Sci-Fi Podcast Ho!

THIS IS unfortunate, because I really should have plugged this before, and now it seems like I'm just trying to be self-aggrandiz...(Ed: Stop being So Canadian.)

Right. Sorry. Sorry. (Ed: Really, quit it.)

Ahem.

Space: The Imagination Station is Canada's Sci-Fi/Fantasy Channel. I helped get the station off the ground as a Producer almost ten long years ago now, before I started writing professionally. This week, they invited me back to talk about my personal experience on Blood Ties and this posting on this old blog.

John Llyr and Mark Askwith are both friends of mine. Between them, they know just about everything there is to know about Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Star Trek, Comics, and all things genre.

Awhile ago, they started doing the HypaSpace Podcast, as a web complement to HypaSpace Weekly, SPACE's weekly wrapup of Sci-fi news and wackiness.

What's great about this podcast is that it's not just two guys yakking about sci-fi. The podcast runs down the latest news and rumors, to be sure, but it also plays clips from Space interviews with celebrities, artists, performers, writers -- this is stuff that never appears on TV, so it's pretty much exclusive stuff. And it's free.

So you should check it out. And if you check out this week's edition, you get to hear me yak, and then at the end they've even dug up a really cool interview I did with Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) when I was at the station. I think you can even subscribe to the Podcast via RSS and on Itunes.

Thanks to Mark and John for making coming back so easy, and for picking an interview question where I don't sound like a total tool.

Will and His Landlord

YEARS AGO I was in a series of bizarre Hallowe'en promos for Canada's music video channel, Muchmusic. In my favorite one, you saw me screaming at an assailant who was throwing, hurling pumpkin after pumpkin at me, against a huge wall festooned with the Muchmusic logo. As the pumpkins got closer and closer, exploding seeds and viscera on me, I screamed my head off, taunting my assailant, screaming, "is that all you got? is that all you got?"

CUT TO:

The creative director's toddler son, sitting amid the pumpkins....crying.

I was there. I got pumpkin all over me. But even knowing how it was made, seeing it cut together, I still watched and thought I was a heel. And that made it all the funnier.

I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to post this, but I don't care. Will Ferrell mines the same joke, but way better. And for the comedy scholars out there, let's review an important comedy rule:

• Making jokes about kids being drunk = always funny
• Actual drunk kids = never funny
  

EDIT: I took the video off because it was doing that weird thing of loading and playing whenever anyone came to the page. I don't know why. You can still find it at 150, 387 other places on the net, I'm sure.

More Radio Fun

APPARENTLY Yours Truly will be on CBC Radio on Monday talking about the return of HEROES, and girl tv vs. boy tv.

I'll be part of a panel on Q, the new Jian Ghomeshi afternoon Arts show. Check local listings for the time in your area. (In Toronto, it airs at 2pm.)

Be sure to roast me here after the segment. I loves me the punishing and the mocking.

Our Readers Write

A COUPLE of interesting posts/comments/emails received here at Dead Things HQ recently that deserve a bit o'mention. In response to the post below, "Why Canadian Satire Sucks," someguy commented:

I work on Mercer Report and I remember the debate footage.

As I recall the debate was on, like, a Monday and our show was airing the Monday afterwards. So if we were going to use the tape it would have been a week old. So we didn't use it. Nobody cared that we "weren't allowed."

I think our shows has done its share of satire. We've put the Liberal leadership up for auction on ebay. In our first season we actually (probably) cost a Winnipeg MP his job when we aired him falling asleep in the House of Commons. And there's Rick's rants.

That said the show isn't intended to be 100% satirical. It's a travel around Canada show with some satirical elements. When we send Rick to visit polar bears or go window washing we're not intending to do political satire.

I'm glad you wrote in, someguy, because it gives me a chance to say the thing that I didn't say this time when I revisited this subject -- I happen to think that Mercer and 22 are both very funny shows, with lots of great material. But they're not satire. Yes, both shows have in the past traded in satirical humor --The Rant bit Mercer does is the most satirical part of the show, but that's not their full brief.

