More Than Kin but Less Than Kind

ACT TWO is a bitch-mistress. She taunts you as you go forward, back, rewrite, and contemplate whether novel-writing in Mexico IS actually all that impractical.

As I make peace with my inevitable weekend of writing, I could be depressed by stories like this. Okay, I am depressed. But I can't bear to write about that subject again today. That fight can come next week.

For now I want to seize upon something good.

Last night, twenty or thirty Toronto screenwriters got together for Jill Golick's periodic screening sessions. This is a chance for Toronto-based creatives to gather and geek out a bit over the writing of new programs coming down the pike. The event is sponsored by the Writers Guild of Canada, and isn't a public screening -- but neither is it strictly for WGC members.

What it IS is a chance to network a bit, and familiarize yourself with new work; hear how it came to be, and the common challenges to making it, from the screenwriter's perspective.

So it was that last night a little over two dozen people got a sneak preview of an episode of an upcoming Canadian comedy series.

Less Than Kind is the creation of Marvin Kaye and Chris Sheasgreen. It's the first series for both. Both men come from an acting background. Marvin has also worked in several story departments as a story coordinator -- The Newsroom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, to name just two.)

The show (based on a play by Kaye) was a featured project in the NSI's Totally Television program a couple years ago. It was subsequently picked up by CHUM Television, and was greenlit just before the fallout of the CRTC decision that led to CTV divesting itself of the Citytv stations.

After a tense couple of months of wait and see, Less Than Kind passed to the Citytv stations (now owned by Rogers.) The first season of thirteen episodes shot in Winnipeg, Manitoba last winter. They will air sometime this fall on the five Citytv stations in Canada. (Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg)

The guileless dynamic duo were led through a pre-screening conversation by Golick. Then the lights dimmed and the show began.

Almost immediately, there was kind of an electric thrill in the room. Because the show was funny. Really funny.

Patriarch Sam Blecher (Maury Chaykin) runs a driving school in Winnipeg. His son, Josh, has returned home, penniless after two years on a Canadian show called "Thunder Bay, O.P.P." The family's going through financial problems, and in the words of Kaye, "the only adult in the family is sixteen-year old Sheldon Blecher."

Sheldon is too fat, too Jewish, and too...much. He refuses to get his license, because he doesn't want to get into the family business. He just wants to get the hell out of Winnipeg. It's a family comedy with both heart, and a lot of edge.

The laughs were deft and character-based. The pacing was brisk, the performances grounded in reality and pathos, never over the top. As Golick observed, "the show managed to be both edgy and yet, have a sweet, family friendly vibe to it."

There were murmurs of delight and recognition as Shaun Majumder showed up in a guest role. He was very funny. The laughter was steady and constant. No stony silence in this room.

By the time the lights came up, the room was impressed. Let this be the start of the buzz.

Some interesting facts came out of the screening:

-Kaye and Sheasgreen both credited the acting pool in Winnipeg for offering them some real finds. Several actors who were cast locally 'popped' so much that they were written into subsequent episodes. (A happy circumstance that was possible because the later scripts were being written as the earlier ones were being shot.)

-They always intended to shoot in the winter, but a push in filming put them dead into the heart of the coldest winter in Winnipeg in years. Some nights they were filming in -48 degree weather. I can definitely say that this is the most authentically Canadian looking Canadian series ever. It looks cold.

-There's a sweet visual gag about Sheldon's High School that's just too good to spoil.

-The scripting process was particularly meticulous. Even when episode outlines were already written, they were brought to the table and rebroke, in a process that could sometimes last two days per episode. (It shows. The shows are structurally tight.)

-The writing room featured some top shelf talent, including creative producer and Showrunner Mark McKinney (currently on tour again with The Kids in Hall) who really drove a lot of the precision in the comedy. Kaye said that it was not uncommon to have Mark push them to work and work on a proper punchline for an hour, finding exactly the right construction. Along with McKinney was Gary Campbell, who has several seasons of MadTV under his belt. Campbell had to work on another project halfway through the season, so in addition to writer and former standup Jenn Engels, the end of the season brought Rob Sheridan (Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie) to the room.

-Having someone on set all the time was key. After the first few shows, someone from the story department was always on set -- which probably accounts for the consistent, manageable tone. Many Canadian series spoil the broth by going "too big." Both creators were constantly on the prowl to dial it back.

