so many of us freak out every once in a while has screenwriting roots.
In brief: we spend our days trying to come up with narratives that make sense, that don't defy rules of logic - that take questions and follow them to truthful, emotionally satisfying conclusions.
And then we look at the narrative of what's happened in the last couple of years in America and we just can't believe it. Because it's such a bullshit narrative. Never in a million years could we get away with such a shoddy, misleading, ill-researched, counter-intuitive plot.
Yet here we are.
In Salon today, Eric Boehlert has published an excerpt from his new book, Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over For Bush. It's long, and depressing, and quietly devestating. It's so devestating, in fact, that much as I've always enjoyed Boehlert's writing in Salon, I don't think I can bring myself to read the book. It's just too depressing, and I'm not really going to learn anything I didn't already know.
In recounting how the MSM behaved in the leadup to the Iraq war, Boehlert name checks the usual suspects: and with fact after fact, lays bare how completely the U.S. media have abandoned their responsibilities since 9/11.
In short, it's like this: they're so afraid of being labeled "liberal" that they have grossly overcompensated. During the Clinton administration, this meant going with poorly-sourced and false stories that were unfairly critical of the adminstration. In the War President Fictions of Bush the Second, it means overreporting talking points by the administration, and marginalizing any views that challenge the Bush narrative. All this while the media mouthpiece of the Republican Party, the right wing talk shows and FOX News and their ilk, continue the steady drumbeat of criticism that the media has a "liberal bias."
Boehlert's quiet, steady timeline of story comparisons, timelines and, um, oh yes, facts -- puts the lie to the received wisdom at the centre of the media story in America today. From Judy Miller to the Times to the conduct of supposedly "liberal" outlets like CNN and Nightline -- it's just shameful. And, of course, the only way that it can be refuted by the right is through more of the same dirty, sleazy demagoguery.
Which brings us back to Colbert. Make no mistake, Boehlert's article is the Cliff's Notes for what we saw play out in the media last weekend.
The press ignored Colbert -- as they have about far, far more important stories over the last three years. Then, when prodded, step one was to float the idea that near-total omission of talk about Colbert was due to it just not being "newsworthy."
That spin couldn't hold, of course, because it was ridiculous. Someone does a hyper-critical routine three feet from a President who's well known for not hearing critical voices -- that's news. It certainly was news when Don Imus roasted Clinton at the same event a few years before. So... that spin morphed to the current talking point: "he just wasn't funny."
One problem: millions of people have seen the clip now...millions more than ever would have seen it if it was the one day story it deserved to be -- and they disagree. Plus, the sentiments expressed by Colbert are now the sentiments of a majority of the American population.
The optics are crystal clear: the press is completely out of step on this one, with everyone except the hardcore, shrinking rump of the extreme right wing. They may try to peddle the "Colbert crossed the line" meme -- but considering Colbert's actions run in a straight line back to, oh, say, Thomas Paine -- it's just not a theory that will fly for long.
My parents are fiscal and social conservatives. Through my twenties and into my thirties, as a series of Conservative governments ruled Canada, and my Province of Ontario, I would have huge, pointless political fights with my father. I'm actually pretty centrist, but I used to joke that all it took was a visit with my parents to make me come out sounding like Trotsky.
My Dad and I haven't had a political argument in two years.
What changed? Well, my parents, like a lot of retirees, now spend half the year in Florida. And for the last couple of years, they've become horrified by the one-sided slant they see in the news. "Americans," they say, "simply aren't getting the full story."
The Salon article neatly lays out how that came to be.
Funnily enough, I have never been too comfortable with journalism even when I nominally worked in it. (For a laugh, check this internet wayback cache of an article riffed off by Jon Katz when I interviewed him in my previous life.)
All voices have bias. All stories have a slant.
But there are some pitches that you should just not be able to sell.
Interestingly enough, this week in Toronto, there's the huge HotDocs festival going on. The huge rise in the popularity of the Documentary format -- the thirst people have for non-fiction reading these days...take the blogs out of it -- do you think maybe, just maybe, these trends have something to do with people feeling failed by the storytelling coming from the mainstream media?
Just asking.
I understand the sentiment -- I've grown pretty weary, Lord knows, of hearing Pam Anderson on Peta or George Clooney on deforestation, or Bono on Africa. (Okay, maybe not Bono on Africa.) Blogging screenwriters don't even have their chiseled good looks to fall back on.
But in the case of the Media today, and reportage of Iraq, and Bush -- I think the reason why so many of us freak out every once in a while has screenwriting roots.
In brief: we spend our days trying to come up with narratives that make sense, that don't defy rules of logic - that take questions and follow them to truthful, emotionally satisfying conclusions.
