Batter Up, Craig, the Upside of Failure, Puppets & Hanson

AND FOR THE other side of the coin today...

We've got two of my favorite cultural confluences -- the start of the Baseball playoffs, and a good old fashioned immigrant's story. I'm fond of saying that I'm an immigrant myself, and the son, and the grandson of immigrants. Going from one place to another, and living with a split identity is the hallmark of who I am, and the major driver in my creative work. It feeds my writer's propensity to be an outsider, and to challenge any country's ingrained cultural assumptions about itself, its people, and its place in the world.

I've always been drawn to immigrant stories, but the book I'm enjoying now, combined with the pitching trip I took to the USA last week has reminded me how so much of my makeup is also informed by the specifics of the nation of my birth, and how I was raised with those values.

I've been a Canadian citizen since 1993. I love Canada, and the city that I live, Toronto. There are other places in Canada that I love well -- be they recent crushes like St. John's or my long-smouldering, dirty affection for Montreal.

But in how I've been socialized, and socialize -- the way I choose to frame and share my opinions; the confidence I have in taking risks & approaching conflicts both creative and personal as things to be embraced and worked through, rather than avoided -- all of that is a function of the circumstances of my birth; of a sense of exceptionalism that I will never quite escape, even as I find it tempered each day by the wisdom and skepticism of those who surround me.

I'm an American. And I know why y'all love Hockey so much, but it's the Crack of those October bats that really get my blood pumping every fall.

Anyway -- the book, which I listen to on Ipod a little bit each night before I go to bed (my preferred method for bios by performers -- it's how I enjoyed Steve Martin's Born Standing Up) is Craig Ferguson's American On Purpose.

It's a wonderful memoir. And in the preface, he writes something about Baseball and America that I think is something that all writers should have pasted above their workplace.

Failure is not disgrace.

From the preface:

One of the greatest moments in American sports history was provided by Bobby Thomson, the "Staten Island Scot." Born in my hometown of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1923, he hit the shot heard round the world that won the Giants the National League pennant in 1951. Had Bobby stayed in Glasgow he would never have played baseball, he would never have faced the fearsome Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca in that championship game, and he would never have learned that if you can hit the ball three times out of ten you'll make it to the Hall of Fame.

Today I watch my son at Little League games, his freckled Scottish face squinting int he California sunshine,...and I rejoice that he loves this most American game. He will know from an early age that failure is not disgrace. It's just a pitch that you missed, and you'd better get ready for the next one. The next one might be the shot heard round the world. My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by failing until we don't.

Finally, -- a little Craig Ferguson from last night. Makes me smile.

Irish Spring vs. Lucky Charms

THE WIRE THAT separates something that's great, that's fun, artistically pure, enjoyable, a great entertainment...from something coarse, abominable, or mediocre can be the very thinnest of filaments. You add in subjectivity -- the fact that no one is going to react the same way, and that there's no such thing as an objective reaction to an artistic work, and that task becomes even more daunting.

It's one of the reasons why most of the writers I know tend to be their own toughest critics: uncompromising, flinty, and clear-eyed about the shortcomings of their work -- sometimes to a fault. It's why breakthroughs, when they happen, are so welcome -- but also why you keep soldiering on when they don't seem to be coming. Once you choose to suit up, you can't be distracted by mealy-mouthed critics or snarky commenters here and there.

A couple of weeks back, I saw a panel of writers from 30 Rock talk to a room full of wannabes at the New York Television Festival. (I still intend to write that up -- provided I can retrieve the notes I took on the old Iphone before I ship it back to Apple.) The question came from the audience (as it inevitably always does) about whether they read online stuff about their work. And each of the three had an interesting answer: they did. They used to. They don't now.

That's an inevitable evolution, I think. I never used to understand actors who didn't read their critical notices in the newspapers. I still don't, to be honest. As well as your self-criticism, there should be space for you to let in some outside voices -- notes from other writers, critics with insight -- and yup, even the occasional blogger or internet poster with a fresh or dynamic take. The problem is that with the latter especially, the noise to signal ratio is so high that it's like putting your hotel key card next to a source of magnetism: poof -- suddenly the mooring you had is gone, buried under the weight of the snark.

So you have to be merciless in your self-criticism -- sometimes to a ridiculous degree. And to bulk that up, sometimes you need control rods -- and here is where, in TV at least, the writer's room can come in so handy.