Mark Farrell on Inside the CBC said much the same thing about 22 as you do above. There, he wrote:

I think of 22 as a news parody show. One of the tools it uses is satire.

I won’t speak for the other shows but when Mark Critch shows up at liberal debates and conventions the candidates tried to avoid us because they know or think we’re not going to be soft on them. For the most part those interviews are not set up before hand. But don’t take my word for it watch them on the website if you want and decide for yourself. As an example, according to our field producer, at the Giller awards Bob Rae was trying to get away, he was trying to avoid us, he took a wrong turn and ended up talking to Critch and Crawford.

Also, as an aside, the Prime Minister has so far refused to appear on 22 minutes (which is his right, he’s a pretty busy guy,); We (22) have not been invited into 24 Sussex.

So yep, let me say that I don't want to pillory either Mercer or 22 for not doing hard satire when it's not their intent to do hard satire.

Where the gap comes, and where I might diverge from Doyle a bit (or maybe this is what he's saying, too, I don't know, it's hard to tell) is that in the popular imagination, these shows are held up as "Canadian Satire" and are often (as in the case of the "Inside the CBC" reaction to Doyle's article) trotted out as an example of a more virtuous Canadian brand of humor that says something about our character.

In reality, it's anything but that. The combination of the "big 3" shows on CBC and the reverse onus libel laws in Canada make it very unlikely that any kind of true satire program could ever flourish in this country.

CBC can point to the "safe" poltical comedy we do and say, "see? we do that!" And they'll have plenty of people (like the apologist spinners on the CBC thread) who'll tart it up as virtue -- when really it's evidence of constriction, not expression.

Even on CTV/Comedy's doomed Popcultured, the brief was to do celebrity news "but with a smile," Ie: don't be mean. No wonder the show tanked. I mean, are we really saying that what our celebrity obsessed age needs is more softballs?

As Joanna Schneller put it in the Globe today (talking about the cessation of Premiere Magazine):

Premiere gave writers space in which to expand ideas about our cultural moment in a general-interest format. Without venues like it, entertainment writing falls into two slots: either highly specified, or distressingly shallow, a scrap heap of sound bites, tabloids, "charticles" and gossip. There may not be many of us actively mourning the loss of Premiere's type of intelligence, but we'll all feel it

I think the same is true of the lack of true satire in Canada. I think it makes us poorer, and smugger, as a people. There's a study out just now that proves that viewers of The Daily Show are better informed about issues than the rest of the U.S. populace -- including people who watch the national nightly TV news. What the study seems to indicate is not that people get their news from the show, but that to find the show funny, you have to have a base level of understanding of the issues. To me, one of the great strengths of both Colbert and Stewart is that they are actually quite hard on Democrats, too. That's the nice thing about true satire -- it means challenging ALL the received wisdom.

I like to think that Canadians are generally better informed than Americans about what's going on in the world. But I've also found in my personal experience that the best informed Americans are a lot more willing to challenge the orthodoxies at play in their mediascape, than the best informed Canadians are willing to examine similar Canadian myths.

I think that's because no one here ever says truly impertinent things. And I think a large part of the reason for that is because, well...they're afraid.

The example used in The Walrus article of a joke that almost got Mary Walsh in deep dutch was the quip about then-Reform Party Leader Preston Manning's speech being better "in the original German." Had the Reformers pressed a suit there, there probably would have been trouble -- despite the fact that the joke is funny.

I happen to think that's probably not good for either humor, satire, or political debate in this country. It's not that we're kinder, gentler. It's that we pull our punches. And in this day and age, I'm not sure we can afford to do that.

Thanks for writing, and letting me clarify my position on those shows, someguy.

***

Reader Jesse emailed me a link to this very fine story in the Chicago Reader, about how this summer, the Washington Post will close its one-man Canadian bureau, leaving absolutely zero American newspaper bureaus based in Canada.

Writer Michael Miner sounds like he had an opposite experience to me: he's an American who spent several years in Canada as a boy. Well, that's not exactly opposite. I'm an American who only lived in the U.S. a short while before I...no...wait...I'm a Canadian who was born in the...well, that's not exactly...

