Reprint: Book Review: "Billion Dollar Kiss"

THERE'S A VALUE for any young aspiring TV writer in reading books on the craft. Everyone's got a few that they'll recommend as Gospel. And there are sites like Jill Golick's and Jane Espenson's that are invaluable when you're trying to put together those first, all-important sample scripts.

But after a while, if you're not careful, it's easy to descend into a pit of script porn -- where you discuss format or technique endlessly; where discussing the minutae of craft starts to crowd out the ass-in-seat time that's actually going to get you somewhere. For all the resources now available to the aspiring, there are very few, I think, that offer the one thing you desperately need: perspective. A leg up so that your baby-writer gaffes aren't fatal, a way for you to understand what you're getting into before you're too far down the path.

Billion Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson's Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing (available right now as a bargain book from Amazon...5.99!) isn't just the truest, most straightforward tome I've ever read about the actual life and process of writing for TV, it also serves as a pretty decent history of the last twenty years of the business -- and it's now particularly timely as a backgrounder to how we found ourselves in the morass of the current WGA strike.

This book is also the only TV-writing related book I'd recommend to a fan -- somebody who has no intention of ever writing themselves, but is interested enough in how the game works to want to know more. Billion Dollar Kiss sometimes reads like a good thriller, sometimes like a psychological study. If you read this book, you'll definitely be the smartest cookie in the sleeve when anyone wants to talk about realityTV, or the strike, or how a show gets made, or why TV sucks so often -- and why it's good, when it's good.

That's a pretty tall order, but Stepakoff's straightforward prose and his willingness to explore his own mistakes and shortcomings makes for a refreshing, and ultimately inspirational read.

He also nails the personality of a TV writer to a T:

It's hard to explain in succint terms just what makes a good TV writer, and by association good TV, because of course you're dealing with something that is subjective. But by this time, just like I saw a pattern in the pathology of all my colleagues, I saw similarities among the most talented. Obviously, they all have good skills, a mastery -- or at least an intuitive understanding -- of craft. But with hard work and commitment that can be picked up. There's something else, too. The best way I can explain it is tha they have a sensitivity to the world around them, a sort of sixth sense. They pay attention to the little things that others miss. Every outing to the bank, mall, or post office is a chance to people-watch. They listen for subtext instead of just what someone is simply stating. They watch body language, what someone is wearing, how someone is behaving. They always look for the inside joke. They examine and consider how everything tastes and smells, to the point where even a simple lunch from Baja Fresh is subjected to extended critical analysis. Everything is turned over, reflected upon. They look for connections in the chance. Meaning in the random. Metaphors in everything. Their interactions with the world beocme a process of looking for secrets and clues that will unlock the Great Truths, so that these things can be examined and written about for the ever-approaching next episode...

At times, frankly, this life can be downright exhausting...Simply put, TV writers are original and whacked-out people.

That last part's important. Elsewhere he puts it in less diplomatic terms, describing himself and other TV writers as "nutjobs."

And we are.

But that's not what makes Stepakoff's story compelling. What gives Stepakoff a leg up is the peculiarity of his timing. He entered the business -- thanks to a break from University alum John Wells -- just as the 1988 WGA strike got underway.

Besides evocative passages describing how he came to sign with his first agent, the author relates a story about his struggle with being a brand new writer, not yet union, in a time of labor unrest. A top exec offers him a secret deal to scab for $10 000 -- at a time when he's flat broke, and fresh in town. The struggle is something that I imagine several people are going through right now as I type this. You owe it to yourself to read about his experience, and how he came to turn the offer down.

Stepakoff's career straddles the end of 80's style schlock tv like Simon & Simon, to stints writing for The Wonder Years, Sisters, and Disney animation. He witnessed first hand, the gold rush into TV writing that defined the 90's (he runs down the numbers...and they're staggering) and the end of fin-syn rules that profoundly changed the relationship of studio and network to writer, and led to the rise of the conglomerates (and in many ways led us to the brink of the current strike.) And for process wonks, the insight into the story room and production process behind Dawson's Creek (where Stepakoff worked starting in a very troubled season 3) is worth the price of the book on its own.

But there's other wisdom in here too. Why is TV so white, and why does the industry consistently fail to deal with its diversity problem? It's in there. He's also sympathetic to actors in a way that many writers aren't:

For a writer to work on a troubled show, your career is not on the line. For one thing, everyone around town knows it's a troubled show, and for another your agent is already working on getting you another. The most important thing for a writer's career is not the show, not the credit, it is to work hard, contribute to the Room, write scripts that satisfy the showrunner -- basically to get along. If you do these things you get good recommendations, your showrunner and your colleagues want to hire you again, and good buzz follows you, no matter how stupid the show.

However, if you are an actor on a stupid show, it's your face saying those stupid words. You become forever associated with them. Actors' businesses are the characters they are associated with, and if the characters on the TV show they are doing are not being cared for, they get tense.

The effect of POD deals, Vertical Integration, how MTM invented Quality Television, why a pitch is easier to sell than a script, and how the end of independent studios damaged the training up of young talent...it's all in there. If you read this book, you'll understand TV a lot better...you'll understand why this strike is so bitter, and you'll hopefully see why writer-driven TV is really the only sure path to putting out a decent product.

Interestingly enough, though Stepakoff works in L.A. there's a lot of parallel wisdom in here that informs the Canadian industry. The problems aren't the same, not by a long shot. But in reading Stepakoff's explanation of fin-syn, I saw parallels to the 1999 CRTC decision that killed drama in this country. That's the thing about clear-headed prose. It helps you see things -- even things you already know -- just a little bit differently. I'll be working that into a separate post in a few days.

Billion Dollar Kiss is like the Cliff's Notes of how to live as a TV writer. It's a fast read, just over 300 pages -- and it's wise. And like any good TV story, it even ends on a note of hope.

Which I know we all could use right about now.