Mad Writers

JUST RETURNED FROM a half day conference put on by Playback magazine at the St. Lawrence Centre's Bluma Appel Theatre.

The conference, dubbed Playback Innovations: The Technology Revolution and sponsored in part by the Canadian Film Centre and the Ontario Media Development Corporation, was a toe dip into the world trod by things like the Banff TV Festival. As a first step it had the usual growing pains. The afternoon was built around four main sessions: a conversation between Bill Brioux, Freelance TV writer of TV Feeds My Family fame, and James Manos, Jr., the creator of Dexter. a panel on Reality TV, another digital panel, and arguably what was the day's main draw: a panel titled "Flashpoint! Mad Women at Work."

That panel was supposed to feature Robin Veith, (Mad Men,) who went from writer's assistant to creator Matthew Weiner's assistant to Emmy nominated screenwriter, for her part co-writing the first season finale "The Wheel," and Tassie Cameron, who ably steered the writing room for Mark Ellis & Stephanie Morgenstern's Flashpoint in season one. But in the big misstep of the day, attendees arrived for some reason to find that Tom Chehak had been added to the roster to talk about The Listener.

No offence to Chehak, who was charming and funny; but no one has seen the show, and what's more, it's an industry crowd -- so most people in the audience have probably heard the rumours that The Listener has been famously troubled. Chehak admitted that he came on late in the process. There are probably a lot of interesting stories one could hear about The Listener. But they weren't about to be told in that auditorium, and in the absence of anyone seeing the show, there simply was no context for Chehak's remarks.

Also, simply by virtue of math, adding another guest suddenly brought each guest's time to speak down from a half hour to 20 minutes. Combine that with a truncated question period, and the fact that the woman up from Los Angeles speaking about the buzz show spoke about four times, and you've got a panel that was a tremendous disappointment, and a seriously missed opportunity.

Other short thoughts:

• why douse the house lights? It made it impossible for people to be seen trying to ask questions, and certainly made the speakers feel isolated.

• In terms of framing the correct questions -- it would have been helpful when registering, or on entering, to provide cards on which people could ask a question that then could be collected and shown to the moderator. That way the moderator could know the level to pitch the discussions at. These things always run the risk of skimming the surface, but this one was particularly guilty of that.

• Also, four sessions without a lot of crossover interests scheduled sequentially with no alternative program does not work. There's no way that I was going to sit through a reality TV panel, and judging by the lobby full of people with me, I wasn't alone.

I paid full freight for this conference. It was decidedly NOT worth the money.

That being said, some interesting tidbits:

Robin Veith on the Mad Men research:

"People spoke differently back then." Once they get a script in they sit around and they flag any language that might sound too modern. Then they have a group of research interns (oooh, imagine that!) who search out the references and confirm through first hand accounts of the day, the usage. (This sticks with me because I just saw a scene in the U.S. Life on Mars where somebody was talking about discriminating against someone on the basis of "sexual orientation." Man. That was like...BUMP.)

Also, students: please note: Veith: "Wikipedia is not allowed. It is not a credible source."

In terms of Pitching, at the beginning of the season the Mad Men writers spend two weeks in the room. Matt Weiner comes in with the beginning and the end of the season. The staff then goes away and in four days have to come back with twenty story ideas.Veith pitched hers last, as she has the least seniority, so she'd come up with 25, anticipating that others would have come up with some of the same ideas. The ideas have to be fully formed with beginnings, middles and ends. They pitch orally to Matt Weiner, and if he likes something, the writer's assist makes a note, and it goes on a card. The writers (4 last season) live and die on whether their idea makes it onto a card, and then again when they see if their card makes it onto the wall.

Apparently, every one of the writers independently arrived at the idea of Betty's Dad having a stroke in Season two. There you go, spec monkeys and fanficcers -- it's not just you.

Veith also lifted the veil on the Matt Weiner method of structuring a season, which he inherited from David Chase. In structuring the season, here's the formula:

• Ep 5....you have to give something big back to the audience for sticking in that far (Ie: in 5 this year we find out how Don advised Peggy post-baby, and this was the Car Crash with Bobbie)
• Ep 7&8 ... do it again -- something big.

• Ep 12 ... the climax of your season.

• Ep 13 ... denouement, tie up any loose ends not dealt with in 12.

On Mad Men's chances on being shown on Network TV in the USA:

Apparently NBC was thinking about it around the time Dexter was showing on CBS. Veith said "You can stab people in the face, but you can't have a smoke and a drink."

Tassie Cameron on Flashpoint's first season:

"Basically, they asked us to make 13 pilots." That's how little crossover/serialization/carryover they wanted. The thought of that made me queasy in my seat. What a fucking LOT of work that must have been! I can't help but think that if FP was a writer-showrunner driven show, they might have had a better appreciation of just how much work that really was. You can ask for the moon if you haven't really internalized the process, I guess.

James Manos Jr. on Dexter, and research for Dexter:

"Three percent of the world are sociopaths. They will run over your kid without a second thought. There are three hundred million people in the USA, which means there are 9 million of those people walking around."

Nice. I wonder how many of them work in Television.

Manos had a falling out with partners on Dexter, and wasn't involved after the pilot. He said that in his original conception of the first 12," you were going to find out that Doakes, the cops -- all were crazier than Dexter. He was, in a weird way, the sane one."

That's interesting. I always felt there was something a bit off about Dexter's 1st season in that it went exactly where you thought it was going to go. In retrospect, you can see how Manos' vision was set up in the pilot with the Captain's sexual harassment of Dexter, and Doakes' obsession really being at 11. It's in there. Shame. As good as Dexter may be now, that would have been an interesting show.

I appreciated a lot of Manos' sentiments about the craft. He said that the number one thing for him is to not work with assholes. Life's too short. "There's a certain honor in the work that you're doing. At the end of the day you want to wake up, shoot 12 hours, have a drink, screw something, then go to sleep and get up and do it again."

And when asked if he preferred finishing the script or seeing the finished product he chose the latter.

"Finishing the script is more like bad sex. Did I really do that? And now I have to do it again?"

I'll write up further tidbits from the forum later.