I should jump in here and add that I did do an early round of Story Editing on their first scripts, and Marvin and Chris are friends of mine. I've also seen cuts of two other episodes, and I can say with confidence that they're of the same level as the completed episode screened last night.

The Globe's John Doyle and others have observed that the kind of homegrown comedy that connects with Canadian audiences is often rural, and about lovable losers. Well, you can add an urban version to that. Glorious Winnipeg, welcome to the Comedy map.

Less Than Kind is a real winner. Production companies Breakthrough Film and TV and Buffalo Gal Pictures should be thrilled. Chaykin has never looked better. Several of the cast members, I predict, are going to break big off this show. Post Production on the first season continues in Toronto now. A second season is currently in development.

One never wants to jinx anything by saying something that rhymes with, say, "the text mourner pass..." but one hopes that when Rogers finally schedules the show this fall that they find a way to get it on more than the five Citytvs -- and they promote it with enough gusto to let people know it's there.

Craft + Precision + a lot of hard work has resulted in a winner. Less Than Kind is your good news Canadian TV story of the week. Watch for it this fall.

And thanks, as always, to Golick and the WGC for hosting, and to Citytv for letting the episode be screened.

F*%%tardery, and the Creative Gap

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The Annotated Globe & Mail

SUBMITTED FOR YOUR dining and dancing pleasure, a Gayle MacDonald article in the Globe & Mail today about those two new Canadian dramas upcoming from CTV: Flashpoint, and The Listener.

The article starts with a provocative title:

Are U.S. networks messing with our shows?

And then tries to meticulously answer in the negative, by quoting the Executive Producers of both shows.

But no sooner had the ink dried on the licence agreements, when many in the close-knit production industry began to twitter that creative friction between the various factions would be inevitable. With so many cooks in the kitchen, Shaftesbury's Christina Jennings, Pink Sky's Anne Marie La Traverse and Avamar's Bill Mustos, admit that they, too, worried it would get tricky keeping all the parties - in this ego-ridden business - happy.

"Sure it feels like we need to be in three places at the same time, 24 hours a day," says Mustos, CTV's former head of dramatic programming. "And there's no question it's more complicated than when you're just doing a show for a Canadian network. But I have to say it's been surprisingly smooth to date. And I believe that's because Anne Marie and I have a very clear vision of the show, which we sold to CTV first and, within a matter of weeks, to CBS.

At Shaftesbury, Jennings agrees that while she clears everything with CTV (first) and NBC (second), the Americans haven't been pushy.

"Shaftesbury sold the series to NBC and to CTV. In this model, we're considered the studio. CTV put up the lion's share of the money, and NBC and Shaftesbury are bringing in the rest. ... We sit in the middle.

You may wonder why this article's bubbling up now. Some of it probably has to do with rumblings going around the industry that, is it proper that a show that's funded partially by Canadian Taxpayer Money through the CTF, is in effect, subsidizing American network development? (Jennings above may be engaged in a little spin. As far as I understand it, the biggest contributor to the license fee is neither network: it's you and me, through the cable fees we pay to the CTF (the same ones Jim Shaw wants to take away) and Tax Credits. (Now we're back to C10. See how Canadian TV financing makes your head hurt?)

The important thing is that the voices in the article vigorously say no: CTV is the network calling the shorts first and foremost.

Good to hear.

While the working relationships may so far be amiable, Jennings, Mustos and La Traverse all readily admit that they feel pressure, on a daily basis, to make sure The Listener and Flashpoint perform well in the United States, the world's toughest TV market. Not to mention, the most fickle and cutthroat.

"A lot is riding on this," Jennings says. "But if we succeed in the States, the door will be open to more Canadian producers to pitch their shows there.

That's for sure. It's why every creative in this country, no matter where you sit and what you do, has a stake in these shows doing well. And why we're worried when we hear things about what's going on behind the scenes. Which is why articles like this are probably smart. Tamp down the worry. You can't tamp down the expectations -- they're already too high.

But like a lot of articles in the mainstream press, what's most interesting in this article isn't necessarily what's said, but what isn't. And it's not necessarily who they talk to, but who they don't.

In the United States, they just got through a very painful Writers' Strike. In the years leading up to that strike, one of the things that a lot of the American Networks were pushing was for more control. One of the ways they got this more control was to hand out POD deals -- these were development deals that, essentially, went to Producers, not writers. If you read Jeffrey Stepakoff's book about his rise in the business (and the road from the 1988 to the 2008 WGA strikes) you can judge for yourself as to whether that was better for TV or not.

