Reprint: Oedipus Rex: Or Where a Simple Toy Teaches Our Hero About Drama and Fridge Logic and the Perils of the Internet

MEET REX. Rex is an I-Dog : an electronic device with LED lights on its nose. A tiny microphone inside, and a headphone jack mean that Rex reacts to music you play to him. That's how you feed him. In return for a bit of music, Rex will display patterns of lights, move his ears, and bark. Occasionally he'll play a jaunty little tune. Like the long-ago Tamagotchi craze, Rex is interactive, in the sense that he demands attention, "learns" and has different moods depending on how you interact with him.

Someone very cool who clearly has my number sent me Rex for my birthday. I opened up his box this morning, expecting it to be the HDMI cable I ordered from Best Buy. Imagine my surprise.

I've been playing with Rex all morning, as I read the paper and drink coffee. I've got the XM Radio on, and I've been switching between singer songwriter stuff, hip hop, blues, alt country, jazz, and punk to see the different ways Rex reacts. And he does react differently to different types of music. Sometimes he even dances.

Clearly, Rex is a good boy.

What's that?

Oh, I know.

Rex actually has a computer chip inside, and a microphone that reacts to sound waves and converts those sound waves to trigger certain sequences of LED's because of some algorhythm. Rex's barks are a recording. And his motions are motor-driven.

Now, that being said, if you diss my dog again, I'll fucking kill you.

See, I've wanted a dog for a while now. Dogs and writers just seem to go together. Sadly, I don't feel like getting a dog that looks more like a rat, and the condo I live in is too small and cluttered for a satisfyingly- sized doggie. So I've put off the dog until the next time I move.

I know all this, and the stuff about Rex being an electronic device from Hasbro, and yet within a few minutes, I'm reacting to this toy like, you know, it really is a dog. Like its mood is a mood, and not a program.

See, we humans are programmed to react to things. And pretend, and buy into things that we know in our hearts aren't real. In school, one of the first literary techniques you learn about is the concept of personification.

But it goes beyond that. Way beyond. We take steps to buy into things that we know are not true every single day.

On Facebook, I've added this dumb zombies application. I have a zombie army. Recently they introduced fighting. Now, I know that the fighting is just mathematically determined, that there's no skill and nothing going on there. But yet, I have a complex series of moves I do when I lose a fight. I fight weaker opponents in order to amass a few wins before I can take on the next, stronger opponent. (By the way, in this context, "taking on the next opponent" really means clicking the mouse twice.) I know this helps me win more, even though I know it has nothing to do with me winning more.

Confused?

Okay, what about this? Steve Jobs constantly fields queries from people who insist that the Ipod has some super secret proprietary algorhythm that somehow knows exactly the right song to play next when you shuffle. Seriously, otherwise, how would it know to follow up "I Wish it Would Rain?" with "Aint No Sunshine?" I mean, come on.

The idea of randomness, true randomness, is so scary to us in most contexts that we will jump through all manner of hoops in order NOT to face it. I've sat through many dates where I got to hear all about horoscopes -- and people (okay, sorry about this, but it's mostly true) women -- explain why this and that means this and that and the other, and besides the fact that maybe being born at a certain time in the year influences your behavior slightly -- come on, deep down, you know it's all bullshit. But try saying that to a believer.

(And yes, yes, I know my atheist friends will insist this applies equally to all manner of religious faith too, but I'm not going there, a) because I'm a once and, let's face it, probably future Catholic boy, and b) because I think so long as faith is kept personal and not put out in the world in an attempt to codify or judge the behavior of others, hey, it's nobody's damn business but your own.)

The net result of our incredible fear of randomness is that we look for patterns in everything. We try to make sense of things. Our minds fill in the blanks. So we see shapes and animals in clouds of water vapor. So we look at multicolored dots in the newspaper and see them as an image.

It's a good thing we do this, because if we didn't, I wouldn't have a job. And storytelling for film and TV wouldn't exist.

When you watch a TV show, you intuit a lot. You follow narrative, you fill in blanks. You follow clues, and search for the pattern. If it's a hero journey, you identify with the quest. If it's a mystery, you try to figure it out.

Your audience will work with you to understand the story. They're desperate to do it, they're looking to be entertained, to learn something, to distract themselves from the randomness.

So as storytellers, we do a little dance. Our job, whichever crafty technique we use, is to give enough detail, to provide enough information or imagery or character or data so that our audience deciphers our pattern. They work to fill in the blanks we've left and get to the end.

