Rolling Your Own

Over at Alex's place, he got a question about shooting your own pilot stuff, doing the homegrown thing. The basic gist is here.

The highlights:

Should I try to get time at my cable station/public access station and try to get them to shoot and air my joint?

Alex, being a tried and true New Yorker, di'nt really cotton much to the whole public access volunteer thing. Cause, you know, if you're a teenager growing up in New York you probably don't spend a lot of time at the old public access community cable station.

You know why?

Because you live in frigging New York frigging City. Frigging.

Gather round, my suburban babies.

Yes. This would be a great idea if you had a pilot idea but not a lot of experience. Especially if you're living in the year 1978.

However, the truth is that living in the year 2006, the combination of prosumer cameras and powerful desktop editing systems mean that the cable access route -- at least for production -- is probably more trouble than it's worth. Unless you are a big time volunteer at the station.

I did a bit of the cable access thing when I was younger. And the truth is that whatever the size of the community, there are rules about that equipment. There may be volunteers you have to use, red tape you have to cut, and depending on where you live, interference from people who don't buy into your vision. The tools of production are actually democratized enough now that if you really feel left out, my advice is to work a job for a while, buy the edit program and platform and the prosumer camera rig and DIY, baby.

Some helpful commenters on Alex's post pointed out that this is how It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia started. As for the public access/community station route, yes, that's how You Can't Do That On Television and Tom Green started. (Ottawa, we still haven't forgiven you for the latter one.)

But then a commenter said that he didn't think this really applied to Canada. I could not more strongly disagree, for a very simple reason:

Canada is a smaller market. In this smaller market, there is a smaller pool of executives. No matter how smart those executives are, they don't have the experience in picking hit shows. So if you do a demo yourself, and it's good, that could help you get the sale.

Please notice the caveat embedded above. If it's good. Bad, amateur wannabe stuff will be received pretty much like those bad singers who think they're great on the Idol shows.

But off the top of my head, I know that Jeff Ltd., Rent-A-Goalie, and Trailer Park Boys all made their sales based on self-produced "demonstration reels."

The trick is not to do a pilot -- but to show the flavor of how the whole thing could work. Chances are, especially if you're really low budget, that presentation will be reshot. But if you really do have something special, then a demo can't hurt you.

If you have a singular vision that doesn't translate on the page, or you fear it doesn't -- showing it isn't the worst idea in the world.

But a great demo isn't going to do anything to elevate material that just isn't ready for Prime Time.

I spent a lot of years teaching university students writing. And most of the stuff they wrote was, you know, okay.

Okay doesn't get made into TV. Even if you do a pilot. Exceptional does. That's how it works.

And though above I take a shot at network types in Canada not being able to pick hits, it really isn't that difficult to judge a good script from a bad one. In the years I taught writing, pretty much every person whom I read as a student and went, "that person could have a career as a writer..." All those people have careers as writers, now.

The problem with doing a demo before you're ready, before what you have to offer is TRULY unique, is this: a demo raises the stakes over a script.

A script that isn't ready just gets tossed. But if you see people have spent such a long time, so much effort, so much sweat and toil working on "demo-ing" a script that isn't ready...well, that makes you question the judgement of everyone involved. As in, "wow, how could they have worked so hard on this and not have realized it just wasn't very good?"

People -- even people without great imaginations or taste -- can often spot a gem in the rough. But no amount of nifty vamping on your new HD camera is going to get you in the door if what you're doing is polishing a turd.

The best money you can spend, before buying the edit system and camera, or before you slave over your 100 hour volunteer shift at the cable access station so you can get access to the cameras, is running your script by someone smart who will speak truth to your power.

Remember, Ed Wood didn't know he was a bad filmmaker.

Canadian TV this weekend: Rent-A-Goalie

Finally for the week...

If you're in Canada, save some time to watch the premiere of Rent-A-Goalie. It airs on Showcase, Sunday Night at 9:30 p.m. ET and PT.

Last night I got to go to the launch party at a Toronto bar. They showed two episodes. This is the third time that I've seen the pilot and I was still laughing at it.

Rent-A-Goalie is a guy show. A real boy's show. It's a mix of the profane and profound. Yes, there are fart jokes and coarse stuff and a lot of swearing. But there are quiet moments in the performances. This is a show that knows to both go for the laughs, and for the heart.

So last night, Phil Esposito was there. Okay, I may not have been born in Canada. But...friggin Espo, guy?

No, of course I didn't talk to him. Phil Esposito, guy! Keee-riiist!