Also, hearkening back to the recent WGA strike, one of the things that infuriated the Networks most, and that arguably hurt them the most, was that the Showrunners -- the powerful hyphenate writer-producers who form the backbone of the TV industry, and who shape and oversee every creative aspect of the shows -- stood with their staffs and refused to complete and shoot episodes (exercising their "producer" duties) while their brothers and sisters were out on the line.

All of the quoted Producers in the Globe and Mail article are non-writing producers. In fact, both The Listener and Flashpoint are staffed in a very, very different way from American TV shows. They don't use the Showrunner model. The person with final say is not a writer.

Now, this is a different way of doing television. And it may result in just as good a product. But it is different. And it is exactly the model that Canadian Television has been using for years -- the model that has slowly been changing over the last couple of years.

The model that is not in place on, say, shows such as Intelligence, The Border, Corner Gas, Robson Arms, and Trailer Park Boys. Those shows all have powerful producers -- but they also have writers in either a primary or an equal power position. (Ie: they don't use "head writers" and the writers are not just hired guns.)

These shows on which so much is riding for everyone -- Producers, Directors, Writers, Actors, and Crew, are being made under one model -- and it just happens to be the model that has resulted in less successful Canadian shows.

The CBC's development team, interestingly, took a turn a couple years back when the regime changed, and are now insisting that their shows have a strong showrunner. Some since have had writer-producers in charge, and some have had the traditional Canadian model -- Producers in charge (usually who cut their teeth as "service" producers on American product shooting here, or who may have come up through line producing) with a revolving door of writers. Anecdotally speaking -- the shows made the first way have continued on. The shows made the second way haven't.

Again, I want to stress how much I would love both these shows to be big fat incandescent smash hits. And maybe the Producers of these two shows are so strong of character and skilled at speaking the U.S. Network language that we'll all be thrilled and surprised when their shows debut to huge plaudits and millions of eyeballs. That will be a GREAT day for our industry, and I'll be the first one lining up to get Producing tips from them. I really mean that. Success makes its own rules. A rising tide floats all boats.

But there's one more thing that's missing from the article in the Globe today:

Michael Amo. Stephanie Morgenstern. Mark Ellis.

Those are the names of the people who created the two shows. Michael Amo, apparently, is no longer with The Listener. In the case of Flashpoint, I admit a bit of a personal bias -- I've been friends with Mark and Stephanie for a long, long time. They've been working on various incarnations of Flashpoint for about five years now.

In the last month, the Globe has run two articles that talked about Flashpoint. They even talked to some of the Flashpoint writers -- but they didn't talk to the two people who actually created the show.

These shows are about more than their U.S. sales. They also are part of a dialogue that's not being had in the open, but in the subtext all around the corners of the industry: How do you organize and produce a quality show? What are the ingredients, and in what proportions? Who has the final say?

Like I said, sometimes what's not in an article is as important as what is in it.

Brave New World (Not Fully Distributed Yet)

OR...THE PRECISE MOMENT FACEBOOK STARTED TO SUCK. (FOR ME.)

THE BEST WAY I've heard all the head-scratching over "how do we approach storytelling in a digital medium" described was in this quote from William Gibson: "the future's already here. It just isn't fully distributed yet."

The music business sucked for years -- offering a warmed over product at too high a price point -- before Shawn Fanning came along and blew it all to hell.

And the person who is going to make the first jillion on the killer storytelling ap on the 'Net is already out there, right now. Maybe they're only four or five. Or maybe they're rounding out their angry teenager phase. But I'm pretty sure they're out there.

One of the obstacles to change, though, is always going to be those who simply don't get it. I kind of completely despise these people. No, let me remove the qualifier. It hate these people.

They're the same people who sniff at any change like removing Classical music from a public radio service barely anyone listens to. They're the people who whine whenever a handheld camera shot graces the TeeVee, whether the shot is motivated or not. They're the ones who immediately dismiss any music they aren't immediately familiar with as 'noise.' They're the people who reacted violently when they made Starbuck a girl.

And apparently they got shirty with Jill Golick last night.

If you've been following Jill's storytelling experiment, story2oh, you might have known about the two experiments she conducted earlier this year -- a combination of social networking profiles and wall posts on Facebook, and video podcasts, twitters, and other methods used to move a story along that wasn't quite performance, and wasn't quite narrative. It melded real and unreal. It was pretty neat.