And then we look at the narrative of what's happened in the last couple of years in America and we just can't believe it. Because it's such a bullshit narrative. Never in a million years could we get away with such a shoddy, misleading, ill-researched, counter-intuitive plot.
Yet here we are.
In Salon today, Eric Boehlert has published an excerpt from his new book, Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over For Bush. It's long, and depressing, and quietly devestating. It's so devestating, in fact, that much as I've always enjoyed Boehlert's writing in Salon, I don't think I can bring myself to read the book. It's just too depressing, and I'm not really going to learn anything I didn't already know.In recounting how the MSM behaved in the leadup to the Iraq war, Boehlert name checks the usual suspects: and with fact after fact, lays bare how completely the U.S. media have abandoned their responsibilities since 9/11.
In short, it's like this: they're so afraid of being labeled "liberal" that they have grossly overcompensated. During the Clinton administration, this meant going with poorly-sourced and false stories that were unfairly critical of the adminstration. In the War President Fictions of Bush the Second, it means overreporting talking points by the administration, and marginalizing any views that challenge the Bush narrative. All this while the media mouthpiece of the Republican Party, the right wing talk shows and FOX News and their ilk, continue the steady drumbeat of criticism that the media has a "liberal bias."
Boehlert's quiet, steady timeline of story comparisons, timelines and, um, oh yes, facts -- puts the lie to the received wisdom at the centre of the media story in America today. From Judy Miller to the Times to the conduct of supposedly "liberal" outlets like CNN and Nightline -- it's just shameful. And, of course, the only way that it can be refuted by the right is through more of the same dirty, sleazy demagoguery.
Which brings us back to Colbert. Make no mistake, Boehlert's article is the Cliff's Notes for what we saw play out in the media last weekend.
The press ignored Colbert -- as they have about far, far more important stories over the last three years. Then, when prodded, step one was to float the idea that near-total omission of talk about Colbert was due to it just not being "newsworthy."
That spin couldn't hold, of course, because it was ridiculous. Someone does a hyper-critical routine three feet from a President who's well known for not hearing critical voices -- that's news. It certainly was news when Don Imus roasted Clinton at the same event a few years before. So... that spin morphed to the current talking point: "he just wasn't funny."
One problem: millions of people have seen the clip now...millions more than ever would have seen it if it was the one day story it deserved to be -- and they disagree. Plus, the sentiments expressed by Colbert are now the sentiments of a majority of the American population.
The optics are crystal clear: the press is completely out of step on this one, with everyone except the hardcore, shrinking rump of the extreme right wing. They may try to peddle the "Colbert crossed the line" meme -- but considering Colbert's actions run in a straight line back to, oh, say, Thomas Paine -- it's just not a theory that will fly for long.
My parents are fiscal and social conservatives. Through my twenties and into my thirties, as a series of Conservative governments ruled Canada, and my Province of Ontario, I would have huge, pointless political fights with my father. I'm actually pretty centrist, but I used to joke that all it took was a visit with my parents to make me come out sounding like Trotsky.
My Dad and I haven't had a political argument in two years.
What changed? Well, my parents, like a lot of retirees, now spend half the year in Florida. And for the last couple of years, they've become horrified by the one-sided slant they see in the news. "Americans," they say, "simply aren't getting the full story."
The Salon article neatly lays out how that came to be.
Funnily enough, I have never been too comfortable with journalism even when I nominally worked in it. (For a laugh, check this internet wayback cache of an article riffed off by Jon Katz when I interviewed him in my previous life.)
All voices have bias. All stories have a slant.
But there are some pitches that you should just not be able to sell.
Interestingly enough, this week in Toronto, there's the huge HotDocs festival going on. The huge rise in the popularity of the Documentary format -- the thirst people have for non-fiction reading these days...take the blogs out of it -- do you think maybe, just maybe, these trends have something to do with people feeling failed by the storytelling coming from the mainstream media?
Just asking.
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
I have a new favorite phrase
lèse-majesté
Merci, Merci, Monsieur Colbert.
And honestly, how perfect that it's French? (Although derived from Latin, so I guess you can blame the Catholic Church too, if you want, dittoheads.) Go on. Flail.
Blogger Busman's Holiday.
Only one thing I care about today, and it's this:The forecast calls for Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour on XM.
I dig it.
Muddy Waters first up. Blow Wind Blow, indeed.
You can have Stern. This is the shit.
Now if XMCanada could only find in their hearts to send me an Inno to replace my poor cracked Pioneer Airware.
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
What So Proudly You Hail
This is the thing that honestly makes the rest of the world crazy about us Americans.
