Oh. My. God.

OKAY OKAY. I know I said I was done til Monday. At least. But in catching up on some of my reading over coffee this morning, I read this little article in Salon, an excerpt from an interesting new book called "Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean" by Douglas Wolk. If you work in TV in Canada, read this passage where Wolk talks about comic fans and tell me if it doesn't sound familiar:

There's an element of comics culture, sometimes called (a little derisively) "Team Comics," that gets excited whenever anything that looks like that acknowledgment or respect I mentioned above turns up in the outside world -- a college class on the graphic novel, a Hollywood movie based on a graphic novel, a newspaper or magazine article about a cartoonist, somebody reading a comic book on a TV show. Different segments of Team Comics take notice if a TV character is reading a new issue of "Aquaman" or Lynda Barry's "One!Hundred!Demons!," but the principle is the same.

Both the "Team Comics" culture vultures and the alternate-cover-hoarding mavens are driven by the desire to turn their hobby into some kind of success or validation, whether through affluence or cultural power, and that impulse is directly connected to the class aspirations that afflict the entire medium. A lot of comics readers are unhealthily attached to the idea that everyone else thinks what they do is kind of trashy and disreputable, and that they have to prove their favorite leisure activity worthy of respect -- to show the world that they were right all along.

It's probably time to let go of that strain of earnest defensiveness.

Uh...Der. Wow.

I get it now. We're all comic book geeks.

Mind officially blown. That's it. I'm getting the hell out into the sunshine. Stat.

Wherein Denis Asks for a "What What" and a "Mea Culpa"

I MEANT to work up a post all day today, but it's just turned into one of those days. First there were a couple of aborted notes sessions on other scripts. Then we spun out to see our set -- which is insanely cool, and a dream found location...this show's going to show my city off proper! Now I'm reading an outline and there's just not going to be anything else from me til Monday. Too burnt. Too Summer-headed.

But over at Will's place, he saved the best part of his interview with Al Magee for last. It's well worth reading , and I'm going to excerpt a big chunk of it below.

I get a lot of "good on you" stuff from people -- a lot of it, inevitably, in the "don't use my name" email or conversation department -- Welcome to Canada, you fraidy cats -- every time I post some gear to what the CRTC does or how Jim Shaw is mouthing off, or this, or that, or the other thing...

But every once in a while when I post about how the creative people in this country really need to stand up and pull up boots and work harder and be more professional, I'm greeted on those posts with a whole lot of silence. And that's telling.

Now, I like the Teamakers site. She/He is an anonymous manager somewhere inside CBC Toronto, Fort Dork, and since the days of the lockout of 2005, she/he has posted a lot of interesting commentary and criticism of the dysfunction of CBC, all under the nom du keyboard "Ouimet." Well, today, Ouimet went off on a hack about the Globe's TV critic, John Doyle. I gather the issue is that Ouimet feels Doyle takes info that appears anonymously on the site and uses it in his column without proper attribution. Or something.

I punt on this issue, completely. It just doesn't really interest me.

What does interest me mightily is how a lot of commenters take the time to courageously, from the cheap seats of anonymity, trash Doyle, including someone apparently connected with Dragon's Den who seems to have it out for Doyle because The Globe gave Dragon's Den a bad review.

This is the shit that makes my blood run cold.

Because, see, the other part of having an industry that we take seriously is having, and displaying, a level of professionalism that I don't see everywhere I look. And we should see it everywhere.

Commandment fucking one of that professionalism is that you get a bad review, you take the freight. You don't whinge like a baby about it. Certainly not from a position of anonymity.

Television, when it gets covered at all in Canada, is covered mostly as a business story. That's not good. We don't have very many people writing intelligently and critically about the business and about the culture and what it means to Canada. With Antonia Zerbisias at the Star moving on (after being fed up, finally) with the insularity and reticence of anyone in the business to speak truth about the problems facing us, Doyle is probably the only guy left in Canada who regularly calls it like he sees it, and treats television -- Canadian television -- as something worth considering and writing about. Vinay Menon and some of the other writers at The Toronto Star are trying to get that moving, too. But you know, it's still one page for TV, nine pages for Sports, right?