In TV you're moving fast. You have to get a story on its feet and out the door at a pace that would make a playwright blanch and even an experienced screenwriter blush. If you've picked the right people to be in that writing room, you've bought yourself several steps of control in case your judgement is misfiring that day. In case, this one time, you just don't feel like putting a bullet in the head of your darlings.

I firmly believe that this is what's missing most from the understanding of the writing process - both by baby writers starting out, non-writing producers who want to have the final creative say without understanding a) the process or b) writers, or various & sundry others (Actors, Directors, etc...) who get handed TV shows and don't understand why they don't turn out very well -- or why a great swath of the public doesn't think they turned out so well.

Oy vey. It all comes down to that quality of self-judgement. Second guessing. Is it any wonder that so much of the rich vein of humor on TV has a Jewish tint to it? The self-laceration at the heart of that culture might not be great to be in a relationship with -- but it's pretty good training for doing the job.

Which brings me back to that thin, thin wire. Last night I saw a production of a Musical called The Boys in the Photograph. The book & lyrics are by Ben Elton, with Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. And brothers and sisters, it was not good.

It's the attempt to graft a story about a high school football team in Belfast, circa 1969, and how those boys manage to weather the eruption of sectarian violence through the early 1970s. And though there were some winning performers, selling the material as best they can (Erica Peck & Tracy Dawson are particular standouts) ultimately the show plays as a pastiche of musical theater & Irish clichés. (The song about how much Irish people like to drink, Craic, had me watching through my clenched fingers.)

Contrast that to the production I saw in New York, a couple weeks ago, of Billy Elliot.

Superficially the two shows have a lot in common. They graft a personal story against a larger backdrop in recent history. They use projections of footage from the time to set time, & place, and give crucial information. And both don't necessarily have more than a couple of good songs each.

But Billy Elliot works because of odd character choices, things that are off the nose -- moments of humanity that suggest emotion rather than state it; that sneak up and pull out your sympathy instead of standing there and demanding that you offer it up.

A couple of reviews I've read of Boys put the fault at the feet of writer & lyricist Ben Elton. I found a lot of his lyrics pretty moon/june, and the jokes a bit corny & obvious...but none of that was a surprise, based on my reaction to his earlier work.

I loved Blackadder -- but to me the main reaction to Elton (who's a revered comic genius in the UK) was formed by "Popcorn," the novelization of his stage hit that I read on a friend's recommendation a few years back. I thought Popcorn the book was simply terrible -- and for a very specific reason. A satire of America & show biz and fame, the book's California setting and American characters are constantly undercut by Elton's tin ear when it comes to American idiom, character, and culture. (I remember one specific, slightly pedantic mistake of having Americans referring to news anchors as "presenters," a Britishism that no American would use, but really the faults of characterization, point of view, and details of California & American life were so off in dozens of ways.)

Flash ahead to The Boys in the Photograph, and most of the same sins are made manifest. (And let's not forget, this is kick at the can #2 -- it's a reworking of an earlier musical.) The parade of cliches was so thick that I told my sister that I wouldn't have been the slightest bit surprised if the Irish Spring soap guy came out at one point and fought the Lucky Charms Leprechaun.

Now -- I don't know Elton. Never met him. So I can't tell you what's going on here. Does he lack the self-lacerating writer gene? Does he not have people around him who can shore up and rein in his bad artistic impulses? Who knows? But there's some level of judgement missing. What I saw last night was uncooked -- a first draft at best.

Coincidentally, I'm rounding home on a first draft of something right now. Which is why I found the experience last night so unsettling, so terrifying. The fearlessness with which you must blow up and cut down your own material cannot be overstated.

Last week I met a writer in L.A. who's establishing herself -- and she's recently taken a leap into the blogging world, too. Julie wrote a disturbing -- and pretty achingly true -- essay comparing the paring and cutting process of creating a new work to anorexia. It's a pretty chilling read. But it does suggest one route to the unsentimental, vicious, clear-eyed sense one needs about one's own work to move it forward.

There's many ways you can get there. You can self-flagellate, like I did in that email to a friend after a bad day. (Which led to a GREAT day of writing yesterday.) Sometimes it's a mystery, like the friend who called yesterday to tell me that the clouds have suddenly lifted and she feels like she's finally gaining traction and momentum, and remembering why she loves to do this.