Last night, Jill presented her findings at Casecamp. And a few people were...well, upset to learn that -- omigod -- some of the people who "friended" them as part of Story2oh were fictional constructs.

That was kind of the point.

Most people got it.

But a few didn't. And in classic fucktard, "I don't get it" fashion, they waded in and got all the story2oh characters deleted from Facebook this morning.

Game over.

Jill has a very evenhanded and philosophical take on the thing over at the story2oh site.

It’s sad because it was fun having them on Facebook and using Facebook for storytelling way back in January was a really effective way to communicate with the audience. But even by early March when we ran the second experiment, Facebook was already too crowded an environment and we did very little storytelling in that venue.

It seems to me that early this year, Facebook took a strong cultural shift. Instead of being an underground play space it turned into a business must-have. People are serious about and on Facebook.

I made a rather large boo-boo in not taking this cultural shift into account. Some of the attendees had gotten friendship requests from Simon and Ali and were upset to learn that imaginary people were rubbing shoulders with them. I did apologize to them, from stage and again in person — rather profusely in fact. But too little too late apparently.

If any of them are reading this, I do apologize once again and especially the woman with dark hair who questioned me from the audience. I would have sent flowers this morning if I knew who you are.

Jill is, I guess, simply a better person than I am. Because I'm not as sanguine about the whole thing. A culture defined by the uptight is no culture at all.

The future is already here. But luckily, we've got plenty of fucktards ready to keep us from fully distributing it.

Idiots.

or should I say...Idiots 1.0.

Numbers for a Change

I AM SIMPLY DYING in the middle of a first draft. I remember so well the words of my writing prof, Dr. Bob at old Rye High, when I asked him if writing ever got any easier. He smiled a bit, stroked his chin sagely in his three hundred dollar sweater and said, simply,

"no."

So in this hour's mini-procrastination break, I read an article in the Globe & Mail about the Ontario Government's Decision to restore millions of dollars of funding to the Ontario Arts Council which was cut by the Province's previous Tory government. This passage, particularly caught my eye:

...the hikes are “an important part of an overall policy approach.” The Finance Ministry “has identified the creative industries sector as one of three key economic sectors; the expectation is that these sectors will grow faster than the rest of the economy over the decades.”

Ms. Carroll said Ontario's cultural sector is the third largest in North America, behind that of California and New York, and its annual contribution to the province's gross domestic product is $20-billion.

Twenty. BILLION. Dollars. (as Dr. Evil would say.)

See, with all the tempest in a teacup bullshit that goes on in Ottawa and in hearing rooms in Hull, and all the ignorant "yer spindin ar tax dolllllers" cant you get from the Letters sections and mouth breathing internet yahoos, there's the real nut of it. This is one province. One. And this industry -- as fragile as it sometimes seems -- is worth 20 billion dollars to the province.

From people paying tax dollllers into the coffers of the Liberal gov't.

Funny how the (supposedly) pro-business party can't seem to get that message.

Something to remember.

Equal Opportunity Plugger

LAST WEEK I wrote a little thing despairing that CTV didn't go the extra mile to capitalize on the Kiefer Sutherland Corner Gas cameo.

In the comments, there were a few people who wrote in including one of the big Promotions people at CTV.

Well, mama and papa always taught me not to be one sided, so I have to say that I'm pretty tickled to see this current promotion running for Robson Arms:

Win your rent with 'Robson Arms'

It's a renter's or homeowner's dream!

Beginning Monday, May 5, Canadians have the opportunity to win up to $12,000 towards their rent or mortgage payments for one year by virtually stepping into Robson Arms and playing the "Robson Arms Rent Control" game at robsonarms.CTV.ca.

Created exclusively by the CTV Creative Agency, the game serves as a companion to Season 3 of Robson Arms which airs Mondays at 9:30 p.m. ET on CTV.

Additional promotional support for the Season 3 premiere included teams dressed as Robson Arms character Yuri Kukoc (John Cassini) who took to the streets today in Vancouver and Toronto to hand out free DVDs of the season premiere including special Season 3 bonus material.

The giveaway DVDs also included instructions on how to enter the "Robson Arms Rent Control" contest. CTV viewers can also qualify to win an iPod Touch by simply subscribing by June 1 to the Robson Arms newsletter at robsonarms.CTV.ca.

