The Line in the Sand Does Not Lead Back to Winnipeg, My Friends.

PENCILS DOWN.

So I guess it's come to this.

(Thanks to Chris Leavins for the awesome pic, taken at the L.A. Hallowe'en Street Party)

In many ways, if you're a TV scribe in Canada, or a lot of other places in the world, right now, you're scratching your head and trying to decide how you feel.

The very things that the WGA is fighting for
are things that writers in Canada and a lot of other jurisdictions don't have. In Canada, we don't make residuals until the producers recoup. Instead, we get a bit more "upfront money" as a buyout when shooting starts. The difference in the economics is profound. There are writers I know who've had a couple of WGA scripts -- and the royalties from those are a big part of their yearly take. If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that I've had a pretty good run over the last eighteen months. In fact, I've been working my great big Irish butt off.

But a good year is just that. I know that it's equally possible that my 2008 may look more like 2005. Or even 2002 or 2003, where I spent many miserable weeks wondering what I was going to do with my bank account in overdraft. Even successful years in Canada mean not scrambling for a few months, at best.

The AMPTP's policy of demanding rollback after rollback was a non-starter to begin with. But if American writers are walking a picket line Monday, what are they fighting for? Why don't you get to watch new TV?

Well, here's the cleanest explanation I've found ... this was posted on Deadline Hollywood Daily:

'What's the biggest issue? Internet and New Media

What are we asking for in Internet and New Media? Two things: 1. Residuals for reuse of content (like replaying tv shows) on the internet. We're asking for residuals of 2.5% of revenue -- that means for every dollar they get paid, we'd get 2 and a half cents. It's a flat percentage, so if they're right and they're never ever going to make a penny, well then, we won't either. No harm, no foul. Since 2.5% is our starting point, in any normal negotiation we'd end up somewhere between what they want to pay (.3%) and what we're asking for (2.5%). I'd guess 1 to 1.5 %. 2. Coverage and protections for original content (new stuff we create for the internet.) We're asking for basic protections so that when we write original stuff for the internet, we have rights -- health and pension, minimum amounts, credits and separated rights (so if we make some amazing character or show, we get the right to share in its success.) We're just asking for the same protections we already have for writing in TV or film. Nothing new or weird. Just the basics.

What are the other issues? DVDs: Currently we get .3% per dvd, we're asking for .6%. Translation: now we get 4 cents per dvd. We are asking for 8 cents per dvd. Since most DVD's cost at least 10 bucks, that doesn't exactly seem like a bank-breaker. Whatever. Enforcement of Coverage: There are lots of shows, like game shows, documentaries and talk shows, where writing is supposed to be covered under our contract. The companies sometimes just ignore the contract -- which means folks don't get health and pension, and if they ask for it, they get fired. We want them to stop that, and honor the contract they signed. Expansion of Coverage: We want to cover stuff where writers are working without coverage, which means without health and pension and other protections. The two big areas are animation and reality. We think those writers should be covered.

You don't actually think you'll get all that, do you? Personally? I think in a perfect world, negotiation involves, well, negotiating. That's give-and-take, where we get some of what we want and they get some of what they want. So far, they just keep showing up at the table with more and more things they're saying they're going to take away -- rollbacks on health and pension, gutting of separated rights, that kind of thing.

But they gave back those resid-whatever-thingums, right? Sort of. They took that one rollback off the table -- but since they're not moving on "digital delivery", and since pretty much all content is going to be digitally delivered in the coming years, well... we'll lose those residuals as soon as that happens. So without internet coverage, it doesn't mean much.''

So anyway, in looking for the local angle, Lee-Anne Goodman from the Canadian Press wrote this article.

Now there's about five things in there that are just howlers, but I'll leave that aside for now. Others have written about them, anyway.

But to Canadian-born scribes thinking about coming home and slurping up some work, I can only say this:

You're gonna be surprised by the contracts you're asked to sign, and you're going to be surprised by the people you find yourselves in meetings with. You may find yourself wishing you'd stayed put and picked up a sign.

My thoughts and best wishes are with you all, right up til the moment where you decide to carpetbag it back here. Cause I know the calls have started. I've heard it from more than one agent-type acquaintance.

In the worst case scenario, while your brothers and sisters walk a picket in L.A., if you come back and get work from fickle, starry eyed producers, and help perpetuate the idea that if you're good, don't bother to try and build something at home -- go to L.A. -- and flee back only when you can't get work there, or if there's a strike.

In the best case scenario, who knows? Maybe producers who can't hire scribes and start new projects will come to Canada. Yeah. Imagine, producers who can raise money from different places, and really know what they're doing. You know, Maybe this strike could end up spilling a little bit of sparkle dust on the Canadian community. There's so much Canadian talent down there ... there may be some really interesting, wonderful opportunities for Canadian writers as they draw on the experiences of people who have done volumes and volumes and volumes of producing in L.A. who are coming back home and want to stay home.