And sometimes, when all else fails, it's making sure you've got a room of the trusted who can back you up, challenge you to defend your material when that's what you need, and set you back on course when that's what you need.

Whatever works; a combo of all of these techniques, usually. I know it doesn't sound like much fun, but if you're going to keep your efforts on the right side of the wire, that's what it takes.

Otherwise...

Manly yes -- but I like it too! Magically delicious! Fiddly-dee-dee!

Finally.

NOW LET'S GET on with it.

The Way It Works

OH NEWBIES. You read Josh Olson being all mean and you crumple like little petals in a strong gale. Oh, do you know? Could you?

Actual email I sent to a friend of mine yesterday:

Warning: May Contain Strong Language.

I saw you called. Sorry to say that I couldn't do a drink today because I'm a worthless, shiftless, no-talent, lazy, dumb fucking bitch of a meat-handed, retarded hack. I have shit for brains and bleach in the soul. I'm incapable of stringing together a sentence on a word processor, utterly undeserving of friendship, and could never actually please a real live

woman.

I'm gong to torture myself doing shitty shitty work tonight. Maybe a drink or lunch or something later in the week? Wed or Friday? That's if I finally man up and actually get something done instead of being a talentless snivelling douchebag.

So there you go. There you go.

Big Heap TeeVee

SO I HAVE two scripts in need of some serious watering, so maybe a bit of open thread vamping til I can gain some traction. Some short, disconnected thoughts:

• Other people have been saying it at various times for weeks, but last night was the first Mad Men where I felt like they were just treading water. Esp. disappointing after the last two, very strong episodes. The Conrad Hilton thing is cool, and I know the clock still ticks to November, 1963... but they need to get to the point or I'm going to find my mind wandering to my own fantasy spinoff : Joan Holloway, 60's Shopgirl.

• Community & Modern Family both had stronger 2nd episodes than their first outings. I'm amazed by what fully realized, confident comedies they seem to be straight out of the gate.

• Flash Forward is my favorite new drama. I think both John Cho and Joseph Fiennes are surprisingly durable TV presences

• At this point, I can't even conceive of what would cause me to add another Medical Drama to my viewing. But Trauma, Three Rivers, & Mercy haven't exactly made that argument.

• I'm just about willing to concede that I've been wrong all along about Curb Your Enthusiasm. Although maybe it's just that they're so smooth in the improvisation now that I don't notice it.

• The Stargate: Universe Premiere rocked it for me. I think the actor playing Lt. Scott is really sympathetic. David Blue's great. Most of the actors are stronger in this iteration, and I think that Robert Carlyle is going to be so much more than a cardboard villain. I really am looking forward to seeing how the season plays out. Love the totally different look and pacing than any previous Stargate series.

• On Being Erica -- it's a funny thing when you evolve your concept forward -- you have to be careful. I find myself way less interested in Erica's journeys into her own past now, though maybe the series highest-rated edition ever last week might suggest that's a minority opinion. To me though, it's like House with his ducklings - I have no interest in seeing Chase/Cameron/Foreman and their dynamic; move it along.

Not to reopen an old wound, but my LOST reprint column garnered this very interesting comment:

DMc, I think you're missing something important here. The car analogy isn't quite right. In the car, both driven and passenger know the destination. LOST is more like a driver insisting he knows *just* where he's going, trust me, and Don't worry honey it's going to be *fantastic* when we get there. And the passenger is supposed to trust, when they get to the run-down empty amusement park (personal note: fucking scary those places are, yet weirdly erotic) that Disney World really always looked like this, really really, trust me, really, this is where we were headed all along.

I didn't stop watching LOST because it turned out the writers had no idea what they were doing at first - I've known that since the end of Season One. Nor does it bother me that 'experiments' (read: unwise indulgences and failures) like Pablo and what's-her-name have stolen time that might've lifted the burden on other, overstuffed episodes. Hell, I stuck it out through S4 despite S2 being the longest, least daring Psych-101-via-cheap-weed dorm-room bullshit session I've ever sat through. You fight through such things.

Nah, the problem is the realization that when the show is over, *nothing will have happened*. LOST is all about its own mechanisms, how 'fun' it is to get swept up in a conspiracy-shaped thing...and you look at shows like DEADWOOD and THE SOPRANOS and THE WIRE and, Christ, even BUFFY, and realize that they left you with something to think about, a series of plot movements that summed to something more than themselves.