Oh bother -- read the article. One of my favorite points, which comes courtesy of the writer's Vancouver-based sister:

Canada is enough like the U.S. that Americans can't afford to pay attention to it. If we saw things Canadians did better, we'd have no good excuse not to copy them.

Neat observation. Miner also has a lovely turn of phrase when he observes:

Despite what Canadians think we all think, I don't consider Canada a part of the U.S. that technically isn't. For me, Canada is some sort of benign antimatter whose reason for being is to not be us. The existence of Canada is the gentlest reproach on earth.

"The gentlest reproach on Earth." I like that. I like that a lot. Thanks for passing that article along, Jesse.

***

Finally, an emailer, who I'll call, "Etobicoke," asks:

Are you going to write about the return of Billable Hours?

Well, Etobicoke, no. We don't talk about Billable Hours on this blog. We did once or twice -- tangentially -- when it first came out. Then, our delicate ears heard that someone connected with the show was going around saying that I slammed the show all the time on the blog. They were powerful upset bout it. They were upset enough to complain about me in Banff, and they were still complaining about me at industry events six months later. So, um...I punt.

However, if you'd like to read more about some of the changes made for Billable Hours' second season, Canadian Press has a great article on them, by Lee-Anne Goodman. Sounds like they really worked hard to retool to a more American-style writing room. You can see and judge the results for yourself when Showcase debuts the second season, this Sunday night, at 9:30 p.m.

They bad mouthed you, yet you plug the show? Why?

Because the Baby Jesus said, "turn the other cheek." And as I've said before, I'm a big fan of Baby Jesus, rather than scary punishy judgey Mel Gibson Jesus.

You're such a good boy.

Thanks, Mom. Er... I mean..."Etobicoke," thanks for writing.

Why Canadian Satire Sucks

A RECENT CONTRETEMPS in this blog had me take on (rather badly) the concept of satire at the CBC and in Canadian Comedy, as evidenced by three shows: Air Farce, 22, and Mercer. All this was sparked by a column John Doyle wrote about the subject in the Globe. If you click the link above, you can see the whole sorry exchange including me bloviating rather ... counterproductively ... on the Inside the CBC blog.

For the record, there is a problem in sharpness in Canadian comedy, and I knew this, and I knew it was at least partially structural, but I was exhausted at the prospect of trying to explain it.

Enter The Walrus.

One of the great things about playing poker with smart guys is that they read, and one of my friends left behind his copy of The Walrus on just this subject last weekend. I just got through the article in question, and it pretty clearly lays out (much to the consternation, I'm sure, of the ultra nationalists who wanted to make lameness a virtue) just why the situation is so.

And lo, The Walrus has that article (by Rebecca Addelman) online here.

Or at least the start of it, anyway. The article starts, cheekily, with a moment that was pretty dark for me -- during the last election, The Daily Show actually used clips of the Leaders debate to make fun of Canadian politics...which is something Canadian comedy shows were not allowed to do. (Oh my, isn't THAT something to be proud of...)

South of the border, the folks at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart thought otherwise. On January 19, broadcasting across ctv and Comedy Network airwaves into 465,000 Canadian homes, Stewart launched into six minutes on the debates. After airing some of the French-language contest, he deadpanned, “You may have noticed the quality of that footage was a bit grainier than the footage we usually steal. That’s because we had to get it from the Internet.” He then introduced more “forbidden fruit of debate footage that the cbc and the Parliament felt was too explosive for fake news”—two dreary Stephen Harper sound bites proving that Lunz was right, this stuff is boring, but that boring, in a blue-plaid tie, can be funny too. Canada is famous for birthing satirists who have gone on to take down the American establishment. How did we get to the point of needing Jon Stewart to make fun of our politicians for us?

The article goes on to explain the problems inherent in Canada's legal system -- the limits on criticism through free speech; the "reverse onus" that hamstrings comedians, and the more sinister, creeping effect where no one ever thinks of approaching the line lest they provoke a lawsuit that they're not insured for.

All in all, it's textbook libel chill. It's nothing to be proud, or smug about, and it's rampant in this otherwise great country.