We are a nation of immigrants -- many of them illegal. My Grandfather was illegal for years. I daresay he and his descendants helped pay taxes, build the country, and support the values of America completely.
Through all the difficult issues facing Americans right now -- stellar gas prices, a falling dollar, a war with a mounting death toll that started because of a lie, a President who insists that neither checks nor balances apply to him, a broken country that we're now obligated to fix, and, oh yeah, a destroyed city to fix while the debt goes north of another trillion -- by all means, let's all take a stand...
...on NOT singing the national anthem in Spanish.
Sixty-nine percent of you, including our one-third popular President, thinks this is a big deal.
Is anyone surprised that Bush actually sang the anthem in Spanish himself in the past? No? Why? Oh, right -- it wasn't an issue they were trying to exploit to change the subject back then. Right.
Nuestro Himno is not the issue and it never was, of course -- but just before it all gets clucky-ducky down there, here's an alternate view.
Hi! Canada here. We're a country with two official languages, English and French. Our anthem is in two languages. English and French. Believe it or not, the French version was actually written first. It was first performed in 1880. Calixa Lavallée wrote the Music, and Sir Adolphe Basile Routhier wrote the original lyrics. A lot of Canadians are surprised when they find out the song's origins: it was written originally as a French Canadian patriotic song for St. Jean Baptiste Day. (Ironically, in recent years when separatist furor has waxed in Quebec, it's gotten booed at hockey games, without the realization that it's a French Canadian patriot who came up with it!) The French version of the song is very pretty:
Don't worry if your French is hazy. Mine too. The translation basically boils down to this:
Sword AND the Cross -- see that? A sentiment even a Bush fan could get behind!
The English version wasn't written until 1908. It's had some changes through the years, but the current lyrics are now basically this:
Now. Two things for you to know. First -- O Canada didn't officially become Canada's national anthem until 1980. And second -- people in English still complain about the lyrics. The most voiceferous are currently feminists who believe that the line about "In all thy sons command" is sexist. I tend to agree, and don't particularly understand why a quick change to "In thy children command" or something is such a big deal. Then others don't particularly like the heavy God stuff. We're a more secular country than the U.S. don'tcha know. But you know what?
Funnily enough, most of the time there's a Canadian solution. At events, often they'll sing a version that has some of the lyrics in French, Some in English. And nobody gets too worked up.
You know why nobody gets too worked up?
Because it doesn't goddamn matter!
If an immigrant wants to sing your anthem in Polish or Xhosa or Navajo -- the important thing is why they're singing it. And what it represents to them.
And anyhow, you're all getting pretty shirty up about a tune that, after all, is a British drinking song from the 18th century! Does that matter? That it was a big old piss up number sung in bars from Portsmouth to Gibraltar?
No? Why not?
Oh, I see, because the important thing is the meaning you feel when you sing it now?
Got it.
Funny. Said that way, it all sounds so simple.
Now, can you get back to fixing the shit that needs fixing? We got a 90 cent Canadian dollar here. It's messing stuff up for us Canucks. Go. Take care of the economy and shit.
We are a nation of immigrants -- many of them illegal. My Grandfather was illegal for years. I daresay he and his descendants helped pay taxes, build the country, and support the values of America completely.
Through all the difficult issues facing Americans right now -- stellar gas prices, a falling dollar, a war with a mounting death toll that started because of a lie, a President who insists that neither checks nor balances apply to him, a broken country that we're now obligated to fix, and, oh yeah, a destroyed city to fix while the debt goes north of another trillion -- by all means, let's all take a stand...
...on NOT singing the national anthem in Spanish.
Sixty-nine percent of you, including our one-third popular President, thinks this is a big deal.
Is anyone surprised that Bush actually sang the anthem in Spanish himself in the past? No? Why? Oh, right -- it wasn't an issue they were trying to exploit to change the subject back then. Right.
Nuestro Himno is not the issue and it never was, of course -- but just before it all gets clucky-ducky down there, here's an alternate view.
Hi! Canada here. We're a country with two official languages, English and French. Our anthem is in two languages. English and French. Believe it or not, the French version was actually written first. It was first performed in 1880. Calixa Lavallée wrote the Music, and Sir Adolphe Basile Routhier wrote the original lyrics. A lot of Canadians are surprised when they find out the song's origins: it was written originally as a French Canadian patriotic song for St. Jean Baptiste Day. (Ironically, in recent years when separatist furor has waxed in Quebec, it's gotten booed at hockey games, without the realization that it's a French Canadian patriot who came up with it!) The French version of the song is very pretty:
Ô Canada! Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux.
Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix.
Ton histoire est une épopée,
Des plus brillants exploits.
Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
Don't worry if your French is hazy. Mine too. The translation basically boils down to this:
O Canada! Land of our forefathers
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As in thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic of the most brilliant exploits.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.
Sword AND the Cross -- see that? A sentiment even a Bush fan could get behind!
The English version wasn't written until 1908. It's had some changes through the years, but the current lyrics are now basically this:
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
Now. Two things for you to know. First -- O Canada didn't officially become Canada's national anthem until 1980. And second -- people in English still complain about the lyrics. The most voiceferous are currently feminists who believe that the line about "In all thy sons command" is sexist. I tend to agree, and don't particularly understand why a quick change to "In thy children command" or something is such a big deal. Then others don't particularly like the heavy God stuff. We're a more secular country than the U.S. don'tcha know. But you know what?
Funnily enough, most of the time there's a Canadian solution. At events, often they'll sing a version that has some of the lyrics in French, Some in English. And nobody gets too worked up.
You know why nobody gets too worked up?
Because it doesn't goddamn matter!
If an immigrant wants to sing your anthem in Polish or Xhosa or Navajo -- the important thing is why they're singing it. And what it represents to them.
And anyhow, you're all getting pretty shirty up about a tune that, after all, is a British drinking song from the 18th century! Does that matter? That it was a big old piss up number sung in bars from Portsmouth to Gibraltar?
No? Why not?
Oh, I see, because the important thing is the meaning you feel when you sing it now?
Got it.
Funny. Said that way, it all sounds so simple.
Now, can you get back to fixing the shit that needs fixing? We got a 90 cent Canadian dollar here. It's messing stuff up for us Canucks. Go. Take care of the economy and shit.
Writers, Break out Your Jazz Hands
John Doyle does his usual stellar work in The Mop & Pail this morning, and he puts me in mind of something I've been thinking for a while.
For your DH script to work, you have to master the same careful balane of comedy and melodrama they do. If you're doing a Grey's -- you better not front-load that medical stuff just to show off all your fabbo research. And God-help-you if you get House's Socratic demeanor wrong:
Depressed yet?
We need to imagine the television landscape today as a post-Balkan battlefield. The Networks have been fighting a scrappy insurgency for years from Cable shows. The pieces of the pie are still out there, but they're not in creamy, easy to deliver swaths of shining suburbs. It's a pitched viewer battle, clearing street, by street, by street. And the weapons haven't changed much in thirty or forty years.
Oh sure, for a while there it looked like reality was the nuclear-tipped ordnance of their viewer pacifying dreams -- but that proved to be short lived.
I'm going too far with the war metaphor, aren't I? Okay. Let me try something else.
What all these hybrid shows have discovered is that the only way to build a large audience on the TV dial these days is to borrow and recombine elements that will draw viewers from different constituencies. It's not enough that HOUSE has a cranky, male-appeal lead -- he has to have a mystery and elements that feel like a cop show. That way the men watching can exercise their figure it out circuits, and the women in the audience can invest in their caring, will the patient survive stuff. Oh, and the sweet obsessives can also take their licks following wounded House or Cameron into relationship heaven or hell. Smack it all together -- see all those elements cooking in there, and THAT'S why so many people are staying tuned after American Idol. Parts of the show appeal to different constituencies. And the blending of those elements is skilful, not hamfisted, so none of those constituencies revolt and think that they're being pandered to.
These shows are the medium-future of TV. It's an outgrowth of conversations I've been hearing from various quarters for two or three years. When executives say things like, "I want a sci fi show that isn't a sci-fi show..." or, "I need this to do more," that's what they're struggling with.
If you go in with a spec, or a series, that's just a lawyer show or just a cop show these days, you're going to get a blank look. It's time for us all to become DJ's. Scratch and Mix guys. Scratch and Mix. It just got harder, sure -- but if you're the guy or girl who comes up with the next Grey's Anatomy (rather than the next copy of Grey's Anatomy) then the ticket's right there, waiting for you to snatch it.
And if you're just trying to break in, well -- maybe it's time to jettison that idea of going in as a mystery or a sci-fi or a procedural writer. Open it up. Time to play some jazz.
Blow, Gabriel, Blow.
That's a very neat summation of the three shows, and something that I wonder if potential spec writers have realized yet. Time was you needed to master a genre in order to deliver a credible spec. In this new hybrid world, the rewards are greater -- a sparkling script will probably sparkle a little brighter. But it's also fraught with peril -- because it means that your analysis skills, the stuff you do before you attempt to break a story -- become even more important.Take a look at the truly successful network series of the moment and you'll find that all are hybrids rather than genre-specific.