The herky-jerky plotting, illogic, and navel-gazing isn't just irritating in itself, it breaks the illusion that the show *means something*. Which is only bothersome at the craft level but, like, existentially crushing when you turn off the TV. All those hours for a show with nothing to say. I turn off THE OFFICE on Thursday night and I'm disturbed and ambivalent and hopeful. I'd turn off LOST admiring the writers' labours. It's like praising seam placement and not noticing the pants look stupid, y'know?

The show's a cheat. Not because of how it's written but *what it's saying*. The latter opens you up to anxiety about the former. The end, baby.

So what do you think? Is our commenter right? I think this is part of what makes Flash Forward & Mad Men's compacts with the audience so interesting. FF promises that come April you're going to have closure, of a sorts. While Mad Men is spooling out an entire season predicated on your knowledge that this is the calm before the storm. The pressure to have each season have a discrete theme also helps in packaging them for DVD or Bundled sale later, methinks.

One of the great fictions perpetrated on fans, I think, was how the creator of Babylon 5 told everyone that every single chapter was worked out in his head, and people bought it.

I think the commenter above might be right -- but I don't really take the point, because I think the idea of following the cleverness, and making it up as you go along is the endearing part of ongoing series drama...in fact, it's the endearing part of storytelling -- from the days when it was around the campfire. When I read Charles Dickens' books, I don't marvel at how he had the whole story in his head before he wrote it. In part, I find them compelling because I know they were written as serials -- leading to richly detailed smaller characters and story eddies and all sorts of great stuff that you might not have gotten in a more planned work.

But maybe that's just me.

So. There you go. Grist. Comment below. Writer types : I'm esp. interested in anything you've seen, any trick or technique or example from the new season that made you think differently about your own work, or made you want to steal something for your own toolbox.

Redux: Acing the Meeting & Social Trickery 101

This started out as an intro to a reprint and morphed into something else.

WELL, TONIGHT I'm excited because hopefully I'll meet a few Ink Canada types I haven't before, here on my last night in L.A.. Tomorrow it's home and an immediate dive into work. Now that we're a few weeks past the firestorm of "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script," there's another thing that working screenwriters have to deal with quite a bit, and that's the, "I'm totally lost and don't know how to break in, will you meet with me to give me some advice" conversation.

This one's a bit trickier to negotiate. I try to do them whenever I can, but then there are sometimes, like now, when I see everything piled up that I have to do and think, "I just don't have the time right now." In my case, I tell myself that I've already done (and am doing) a lot right now to try and bring up writers -- a couple of student lectures here and there in the next month, and a few projects I have to do as part of my WGC council duties...

But the thing that sometimes gets me about the people who want to meet is how ill-prepped they are. I mean, in this day and age, with all these screenwriter blogs to read, I don't understand why you would skip right to, "can you explain the industry to me and give me some advice" when there's tons of practical advice just sitting out there for you in the scribosphere. If you're looking for craft advice, there's the Jane Espenson archives, or John August, or Alex Epstein, and any one of a dozen other locales. If you want career or life advice, how can you meet without devouring every word of Ken Levine, or Lee Goldberg. You want to know what writers are like? There's Kung Fu Monkey. Canadian? Well, once upon a time this was a black hole, but I think if you read the archives of Jim Henshaw or Will Dixon or Jill Golick or yours truly, you're going to get a whole lot of knowledge downloaded in a short time.

Then, and only then should you go and look to ask for a working writer's time to "fill in the rest." Most of us are nice people and try to give our time as much as possible. (Sometimes more than possible -- anything to help procrastinate.) I know when I sit down and get to have a conversation with somebody where they've done the prep -- it's way better for both of you. I don't have to be quietly resentful that I have to explain basic stuff that the person could have gotten a hundred other places -- that could have gotten by just reading this blog, or Playback, or Deadline Hollywood Daily or a book like Billion Dollar Kiss, or any of the fine books on TV writing out there; and in most of those convos, where the person is prepped, I might even come away with a few new thoughts that help my process. That's an unexpected dividend.

And this doesn't stop, by the way. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to tag along with someone else to their meeting with a top Hollywood TV writer/showrunner, who's also written a bunch of movies. It was great to be in this meeting, simply because I didn't want anything: I wasn't looking for a read, I wasn't looking for a job...I just wanted a bit of face time with the guy. And I wanted it because I was, and am a big fan of a lot of his work - the stuff everybody likes, and some of the stuff that wasn't so successful, too.