Now, I've said before -- there's all sorts of stuff we have to do to make that work within the frame of the restrictions of the medium: whether that me a limited number of sets, or the 43 minute running time, or a small budget.

Stories use coincidence, they use shorthand to hide exposition, they use recognizable tropes to signal things to the audience that you don't want to take the time to explain because the meat of the story -- the thing that people are going to enjoy -- lies elsewhere.

"Fridge logic" is a much maligned and misunderstood term outside the TV writing community. Technically, it's those small details that won't bother the audience until later, the ones that if they think about them at all -- it's a half hour later when you're at the fridge making a sandwich and you go, "hey, wait a minute."

Arguably, the most famous example of "fridge logic" are the Letters of Transit in Casablanca. Think about it. If they get those letters, Ilsa and Lazlo are free -- the letters can't be rescinded, they can't even be questioned!

That's actually said in the movie.

They can't be questioned. By the Nazis. In WWII.

Riiiight.

There's a moment in the construction of every drama script where you have to decide, and discuss, whether you need to explain or justify something, or whether you can just let it slide. The problem is that every thing you explain takes time. And if you take the time to explain, you have less time for story, and emotion -- which is what people buy into. If you err on the side of explaining too much, your story becomes like a hull with lots and lots of crusty barnacles clinging to it. You can't slide through the water gracefully anymore -- you're this big, ungainly, crusty thing.

I'm not trying to excuse bumps here -- bumps are things that take your audience out of the story...and woe betide someone who tries to excuse something that's actually a bump as fridge logic." If you jar your audience out of their state of willing disbelief, they stop filling in the patterns you want them to fill in. And they start looking for fault.

But the thing you must keep in mind is this: People want to believe things. They want you to fool them. They WANT to see patterns -- they're programmed for it. In a very real sense, they are more on your side than you (or even they) think they are.

But...

(Man, if you didn't know that was coming then I'm afraid you've missed the DTOS pattern.)

The social ramifications of some of the TV discussion sites, like Television Without Pity can be serious for a writer who's just starting out, or even for those of us who've been doing it for awhile.

Because TWOP and some of these other sites reverse the dynamic that's at play in the wider audience.

See, rather than doing what the majority of people do when they watch -- try to buy in, try to see the pattern, try to fill in the blanks -- a lot of the posters on these sites watch to find fault, so that they have something to snark about.

It's the difference between meeting your friend's new girl or boyfriend, and your ex's new love. In the case of the former, you're going to do whatever you can to find the parts of that person you like. You want to buy in because you want your friend to be happy. In the latter case, you're looking for any fault you can possibly find because hating that person is going to make you feel better about yourself.

Yes, I'm aware that I just called the posters on TWOP bitter exes.

Give me a minute to coil out some more rope --

The peculiar socialization rituals of online messageboards mean you can earn bonafides for being critical. Or even overly critical. You saw something first. You're building yourself up and tearing them down. So, yeah, those LOST writers sure are stupid, because they completely missed this inconsistency...

...now, some of the time whatever they point to will be apt. It may indeed be a flaw in the writing. Or it may be one of those things that happen in production. The director didn't direct the scene the right way, or the actor didn't bring it or any one of a number of things.

But more often than not the thing that they're pointing to is either an absolutely concrete case of fridge logic -- ie: if you weren't watching to LOOK for a fault, it wouldn't bother you -- or it's not a fault at all.

Come on, it wouldn't be the first time somebody found fault when one wasn't there.

I'm amused and amazed when I read a post from someone pointing out a "fault" that shows a complete lack of understanding of a) history, b) society, c) science, d) logic, e) human nature, f) relationships (I could keep going to zz but I'm already bored.)

So why do I read these posts? Why do they fascinate me? Well, because I'm hooked. Hooked by how the way people critique things always reveals more about their character than the work they're critiquing. I think you probably get a pretty good, if not complete, picture of me and how I think from the entries on this blog. Roger Ebert is pretty knowable through his reviews and opinions, I think. So is John Doyle. Anyone who posts regularly on any site related to TV is no different.

If you started writing after the rise of the net and these sites, then you've got to work extra hard to insulate yourself from the deleterious effects of nitpicking criticism. It's a social expression of a community way more than it's a useful learning tool. If you use the kind of dissection you see on TWOP as a baseline when you're constructing story, you are never going to get anywhere. You will spend way too much time trying to bullet proof your story, adding barnacle after barnacle of explanation that doesn't matter to the 90% of the audience that doesn't derive some self-esteem from complaining about Jack or Sawyer or that girl with the short haircut on Cold Case.