Great article. Great magazine. (I would be very very happy to receive, say...you know, a free sub...hint hint)

Read it and weep.

Just don't make a joke about me that comes close to that imaginary line, because the burden's on you to prove it... and I'd love the money...

Fun With Actors' Names

LAURENCE LEBOEUF is a girl. SHIA LABEOUF is a boy.

Return to your homes, citizens.

Dipping My Toe into Durham

SO LAST NIGHT was a dip back into the thrall of the Toronto media thing scene. Which sounds about as fun as it is, but heyo, it's a living.

At a club in West End Toronto that used to be a lot more fun when it was The Mockingbird, the CFC held a launch party and panel discussion for a new original Canadian series called Durham County.

Durham County is a six part, one hour mystery/police procedural series that will premiere May 7 on Canada's premium pay cable channels, Movie Central (Western Canada) and TMN (Eastern Canada.)

TMN/Movie Central are getting aggressive about raising the bar on their original programming, and after some highs (they were first in for Slings & Arrows) and lows (sorry, Terminal City, which recently proved the difference between a format sale and a program sale) they are really doing their level best to complement all that sweet sweet stuff they pick up from HBO and Showtime.


Durham County has a lot going for it. I first heard about this show last year. Then, I got to work with Holly Dale, (who directed Episodes One through Four) out on Blood Ties. The buzz has been good. So I settled in last night with fingers crossed. I've liked some of Back Alley's shows in the past (Talk 16, Drop The Beat) and been lukewarm toward others (Straight Up, Bliss) but from the moment I walked in, you could tell that straight from the graphic image treatment, they definitely know their mood.

They only showed clips, but the clips I saw seemed fine indeed. There's some first rate actors in this, including a lot of actors who are working in English, rather than their native Quebec French. Laurence Lebouef, who plays the daughter, and Patrick Labbe in particular are huge, huge stars in Quebec.

It's worth a chuckle to know that yup, in fine Let's All Hate Toronto fashion, this is the second series we've talked about this week that is set ostensibly here (Durham County is North East of Toronto) and filmed somewhere else. (Durham County was shot in Montreal.)

Gosh, we can't even play ourselves anymore...SEE! We ARE like New York!

On the panel was Adrienne Mitchell, one of the Executive Producers (with Janis Lundman, who wasn't there,) the writer of all six episodes, Laurie Finstad Knizhnik, and stars Hugh Dillon and Laurence Leboeuf.

Hugh Dillon is amusing and great on screen. Very charismatic and wounded....in the opening episode, at least -- which is the only one I've seen so far, he's got a quality to him that you see on the best of those British Crime dramas, like Cracker or Touching Evil or Prime Suspect. Like everyone these days, people on the panel gushed about The Sopranos, but DC doesn't strike me as being quite that operatic. It's smaller, quieter, and more sinister -- it really does have that British crime thriller feel.

Which is awesome. I love those shows.

Anyway, I'm always going to be endlessly grateful to Hugh Dillon, not just for his rock and roll past and Hard Core Logo and his great charisma on screen, but for the fact that I got to sit in the audience and hear him swear constantly at this launch event. I mean, like, Fleet Week swearing. I think I saw a couple of delicate flowers jump in the back row -- especially when he said a word that I don't think we've ever heard on a panel discussion in Canada, anywhere. He's the perfect antidote to Canadian fussiness, and he brought it bigtime last night. Good on him.

It's interesting to see these panel discussions, having seen so many of the damn things in the past and even having had to cover a few. It's like when it comes to Canadian shows, we're not fully media trained, and getting things across clearly and succinctly seems to be a stretch. The most impressive speaker was probably Leboeuf, who was very eloquent in talking about how the portrayal of violence is handled in the show.

It's clear that everyone had Virginia Tech on their minds, and as Leboeuf struggled to contextualize the drama, you could see that everyone was still continuing a conversation that they'd obviously had many times on set.