When I was in Banff, it was a great thrill to finally meet Bill Carter from the New York Times. Much of what I know about TV, much of what I think about this industry, is based on Bill's excellent reportage. We don't have a Bill Carter in Canada. Would that we did. Doyle to me is the only guy who comes close. Antonia's gone, guys. While I was there, I also finally had a conversation with another writer who used to write about TV in this country, and they confirmed something I had always suspected: they stopped because they got tired of all the whining by all the people who pounced every time they thought they were being treated oh so unfairly in the press.

We all need to grow the hell up.

If you're a creative in this country, I think we need a drunkard's prayer or oath or something. Here's my first draft to start:

I resolve to do my best to craft stories and characters that will entertain and enrich the cultural experiencce of the Canadian Television viewer.
I resolve to conduct myself professionally at all times.
I resolve to work as hard as I can, to never settle for good enough.
I resolve to remember to work telling stories, and to be paid for that, is a privilege, and that there are many, many people out there who would gladly trade places with me.
I resolve to put my work out into the world when it is ready to be judged, and to react to that judgement profesionally, with dignity and with perspective.
I resolve to learn, and do better, and to keep ego in check, and to help those who come after me.
I resolve to keep bitterness at bay as long as I can.

I don't know. Too flowery? Anyway, back to Will and Al Magee. Here's what Magee says, kind of on the same line:

The only hit one hour show I worked on was Slings and Arrows and I was a spear carrier to Bob Martin and Susan Coyne’s genius. (Ask producers Niv and Danny, they’ve got the touch.) I think Regenesis is a success because it is unique, it is rigorously produced by a strong production company and team and it has committed support from its broadcaster. That combination has allowed the show to mature and gain momentum and build an audience. It takes time, (more than one season) to discover a series, to learn from the audience and to process all of that learning into stronger characters, stronger stories and a stronger series design, which payoff with audience.

On the speculative opinion side – popular television is made by people who live and love television, not by people taking a break from feature film careers. Which is not to say you can’t do both. Slings was loaded with feature people, and certainly the actors, the producers and the director have great success in features, but they also have great experience and respect for the craft of television story telling and dedicated themselves to that. So too do the team at Regenisis. The industrial series that we make never hit too big in Canada because they smell so inauthentic. It’s not so much fun to watch a guy from a salad dressing commercial dressed up like an Alien spewing gibberish on a set full of flashing lights. But those series give us all great experience and keep us alive and make it possible to develop an industry. And sometimes they make it harder to develop an audience. (And by the way that is not a reference to Stargate, which is a favorite of mine, great television made by an incredibly talented group of people.)

Can we get a one hour series that takes off the way our half hours like Corner Gas and Little Mosque can? Maybe, and maybe if the one-hours follow a similar route as the half hour hits – authentically Canadian, not pretending or aspiring to a US primetime aesthetic, and giving the audience something accessible that is not available on a network simulcast. It takes a perfect triangle to get any series right but it’s more important on a one hour because of the pressure on the writing to be sustainable. So the triangle of a skilled writer with a strong point of view, a producer who knows how to work with writers and broadcasters and banks, and a broadcaster who is unflinchingly committed to the series is essential. I’ve had first hand experience on each side of the triangle and at various points in my life as a writer, as a producer and as a broadcaster, I’ve been the one to screw things up. It’s not one of those triangles that works with two sides out of three. It takes all three. So can I revise my pretentious label and call it not the Perfect Triangle, but the Perfect Storm.

The world doesn’t need another TV series the way it needs cures for what ail us, so the making of TV series is an illogical enterprise from the get go. In my twenty some years, all of the successes I’ve been a part of have had perfect symmetry on what I’ll now call my triangle theory. If you’ll permit me the temporary pretensions of naming my own theories:

Slings and Arrows had a head writer in Bob Martin with a unique imagination and singular point of view. It had producers in Danny and Niv and Sari who are very creative, know how to lead projects, how to marshal resources, how to bridge production and broadcast, and it had a team at Showcase that was maniacally committed to the enterprise. Speaking purely from my experience on that show from the broadcast side at Showcase, we were rigorous and respectful with the development, the creative team completely engaged with us for full debate, and as a result the project maintained one singular point of view and a commitment from everyone to stay on the same page regardless of the pain. Hence there was no pain. That takes great commitment and leadership from all sides which we don’t often experience.