Sunday 9:30 p.m. It's really worth your time. Even if it's not your cup of tea, I guarantee you'll laugh at something in the show. The stories have heart, the acting is good, the pace is great: this is a very successfully executed show and it, and Showcase, deserves Canadians' support. It's not like having green beans or Brussels Sprouts -- it's about Hockey, which Canadians love. It's about life in Toronto's Little Italy, which is a great neighborhood with a decidedly different feel from Little Italy's in most of the U.S. cities I've visited. This is Showcase's best original series in years.

Have a good weekend.

Mothers I'd Like To!

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Oh Dear.

Well I'm going to assume that any of the readers of this blog are media maven types, and we're all reading the same stories. So I'm going to say it short and not link to articles.

We're a week and a bit into the new season, and the narrative seems to be this:

1. Viewership is up
2. People are sampling lots of new shows
3. Once they sample, they're tuning away as the hour progresses

It's this last one that could deeply affect what TV writers do. If this gets in network types' heads as an article of faith, we could wind up seeing as profound a change as the move to five act structure.

Everybody already wants big bangs off the top. Front load the action. I've been in meetings where the network person wants the Act One out moved up to the teaser. We've all been there.

But a little data is a dangerous thing. How can we amp up more? What bang for the storytelling buck are we going to be asked for next? As the narrative room shrinks to nearly 40 minutes for an hour, five acts, and a desire to grab people by the throat off the top, how are we going to be able to tell coherent, compelling, satisfying stories?

Any thoughts?

Like Doctors Standing Around an Open Chest Gabbin About Izzy and Denny

Anyone else have the vague idea that all this bitching about Studio 60 from writer types is just the same as Doctors who complain about how inaccurate medical shows are, and cops who complain about cop shows? The difference, of course, being that we don't have anywhere more important to be. Writers complaining that writing is not interesting and that behind the scenes of a TV show is not interesting belies the fact that our entire celebrity-culture is focused on just such showbiz insidery crap. I think we passed through the looking glass the day I found myself talking to my 68 -year old father about one of the making of extras on the ROME DVD.

Talking with my Dad about production is kind of like talking about sex with my Grade One teacher. I just don't want to be there.

Anyway, amidst all this, Ken Levine's struggling with the conflicting feelings that Studio 60 isn't his cup of tea, or it bothers him, but he still wants to keep watching. This latest post gives the full flavor.

To my mind, I never wanted to see the Crazy Christians sketch. That is so not the point. Everything I needed to know about that sketch is in the title, and the reality couldn't help but be a let down after that. Like the thing that's in the briefcase of Pulp Fiction, I just don't need to know. Any more than when Josh on West Wing said, "this bill will hurt 40 million Americans living below the poverty line," I needed a Family Guy-style CUT TO: little girl eating paella with a ditch-water chaser.

But Ken's right about one very, very important thing. We need to see, pronto, "the big 3" and especially Paulson's Harriet Hayes, be very funny in a sketch. We just can't keep hearing about how great she is. That actually IS cheating.

DL and Nate Corddry? I've seen them be funny. Paulson? Good actress, but not so much.

I'm hoping that Sorkin leans on the manic comic talents of Mark McKinney to pump out some of those funny sketches -- because Ken's also right about another thing: I doubt many people in the SNL crowd are big Gilbert & Sullivan fans.

Until then, man, there's always Steven Weber. That guy is the shit. Wings? Who knew?

Favorite Things & Comic Pairings: Weeds

Like a lot of writers, I spend a certain amount of my time slagging actors. It's what we do. From the moment you first run into someone who's been hired for a role, and they start talking about "how their character wouldn't..." -- a character you've lived with for eight months, and they've lived with for ten minutes -- well, the craw, the gorge, the bile.

But I'm also sanguine with the compact. The compact is this: good actors make you look good. If you can keep them from metastasizing into monsters, the good actors can help you. They can lift your words, and find laughs where there weren't any. And though the public at large will credit them with everything and you with nothing, among your bitter, small coterie of admirers, they can make your stock go up. Truth.

I got thinking about this because of Weeds. I've read the stories over the past few months, about the battles between creator Jenji Kohan and famously-difficult and prickly star Mary Louise Parker. It sounds tense. And unpleasant.

And sadly, I do not care.

In its second season, Weeds has become something so much sharper, weirder, and funnier than what it was in its first season. There are still moments of quiet, still drama, but overall the comic tone is what sells it for me - and the darkness of that comic tone.