DC forces you to be a voyeur to violence...it implicates you straight off the bat -- the opening five minutes are difficult to watch. But that's kind of the point. As the setpieces slowly unspool, it becomes clear early on that what you're watching isn't really a whodunnit, so much as a whydoneit. That's really appealing to me. I pitched and tried to make Across The River To Motor City more of a whydoneit last year, and met resistance. We ultimately wound up changing it but I'm intrigued to see how DC handles the brief. It's kind of like the road not taken.

Being an event about Canadian tv, someone inevitably asked about the financing. In this case, it seems like DC benefited from TMN/Movie Central + Rogers Fund + CTF + Canwest Global + money upfront from Granada, the international distributor -- based on the scripts. THAT's interesting, in a "you know, huh..." kind of way.

As for the rest of the event, everyone seemed delighted (maybe a trifle too delighted) that the show's turned out as well as it did. Every time my American angel hears too much hype, my Canadian angel gets embarrased and says, "really, just let people see it for themselves...don't make a fuss." This is why I am never happy, maybe.

It was nice to ease back into the scene with a low key event. There were the usual party suspects. Some welcome familiar faces, and some new ones bold enough to introduce themselves (I got asked twice how I liked Grindhouse, and was puzzled at first til I realized I had, in fact, written about going to see the movie yesterday. I enjoyed it lots, thanks for asking. I wonder if this is how Paris Hilton feels about getting caught not wearing underwear?)

There were writers only too happy to plant themselves at the periphery with me and ogle the Dead Things -- not on sticks, for once, more like in little bowls. There was shrimp, though.

It's completely clear to me that I need to psych myself up to bring my A-game for the Canadian Screenwriting Awards Monday. I'm going to need to pre-load a few conversation sparklers. And I have to enjoy myself, since it looks like my little work furlough is going to be short-lived. Again, more on that later.

As for Durham County, I'll be posting a full review of all six episodes closer to the premiere date. This is one I want to savor a bit.

You know, like the shrimp. I don't mind if you say I'm being a little shellfish.

Okay, now I'm just ashamed.

Wherein Denis Posts The Cat

NOT REALLY, I mean, I don't even have a cat. I barely know any cats. But I don't really have much to say today but a bunch of little tiny things.

So this will be the bunch of little tiny things post.

I'll probably have more substantive stuff in a couple days -- including some news that affects the drift of this blog in the months to come.

• It occurs to me that since I arrived back in Toronto, I have not seen the sun. That strikes me as somewhat ironic.
  
  
• ROGERS should spend less time buying money losing terrestrial television stations from CTV Globemedia and more time fixing my stupid damn buggy HD PVR
  
  
• A cut on the tip of your finger can bleed for a very long time. Almost the entire length of a Sopranos episode.
  
  
• Macs rule, but Apple sucks. There. I said it.
  
  
• Do not even get me started about Crackbook.
  
  
• You know that thing about stop and appreciate the little things? Well, for all the nutsoness of being a writer sometimes, there are nights like the one I spent last night at The Paddock, surrounded by some of the funniest comedy writers in Canada, telling stories. Good conversation, good people, good humor -- it all goes a long way. It almost makes you forget to drink.
  
  
• I've made it through to the end of Ep.2 of The Sopranos, and any lingering dissatisfaction with the drift of the first half of the season is gone. What a valedictory. The way it's lensed, with all those autumnal browns and indirect lighting takes my breath away. Melfi's office has never looked so ominous. I take it back. The Sopranos does live up to the hype. All that and Sydney Pollack too.
  
  
• Mark Leiren-Young, a nice writer who also worked on Blood Ties, sent me a link yesterday to this article he wrote, an interview with Vonnegut. I'm still bummed out by his passing. It's funny the things you can't shake off. John Doyle in the Globe today also has a wonderful appreciation for June Callwood. Many years ago, Callwood gave the commencement address at my University graduation. I forget now what she said, but it was suitably inspiring and wonderful at the time -- and warm -- and I think I even remember taking comfort in her words for the first couple of years when I was working and it seemed like I was banging my head against the wall. People like that make you want to just make dead sure you put out into the world more good things than bad. Yup. I guess I'm thinking about karma now.
  
