Friend of the blog blueglow waded in a with an interesting couple of comments in the post below, where I talk about the upfronts. Here's a taste of what he had to say:
This is a little off topic with regard to the body of your post, but it's something I've been thinking about since i started reading the various blogs about writing and screenwriter and since I am currently in full procrastination mode... what the hell...The short answer is Yes -- not necessarily the shows that are upcoming (not in any real organized way) but certainly shows that have come before that have a similar area.
I have no idea how you guys do it.
If I was ingesting the amount of info about the biz and the trends in programming you do on a daily basis I don't think I could write a word...I know when I have tried to pay attention to shows of a similar ilk to the ones I'm working on it stops me dead because it makes me feel like there in not a single original thought in my head so why bother...How do you manage to navigate thru a story when you are so aware of all the other stories and series that in development or are going on around you -- obviously you're able to do it (you're working tons right now) but I know if I was paying as much attention to the media as you do I would feel like there was little point in adding to the clutter....the question I guess I am asking (because people work in different ways) is, do you take into consideration all the other shows that are being kicked around or are on the air when you work at the most fundamental elements of plotting and characterization?
This answer is going to be a rough mix of process and the much muddier psychological whys. (I was trying to lay out one then the other, but I can't figure out how to do that because they're so mixed.)
Though I completely understand your approach, and I understand everything you're saying, the thought of working the way you do terrifies me, because how would I know if I was doing something that a similar show had already done? If you don't know what else people have done and are doing in the genre, how can you possibly know when you're being original? See, same question, same neurosis, opposite entry point.
I tend to go into things for television from a craft entry point anyway, because that has so much with how I view the idea of originality on TV.
Simply put, I think when we talk originality on TV we're using a different mixture, or recipe, than when people talk originality in art or in the novel or even the movie. Originality in TV to me is more akin to originality in popular music.
When you hear an unbelievably catchy song on the radio (these days, if you're talking a new song you haven't heard before, I'm probably talking, on the satellite ratio) the thing that gets you is that most of the time it pulls off an impossible trick: it simultaneously feels and sounds fresh and familiar. Maybe there's something about the bassline or the chord progression, or maybe it's built upon a sample from an earlier song you liked...but to me the pleasure comes from feeling that it's both new and familiar - both receptors in your brain go crazy, and that's why some songs you hear for the first time and go, "that's amazing!" and you love it right away.
I think that's kind of like what we do in TV. TV is about constantly pulling off the impossible trick. When you drag people out to a theater (and I'm talking about viewers here who aren't 18 year old boys with no sense of history) you have a bit of a higher burden on creativity -- it needs to not be something you've ever seen before, or if it's even the slightest bit pastiche, it better be great pastiche, like The Departed. Same is true of a good novel, I think.
But at home you're competing with laundry and the kids and pilates and dinner and the effing cat, and most of the time you really need to draw in your viewer quickly or they'll choose one of their other 278 entertainment options. And of course, because your timeline is longer -- rules of characterization are completely different. Imagine trying to paint a character like Tony Soprano in 2 hours and 30 mins.
When I sit down with a series idea, my entry always is 1) Okay, what's this like? 2) Now, how's it different? 3) What am I going to give the audience that surprises them -- something they haven't seen before?
And I go from there. When I'm writing off a bible I didn't create, it drills down to the episode level. What's the shorthand of this ep? Is it a Frankenstein story? Is it the Telltale Heart? (genre room, now) or What's the obstacle here: (action show, now) ticking clock bomb, secret that can't get out, etc. etc. I can't speak for my compatriots, but when I was on Blood Ties, I was very aware of Buffy and Angel, and would often when bumping up against something, think, "how'd they do this?" to actively try to go in another direction. (I didn't much consider Forever Knight, since I've only seen maybe a half dozen eps of that show, and it was long enough ago now that I think the statute of limitations has run out on story-messing.)
The thing is, I enjoy working this way. When I see a series that's cross-pollinated two genres, I'm delighted and giddy to see if it works. When I see a refinement of an idea that's out there already, I love it. Raines, to me, was kind of genius-y because it took that Medium/Ghost Whisperer vibe and gave it a secular twist that men and women could watch equally. I'm not gonna watch Medium because I don't really buy the whole psychic mom thing, and the less said about Ghost Whisperer the better. To me, Raines was that idea 2.0, in that because he knew his conversations were all in his head, you were automatically off the hook in believing in heebiejeebie, and it was also a great extension and twist on the defective detective area Monk introduced a few years back. His vision/conversations told you about him and revealed his character, not just plot. I'm constantly looking to do something like that. I want to pull off the impossible trick.
I also have this need to figure out when a show fails, why it fails, beyond bad timeslot or poor promotion. I'm not as good at that, but I think I'm getting better. But. But. I worry that more and more of the shows I find fresh and original don't catch on. I'm not quite at the point where I'm second guessing my own tastes yet -- not really -- but I can see that being a potential problem in the future.