Desperate Housewives is an hour-long drama, a soap opera brimming with bits of comedy. The actors need finely tuned comic timing to make the scripts work, but it's not a sitcom. It's a subtly massaged, mixed-up comedy-drama. Grey's Anatomy is Sex and the Big City Hospital, with a few touches of Melrose Place and ER thrown in.
And then there's House (Fox, Global 9 p.m.), which is certainly not your traditional medical drama. It's part police procedural and part legal drama, with dyspeptic Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) often taking a prosecutor's perspective on the hapless defendant. It's just that the defendant is the patient and the motive to be discovered is some obscure but pesky infection.
For your DH script to work, you have to master the same careful balane of comedy and melodrama they do. If you're doing a Grey's -- you better not front-load that medical stuff just to show off all your fabbo research. And God-help-you if you get House's Socratic demeanor wrong:
The thing is, this episode underlines the show's reliance on the dramatic strategies usually associated not only with cop shows, but also many legal dramas. A lot of what Dr. House does is familiar to anyone who knows how some classes at law school proceed -- House's probing wit, sarcasm and skepticism is a souped-up version of the Socratic method of questioning in order to establish critical thinking in law students. It's not about establishing certainty, it's about learning to question received wisdom.So what we're saying now is that if you're going to write a credible HOUSE spec script, not only do you need to have a medical advisor who helps you come up with a weird twisty turny case, but you have to have an intricate understanding of how legal dramas work. So it helps if you're a lawyer. Oh, and the cop show thing too.
Depressed yet?
We need to imagine the television landscape today as a post-Balkan battlefield. The Networks have been fighting a scrappy insurgency for years from Cable shows. The pieces of the pie are still out there, but they're not in creamy, easy to deliver swaths of shining suburbs. It's a pitched viewer battle, clearing street, by street, by street. And the weapons haven't changed much in thirty or forty years.
Oh sure, for a while there it looked like reality was the nuclear-tipped ordnance of their viewer pacifying dreams -- but that proved to be short lived.
I'm going too far with the war metaphor, aren't I? Okay. Let me try something else.
What all these hybrid shows have discovered is that the only way to build a large audience on the TV dial these days is to borrow and recombine elements that will draw viewers from different constituencies. It's not enough that HOUSE has a cranky, male-appeal lead -- he has to have a mystery and elements that feel like a cop show. That way the men watching can exercise their figure it out circuits, and the women in the audience can invest in their caring, will the patient survive stuff. Oh, and the sweet obsessives can also take their licks following wounded House or Cameron into relationship heaven or hell. Smack it all together -- see all those elements cooking in there, and THAT'S why so many people are staying tuned after American Idol. Parts of the show appeal to different constituencies. And the blending of those elements is skilful, not hamfisted, so none of those constituencies revolt and think that they're being pandered to.
These shows are the medium-future of TV. It's an outgrowth of conversations I've been hearing from various quarters for two or three years. When executives say things like, "I want a sci fi show that isn't a sci-fi show..." or, "I need this to do more," that's what they're struggling with.
If you go in with a spec, or a series, that's just a lawyer show or just a cop show these days, you're going to get a blank look. It's time for us all to become DJ's. Scratch and Mix guys. Scratch and Mix. It just got harder, sure -- but if you're the guy or girl who comes up with the next Grey's Anatomy (rather than the next copy of Grey's Anatomy) then the ticket's right there, waiting for you to snatch it.
And if you're just trying to break in, well -- maybe it's time to jettison that idea of going in as a mystery or a sci-fi or a procedural writer. Open it up. Time to play some jazz.
Blow, Gabriel, Blow.
Monday, May 1, 2006
A Reader Writes: "Your Partner Becomes the Moment?" HUH?
Yesterday I posted a bit of wisdom that Cherry Jones related about acting monologues, and said that it could apply equally to writing. Jones was quoting her castmate Jonathan Kent, and here's what he/she said:
What Jones is talking about is actor's process. It's often precious, but the real-world example I can come up with is this: we all know certain people who we feel, deep down, don't listen. The old two-types of people-in-the-world trope says that there are people who listen to what you're saying, and follow a conversation, and people who are mainly using the time that you're talking to formulate what they're going to say next. Ie: they're not really listening to you, they're ordering their own thoughts, and processing your auditory information primarily as cues to when they can communicate next.
This is a bad, bad habit. It drives everyone crazy. We all know how much more satisfying it is to have a conversation with someone who "is a good listener." There have been countless jokes about how men do this more often, or how women do it more often, which to me is the perfect indicator of the fact that people in both genders do it way too much. Even people who are "good listeners" find themselves in the position of focusing on what they want to say next, sometimes. It's a bad habit, yes, but it's also a natural one.