  
• This is just hilarious -- passed on to me by Diane. Yes. Hating Toronto. I hear it's set to be a demonstration sport at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Tell a joke or pet your cat today. Call Mom. Encourage someone who looks like they need it.

Me, I'm going to see Grindhouse.

Oh snap. See what I did there?

Despair.

I HAVE NEVER seen a film or TV show where a troubled sociopath shot up anywhere and it was glorified.

But the United States' relationship with guns is sick. It always has been. The video below is moronic. It shows just how adolescent the gun cliche has become in our culture.

As the inevitable Columbine rehash happens over the next few days, please remember that we heard this all before. And nothing has changed.

Change requires will. And will requires generational rage. You are the ones being killed, in Iraq and on your own campuses. Your culture is producing these damaged people.

What will you do to stop them?

While you're at that, I'm going to say a quick prayer for the dead.

UPDATE: Just because it happens every time I post something like this, I should remind upfront that I am, in fact, American-born. I vote proudly, and have always been proud of the good that the United States of America has brought to the world. Like a lot of Americans living abroad, I've had a rough few years keeping the candle lit.

But there's another motion here, too. For any Canadians reading this, I get slagged each and every time I mention something like this, but go read Jim Henshaw's post today about the amnesia at root in Canadian society. We love it when Rick Mercer goes Talking To Americans, while we all cede anything in Canada that makes the culture here slightly different.

And then something like this horrific shooting happens. I know. We've had a few here in Canada. But the difference is that after women were murdered by Marc Lepine in Montreal, things changed. Gun laws changed. That, at least, is not part of the Canadian amnesia. This country doesn't produce psychopathic spree killers at quite the rate as the United States does.

The U.S. and Canada have been moving apart culturally for years. But the people selling the stories and the people buying the stories here aren't actually, you know, buying the stories. Our cultural future is American. Stop being smug about being Canadian...because if your kids don't know Vimy and everything else, then what's the difference? Run up the Stars & Stripes and be done with it.

Ooh. Yes. Someone's blood sugar is low today.

Do What You Say!

Well, apparently all that has to happen to have a funny SNL is for me not to watch. This is probably zipping all over the Interweb today, but the reason I like it is because it's kind of bullshit to write a death scene. Any death scene. Time was, you'd give somebody a great out line, like all those old film noirs. But just like the whole shift to the "auteur" theory in film, there's been an equal shift away from giving characters something meaningful to say before they check out.

Now the death is all about the cutting and the foofera. This particular short borrows heavily from "The O.C." -- who knew their melodrama well. (Well, except for Oliver.)

Go on, write a death scene after watching this. I dare you. (Dennis Heaton gets points for sending this to me first.)

Horror is Sccaarrry Work...

So the new issue of Canadian Screenwriter is out on the stands now, and the cover article by Vern Smith is up at the Writers Guild of Canada site. The article features extensive conversations with two of my Blood Ties compatriots, Peter Mohan and (Evil) Dennis Heaton:

Although a fan, Peter Mohan had never written about vampires when he browsed the horror section of a Toronto bookstore 10 or 12 years ago. There, he found a novel about a cop and vampire searching for demons downtown, and said, “Hold it, I like all those things.”

Flash forward, and Mohan is showrunning Blood Ties, adapting Tanya Huff’s “Blood” novels for the small screen. The series–which debuted on Lifetime in the U.S. in March, and will eventually air on CHUM in Canada–revolves around Vicki Nelson, a cop turned private detective suffering from a degenerative eye disease, and her love interest, a 450-year-old vampire. Upon said revelations, the focus of her agency becomes more about ghost-busting and less about fraud and adultery. But as appealing as the gist of it was the day Mohan read the back-cover copy inside Book City in Toronto’s Annex, the kicker was that this story was set nearby. And above all else, it meant the job of establishing normalcy would be a little more seamless in giving way to supernatural revelations.

“This is a quintessential Canadian show in a way that many others aren’t because we don’t push a Canadian agenda,” Mohan says. “It’s just a cool story that happens to occur here. We can make shows that travel with real streets and locations in establishing shots. It’s just centred in this place to ground this world.”