On the creative side, the cliché that it’s all about good writing is only partially true. It’s all about good design. Good design requires the committed input of the writer(s), the producers, and the broadcaster. The broadcaster has to come to the project with an actual tested set of information about their audience not just wacky guesses and misinformation and insecurity that will undermine everyone’s confidence. From the writers it takes a commitment to the project, to the ongoing development of the project, to the responsible integration of all the input, good, bad and otherwise, and to managing their own sense of attachment to their best ideas that just won’t fly without getting pissy and passive aggressive and throwing their hands up. It’s toughest on the writers and we have a lot of extremely talented writers who can write brilliant material, and we need to support and develop those writers to gain the skill to manage their own temperament and attachments so they can apply their talent to what may at the time appear like the most undermining of notes and conditions that get placed on their work.

We need leadership and we need to commit to each other.

Amen, Al. The full post is here. As for the rest of it, maybe this weekend take a look in the mirror and don't think about the CRTC or the CTF or the Networks, or the Tory Government or Bev Oda or Konrad Von Manheimsteamroller or all the other things that are wrong with the system. Look to yourself.

Can you do better?

Let's try. Let's all start Monday.

Have a good weekend.

Greg Daniels, Part II: Long Skinny Notebooks, and The Five-To-One

NOT ONLY has Greg Daniels co-created one of the two best animated tv series of the last 20 years, King of the Hill, but he also wrote for the other one. (The Simpsons) He's written for Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live, and won Emmys galore. In fact, three of Daniels' Simpsons episodes are ranked as among the most popular Simpsons eps of all time. That's a feat.

This is the conclusion to my conversation with Greg Daniels, Creator and Executive Producer of the American version of The Office, which took place at the Banff Springs Hotel during the 2007 Banff World Television Festival.

For Part I, go here. To hear an NPR feature on writing The Office with Daniels and Mindy Kaling (writer, "Kelly") go here.


DTOS: I hate to go to the lame place -- this whole journalist driven, "death of comedy" thing -- but one of the great things about The Office that maybe points what's missing in a lot of other tv comedy today is the idea of truth. There is something true in the work you've done, both in King of the Hill and now in The Office. I recognize the America I see in The Office. And the America that I saw in your years of King of the Hlll. And I don't see that on Television a lot.


GREG DANIELS: Well, we have a couple of things that we do. And one of them is I get these reporters notebooks for the writers, and pass them out. And for King in the Hill we used to go to Texas and go around with our reporters' notebooks and here we're always going to offices, talking to people, and so there's a lot of observational comedy -- seeing what's going on and making humor out of that, rather than coming up with the comedy first. So that's one reason. But another thing is that the cameramen on The Office, specifically Randall Einhorn, although Matt Sohn his number two is also very good...but he's our DP and I used to sit him down when I told him what we were looking for and I'd say, "truth and beauty. we're going for truth and beauty." He really responded to that. "Cool," he'd say -- he lived in Australia, he'd go, "Truth and beauty, mate!" And then he'd go out...so he was always trying to find that moment of behavior, or that thing in the camerawork. So I think that's a lot of -- well, it's a combination of a lot of factors, but I'm glad you pointed it out -- because that's always our sort of secret thing we'd talk to him about.


DTOS: From a standpoint of...for the writer geeks reading this, now. Is there anything in your process that you've learned -- your secret "Office" weapon, the way that you do things that is a better way to do things than maybe a lot of other shows are doing?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I think surprise is extremely important. Which means originality. And I think people have to be really careful when they're doing creative writing that they're not remembering things. Because I think a lot of times you're going, "oh wow, that would be really cool if this happened, and then that happened" and you're not really thinking of it for the first time. You're actually remembering bits and pieces of things that you've seen on other TV shows. Or movies or something. And I would try and steer away from other shows and look toward real life to try and make the writing be fresher. And find stories that people tell you. Stuff like that -- not go, "remember that classic Lucy episode? Well a couple of tweaks and adjustments..." I think a lot of people do that, you know? "I know, how about a 'locked in a' something episode? That's always worked before." And I think that's just the wrong way to think about coming up with ideas. It's so much better to get these little skinny reporters notebooks that fit in your back pocket and try and go out and try and look at things and think of what would be funny in the things that you see out in the real world.