Nah.

In any case, Good Luck guys. At least you're picketing in California and not Winnipeg.

Cause that would suck.

My So Called Could Have Been

"I would have gotten somebody pregnant. Sharon's the obvious choice. I would have made Angela unable to resist turning to Brian Krakow for advice about her doomed relationship wiht Jordan Catalano, and I would have split Graham and Patty up, so Patty could fall into a deep depression -- the kind where you can't get out of bed -- so that Angela is forced to somehow run the household. I would have had Rickie move in with Mr. Katimsky (by the way, Katimsky was executive story editor and writer Jason Katims' family name, once upon a time) and when Mr. Katimsky is fired for the crime of giving a kid a place to live, I would have forced Patty out of her depression to defend him.

These are the ideas that were playing around in my mind, anyway. But there's an intensity, an of-the-moment-ness to making T.V. -- you plan, and the plans go awry and that's called your script. Then it turns out that weird idea that came to you in the shower is more what you meant anyway. Which is part of what I love about writing."

Me too.

Winnie Holzman, ladies and gentlemen. I'm geeking out right now.

My So Called Life is the show that made me realize that I'd never be happy as a TV producer, that eventually I was going to have to take a shot at writing for real.

If you're a fan of quality TV, or if you loved what indie Shout Factory did with their sublime Freaks and Geeks set, run, don't walk to your favorite retailer and order My So Called Life, the complete series -- just out on DVD. A tasteful, insightful book with more of the essay by Holzman I excerpt above, and quotes from the likes of Joss Whedon, featurettes galore, and oh, oh, oh the pain. It's all there.

Winnie Holzman managed to create a show that was just a few years ahead of its time. Imagine what path pop culture and the rise of the new teenage class might have taken had her writing caught on then.

Man. That would have been...Wicked, I guess.

Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder Dares to Say The 'S'-word

WHILE I STRUGGLE to get twenty-six hours of work out of a standard twenty-four hour day, Friend-of-the-Blog Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder dips his gnarly, wizened comedy toe into the big bad blogosphere, with some truly spook-tacular, scaaaaaary thoughts about a scaaaary word that has a lot of people running scaaaaared these days. And though he writes specifically about the industry here in Canada, I think what he has to say is actually pretty universal.

So read on. Wake the neighbors, phone the kids, and as always, please...

...no wagering.

A Dispatch from Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder

So there's this interesting phrase I keep hearing a lot when it comes to comedy in Canada. It's something I've heard from network executives and producers over the years, to be sure. But, more often than not these days, I hear it from fellow writers, particularly emerging writers, about whose future I care deeply, if only because they may be in a position to hire my tired old carcass in years to come.

The writer has a pitch. It's an idea for a half-hour comedy program centering on a small group of individuals, let's say 4 - 8, who either live or work or play together on a regular basis, and each week some sort of problem comes up that needs fixing, and in doing so, the characters interact with one another and try a bunch of solutions and most of those solutions fail until maybe one succeeds, or doesn't, and there's your show.

Hopefully the pitch has a little more meat on the bones than that, but you get the general idea. At that point, the writer often takes a deep breath and says this: "But it's not a sitcom."

"It's not a sitcom." It is a phrase perhaps second in popularity only to the old standby, "We know your show will be funny, but what else will it be?"

(Well, you don't know it'll be funny. A thousand things have to go right before that happens. My name could be Giggles McChucklepants and you'd still have no guarantee the show I'm pitching you will be funny. We should be so lucky. Comedy is hard.)

But I digress.

My little theory is that there are three reasons why the fear and loathing of the word "sitcom" tends to persist. The first, I've grown to suspect, is particularly unfortunate: The writer in question refuses to use the word "sitcom" because it gives them a sort of insurance policy just in case the show isn't actually funny. For some reason, calling their project a "half-hour comedy" or, God forbid, "half-hour dramedy," seems to ease the pressure, because that way, if the jokes are few and far between, it was done on purpose. It's not a sitcom.

This is an important point because it distinguishes the "sitcom versus half-hour comedy" issue from being purely one of semantics to an issue of actual quality. It could just be me, but I believe that a comedy, no matter what you call it, should be funny. Quite funny. Like, ideally, a-couple-of-chuckles-and-one-big-laugh-on-every-page funny. If you're writing a comedy pilot and there aren't a lot of actual laughs, it's a bit like writing a Die Hard movie where there isn't a lot of actual action. The audience comes through the door expecting something and when we don't deliver it we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Now, please note I say "laughs" here and not necessarily "jokes." Personally, I like jokes, and lots of them, but I will labour to make the distinction because it speaks to the second reason people are sitcom-phobic, which is that the word "sitcom" seems to conjur a certain creaky set-up/punchline/my boss-is-coming-to-dinner-and-all-I-have-to-serve-him-are-my-pot-brownies kind of show, like, say, Three's Company (which had its merits, but whatever).