Acting is about creating a facsimile of human experience. And paradoxically, that means that to be effective, you have to excise a behavior that a lot of us do every day. On a mechanical level, actors know what their next line is. It's been memorized. It's cued by the other actor's previous line -- so they know what they're going to say next, and they know what the other person is going to say next, too. (I know, it sounds like a lot of marriages, right?) But what Jones is saying is you can't act that way. You have to listen to the nuance of what the person is doing in a conversation -- you have to feel the words and the flow of conversation just as if you were really listening to the person and didn't know what they were going to say next. Yes, it's the same conversation every night (if you're doing theater) -- but at the same time, it's not. If that sounds confusing, well, then now you know why so many actors are so crazy. I give actors a lot of stick here, but what they do is very hard. (And, irony of ironies, one of the great frustrating things about many of them is that they work so hard to be in the moment when they're on stage, and spend every off-stage conversation they have thinking of what they're going to say next. The Human Comedy. It's a bitch.)
Now. The second part of Jones' theory is about what happens on stage when you don't have another actor there to play off.
The Monologue is a very theatrical concept. It doesn't happen in real life at all, among the non-schizophrenic of us. We speak of "talking to ourselves" but for most of us that's going to be, at best, a couple of anguished self-admonishments. Conscience may make cowards of us all, but we don't go around saying that to ourselves very often. Not out loud, anyway.
So how do you create something on stage and make it real, when the very thing you're doing is artificial, without a real life equivalent?
Well, Jones' solution is to treat the moment that you're in like it's the other player. You become aware of your words in space. The time they're taking, the weight of them moving through space and time. You don't think of what you have to say next, just as you don't do that in a scene. Instead, you feel each line, each thought -- really feel it -- you listen to the moment before you move on.
Why is this important for writers? Because this is how a good actor is going to approach your writing. You are writing to be interpreted -- by actors, by directors... and the only way you can gauge effect is to account for this process in the midst of your process.
Some writers walk and talk their script. I think all of us should. I simply can't imagine putting something forward without having read it out loud; hearing how the words hang in the air. Where are the moments? Time in your mind is never the same as in your mouth.
Know, or at least try to anticipate, how your actors are going to play each moment. I've seen a hundred bad actors rush headlong through the "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy, because they were intimidated by it. And I've seen actors take it painfully slowly, making a meal of every line, every word -- because they were intimidated by it, or overly reverent.
Writers can't be overly reverent toward our own material -- ever. There are lines that are meant to be thrown away. Are you communicating that? Is the shape of your scene correct, in that the 'big moment' is a clear one for the actor or the director to interpret?
(You will find actors who are perverse -- who live to subvert intent, who try to throw away big moments and make their stand on small ones. These actors are craven loogens, and you damn well better hope that the director isn't trying to sleep with them, or you're screwed. But this is also why you don't turn an understanding actor into a loogen, by parenthetically directing them on every single line and inflection.)
Accounting for how the actor must play the moment leads you to understand some things. First, it's the reason why monologue in TV is rare and is used so sparingly. Speeches that are five and six lines long take a long time to say. And if you're trying to flow them in the middle of a vibrant scene that's supposed to keep a plot moving, well, that speech better be pretty goddamn entertaining. With every line you add, you increase the chance that the actor is going to want to either make a meal of every moment, or rewrite it.
Which is why one, two, and three line dialogue patches are TV's bread and butter.
But at some point, you're going to have cause for something longer. A monologue, a voiceover over montage. Remember the actor up there, by themselves, trying to play with the moment as their scene partner. Have pity on them. And try to help them whenever you can.
Or your writing's gonna get butchered.
(ADDENDUM: from the file of trying to subtly influence how actors play your lines, I simply love this post from Jane Espenson, where she explains why it's better to not always go with the rule, and end on the joke.)
“When you’re onstage with other actors,” he said, “the cardinal rule is to listen always, to be alive to what other actors are saying. But when you are doing a monologue, your partner becomes the moment.”To which reader-of-the-blog Anna replied:
"Your partner becomes the moment”? I don't even understand this."Fair enough.
What Jones is talking about is actor's process. It's often precious, but the real-world example I can come up with is this: we all know certain people who we feel, deep down, don't listen. The old two-types of people-in-the-world trope says that there are people who listen to what you're saying, and follow a conversation, and people who are mainly using the time that you're talking to formulate what they're going to say next. Ie: they're not really listening to you, they're ordering their own thoughts, and processing your auditory information primarily as cues to when they can communicate next.