Now that's actually going the extra mile. Not because there's so many DVD's that are gonna get handed out, but because the news that they DID hand out DVD's could make for a start of good buzz.

The contest is kind of a hoot, too, and perfectly matched with the Robson Arms brand. You know, there were grumbles that "sneaking" those Season 3 eps after American Idol kind of almost dumped them without warning...but this is a really positive, forward thinking step showing that CTV is trying to get behind the show.

Launching Monday, May 5 at 9:30 a.m. ET and available online for six weeks (May 5 - June 15), "Robson Arms Rent Control" is a virtual game that has players embark on a quest to help Bobbi (Gabrielle Miller) find her rent money so she doesn't get evicted from Robson Arms.

Players must hunt through the apartments of Robson Arms tenants Nick (Fred Ewanuick), Hal (Zak Santiago), Yuri (John Cassini), Chuck (Dave Foley) and Trixie (Allison Hossack) to locate Bobbi's missing money. In doing so, they can also discover hidden storylines, video and audio clips and delve into the lives of the tenants, all while getting to know them on a "virtual" level.

Players will also need to collect a designated item from each apartment. Once they have travelled through all of the rooms, successfully completed the tasks and collected all of the key items, participants will be eligible to enter the contest and get a chance to win free rent or mortgage payments - up to $12,000 - for a year. Visit robsonarms.CTV.ca to play.

This promotion was conceived by the CTV Creative Agency. That's an in-house sort of promotions/advertising shop that was set up in the wake of the CTV-CHUM merger. (It was also developed with the help of Vancouver online ad shop Noise Digital.)

If this is the taste of the first things to come from this shop, then maybe, just maybe, we might have a light at the end of that chronic Canadian under-promotion tunnel.

Consumers vs. Citzens

IF YOU LISTEN very carefully you can probably catch the sound of me disappearing down a deep script hole. But in the meantime, you should all read Ken Girotti's take on how you approach culture defines you as a nation. (He's riffing off the CRTC hearings and an op-ed piece by the head of the CAB.) It's well thought out, and defines the essential problem without emotion. Jus'the facts.

I don't for a minute mean to suggest the opinion presented by Glenn O'Farrell (prez and CEO of the CAB) in the Globe & Mail's ROB today is the be all and end all. But he does begin his thesis with an intelligent analysis of what's been at stake over the last three weeks at the CRTC hearings in Gatineau, Quebec.

He poses the question in a succinct way:

"Do Canadians view their broadcasting system as consumers or as citizens?"

His use of collective nouns is what it's all about for me. If we're consumers, we are exactly what every major Hollywood studio wants us to be. Essentially we become shareholders without access to corporate dividends or profits. We're a mindless block controlled by promotion, swept along amidst the tide of the multitudes and God forbid we have a dissenting view or an honest criticism. If we're citizens we are everything they hate down there in La La Land. We're free thinking individuals with a multitude of opinions demanding access to diverse wares from a variety of sources. We become a major pain in the ass to their vertical integration, but we ensure choice for ourselves.

Okay, you think I'm reading too much into it. Here's why I'm not. The essential concept Peter Grant and Chris Wood illuminated in their book, "Blockbusters and Trade Wars" is this: cultural goods are different. Sure, you sell them on the market like other goods, but they are made differently, and for different reasons a lot of the time, and they don't behave like widgets or fly fishing rods or cars or toilet seats. When you make a widget (and I'm using the word widget the way my dad and yours would have used it) you spend some cash designing it and then you spend more buying materials and creating the assembly line to produce it. Here's why a film is different: we spend almost all of our money on the first copy. Millions of dollars go into the creation of a film, and outside of its theatrical release (a whole other story) all the subsequent copies -let's use DVD as the medium- are essentially worth pennies. So why does a DVD copy of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy cost nearly $40.00 when the plastic, paper and ink in the package is probably worth less than $1.00? Because we're not paying for the plastic and the paper. We're paying for what that stuff does, not what it actually is. Like books and pharmaceuticals, films and TV programs don't behave in the marketplace the way widgets do.