Just remember: most people want to see the dog.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Rex is geting antsy.

Somebody's Gotta Scratch It...

SO IT SEEMS that White Pine Pictures and Stitch Media won an Banff World Television Award for "Mobile Enhancements" for the Season One website of The Border.

Just a little note that those Mobile Enhancements were written - under the direction of Janet MacLean and David Barlow, by Sarah Dodd, James Battiston, and Yours Truly.

Return to your homes, citizens.

Oops. RSS.

I KNOW A lot of people read blogs via RSS. Just so's you know, there's a lot of challenged people like me who often spot things wrong after publishing and who go back in and expand a bit. Sorry. I'm posting this now because my previous post on Katims rules for showrunning was a dog's breakfast. Originally I was just throwing up a link, then I wrote more. So for once you might want to do a click through cause the finished article is way different.

It sports nudity.

Mmm. Give Me The Damn Marrow! (Showrunner stuff)

I'M PUNCHY, AND when I get punchy I like to give obscure titles to posts. In this case, a funny Onion article I half remember about an old man writing an Op-Ed explaining why he needs to suck out your bone marrow.

The Marrow today comes courtesy of the great Jill Golick, and the equally great Karen Hill, who's in Banff as part of the Canwest Showrunner Training Program. Karen had a session with Friday Night Lights' Jason Katims, the writer crush of many a scribe right now because of the absolute deliciousness of that show on just about every level known to man.

During a session, Katims outlined his rules for showrunners. They're awesome.

Coincidentally, around the story room table at lunch last week on The Border, a bunch of producer, writer, key types were speculating over why things seem so chaotic in our few Canadian shows this year. There seems to be a lot of creative turmoil, showrunners coming and going, writers being replaced, things being thrown out and around. All of it under the surface. Oh, and the pilot thing hasn't helped -- big creative fights are still happening and it's kind of ... icky.

Well, besides the usual Canadian problem of "too many cooks" -- I think that maybe a solution could be found by really sticking to Katims wonderful rules here. They show a lot of insight and experience. (Of course, they also come from a tradition where they actually recognize the Showrunner-Writer paradigm, but never mind. We're getting there.)

Katims Rules For Showrunning:

1. Decide what you need.
Look at your skill set critically and determine your weaknesses. Then, hire accordingly.

2. Embrace input.
Even if your initial input is to push people away, fight that impulse. Embrace the collaborative nature of the medium. Listen to your actors, execs, keys.)

3. Give yourself permission to say no.
Once people feel they’ve been heard, then you can tell them it’s not the way you envision the show.

4. Success is determined before principal photography.
Once you put together your team, most of your work is done. When you interview folks, really pay attention. You’ll learn what you need to know in the first five minutes.

5. Be open to change when reality hits.
For example, if you’re in editing, don’t hang onto your fantasy version of the script. Deal with the material that’s actually been shot and cut the show accordingly.

6. Not everything is your fault.

7. Some things are your fault.
When you can cop to your fuck ups, it’s a good thing. It fosters an atmosphere of trust. Own your mistakes so it won’t happen again.

8. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Pay attention to lifestyle stuff. Katims prides himself on being able to go home and have dinner with the kids. Losing perspective from overwork doesn’t help the show. Hiatus is a sham.

9. Believe the cards.
Put the story up on a board on index cards. If you can’t talk your story from start to finish, it’ll show up on the screen. Story holes always show. Be willing to throw out the cards and rewrite. Know how your story tracks.

10. Be honest when conflicts arise.
If an actor complains about their character and you disagree with them, tell them. Be honest. People will respect you. Nobody wants to tell the truth but you need to remember you are being paid to do the things that are hard. No exec has ever said anything wrong. When a show fails, it’s because of us.

11. Empower your team.
Believe in the people you hire. Don’t make it seem like you’re indispensable. You will be rewarded by empowering talented people. They’ll do better work.

12. Don’t hire anyone who wants your job.
They’ll make your life difficult as they try to take your job.

It's funny. My plan was always about learning the craft and working my way up -- which is hard to do in Canada because the shorter show orders mean less opportunity. There's also a culture here that seems, foolishly, to think that the solution is to give shows to people with no experience. Eight months at the film centre does not make you qualified to run a show.

So I've had, in my time, the chance to see the execution of each one of these rules. How it works when it's done, and how it's worked when it's not done this way.

One of the things that struck me about the BSG podcasts is how often Ronald Moore cops to being wrong. "We screwed that one up," he'll say. "That's on me."