This is a bad, bad habit. It drives everyone crazy. We all know how much more satisfying it is to have a conversation with someone who "is a good listener." There have been countless jokes about how men do this more often, or how women do it more often, which to me is the perfect indicator of the fact that people in both genders do it way too much. Even people who are "good listeners" find themselves in the position of focusing on what they want to say next, sometimes. It's a bad habit, yes, but it's also a natural one.
Acting is about creating a facsimile of human experience. And paradoxically, that means that to be effective, you have to excise a behavior that a lot of us do every day. On a mechanical level, actors know what their next line is. It's been memorized. It's cued by the other actor's previous line -- so they know what they're going to say next, and they know what the other person is going to say next, too. (I know, it sounds like a lot of marriages, right?) But what Jones is saying is you can't act that way. You have to listen to the nuance of what the person is doing in a conversation -- you have to feel the words and the flow of conversation just as if you were really listening to the person and didn't know what they were going to say next. Yes, it's the same conversation every night (if you're doing theater) -- but at the same time, it's not. If that sounds confusing, well, then now you know why so many actors are so crazy. I give actors a lot of stick here, but what they do is very hard. (And, irony of ironies, one of the great frustrating things about many of them is that they work so hard to be in the moment when they're on stage, and spend every off-stage conversation they have thinking of what they're going to say next. The Human Comedy. It's a bitch.)
Now. The second part of Jones' theory is about what happens on stage when you don't have another actor there to play off.
The Monologue is a very theatrical concept. It doesn't happen in real life at all, among the non-schizophrenic of us. We speak of "talking to ourselves" but for most of us that's going to be, at best, a couple of anguished self-admonishments. Conscience may make cowards of us all, but we don't go around saying that to ourselves very often. Not out loud, anyway.
So how do you create something on stage and make it real, when the very thing you're doing is artificial, without a real life equivalent?
Well, Jones' solution is to treat the moment that you're in like it's the other player. You become aware of your words in space. The time they're taking, the weight of them moving through space and time. You don't think of what you have to say next, just as you don't do that in a scene. Instead, you feel each line, each thought -- really feel it -- you listen to the moment before you move on.
Why is this important for writers? Because this is how a good actor is going to approach your writing. You are writing to be interpreted -- by actors, by directors... and the only way you can gauge effect is to account for this process in the midst of your process.
Some writers walk and talk their script. I think all of us should. I simply can't imagine putting something forward without having read it out loud; hearing how the words hang in the air. Where are the moments? Time in your mind is never the same as in your mouth.
Know, or at least try to anticipate, how your actors are going to play each moment. I've seen a hundred bad actors rush headlong through the "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy, because they were intimidated by it. And I've seen actors take it painfully slowly, making a meal of every line, every word -- because they were intimidated by it, or overly reverent.
Writers can't be overly reverent toward our own material -- ever. There are lines that are meant to be thrown away. Are you communicating that? Is the shape of your scene correct, in that the 'big moment' is a clear one for the actor or the director to interpret?
(You will find actors who are perverse -- who live to subvert intent, who try to throw away big moments and make their stand on small ones. These actors are craven loogens, and you damn well better hope that the director isn't trying to sleep with them, or you're screwed. But this is also why you don't turn an understanding actor into a loogen, by parenthetically directing them on every single line and inflection.)
Accounting for how the actor must play the moment leads you to understand some things. First, it's the reason why monologue in TV is rare and is used so sparingly. Speeches that are five and six lines long take a long time to say. And if you're trying to flow them in the middle of a vibrant scene that's supposed to keep a plot moving, well, that speech better be pretty goddamn entertaining. With every line you add, you increase the chance that the actor is going to want to either make a meal of every moment, or rewrite it.
Which is why one, two, and three line dialogue patches are TV's bread and butter.
But at some point, you're going to have cause for something longer. A monologue, a voiceover over montage. Remember the actor up there, by themselves, trying to play with the moment as their scene partner. Have pity on them. And try to help them whenever you can.
Or your writing's gonna get butchered.
(ADDENDUM: from the file of trying to subtly influence how actors play your lines, I simply love this post from Jane Espenson, where she explains why it's better to not always go with the rule, and end on the joke.)
The Thing That I Don't Get
So sounds like Stephen Colbert caused a furor over the weekend at the White House Correspondents' Dinner by actually having the temerity to be funny.
You'd be forgiven if you missed the story, though. It's not like the media reported it much. Even the "ooh so liberal" NYTimes goes today with a story about Bush's routine with a lame Bush impression.
John Rogers lays it out pretty well in this post.
And Glenn Greenwald had this to say:
This is where, for the sake of argument, I throw it open to the less than one-third of my countrymen who still believe in this guy. Even if you think we are wrong to criticize him, even if you think everything he does is sweet and light, can you not step back for a second and see how this is just not good?