Some people might look on my way in as setting the bar lower, but, fine, let them go off and get work then, I couldn't care less. Working my way cuts me a little more slack because the boulder you still have to roll up the hill is huge, but at least you've got all those giants who came before helping you push. I tend to think that execution of an idea is all.
(Nothing makes me angrier than a great idea poorly executed. Seriously, I can't understand for the life of me once you've caught the tiger by the tail and have a great idea that you don't do the work to make it good. Arrrrgh.)
Let's face it, TV only has a truly 'revolutionary' show once every few years. And the revolutions are constantly being re-fought, because people have no memory. All In The Family made certain topics OK for tv, and now they're not again. Hill Street Blues gritted up the drama. E.R. amped the pace, made jargon and complex research okay, then de rigeur -- and The Sopranos signalled that Cable was now the tastemaker. Most of the stuff that is really groundbreaking (Hello, Twin Peaks) burns bright and out fast. Those shows leave marks on us all as creators, without necessarily re-shuffling the landscape.
Now a bigger question is: why am I this way? Well, I've got a theory.
I'm in the first Sesame Street generation. That show, The Electric Company, and even Mr. Rogers -- those shows were made for me.
Those were the last shows that were made for me.
I don't want to back and refight the great and stupid GenX-Boomer culture war, but the truth of it is, when I was growing up, I and most people my age were cultural refugees. We'd come home from school and watch Three's Company and M*A*S*H, shows that were in NO WAY aimed at us. (Seriously, could you imagine a 10 year old today watching reruns of West Wing? I know they watch Friends, but Frasier? Not so much.) The culture was obsessed with boomerdom. I watched the old SNL and watched the cast change to the Eddie Murphy SNL, and then the ringer years where the old boomers came back. But it wasn't aimed at me. Letterman was aimed at college students when I was still in high school. Parents were watching Carson. I watched and appreciated them both. Because I wasn't locked into stuff that was aimed directly at me, I surfed and cadged a lot more from various places. I discovered jazz early, and my parents were quite puzzled when I got hard into Sinatra at 15 or 16. To them, that was their parents' music: but to me, it was all the same. All culture talked about events that happened before I was born, or referenced things I had to go look up. That's just the way it was. I didn't give it a second thought.
While this was going on, the whole pop culture ascendancy came in, too. Entertainment Tonight came on the scene. 24 hour news became a factor. Then MTV and Muchmusic -- which was the only part of the culture that I felt aimed at me, and even then, for only about eight minutes. Weekend box office totals started making the papers.
By the time I got to University, cultural marketers had started to finally cool on the boomers in order to go after their kids. A Young Market was identified and people started actively going for it. The entire concept of 'tween shows' still freaks me out a little, because, man, where were those shows when I was that age?
I'd look at SNL, and Sandler and those guys came in and I sometimes found them funny, but not all the time. And the boomers clucked "Saturday Night Dead" and how bad it was, while the people a few years younger than me were getting it. And for a while it was, "wait a minute...where's our cultural moment? Oh, don't tell me it was that fucking TIME magazine article, the Coupland book and Reality Bites...C'mon...I'm gonna fucking kill somebody!"
The came Britney...
And...
Oh..oh man. These people behind me...they're not going to be cultural refugees, are they? Hmm.
Part of having to spend all those years parsing things that weren't meant for you made my brain work in a way where it kind of always stands apart and analyses. Very rarely do I ever get fully immersed in a story or a movie or a TV show. I'm always clocking where they're going, and what they're doing... Once upon a time I thought this was just the famous GenX cynicism, but I've come to understand that that's merely a symptom, not a cause. It's not so much cynicism as it is distance. A distance that comes from spending those big teenage years not as the focus, but on the outside of a culture looking in.
So it is any wonder that now that I'm making culture that I feel comfortable working that way?
I don't know how it's going to work for those coming up behind me. Because I have to assume that the marketers klieg light is going to shift again. Now we have the "Most Praised Generation" entering the workforce, and there are hilarious articles like this, all I can think is, "what's going to happen when these guys find that the experience they've had all their lives is shifting? How will the people who've had stories aimed at them their whole lives react when they have to tell stories for someone else?
I guess we'll see.
I'm gonna keep my head down, clock what's out there, and keep on trying to pull the Impossible Trick.
10 rumbles:
thanks for the response, most appreciated. I understand what you're saying because essentially we are contemporaries (give or take a few years).
I guess the difference is I really don't ponder the pop cultural theories as much as you do when it comes to writing what I think will maybe, hopefully entertain the audience.
to me the whole searching for a definition of a generation seems like a mugs game -- it seems to me that the people who are applying the "most praised generation" label to the young adults of today aren't really saying anything any different than chistopher lasch did when he wrote the "culture of narcissism" or tom wolfe did when he wrote "the me decade" close to thirty years ago when they declared that people growing up back then were self absorbed/obsessed.