Personally, I say enough. It's time to re-claim the stupid word. The old adage that a sitcom should have "three jokes a page" may sound hacky and tired, but keep in mind that it's not all sarcastic retorts. It's wordplay, it's pratfalls, it's cutaways, it's bad behaviour, it's reactions to that bad behaviour. Things that are not all necessarily "jokes" but things that are clearly, demonstrably funny. Comedy scripts should be chock full of them. That's not to say we can't have dramatic moments, or land an emotional punch here and there, but if we're doing comedy, we have to earn that stuff, not just cram it in because we ran out of gags.

Cheers, Taxi, Everybody Loves Raymond, Will and Grace, Two and a Half Men, and Happy Days are all sitcoms. But so are Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, Flight of the Conchords, 30 Rock, Extras and so forth.

Now: You might look at that list and note that none of those shows are Canadian, which brings me to the third and possibly most common objection to the use of the word sitcom, which is that we don't have that kind of history up here. Well, you're right, we don't, which is why any time I get into a discussion about sitcoms in Canada someone invariably brings up The Trouble With Tracy. Truth be told, that was a perfectly good argument twenty years ago. Maybe even ten.

But I think we should move on. The Trouble with Tracy was nearly forty fucking years ago, and the tide has, I believe, finally turned. If we accept that Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys, Rent-a-Goalie, Little Mosque, Made in Canada, The Newsroom, etc. are, by definition, sitcoms, then we have to come to the conclusion that we have, in fact, rounded some kind of corner in this country, and that there is nobility in building on this new tradition. Television comedy isn't dead. People like to laugh. It's like some sort of weird thing with them, in fact.

What kinds of sitcom are we going to make, traditional or groundbreaking? I'm not sure. I recently had a conversation with a very talented Canadian television writer who argued that not only is sitcom a dirty word, but that comedy had "evolved" past shows like Cheers.

I like this guy, but I say that's bullshit. The traditional multi-cam show has run aground in recent years, no question, but I am convinced it is resting and not dead. Much has been made of the fact that CBC are currently looking to produce traditional, family-oriented, multi-cam sitcoms. Some people question the idea, but I happen to like it a lot. There is something to be said for zigging while everyone else zags, and I actually believe that the Ceeb, rather than dragging behind the curve on this one, are in fact out-front, anticipating a time in the near-future when frenetic, uber-ironic, 40 locations-and-65-scene comedies wear out their welcome. People like shows where they can drop in to a place they know and actually hang around a while. It was nice to go back to the WJM Newsroom, or Mary's apartment. It felt good. Shows like Arrested Development had no real home base, and I think suffered because of it. The show was hilarious, but the emotional connection wasn't there.

This is related to my "Friendly Giant" theory of television, which is that people like a certain amount of repetition in their TV because it's ingrained in us at an early age ("I'll close up the draw bridge when you leave...") But that's another post.

Similarly, it's been a while since I sat down with CTV, and they may not be as interested in doing the multi-cam thing, but I can't believe they wouldn't love to have another Corner Gas on their hands. Are they gonna back away from the next great idea or vehicle simply because the man or woman pitching it calls it a sitcom? I doubt it. (Though if I'm wrong, don't sue me).

So, that's my little rant. Be curious to find out if I'm alone on this one.

Oh, one other thing: Assuming we ever get over the sitcom thing, could we also possibly put a moratorium on saying things like "It's a comedy about a family, but it's not "Frasier." Or, "it's a show about young people, but it's not "Friends." Or, "it's quirky, but it's not Seinfeld."

Why do we always pick the most successful shows in television history as an example of what we don't want to do? I'm not saying we should set out to re-make a show that's already been done, but wouldn't it be nice to at least duplicate that kind of success?

It always seems to me like it would make more sense to say "It's a story about a guy on the radio, but it's not 'Hello, Larry.'"

Now there's a pitch I could get behind.

"Hello, Larry"? Anyone? As I say, I'm old.

If you're an industry professional, and you'd like to guest blog here in Sticksville, drop me a line at the email link on Ye Olde Sideboarde. Thanks to Matt Neffer. Promotional considerations by Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat. This guest blog is a Mark Goodman/Bill Todman production.

I Got Nothin

A LONG DAY of tech surveys and production meetings. And strangely, when I say I got nothin...I mean I got nothin. At all. Leopard is a sweet looking O/S. I suspect no one in the industry in L.A. has fingernails right now. How much did it suck that the World Series only went 4? Still... nothin.

And nothin it shall continue to be. At least til tomorrow, when guest Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder takes on what is, inexplicably, currently the dirtiest word in television.

Here's a hint. It ends with "com."