There's been a fight waging for quite a number of years over this difference with regard to cultural "thingies." Big movie studios, the ones that produce the tentpoles, want total market penetration everywhere all the time. That means things like indigenous content rules in countries like France, Germany, the UK and Canada are a big pain in the ass to organs like the MPAA. For years they fought in Washington to have cultural "thingies" treated in the international marketplace in exactly the same way widgets are. They've fought the wording of GATT at the WTO. (A very good overview of Canada's own confusing approach to cultural diversity can be found here). In the end (will it ever really end?) Canada was in the vanguard of the push to ensure cultural diversity through the cumbersomely titled UNESCO convention called, "Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions."

The rest of Ken's clear-headed take on the argument, and why neither Jim Shaw nor the broacasters are "heroes" in this, can be found here.

Now where did I put that magic scriptwriting elf?

"For some reason, because it's surrounded with big beefy guy jokes and poo jokes, we get away with it."

DIANE AT TV, EH? has taken my convo with Rent-A-Goalie star/creator Christopher Bolton from Blogtalkradio and spun it into an entertaining background piece on the show.

When I mentioned that Christopher Bolton, creator, writer, executive producer, and star of Showcase's Rent-a-Goalie would be a guest on the TV, eh? Blogtalkradio show, the reaction from women familiar with the series was hilariously universal. So when guest interviewer Denis McGrath and Bolton started discussing how the fart-joke-filled, testosterone-laden show resonated with females, I felt the need to add my voice on behalf of the double X chromosomes. Turns out, though, it's surprisingly awkward to tell someone "they think you're hot." I'm afraid I conveyed it slightly less coherently than that.

That's not the entire reason, of course, and I threw in something about his character's vulnerability and efforts to do right. As McGrath clarified: "Women love the reformed bad boy."

Rent-a-Goalie, which just finished production on a third season set to air in the fall, is an ensemble comedy centred around Cake, a recovered-from-every-imaginable-addiction hockey nut who runs his replacement goalie service out of Cafe Primo in Toronto's Little Italy. Cake lives by The Code, his personal philosophy on life that keeps him out of trouble. Almost.

If you'd like to hear the full half-hour conversation, where Chris and I talk comedy, the strengths of the RAG cast, and the Writing process Bolton and his co-writer Graeme Manson bring to the table, click here. (The RAG convo starts about 15 mins in)

Rent-A-Goalie is now streaming full episodes on the Showcase Website. New episodes return in the fall, and the Extras-laden DVD set of Season 1 is available in Canadian stores now.

Ricky, Bubbles, and Brent

REPORTS PERSIST THAT Showcase's Trailer Park Boys won't be returning. It makes sense, considering the fact that the show's run several years, they've done a movie and supposedly are considering a second film.

But the exit of the lo-fi sitcom, if indeed it's going, comes at an interesting time for Canadian TV. TPB has been the cable example of the show that Canadians love -- complete with personal appearances mobbed by fans. With Brent Butt's recent announcement that there will be no new tales from Dog River after the current season, Canada faces the prospect of losing two of its most popular comedies at the same time, with no obvious successors waiting in the wings.

So just because navel gazing's what we do here, sometimes, let's throw open a question to the peanut gallery -- a question that might provide a little free R&D for anyone looking to try and craft a new comedy to take these show's place in Canadian hearts.

What made Trailer Park Boys and Corner Gas so successful? On the surface they seemingly couldn't be more different. But are there any qualities they share that made them connect with the audience, where so many other homegrown shows have failed?

This is, by the way, the question I've privately been pushing inside people to consider for years. I've sadly seen not a lot of evidence that anyone's done so.

Discuss.

Well, It's Very Bad History!

IF YOU'VE EVER visited Washington D.C. and trekked up the steps to the Capitol Rotunda, you've likely seen the painting at left.

Turnbull's "Presentation of the Declaration of Independence" is, to many, the seminal image of that event.

An interesting wink, then, in last night's final installment of the very fine HBO series JOHN ADAMS.

In the scene, set in 1826, just before the second President's death, the 9o-year-old Adams is shown the painting. And he's not pleased. "You must understand," says he, that we were at war. People were coming and going that whole summer, trying to fix their signature when they could." He explains that no gathering such as this, with the complete Congress, ever took place. "It's very bad history!" Adams rages.

But a moment later, it's another remark, offhand, that gives you the emotional key to the scene. "Everyone in that painting is dead," Adams complains -- knowing that, at that moment, only he and Jefferson survived. The first hand history, the events, the reasons for breaking away from England -- all that knowledge was on the verge of slipping away.