DTOS: Just because you've been so great with it, and have tried so many experiments with it -- what have you learned on the show about using the web, and the internet, and webisodes?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I would love to do way way more stuff on the web. Right now there's certain, um...Guild considerations, which I'm very respectful of, because I think the Guild is a great way to protect a good life for creative people and they've identified that these things are not appropriate for Guild members to do. And for some reason, the companies have not wanted to set a precedent by negotiating a Guild-covered agreement, which is silly because it's the same price, you know. But I guess these are issues that are coming up for negotiation in the next Minimum Basic Agreement, so no one wants to touch it now, which is too bad. If they did, I would be all over the web with all sorts of programming. As it is now, you know, once you pick around all the Guild issues -- we're still trying to do a lot of stuff. Just not as much as we would do. Why do it? To me it's because the whole thing with our show is that we've made it much more disposable because it's a fake documentary. So if there's a boom in the shot it's okay, and the lighting doesn't have to be perfect. And that kind of relaxes everybody in the sense of, they can try weird things. And if it works it works, and it goes in. And if it doesn't it doesn't and we haven't wasted an enormous amount of time and money. It's the ease of production -- and I think that's even more true with the web. Because nobody expects glossy, Hollywood values on the web now. So it's really all about the writing and the ideas, not the execution. And it makes it easier for people to just throw their ideas on. So to me if we have weird ideas, that we don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars of the studio's money on because I can't justify it, cause it's just too weird. I still could maybe justify a couple of thousand dollars. And that, creatively is maybe is the most exciting part...these weird, late night kind of ideas. The 1am sketch at Saturday Night Live.


DTOS: The five to one, yeah!


GREG DANIELS: Yeah, the five to one, they just throw it on! Yeah, I'd love to do more of those. That's what the web is to me.

New episodes of The Office return to NBC this fall.

In Conversation: Greg Daniels, Executive Producer/Showrunner of The Office (U.S.)

IN PERSON, Greg Daniels is in many ways, the comedy writer in my head. That is to say, he shows up for our interview late, distracted, in a long coat. He's a bit harried -- the interviews have started earlier than he thought they would, and I'm first up. I have a sneaking suspicion he got lost on the way to the room. The Banff Springs Hotel can be kind of cavernous and medieval that way. No paintings that follow you with their eyes, though...which is a shame.

If you didn't know The Office was an American remake, based on characters created by Gervais and Merchant, you'd swear that you were seeing a character who was a bit of Jim Halpert, and Ryan at his most harried. Playing the writer-as-performer game is always a slippery slope, but the heck with it -- I see a bit of Bobby Hill in there, too.

Daniels gets more animated as he gets talking -- and he's downright passionate when he speaks about he craft of writing. TV also runs in the family - his wife, Susanne, is the President of Lifetime Networks. All the best comic minds, I find, aren't shy about showing their serious side, and Daniels is no exception.

Diane Kristine also did an excellent, wider-focused interview with Daniels for Blogcritics, which you can accces here .

DTOS: I guess one of he first things I'd love to know about the show relates to the show I'm working on now. I'm struggling with the size of the ensemble and the cast, and how you service all those characters. And you have an enormous cast. And all those characters breathe, and live, and I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the fact that some of those actors are writers as well. Does that help you service all those characters?


GREG DANIELS: I think that probably is true. Some of the characters are working on the show in a different capacity. So they don't care as much if they don't have as much screen time. So that helps with three characters at least. But it's very difficult, mostly because it's very expensive. I came from doing animation for the last ten years [King of the Hill] and one of the fun things is that people do multiple voices, so you get an actor who does three voices, you get three characters out of them, and you can have a giant cast of characters to play with, where in ordinary tv terms you don't have that because if you want an ongoing character, you have to make them a series regular, which is very expensive. And you generally have to guarantee that they'll be in every episode, or seven out of 13, or ten out of 13. So we recently made series regulars out of a few fantastic actors that we've had, such as the character of Darryl, Craig Robinson, and Ed Helms and Creed Bratton...but you know, it's expensive. It's very hard to do starting off.


