XX or XY, They're All Writers To Me

THERE'S AN ODD little article by Gayle MacDonald in this weekend's Globe & Mail about some pretty great female Canadian screenwriters:

“To work in a story room, you've got to be confident enough to throw out your good ideas and your bad ones,” adds Forbes, who is also part of Cameron's team on Flashpoint. “These days, girls are raised to be more assertive. Good writers – regardless of their sex – can write anything. Women can write kick-ass action. And men can write a heart-wrenching breakup scene.”

But while women writers are making their mark in part by conquering territory once claimed almost exclusively by men, it hasn't hurt, either, that Canadian networks are hungry for female viewers, especially those 25 and older, a coveted demographic for advertisers. Last year, at the launch of CBC Television's winter schedule, Kirstine Layfield, executive director of programming, made no secret of the fact that the public broadcaster was looking for new shows aimed specifically at a younger female viewership. “We're trying to be more inclusive,” Layfield said. “This is our opportunity to include women more aggressively into the mix. Women are huge followers of drama.”

This past week, CBC announced two new big-budget pickups: The Session, about a 32-year-old woman able to revisit the mistakes of her past; and The Wild Roses, the story of a Calgary-based family of women fighting for what they see as rightfully theirs. The latter was created by Cameron, her sister Amy, and Miranda de Pencier.

“Because viewership is skewing more female, the shows being brought to the screen are in reaction to the viewership,” says Daegan Fryklind, another finalist at Monday night's awards show, for her work on CTV's Robson Arms. “So if these are strong female leads, then they need strong females in the room to write the material they need,” adds the 38-year-old, who also was part of the team on CBC's recently cancelled drama jPod. “But I've never felt anyone only hired me because I'm a woman. I bring myself to the table, ovaries and all, so what?”

So what indeed. To be honest, without taking anything away from the wonderful writers profiled in the article, I kind of agree with the sentiment expressed by a commenter on the Tv, Eh? site:

You know, sometimes I read stories and I wonder what planet I have been on because it is not the one described by the journalist. My first boss in the bizz (say 20 yrs ago) a woman, my second ditto. My third — the same and the creative head of the network, a woman. last year was the first time I ever worked on an all male writing staff, the writing staffs on all the shows I have ever worked on have had equal #’s of men to women and they have been shows in all different kinds of genres.

It feels to me like Gayle MacDonald wanted to profile female screenwriters in advance of the Canadian Screenwriting Awards, which is a fine and laudable thing. But that's not enough. You've got to torque it with a thesis. And this is one she thought she could make fit.

But it doesn't fit. Not really. For a lot of reasons.

First, the move of TV viewership to being predominately female is not a new trend. It's been going on for my entire career in TV, which is about to hit the 20 year mark.

Articles like this were written when Sisters premiered (1991) -- and that ran for over 100 episodes. The truth is, if you're a TV writer working today, the amazing thing is not a woman who can write action. It's the number of men who have learned, by necessity, to write women. (Compare and contrast the roles available for women in the movies - ie: wife, girlfriend) That's why you get lots of big female stars turning to series when they reach a certain age. Glenn Close getting bad scripts? Come to TV. We love you. We'll treat you right.

Men learning to write women is an adjustment to the realities of who's watching, sure. Just as the article points out that women have been raised to be more assertive, you've got pretty much everybody under 40 these days -- boys included, being raised to look at that as no big deal. It's hard to be a real Type A jerk writing tv drama. You have to mine too much stuff. You know, feelings and shit.

There is a selfish, satisfying reason for men learning to write women, too: for the most part, they're more interesting to write. They have more layers. They can deceive others while they're deceiving themselves. They articulate feelings -- and conceal things. Men -- most men -- simply don't display that kind of emotional range. Those still waters run pretty deep, which makes it harder to get out in 43 minutes.

In the Canadian context, of course, there's also the reality that we have to have more talk because even at 1.3 or 1.5 million an hour, that doesn't buy you four action act outs. And the other reality, that as the bleeding of male eyeballs has worsened, many networks are uneasily asking, "how can we lure more men back?" (As I've posited before, the writing of male characters on TV is often now the problem -- not the writing of women.)

Also like the commenter on TV, Eh? there's another wrinkle to all this that makes it weird. The vast majority of TV development execs in Canada are female. As for staffs, well, I worked last year on a show that was 50-50. One of the showrunners -- and the co-creator -- was a woman. And she joked several times that I was hired because I could write the emotional stuff, and my coworker Sarah was good with action.

To me, that's a testimony to what's really great about this job today. In the next couple years, I hope to get a show greenlit, and when I staff up, I'll be reading for the best writers, period.

There are areas that do need a catchup. Female showrunners were thin on the ground, but that's starting to change. I think, if you want to really talk about the need to connect with the female audience, that we could use way more episodic directors. And with Little Mosque, Weeds, Grey's Anatomy, and the like, it's nice that we're getting more female show creators.

There are some who will point to that split still being alive and well in comedy rooms. That may or not be true. Most of my experience is in drama.

What's a much bigger, and much more interesting story, generally, is the gradual, slow, inexorable move in Canada away from the Line-Producer driven model of the past, and toward the embracing of the Writer/Showrunner as the model from which success can more reliably be drawn. That's been a tough slog -- and still is, in many quarters, because non-writing producers incorrectly see it as a threat to their livelihood (which it's not) and their control (which it might be, but not really - not when TV hs to be so collaborative, and also, hey -- if the trade is a chance to work on a show you're proud to have on your resume, why wouldn't you do that?)

Cause to me, that's really what it's all about. I was feeling under the weather last night, but I went to a friend's birthday party, and when small talking with a couple of her very nice cousins, I found myself in a conversation that I've never had with somebody who wasn't a sci-fi fan. They were fans of The Border. Big fans. They asked me all the questions that people usually ask tv types (I mean, non-Canadian TV types.) When they asked me where we got our ideas, I practically had to keep from biting my cheek with joy.

That was great. And why not? I'm proud of my work on The Border.

Anyway, congrats to Tassie Cameron, Tracey Forbes, Vera Santamaria, Daegan Fryklind, Esta Spalding, Semi Chellas and Karen Walton for their exposure in the article. A rising tide floats all boats, and anything that raises the profile of screenwriters in Canada is a good thing.

Of course, nothing raises the profile quite like a swanky, crazy zoo-up. And tomorrow night in Toronto, Canada's film and TV writers get to do just that, at the Canadian Screenwriting Awards. If you don't have a ticket -- you might want to think twice about trying to get one at the door -- the event is reportedly sold out.

I'm going to spend the next two days as a guest at the National Forum of the Writers Guild of Canada. I'm excited. Hanging out with writers makes me happy.