Adams cared, perhaps a bit too much, about the judgement of history, and what people would make of his actions. After all, the fun of living history is that even as it recedes, it is broken down and re-interpreted. There are those who insist that the recollections of those who were there, the "First sources," should be respected at all costs. And then many of us know how memories lie, and how passion and direct involvement can color your opinion of an event, even years later. Sometimes the sober second judgement of those who have a distance from the event is needed.

But from Academia to Historical Adaptation in filmmaking, there's a bigger leap. Perhaps the biggest. Every epic tries to claim historical accuracy, and by design, on some level, every one is going to get it wrong.

But there is something, in our visual age, to the film or TV adaptation of history that is worthwhile, even as it's threatened.

Again, I'll use an example from John Adams. First, let's consider the source material. David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize winning book asks us to reconsider the second President, long misunderstood and maligned among the Founding Fathers, mostly by those who worship at the cult of Jefferson.

McCullough's book is eyeopening in many ways; its telling of the story of the Revolution and the birth of American democracy is novelistic, and sweeping.

There's one passage where he describes Washington, D.C., when Adams first occupied the White House. (He was the first President to do so.) There are carefully drawn passages about how the city was little more than an idea. The Executive Mansion was plunked down in a barely cleared field, with mud everywhere. It's a great passage. But even a wonderful writer like McCullough can't capture the scene as effectively as one image in the miniseries.

The first time you see The White House in John Adams, it is from a distance, set on a hill in a forest. As they push in, you see what McCullough was getting at: slaves wander, clearing brush (Yup, the White House was built partially by slaves.) The new President's home is plunked down in the middle of a construction site. Outside it's nasty, muddy, and almost unbearable: a tent city. Inside, the paint isn't dry, it's dark and empty and the most usable part of the house is the part closest to the fireplace.

To see that image, you can't help but have an emotional response. If you're an American, it may put you in mind of how fragile, how unlikely the American experiment must have seemed in those very early days. All around you must have been the counter-thought that you had to banish: "perhaps we've made a mistake." To know that at the same time, America was struggling at remaining neutral in a war between England and France -- watching as France's own revolution spiralled out of control...the disgust and guilt writ on Adams' face as he beholds the slaves working outside the mansion...the whole thing, tied up in that objective correlative image of that lonely, impractical house -- and John Adams alone in the dark inside, maybe staring at that famous portrait of Washington...the man he could never equal, the man he could never live down.

If you're not American, I imagine to see that image would be confusing and unsettling and maybe even gleeful. What better way to remind yourself that once upon a time, America was anything but powerful. It was a muddy hellhole, in fact.

People complain about the historical accuracy of Films and TV the same way they complain about TV news -- that they don't give a full picture of what's going on in the world; that they favor some stories over others, that they shave away complexity in going for the best pictures.

All of that is true. But yet, there is something essential and moving in the pictorial depiction of where we've been.

I say this because it seems to me that in the internet age of immediate fact-checking, the "based on a true story" and "based on historical events" tags have become far more controversial than they used to be. In the end, one must ask if Adams was right about that painting, or whether there's sometimes greater truth in getting people to understand not the facts, but the emotional context of great events. Because that is something that TV and film can do very, very well.

In Canada, we've suffered through a couple incidents in the last few years where organizations like CBC have caved to pressure to withdraw historical movies because of very minor quibbles about this characterization or that characterization. I've spent most of my schooling years in Canada -- I have a rich and deep sense of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and almost zero sense of the personalities of John A. MacDonald and those who formed this nation. I'm not the only one. A recent biography of John A, Canada's first Prime Minister, was the first new bio of him in fifty years.

I don't get it.

In the end, I hope that the drumbeat of "make it completely accurate" fades, and we can get at more emotional truth in our historical films. The history is always there for the reading. But to get us all to understand these personnages as flesh and blood people, faced with terrible choices and no degree of certainty. That's a fine thing indeed. That's why John Adams, the miniseries, ulimately moved me and made me think anew about the history of the land of my birth.

Sunday Sunday

WELL, I'VE GOTTA prep some questions for my Blogtalk Radio interview with Rent-A-Goalie's Christopher Bolton (2:15 pm ET, or tune into the archived stream anytime.)

Then I'm gonna play some cards.

For some reason when I woke up this morning, I just was in a very good mood. There are plenty of birds chirping outside my window, the sun is out and shining brilliantly off the lake. Whatever you've got going on, I hope you can make a bit of time to enjoy the finer things in life.

You know...like The Hoff.