Weeds has always had a propensity to "go there." But in season two, they've gone places that I just can't believe. The Uncle taking the 12 year old to the massage parlor was bad enough, as was the masturbation speech. But in the episode I just watched, there is the single funniest sex scene I have ever seen on film. Seriously. I will never forget or think about the phrase "Don't forget to breathe," ever again.

One of the strongest selling points for me is Justin Kirk. It is simply inconceivable to me that this is the same guy who played Prior in Angels in America. He is so effortlessly funny in Weeds that from the moment he showed up, it became a different show.

Like in a lot of good comedy, the strongest scenes in Weeds come from the comic pairings. Justin Kirk now has Meital Dohan as a very horny rabbinical advisor. But before that, his rapport with the kid playing Shane, Alexander Gould, was already a thing to behold. Now it looks like Gould is going to get his own comic pairing, with Eden Sher, a young actress who was one of the shining things about Fred Goss's late and lamented (by me, anyway) Sons & Daughters.

There are other pairings that work in Weeds: Elizabeth Perkins and Kevin Nealon (who knew?) And Elizabeth Perkins and Allie Grant playing the most dysfunctional mother- daughter duo since Joan Crawford went after the coat hangers.

These comic pairings, when actors spark like that, are things that you just can't predict, and why writers who talk inflexibly about their work and their words are never the ones that I want to work with. The joy of discovering people who are fun to write for is one of the great surprises and opportunities of this business. The biggest flaw in the Canadian system is the way that development forces five, six, seven scripts to be written all at once before actors are involved -- because you lose the dynamic and clarifying force of actor chemistry.

There are actors on Weeds who aren't really funny at all. Mary Louise Parker, for one, who was so funny on West Wing, probably shows her feud with Kohan the strongest by being perpetually on the drama tip this season. (She's still the anchor of the show...but she's not funny.) The older son, Silas, (Hunter Parrish) isn't funny. Perkins and Parker got one funny scene together a couple of episodes ago. But it was more shocking and weird than funny. It worked because it played as drama.

Casting only gets you to the starting blocks, even if it's cast well. A movie is cast for vision. A TV series is cast for possibility.

Your bible may be neatly typed and a hundred pages. But this bitch is collaborative, G. You have to know when to throw it out. And you network types? You have to recognize when to let us do that.

Don't forget to breathe.

Two, Maybe Three

This is the point in September where my thinking becomes increasingly Darwinian. Since it's pretty much my gig, I probably try harder than most to sample all of the fall's new shows. I never get to see them all, but I do see most, before they fall away. And most years it's pretty easy to break up after only one airing or, at most, two.

But the critics were right. This year's fall season is probably the strongest in years. There's a lot of shows that are infused with a more serious melancholy -- maybe it's the 9/11 hangover finally made flesh, maybe not. But much of the season's fare was not so easy to dismiss.

But...and here's the big one -- none of that matters, since TV viewing time is like Real Estate. It's only value is in the fact that it's finite. I'm sure I would have loved to watch Rock Star: Supernova this summer like a lot of people -- but I don't watch a lot of TV in the summer, and this year the few slots I had were taken up by things like Entourage, Deadwood, and Brotherhood.

In fact, Brotherhood, which ended this week, has my undying admiration for actually going in direction I'd never expected it to. It's not often I'm completely surprised by a TV show. But the season finale of Brotherhood completely took me by surprise. I have no idea where they go now. Rescue Me, too, had moments of this kind of brilliance - but that show's appeal is altogether shaggier and more unruly.

But that was summer. Welcome to fall. And with fall, what it comes down to for me is this:

I can't watch any more TV. In fact, I'm probably looking to watch a little less. I figure I have two or three hours where I can add new shows. This is completely unscientific, based on the fact that I now have the hour I spent watching The West Wing and the hour I spent watching Alias back. There's also a third hour to be gleaned from the fact that I think I'm done with Grey's Anatomy.

So of my new suitors, who makes the cut?

I've obviously only seen one hour of Smith. But Ray Liotta in Goodfellas mode is incredibly hard to resist. Add to that the incredible moments of stillness, cast against the kinetic nature of the storytelling, and it's a potent brew. The amount of time Liotta spends, quietly, with his kid at the end...the beauty of the police cars screaming along the pier as they fled in the boat...the sick knowledge that they screwed up just enough to make their trail possible to follow. Well, there's action and stillness and character and the cast is spectacular. I really felt thoroughly, cinematically entertained at the end of this hour. And, um...Amy Smart. Yum. So it gets a conditional promotion for the next several weeks, certainly.