DTOS: I know you've probably answered this question a thousand times before but hopefully I'll try to get at it a slightly different way. One of the first things I noticed about the American version. that I thought, "that's interesting, that's a very smart American translation" is that the Jim character doesn't seem to hate his job like the British character did. So now that you've got three seasons under your belt and you know these characters arguably better than we did in the British version I'm wondering how you view-- now--those differences. And what makes your Office American, versus the jumping off point.


GREG DANIELS: Well. (long pause) I don't think a lot of these differences came into play until the second season. Some of them might have, but we were really respectful of the original, the first season. Maybe a little too respectful. But we didn't really start to do our own thing as much til the second season. We certainly had a lot of psychological discussions. I like to have a lot of psychological discussions before writing. And the idea behind Jim and why he was still there was, was at first he was there because of Pam. He would have left but he had this unrequited crush. But then I think we started to decide that he had a few character flaws that kept him there, like he was a little bit of a slacker, uh, I mean you can consider these flaws or not depending on your point of view. But you know...I sometimes think about the Jimmy Stewart character in "It's a Wonderful Life" kind of, how he spends his whole time, his whole time there and he realizes that he hasn't had all the adventures his brother has, but he's become very important to all the people in that town. So, it's kind of like, well, perhaps there's value in that too. So I think we started off thinking that a guy like that would be ambitious and do all these other things, and now we're kind of coming to the conclusion that just being ambitious and moving to New York is not the measure of a good person.


DTOS: I'm a huge fan of your version, and I have been since the beginning. But it's funny, as a viewer, but also as a writer, I can look at one early episode and think, "wow, this show is really finding its feet" and that's where the episode where you managed to do what nobody in America can do right now, which is deal head on with the subject of race.

GREG DANIELS: The Diversity Day episode?

DTOS: To start with, yeah...

GREG DANIELS: Wow, that was our second episode. I was at least thinking that you'd pick one at the beginning of the second season -- but that's pretty good!

DTOS: But that was the one to me that was the shot across the bow. I know a lot of people who watched the first episode and went, 'meh' but to me, this was what you would have to deal with in an American version, and you didn't shy away from it.

GREG DANIELS: Well if you know about the realities of TV production, you'll know that first episode was filmed a year before the other one. The first episode was the pilot, and the script had to be a situation where, you know, you're trying to get picked up. And since they had bought an adaptation, completely starting from scratch would be a very risky thing to do. So you know, that was the episode where we hired all the people, we didn't know who any of the actors were when we started shooting. The second episode is...The first episode really should be buried, really, of any new series. Because you don't know who the actors are. The second episode we knew it was Steve Carell in that part, we knew all the other actors, we knew Stanley was black, we knew all these things that we didn't before. I'm glad you liked it. I liked it too. But that was also one of the things where, Howard Klein and Ben Silverman and I went to England to talk to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and one of the things we talked about, this was before even the pilot rewrite, was that a big issue in American offices would be race. Huge. Bigger than class. That would be the equivalent to class in Britain. So that's why we hit it dead on.


DTOS: There's another key scene, I think that defines what's surprising about the show. And this one's from last season. Where you finally showed everybody out on the sales call. And the thing about that, the scene that almost had me getting out of the chair was the scene where you show that, despite everything, Jim and Dwight work really well together -- that they're a really good team. I thought that was brilliant.


GREG DANIELS: Thanks. There's a lot of deleted material in that. I'm trying to remember what actually aired and what didn't. But there's ... I think in the mythology of the show they used to go on sales calls a lot, but they got so irritated with each other that they didn't anymore.

Come back for Part II of my Greg Daniels interview tomorrow.

Will Dixon and Al Magee

I SWEAR this is not just because he hosted a wonderfully enjoyable, raucous dinner in Banff, where Evil Dennis and I managed to traumatize a very nice Magee TV staffer -- but Will Dixon is quietly on fire again with a great profile of one of Canada's nicest super-producers -- Al Magee.

There's a lot to ponder in Will's two part (so far!) profile, but here's the bit that caught my eye the most:

Al: The big lesson from Europe was that all audiences really crave homegrown hits. I worked on a show in Finland called Tutto Jutto, a crazy cross between Lawrence Welk and the Newlywed Game. On Thursday nights 3 million of the 5.5 million population watched Tutto Jutto. It’s no wonder that our own hits have such an idiosyncratic homegrown feel.