(now, of course, this look at the generation that came of age in the sixties and seventies has been revised so that they are now seen as an 'activist' generation.)
i guess I think that when it comes to storytelling on screen now the only difference is that the audience has a much greater understanding of semiotics and one can shorthand a lot more than the dudes who were writing "mannix" ever could.
but, as for the idea of defining a "characteristic" of a generation I really doubt it is much different now than it ever was. I think that the hopes, fears and dreams of characters we write are no different than the hopes, dreams and fears of the characters that appeared in Sinclair Lewis's novels of the twenties or the characters that appears in the post war North American pulp era.
We are all looking for something our culture isn't giving us -- Babbit certainly was, as was Dodsworth -- and I think those characters could exist without modification in anything I wrote fifteen years ago or write twenty years from now.
they carry with them a sense of allienation, a sense of unhappiness and guilt at their unhappiness (living in the land of plenty with anything they want but still vaguely unsatisfied) while still feeling that the world owes them more.
in a way I don't know how they differ from the characters in "slackers" or "clerks" other than being more fully realized becuase people like cain, thompson and lewis didn't opt for the easy way out and infuse everything with annoying ironic detachment.
I guess that's why I've run away from taking any of the copelands of the world too seriously because I kind of think --
"same as it ever was
same as it ever was
SAME AS IT EVER WAS"
There is definitely an element of "same as there ever was" to the generational thing. But I don't apply a value judgement to it: it's different, but not better or worse.
The thing is, I've had that first hand experience of dealing with an aggregate of 20 year olds in the classroom setting, and I have to say that the 2005 version (the last ones I taught) are profoundly different than me, and than the 1995 version.
I think these things are generational. If you read history you discover that a lot of the characteristics of my so called generation line up with the jazz age 20's people, and the "lost generation" of the 1890's.
Ironic detachment is indeed exactly the trap you suggest it is, though, which is why I think so many of my contemps have tried to let that stuff go.
That which is universal is always universal, and that which is new becomes common so quickly.
For my part, I can't imagine being a professional writer in the age when every single question you had meant a trip to the library and not five seconds on Google.
But - I might be of the last generation who understands that "research on the internet" is only step one -- not the be all and end all.
IN any case, whatever the process, the end result and the exhortation is the same:
More heartfelt and original, less hacky and crappy.
Loved this post and exchange... thanks guys.
NO MORE RED PENS!
Hmm I graduated in 2005 so I suppose that skews me on the "baby" end of the spectrum- but can't necessarily relate to being showered in overt praise 24/7.
The writing teacher in my last year of film school was a tough grader. (scoring in the 70's was the best you could hope for- no A PLUS pluses here)but she really did prepare us for the kind of criticisms readers would use on scripts.
Also I have never had a job where confetti'ing or thank you notes were happening.
I did have a box thrown at me though. Which is kinda just big, pointy confetti...
Hmm maybe I'm on the cusp?
To put my corporate culture change geek hat on, I think companies showering people with confetti and stuff is not a factor of the "most praised generation" and more a factor of the baby boomers hitting retirement age and businesses entering an "oh my god we have to keep the employees we do have" generation. It's been a trend in HR for a while now, the constant recognition instead of waiting until someone hits the 10 year mark, and it's been hailed in any number of business books as a way to boost morale and retain staff.
But putting on my TV geek hat now, cool to see how you guys think about this stuff from opposite ends. I don't think TV is quite the special child you think it is, though, DMc - popular movies and books also tend to hit that sweet spot between familiarity and innovation, often without the innovation part. Romantic comedies, action flicks, etc. all fall into a familiar pattern, and the best ones use the pattern but bend it. Books, well, romance books are a huge percentage of the market and they're all about familiarity.
Sorry, there's lots of fuel for thought here, so it inspired a lot of rambling.
i honestly think a writer can learn more by spending five hours in a down market strip club than by injesting all this pseudo socio whatever...
You're probably right, blueglow, but eventually we all run out of twenties.
Diane, good point about genres of film and books that also rely on familiarity. I guess I just feel that all TV does -- even the good stuff -- with the possible exception of stuff like Dennis Potter.
And the Sopranos pulls a neat trick by playing with your familiarity with tv semiotics and consistently flipping it, like they did with Chris' demise...
...that's how it looks from me, nursing my 9 dollar beer down in Pervert's row, anyway...
i've been locked in the story room for the last couple of weeks so i missed this awesome thread.
the issue of "has this story been done?" comes up a lot. and the answer is almost always "yes" and the answer to "Where?" is almost always "The Simpsons"
that said, what becomes clear is that it's not the story that has to be original... it's the approach to the story that counts.
now its back to breaking RA308... where i can see bits of Mary Tyler Moore, Sex in the City, and Buffy peeking out.
Nice one Dave bringing up the Simpsons hold on story-
Or as one of my great south park episode summed up:
"Simpsons did it! Simpsons did it!"
I was thinking "my favourite" and "great"..I also meant to pluralize episodes.
*slinks away to bad typist dungeon*
Post a Comment