I know all those civics lessons about the checks and balances were pretty boring, but seriously, the breathtaking thing that just makes me wonder at the dittoheads sanity is this: if the President can take this much power for himself - don't you guys realize that one day -- someday, someone you really, really, really hate will be in that chair? Some potsmoking faggot hippie abortion lover who hates Jesus? It'll happen, kids. And he'll have the same power that your savior does - because no matter how he tries to shred the constitution, that's how precedent works.
If that gives you even a second of pause -- and it should -- then haven't you just had an accountability moment? The Problem with crowning a King is that there's always somebody worse waiting in the wings.
You'd be forgiven if you missed the story, though. It's not like the media reported it much. Even the "ooh so liberal" NYTimes goes today with a story about Bush's routine with a lame Bush impression.
John Rogers lays it out pretty well in this post.
And Glenn Greenwald had this to say:
One of the principal tactics used over the last five years by Bush defenders to transform the president, our public servant, into some sort of monarchical figure is the endless, craven effort to refer to him as "The Comamnder-in-Chief," in order to implicitly bestow upon him an aura of elevated, militaristic glory which renders not only disrespect towards the President, but also mere criticism of him, somehow inappropriate, even unpatriotic. In that regard, it was extremely refreshing to see Stephen Colbert's stand-up routine last night (video here - transcript here) at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Pam Spaulding provides an excellent discussion of that event, as does Joe Gandelman.The importance or relevance of the reaction to Colbert is given new light in Greenwald's coverage of the Boston Globe article this weekend about the unitary executive's new big hit: the fact that he doesn't have to obey the law.
As Pam notes, a commenter at the site of Jonah's mom, Lucianne Goldberg, said that "Steve Colbert was utterly disgusting. . . He was rude, snarky and unpatriotic toward the President and First Lady." One can be unpatriotic towards one's country, but not to the Leader, and certainly not by expresing criticism of the Leader, even to his face. The efforts to shield the President from criticisms of any sort has been one of the most significant factors enabling the lawbreaking pathology of this president, who clearly has come to see himself as a shielded king. The belief that an American citizen is unpatriotic by virtue of criticizing and opposing the president is one of the most pernicious ideas to take hold in some time. What Colbert did took real courage and - like Savage - he should be commended for reminding us of the kind of country we are supposed to have, and the kind of country we aren't supposed to have and, until this administration, never had.
This is where, for the sake of argument, I throw it open to the less than one-third of my countrymen who still believe in this guy. Even if you think we are wrong to criticize him, even if you think everything he does is sweet and light, can you not step back for a second and see how this is just not good?
I know all those civics lessons about the checks and balances were pretty boring, but seriously, the breathtaking thing that just makes me wonder at the dittoheads sanity is this: if the President can take this much power for himself - don't you guys realize that one day -- someday, someone you really, really, really hate will be in that chair? Some potsmoking faggot hippie abortion lover who hates Jesus? It'll happen, kids. And he'll have the same power that your savior does - because no matter how he tries to shred the constitution, that's how precedent works.
If that gives you even a second of pause -- and it should -- then haven't you just had an accountability moment? The Problem with crowning a King is that there's always somebody worse waiting in the wings.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Sunday Randomness
Today's New York Times, Cherry Jones talks about her appearance in Brian Friel's The Faith Healer on Broadway. it's a show where four actors -- Jones, Ian McDiarmid, Ralph Fiennes and Jonathan Kent weave a story, but don't appear together until the final curtain.
So much of what Actors say is a load of hooey that you can fall into the trap of not realizing just how smart and insightful a lot of them are. Not only do I think the above quote is a beautiful summation of how to act a monologue -- I think it's an essential notion to how you write one.
Theater's a lot on my mind today. There's also an article on Bob Martin and Drowsy Chaperone, which I guess finally opens tomorrow.
Everybody in Toronto's thinking shiny thoughts for 'em. Break a leg at the Marquis.
"I have never done monologue or anything like it. Early on, Jonathan Kent said something important that made it easier. “When you’re onstage with other actors,” he said, “the cardinal rule is to listen always, to be alive to what other actors are saying. But when you are doing a monologue, your partner becomes the moment.”
So much of what Actors say is a load of hooey that you can fall into the trap of not realizing just how smart and insightful a lot of them are. Not only do I think the above quote is a beautiful summation of how to act a monologue -- I think it's an essential notion to how you write one.
Theater's a lot on my mind today. There's also an article on Bob Martin and Drowsy Chaperone, which I guess finally opens tomorrow.
Everybody in Toronto's thinking shiny thoughts for 'em. Break a leg at the Marquis.
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