And the professional sensibility in Europe is the reverse of here; the producers and broadcasters don’t take themselves too seriously, but they take the work and their responsibility to the production community and the audience very seriously.

It's too long for a T-shirt, but I wonder if we could get that last statement on a coffee mug? Or maybe, I don't know, how about a tattoo that we can pass out at the CFTPA convention and the broadcaster launches? Who's with me? Anybody?

You're leaving me out here alone again, aren't you? Bastards!

Part I of the Magee profile is here. For part II, click thusly.

(and just to clarify, in the post below I mention that the only thing keeping us from doing interesting work is will. I mean will. I don't mean you, Will. Glad we cleared that up.)

I'm Not Sure.

THAT I get John From Cincinatti.


I'm also not sure that I care. The performance of the actor playing John, which I thought would get old fast, is really growing on me. Greenwood is dependable as always. And to see Ellsworth and Charlie from Deadwood show up in very different roles is both disconcerting and joyous.

And I haven't even thought about Luis Guzman yet.

And Rebecca DeMornay as a hot granny? Come ON!

John Doyle wrote yesterday about HBO series and how far and away better they were, and you have to admit it's true. Even the ones that I don't care for, like Big Love, are consistently more interesting than anything available from the major networks.

The thing is, because of how crappily CanCon does here anyway, you would think that would take the pressure off to make things more accessible. I'm almost sure that I could live with an industry where we weren't getting the boffo numbers thanks to poor promotion and various other structrual limitations, so long as the quality suggested that we were making a contribution to the art.

One problem, of course, is that fine line between art and self-indulgence. I think there's a bit of Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome out there in CanConLand. Many that have been called "brilliant" and "visionary" have struck me as "boring" or "twee."

I've worked on cheeseburgers and I've worked on vanity projects, and I've worked on shows that were on a continuum between those two things. But if any network, any broadcaster would have the balls to let someone talented here make a John From Cincinatti, well...that'd really be something, now, wouldn't it? That's probably why I flipped for Durham County. Save us Obi-Wan-TMN...you're our only hope!

Except they're not...or they shouldn't be. CTV 's run The Sopranos, terrestrial. CBC gets a whack of cash from taxpayers. How is it possible that they don't have room in their development slate for brilliant? Where is their process failing them?

Think: the only thing keeping us from doing these shows is will. Will, and the wisdom to trust a creative voice and get the hell out of the way.

If You're Surfing in here from Blog T.O.

WELCOME, first of all. This is a blog about TV writing and sometimes Canadian TV. If you scroll down through the last two weeks of posts, hopefully you'll be able to find some lively reportage from my trip last week to the 2007 Banff TV Festival. I have more of that stuff to come, including an interview with the Executive Producer of The Office, Greg Daniels.

If you look at the entry from June 8, I think there are links to some of my big all time posts. Can't say more now. Busy rewriting. Ciao.

Dude, when do you have time to Write?

Debbie over at BlogTo -- a nifty little blog about all things Toronto, did a little email interview with me recently. Go read it here and find out why I'll never forgive Avril for that thing she said to me on the carpet at the MMVA's...or something:

How did you get into screenwriting?

Sideways. I always wanted to write. When I first graduated Ryerson I sent a script I wrote down to L.A. It was a "Wonder Years" spec script and I got really great feedback on it from the Executive Producer of the show. But I didn't follow up. I drifted into TV producing, doing stories on media and technology, first at TVOntario, then at Citytv. I had a wonderful time at Citytv, got to interview a lot of people, but was still restless.

In 1996 I did a play at Summerworks called "Press'd" -- and my boss at the time, Moses Znaimer, brought a Director friend named Jeremy Kagan to the show. And Kagan flipped for my play. He loved the writing. But I never followed up. About a year later, I'm watching the Emmys and there's Jeremy Kagan, accepting an award for Directing "The West Wing," which was my favorite show at the time. And I decided, if I ever got another break like that, I wasn't going to let it pass by.

By this time I'd moved on to help start up Space: The Imagination Station. I met up on-set with a couple of guys producing a show called STARHUNTER. They liked me, I wrote a few eps for their second season, and then I took the big leap. I quit my job and went to the Canadian Film Centre. When I got out, I never looked back. I've been working ever since, first in documentary (I did a lot of lifestyle wedding shows) and now drama.