Previously, Mohan worked on such shows as Due South and Mutant X and wrote scripts for La Femme Nikita, PSI Factor, and Highlander. As for horror, he’d written episodes of Friday the 13th: the series, and produced FOX TV’s Eerie Indiana: The Next Dimension. He’s also been working on a “kickass” vampire feature film over the past few years. The important part was that Mohan was already up to speed on Huff’s Blood franchise, as well as the genre’s hallmarks, when Kaleidoscope Entertainment serendipitously came calling.

“I’ve liked a lot of horror writers–King at times, McCammon, Clive Barker’s books of blood,” Mohan says. “I still remember as a young kid reading ‘Dracula’–the texture of the paper, an onion-skin paper, it was so affecting.”

Personally, Mohan sees the genre through a psychological lens filled with fears about life, death, intimacy, and generally “opening oneself up.” In terms of the evolution of Blood Ties, he describes a larger story arc involving fate, Vicki, her new partner, the vampire, and her former boyfriend/partner on the Toronto police force.

(Above, Peter Mohan works hard at his desk. He may be reading a network notes email. But he's probably on YouTube, because inspiration is hard, bitches. Below at right, Peter Mohan and Dennis Heaton in my office at Blood Ties. You can tell we're talking about something important because Peter is holding a real live BT script in his hand.)

“I’ve done 450 hours of TV, often having to pretend Toronto is Chicago, New York, wherever, so it’s great to write a show where they’re chasing monsters in the Annex,” Mohan says. “That’s the crazy thing about horror. The more you ground the story in something mundane, commonplace, the more you open your eyes to another level. By setting this in a very realistic Toronto with realistic cops who never thought there was anything like this, there’s a whole new world. Even cold cases that seemed insoluble–suddenly they’re looking at things differently.”

For Dennis Heaton, who also worked on Blood Ties, helping audiences establish normalcy was also job one with Fido, a zombie feature that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. In Fido, it was a 1950s fictional small town, Willard, whereas Blood Ties is contemporary. In either case, Heaton describes a mandatory process of making that world as ordinary as possible.“You want to ground your audience so that when your character moves into the supernatural and then the unreal, they start to have reactions to that world, and your audience is having the same reaction,” Heaton says.

“You set it up and here’s your real world and now you’re faced with a vampire and your characters going through disbelief until it’s proven. You draw your audience in through your protagonist. If you’re set in a fantastic world, then your audience is going to have a certain disconnection from reality.”

Adapting all that horror
Blood Ties is also an adaptation for the small screen, so slicing the pie among a group of writers that included the author was another trick entirely.

With author Huff writing one episode, Mohan says the Blood Ties crew stayed true to the central literary dynamic by having the author in on story meetings and pitch sessions.

“Given the time constraints of television production and how quickly you have to get a script turned around, it’s better to have so many hands on deck,” adds Heaton. “You put your script forward and you’re getting feedback from maybe five or six people. You still have to filter that information, but it helps you focus the script faster.

“When you’ve got six people and they’re all saying this doesn’t work, you know it doesn’t work. Then you also have that assistance in finding out how to improve it and get it done, so your writing time is reduced from two or three weeks to three or four days because there are so many people cooking the script with you.”

Still, putting literature on TV can be brutal on the original artifact, so what about having the author in on the deed?

“Tanya’s been really good with us in the sense that these are her characters and she has certain feelings about how they’re produced,” says Heaton. “She gave Peter a lot of freedom to transform it from her literary world into television. It was a positive experience to work with her and get notes from her about whether we’re deviating from her course, because she also understands the things that have to change.”

As for the rest of the process, Mohan describes it as controlled chaos, saying, “You had to be writer and audience at the same time, and you had to be a hard audience. To win people over we had to bring them along by creating something emotionally real. Vicki is a hard sell to the supernatural. Bit by bit, she becomes more exposed to proof. If she’s accepted it, I think our audience will accept it. By that point, I think they will be invested in her character and her entanglements.”

(Above, Dennis Heaton and Travis McDonald in a notes session in Peter's office. You can see that we've failed to keep Travis awake.)