Yes, it's incredibly inside. It's probably too kind in its portrayal of TV idealists, but I have been Aaron Sorkin's bitch for so long, I can't go back now. So Studio 60 gets slot number two.

So that leaves one more hour. I can maybe negotiate with myself and buy more time, by, say, not watching Simpsons anymore. (Once upon a time that would be heretical, but come on.)

What about the also rans?

Brothers & Sisters Another incredible cast, but this one for me is defined by the spectacular audacity with which Calista Flockhart allowed herself to be miscast. When she's in scenes with Rachel Griffiths, it's like they're not in the same show. It smells like quality, but none of the characters or the stories particularly grabbed me. Maybe I'm done with white rich people problems, I don't know. But I don't think that Brothers & Sisters is going to make the grade.

Standoff. Oh yeah, we've flirted. You're fun. But there's an episode on my PVR from last week that I haven't watched yet. Not a good sign...and the same reason, BTW, why Vanished will probably Vanish from contention: I've got two on the PVR, and I didn't tape this week's at all.

Heroes. A weird pilot. Kind of cool. But while I was watching it I thought to myself, "I'm really going to enjoy renting the DVD of this show after they cancel it." Not a great sign, right?

Justice. You want justice? Give Victor Garber a real show. Whathisname who played Sayeed on Oz, too.

The Class. Had two jokes I really liked -- the guy about to commit suicide when the call comes, and the end gag with the vehicular surprise. But the two characters I liked were obviously supposed to be secondary. I might dip in on this one in a few weeks (if it survives) and see if they've found their feet.

Happy Hour. Something about me just has to check out the vilified ones. John Doyle in the Globe & Mail wrote an interesting piece a week or so ago where he suggested that American critics were more prudish, and that the reviews of this show where drinking and cocktails are part of the action reflected that puritanical cant. I don't disagree with him. I found the show fitfully funny in places: like the main rabble rouser, love the bruised slutty girl with the heart of gold, think everyone else is bland, but much as I'd love to add a new comedy to the mix, I don't think this is it.

Til Death. Close(r) but no cigar. Damnit, I want a new comedy.

Six Degrees. Something about this was ineffably sad, even though it's supposed to be that old saw about people crossing paths in unexpected ways. (I never bought Sleepless in Seattle, either.) A great cast, some interesting performances -- Campbell Scott was amazing. I love series set in New York. I also love Hope Davis. I believe that she went to a Sonic Youth show in 95 at the Roseland...(the fact that the writers want us to believe that Bridget Moynahan was also there, as is portrayed in the pilot, is, to me, the man in your 30's equivalent of dreaming that lonelygirl15 is a real geek into Richard Feynman.) Still, I found myself involved with the stories and the characters by hour's end. I'm intrigued enough to bo back.

Kidnapped, Jericho -- haven't watched yet. Will get to them this week.

Still to come that I'm planning to watch: Ugly Betty, Friday Night Lights, Black Donnellys, Knights of Prosperity, The Nine

So the jury's still out. But wait. There's more. Because I'm in Canada, there's a dark horse. Tonight, CBC repeats the two hour movie of Intelligence, the Chris Haddock produced backdoor pilot. Set in Vancouver, it's a story of criminals and cops jonesing for intel in a post-9/11 world where terrorist fears make for strange bedfellows. CBC takes this to series in a couple weeks, and the advance word is great. I loved this movie. Not just because its treatment of the subject was compelling, but because, like the best British dramas -- it brings a decidedly non-American, internationalist view to the issues it raises. It's good to shake up your assumptions about the world...something that Amercian TV does too little of. This is a Canadian drama that's at least as good as any of the competition above. Will that story get out? Will viewers respond? Stay tuned.

So that third hour might already be gone. Anyway, we'll see.

What are your add's and misses? And why?

Opening the Presidential Seal...of WHOOP ASS.

You know, it's not just the thought that W. would go fetal and dissolve into his weird ticks if he was ever questioned like this, it's the knowledge that, whatever his faults (and they were legion) here's a guy who actually saw the world as complex -- who read, and absorbed info from a variety of sources. And who left office with a high approval rating, no less. And -- lo and behold -- actually takes responsibility for his failings. (Just not the failings that the wingnuts want to rewrite history to put on him.) It's such a breathtaking change from Bush it's...a little appalling.

I'm reminded of that Onion headline after Bush was installed: "Our long nightmare of peace and prosperity is over." Indeed.



The Clinton Anger: still fearsome to behold. Good for him.