And it was a great meeting. I got to praise. I got to hear insight about what works and doesn't, why some of the failures failed, what he's learned about some of the things coming up -- and how he aligns what he's pitching right now. And I worked with his Dad years ago, so I got to say nice things about that. Boom. Great meeting.

So, I'm sorry to the foursome of people who've contacted me in the last couple weeks wondering if I could have a quick chat; I hope you understand that I'm not brushing you off to be a dick -- I just have a whole lot to do and I'm not excelling at the work/life balance right now. In the meantime, do some of that reading homework, and make sure when that meeting -- whoever it's with -- comes, that you make a grand impression ... like the person I write about in this entry did.

Originally published May 8, 2006:

Last week I met a fellow writer for a drink. (Okay, full disclosure: I had four. But she had 'a drink.' )

It was a referral from a colleague, just a normal sort of meet and greet to try and suss out and connect to future talent. You still can't shake the feeling that it's kind of like a job interview.

So I fired questions out -- what are your favorite TV shows; what do you like to read; what do you do when you're not writing; how did you come to writing; what's your experience; who've you worked with; what are you passionate about; where have you been; what's important to you?

I know these questions can be daunting, especially fired all in a row like that. I have a friendly demeanor, so that cuts it a bit. But if you notice anything in the pattern of the questions above, let it be this: I'm trying to find out as much about the person as the experience or taste they bring to writing. Because that's an important part of the collaborative process. I don't know who said it originally, but I know that Ken Levine has opined recently that you have to find a person that you could stand to drive cross-country with. Collaboration in TV means lots of long hours, weird times, strange intimacies (get your mind out of the guttter, I don't mean that way) and a whole lot of time spent with someone. So you kind of need to know who they are.

And no, you'll never get that out of one meeting. But that first meeting is important.

Getting to it is even more so.

The first thing that impressed me about the writer I met last week was her persistence. She emailed me several times -- never pushy, always leaving a respectful distance between queries, until we nailed down the meeting time. A lot of people screw that up right off the bat -- either by not following up (I have one focus when I'm writing, and that's the script I'm working on; I can be bad about getting back to people. Yup, it's a flaw, but it's also the flaw that makes it bearable to ride it out when people aren't getting back to me) or by being too forceful (cue the thoughts of the boiling bunny scene from Fatal Attraction.)

As in all conversations, things naturally progressed to the finding of common ground. We found out that we're kind of a similar type. I don't remember if I've said this before, so forgive me if I have, but I think personality-wise, most television writers are a mix of extrovert and introvert.

The true extroverts can never hack it, because there's so much time spent alone that it drives you crazy after awhile. And I think that true introverts, unless their pages are truly, truly stellar, are never going to make it, because so much of this job is constantly pitching, and re-pitching your ideas -- whether in a meeting or in the room, or to a producer, or to a network, or even -- if you magically make it to production -- a real live actor or director. If you're a real wallflower, you're not going to have much of a chance to show your bloom. You gotta be witty and odd and sharp and compelling.

When you're an extrovert-introvert, you sometimes need a way in. I know I'm bad in a social situation where I know NO ONE. That, I find daunting. Give me a few friendly faces, and I'll make my way just fine. But the funny thing is that because people who know me know me to be very gregarious and passionate, they assume I don't need the help -- even if I'm standing at the edge of the room, swimming in my own self-doubt and recrimination.

A lot of extrovert-introverts blanch at the thought of schmoozing. Schmoozing, of course, is smalltalk with intent. I've been schmoozed expertly and haplessly, and I've done both of those things myself. But it's just something you need to learn. It's not like having a 'no schmooze' rule will get you anywhere. There's a lot of starving and unemployed people with integrity.

So last week, I told this writer an anecdote that actually came from the wife of a friend of mine (and a friend of the blog, too, coinkidinkally.)

This person figures every time she goes to a party or social situation, you turn it into a game, and the game is this:

No matter what kind of person they are, no matter what they do, no matter how boring to you they seem, every person has at least one thing about them that's interesting.

Your job is to find that one thing out -- about everybody in the room.

I love this idea, because it kind of applies the craft of writing to a social situation. You have a task, (the project) there are lots of ways to achieve that task, (the craft) and it's a task you have to complete. (You have a deadline.)

And as a net bonus, you get to appear as a true extrovert and an active listener. Brilliant.