Hung Done

THIS IS WHAT passes for correspondence and discourse (and blogging) in my life right now. Today's blogging entry is entirely composed of a comment I made on Facebook from a friend asking me "What did you think of Hung?"

Hate it. Hated the script. Watched the show. Hated it. Usually like Anne Heche and Jane Adams. Hated them. Watched 3 episodes (got preview discs) for professional curiousity, got forty five minutes into ep 3 and said, "Eff this." Life is too short. I don't understand the hook. I don't understand why I should care. The thing is, this is a show that could only have been greenlit in Hollywood. The "hero" is the golden boy from High School that everyone secretly knew was peaking. Now we're supposed to care that his life is shit. No sale. Boo hoo. Don't you get it? We like that this guy failed. This guy failing validates the universe that the rest of us live in, where we were uncomfortable weirdoes in high school and had to fight to come into our own later. We had to fight to be interesting. The fact that the whole premise is that an uninteresting guy falls back on his big dick is just... well, it's a spectacular, spectacular miss. Feh.

Sadly, I think that actually about covers it.

Hack Hack Hack

THIS IS UTTERLY AWESOME.

Screenwriting Tip #30

How you treat your minor characters says a lot about the kind of person you are. I don’t want to spend 110 pages inside your head if you’re a douchebag

And BTW, I found it here. Nice catch, oh new blogger on le block scripto-canadien...

Throwing Stones

SOMETIMES PILOTS don't go. It's a fact of life. And lots of times when they don't, because of CTF requirements, they get burned off with little or no promotion in the summer.

There's a pilot on CBC on Wednesday night this week called Throwing Stones. (Wednes

day, 9pm...uh, 9:30 in Newfoundland? Is that right? Am I ever going to get that right?

It's about women's curling, and it's one of those things that, you know, came close. It's instructive to watch and speculate why you think the network didn't pick it up.

Part of the heartbreak of series tv is that I guarantee you one of the reasons the show didn't get picked up WAS NOT because people didn't work hard on it.

Making TV is gosh darn hard.

I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing from the writing talents behind this pilot -- Lara Azzopardi and Julia Cohen, again soon. But in the meantime, why not check out what they put out there with hope, and hopes of what might have been?

A bit about the show...

Meet Patti, Shirley, Annette, Cindy and Marge – Five very different women just trying to stay afloat amidst the chaos of life: demanding children, high-maintenance husbands, mortgages that keep them awake at night, uninspiring jobs, and all the challenges that come from being a wife, a mother and more significantly, a woman. They’re working class women who do it all and more. And they’re just desperate for a little me time. They are the real desperate housewives.

BUT…all is forgotten, all is left behind when they are together, playing, training, and competing for their true love…curling. They are proud members of the West Kildonan Curling Club in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Don’t worry – this is NOT a show about curling. For our women, curling is just their escape, their girls’ night out and, frequently, a metaphor for life.

The Canadian Showrunner. An Endangered Species?

THERE WAS AN article in the last issue of Playback that really cheesed me off. It cheesed me off because, once again, it was a standard Producer-driven line about Canada not having enough writing talent to do their shows.

You hear this a lot; it's a standard line that certain companies and members of the CFTPA use to try and encourage another agenda: loosening the rules so that "American" writers can be brought in, as the holy grail to save us. That chorus, while not universal, has certainly increased since Canadian shows started selling to the USA -- despite the fact that there is zero evidence of the need. If you look at the list of commercially and/or artistically successful Canadian shows from the last few years: Durham County, Slings & Arrows, Corner Gas, The Rick Mercer Report, Trailer Park Boys, Flashpoint, Intelligence, DaVinci's Inquest, Being Erica, and Murdoch Mysteries -- to name just a few -- the commonality is that none of them had "American writers" on to "save" them. A bunch of other shows that did go that route, I will not name here. They were not so lucky. They were not saved.

The problem with the "loosen the rules so we can hire real writers" formulation, of course is that they never get to bring back David Shore or Hart Hanson -- guys who are doing just fine in the Hollywood system, thanks. No, this blinkered, short sighted, self-hating-Canadian tub of codswaddle catches 3rd or 4th tier American talent and holds them up because -- Gasp! -- they once worked down in the Ewwwe Esss of Ehhhh. See that, Martha? We done gone got ourefs some 'Murricans!

Make no mistake. As the "industry consultation" process goes on in the promotion of the new CMF (Canada Media Fund, the successor to the CTF) a lot of people behind the scenes are agitating for the relaxation of the 10/10 rule for domestic tax credits. "If you want better shows," the whisper goes, "we need to be able to import American talent! American showrunners!" For they, you see, are the grail.

Mary Darling from Little Mosque on the Prairie has been saying this for years. New behemoth Entertainment One makes this pitch frequently to those with ears in the right places. The latest was Shaftesbury's Christina Jennings.

Luckily, Canadian writers have Maureen Parker and the WGC on point. Here was Maureen's response to that interview in the last issue of Playback. I don't know if there's any truth to the rumor that Playback edited Maureen down, but knowing Maureen, I have to tell you she has plenty more to say on the subject of defending homegrown writers and Showrunners.

Thanks Maureen. (And Playback, too, for printing the response, in whatever form.)

From the latest Playback:

In the Playback article "Who's Minding the Store?" (June 22) - after noting that The Listener's initial ratings were a little soft - Christina Jennings is cited lamenting that Canada has "too few showrunners to fuel its drama-making machine." So if the "winning streak" of Canadian shows airing in U.S. primetime stalls with The Listener, it seems we're to understand that a lack of Canadian showrunning talent is to blame. I completely disagree with this conclusion - so let's talk facts before pointing fingers.

Ms. Jennings is right about one thing - after the disastrous 1999 CRTC Television Policy decimated drama production in Canada, some skilled Canadian writers and a few showrunners went south. However, despite this, we have retained and developed many exceptionally gifted and experienced showrunners. And with only seven one-hour dramas in production, and just six more in development, there's demand for only 13 showrunners in Canada right now.

A recent Writers Guild of Canada showrunner roundtable drew 30 of Canada's most experienced showrunners - so shortage of Canadian showrunners is not the issue. The fact is there are more seasoned and talented showrunners in Canada than there are shows to run. And on top of that, we also have an outstanding crop of potential showrunners readying in the nation's story departments.

But Canadian showrunners must have the professional respect that allows them to do their job. They must be given the creative control necessary to realize the original vision of the show - the vision that was the very reason the networks picked up the show in the first place.

Maureen Parker,


Executive director, 


Writers Guild of Canada

Working on Sundays

Really, really blows.