For the other rules, I've seen masters use them to handle network notes they don't like, and preserve relationships, and I've seen the absence of this kind of coolheaded approach lead to chaos. I've embraced wonderful situations working for people who followed these rules -- or most of them -- and I've walked away from projects because I could see that the people in charge just didn't have the wisdom to follow a skillset like this.

Katims has articulated the thing that just about every writer looking to showrun should know, without really knowing why.

But like my poker playing friend Gus would say, palming the "order of hands" card -- It's still nice to have a cheat sheet.

Thanks to Jill and Karen for passing this along. Sweet.

Reprint: How To Give Notes

Summer is notes season in Canada...so maybe this one needs another airing.

"I HAVE a few notes..."

Ooooh. Ooohh. I think I actually heard groaning coming through the innertubes.

I've been talking (commiserating?) a lot lately with fellow TV scribes who are (it's the summer, remember) all presently drowning in notes. What are they saying? It might surprise you. Because sure, there's a little bit of carping of the "they just don't understand" variety. But most professional writers I know express their frustration a bit more plaintively. Vis:

When I am going to get some script notes that help me write a better next draft instead of leaving me on the floor in a pool of confusion and despair?

Contrary to popular belief, most of the pro writers I know understand that an outline is an outline, and a first draft sucks. Always. It's never where you need it to be. And what you need is an astute reader to help you out and get you to where it needs to be. If you're doing a poky spec script, that's one thing. But if you're in production, or prep, all of this has to happen in an incredibly compressed timeframe. But everyone needs that step. Even the Writer Gods who (barely) walk among us.

A good friend of the blog tipped me to Brian Lowry's article in Variety about notes.

Chuck Lorre was speaking with admiration when he told the New York Times regarding "The Sopranos" finale, "This is what you get when you let a writer do whatever he wants." But the "Two and a Half Men" co-creator's observation exposes a larger point.

Network notes have gotten a bad rap, but as several recent programs attest -- including David Milch's bizarre "John From Cincinnati," Aaron Sorkin's self-indulgent "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and, yes, David Chase's much-debated blackout -- left to their own devices, even the finest writers can produce material that leave audiences cold and occasionally slack jawed.

Executives once joked that every A-list producer has a dud inside them just waiting for its owner to achieve success affording them the freedom to release the beast -- a dynamic that begs the age-old question of how to guide creativity without shackling it.

You can quibble over Lowry's choices (I loved Sopranos, still am not sure about John, and agree wholeheartedly about Studio 60,) but Lowry's whole column is well worth a read. But the best part, I think, is this:

Notes aren't inherently bad; bad notes are, and even pedigreed talent can benefit from a little direction.

Let's take that as a bedrock given. I mean, I believe I've written before about the effect good notes can have on a writer. So let's proceed to the next step:

How do you give good notes, rather than bad notes?

This is an entry that could, I hope, benefit Canadian network execs - because as I've said before, rigor, passion, and smarts at that level is what we creatives in Canada desperately need. But it also could benefit people acting as Story Editors, of which there are many in this country, mainly because Telefilm will sometimes pay for them.

Step One: Get the Relationship Right by Managing Ego

As Lowry says in his article, the person giving the notes is not exactly a collaborator. They are, if anything, meant to inspire. But how does that inspiration work? Well, if you remember anything from your philosophy classes, or science classes, the way the progression of intellectual thought generally works is this: thesis + antithesis = synthesis.

So an idea meets another idea, or a counter idea, and the fight between them results in a new (and hopefully better!) idea. Figuring out story goes the same way.

If you're in a position to give notes, there are two ways you can approach it -- you can try to get the writer to do what you want them to do, or you can try to challenge their assumptions, see what their intent was, and talk them through to a place where the result is better.

There are type-A's out there who will snort and snigger at this, and think that it's "touchy feely." There are producers who'll want to say, "hey, what I say goes," and there are network-editor types who'll say, "Hey, we're the ones paying the bill." And both those things are true. And both those things will result in you winding up with a crappy script and a writer who's just trying to get to the end of the project -- and away from you.

Down the line, what it also means is that you'll find fewer and fewer good writers want to work with you. There are producers out there -- even in Canada -- to whom this has already happened. They have trouble attracting talent to work with them because "the word is out." The community is small; people talk. There are also networks that have slid to the bottom rung on who to approach simply because their development process is known to be unpleasant and confrontational.

This sounds like "coddle the writer," a bit, doesn't it? It isn't. Because on the other side of it, the writers, if they're good and serious -- are undergoing the same process. They're trying to decode your notes and really understand what you meant. They're trying to let go of their immediate ego reactions and move on to getting and dealing with your points.