I say all this because now I look back and I think the missed opportunities had purpose. I had to get past my fear. People tend to think that you only get one 'break,' but it's not true. You just have to want it badly enough that you are willing to risk everything. Some get there more quickly because they've got youthful bravado or a natural fearlessness on their side. Some come later to it, once they realize that they won't be happy if they don't really try. But the risk -- taking the risk, is all.

The full profile is here.

It's a Bouncing Baby Blog! Pro-Writer Style!

IT'S HARD at this point to come up with a new entry point into the scribosphere. Lots of niches are being scratched daily. But more and more agents, both southerly and cold Canadians, are reporting that they're hearing that people want to read original pilots as spec samples. Sometimes it's as the second or third script -- but still, that makes for a daunting challenge.

Because nothing is harder than writing a pilot. It's a dark bit of business, part necromancy and part bone-crushing bravado.

Luckily, an incredibly wonderful, hardworking, and way experienced Canadian writer named Jill Golick has a new blog where she obsesses over pilots. Not so you don't have to...just because she's writing pilots herself and therefore, she's obsessing over them anyway. She's just letting you listen in. Awesome, hey?

Here's a bit from a recent post on a British show I've never seen, but boy do I want to now:

One of my favourite series of 2007 thus far is the British series Skins. The opening scenes of the pilot, entitled "Tony" and written by Bryan Elsley, are absolutely fabulous.

The show opens with a 30 second title sequence that is all shots of characters and ends with the series title "Skins".

The first shot of the first episode is close on eyes which pop open, awake, as the camera slowly pulls out to reveal a teenage boy in bed as church bells ring in the distance. His alarm goes off and he flicks on some music as he springs into action, doing his dips, chin ups and bicep curls in only his tight white underpants, his face expressionless. His first smile appears as he surveys his image in the mirror.

That sequence takes 37 seconds and it's all about character.

A teenage girl looking bedraggled in her smudged makeup and short skirt walks up the street.

In his bedroom, our teenage boy's watch alarm sounds. He stations himself at the bedroom window and looks out. In the window across the street, a woman allows her white robe to drop to the floor, revealing her naked back. She glances out the window; she knows our boy is watching.

On the street, the girl glances up at the woman's window and then at his. She stops, arms crossed, staring up at his window. Is she a pissed off girlfriend?

No, actually. She waves, trying to distract him as the naked woman turns in his direction providing a good front view. Below the young girl finally attracts his attention.

The boy turns to his stereo, cranking the volume higher, higher, higher still, smiling with satisfaction in the direction of his bedroom door, behind which we can barely make out a male voice: "Tony! Tony!"

Tony, the teenage boy, signals to the girl below and she lunges for the front door. An irate looking 40-something male wearing nothing but red boxers storms into Tony's room, yelling to be heard over the music.

"Sorry," says Tony, pretending to fiddle with the remote, "the volume's busted."

"Every fucking morning!" spurts his furious father. Meanwhile the young hottie is sneaking up the stairs, into her bedroom, peeling off her clubbing clothes and slipping into her demure English school girl uniform.We're not done yet.

Tony is now sitting on the toilet reading Sartre's Nausea as his father knocks on the bathroom door begging to be let in. Tony smiles mildly as he flushes, brushes and goes out the window, leaving the bathroom door locked and his father pounding and cursing on the other side.

Tony climbs down to street level, pauses to smile at the now-dressed woman from across the street and lets himself into the house.

In the kitchen, Mom is making eggs. His sister, now every inch the innocent school girl, nibbles toast. Dad, still ranting about getting into the bathroom, steps into the kitchen and stops dead when he sees Tony.

The lock is broken again, Tony claims mildly, as his father stares at him with mounting hatred.

By this time, you couldn't pay me to turn off this show. And the interesting thing about this opening is that none of it has anything to do with what follows. Tony's parents and sister don't have any significance in the series until a much later episode.

Instead of establishing story, the writer has opted to devote the first three and three quarter minutes of the pilot to setting up character. And he has done so beautifully.

Jill breaks down other pilots and talks about what makes them work. If you're taking that leap toward trying to come up with a pilot yourself, it's an invaluable addition to the scribosphere: Running With My Eyes Closed.