Understand that doesn't always mean taking and executing your note. Sometimes, the thing that's bothering you isn't really the thing that's bothering you. A good writer always takes note of the bump -- and if they don't agree with your diagnosis of how to fix it, they're still going to look for a way to deal with your concern. You don't see the way we're trying to manage our ego, in good faith, but trust us...we're doing it.

Then we drink a lot of beer. Unless we're one of those writers who have stopped drinking beer. Then we go to the gym and punch a bag. Same difference.

If you're a note giver, getting the relationship right, and managing ego means taking a couple of things on faith:

• Your writer understands the story better than you do, because they've lived with it longer.
• Your writer doesn't think it's perfect, and they don't understand the ins and outs perfectly either -- so there's plenty of room for your input and shaping.
  

From there, like in writing, note giving comes all in the execution. Rather than approach your notes as, "In scene 5 we don't think this should happen," or "I don't like this," how about trying more open-ended questions that require the writer to clarify -- really clarify -- what they're trying to do. "Why do you have Jenny discover the boyfriend's infidelity here? Why not later?" Or "What does killing the Mexican get us in this scene, and is that really worth the risk of making our protagonist unlikable?"

Coming in imperiously: cut this, move that, make this funnier -- hate this line, but don't have an alternative...well... that's not helpful. It's just not. I mean, really, ordering writers around can't be that fun. It's not like we're actors or something...we're not....bendy.

If you ask open-ended questions, and get a dialogue going -- you might have a longer notes call, but I guarantee you you're going to have a more interesting discussion. By forcing your writer to clarify and to articulate their intent, you can focus like a laser on those parts that really aren't integral to the story. And what comes out of the subsequent discussion will make the end product better.

By the way - this is also how writers work with each other.

I recently finished a story editing gig for a young writer who's trying to get his series off the ground. I was clear always, when I made a suggestion, to frame it with, "I feel..." statements, and "What was the intent of..." and "How are you going to..." statements. I didn't impose my ideas on this writer, because I didn't have to. By asking the right questions, and reacting positively to his ideas, we got to a much better place organically. And of course, some of my ideas got in there, too. But they got in in such a way that the writer bought into it. They didn't feel imposed -- it wasn't me vs. him. It was us. Us is always better.

When something wasn't working for me, the other thing I did was frame in terms of "what is the audience experiencing right now?" Which brings us to step two:

Step Two: Who are the Audience, and What Should they Be Feeling Right Now?

The fight over the audience is where you could have some legitimate sparks between network and writer.

In theory, knowing the audience is the network's job. In the United States, they will have very sophisticated testing to show you just what the audience is thinking and feeling, and exactly how they react in razor thin increments. They'll show you the testing data, and what it means, and what they want, and how it all results in success.

Which is why, of course, every fall all of the networks' shows become massive giant hits.

Do the Dr. Evil pinky with me now...

Rigggght.

Leonard Stern, the producer of Get Smart, wrote a book a long time ago called "A Martian Wouldn't Say That!" which collected some of the most inane notes given by network executives. In the Lowry Variety article, he quotes Stern as talking about the downside of testing by executives.

Stern agreed that writers have cause for skepticism in dealings with executives, especially when the suits cite research and testing -- betraying their willingness to "surrender instincts, or a refusal to acquire them."

In most cases, the writer's objection is having someone try to quantify or "prove" something unprovable, when the steady application of common sense would probably work better.

Part of that common sense is arriving at a baseline agreement about who the audience is, and what they're likely to know.

The most famous story I can think of on this point is something I heard from the mouth of Peter Casey, one of the Executive Producers of Frasier. He came to visit us when I was a resident at the Canadian Film Centre several years ago. He told the story of the early days of Frasier, when they prepared scripts, they had Frasier and Niles make jokes about opera and art and wine. They got a lot of pressure from the networks to take those jokes out because it was felt that they would alienate the audience. Casey and his partners argued that Frasier and Niles were who they were, men of erudition -- and that they would make jokes like that. To not have them make those jokes would be to betray something about the character. And they felt that if even 10% of the audience got those jokes, they were worth it. There would be plenty of other stuff to keep the people who didn't get the "ten-percenters."

Well, lo and behold, a few weeks into Frasier airing, when it was already a big hit, they got the data back and they found out that fully 40% of the audience was getting the "ten percenters."

At this point in the story, Casey paused and looked at all of us. "Makes you wonder. Those shows that won't go for the 10% percenters. What level are they aimed at?"

That story has particular resonance for the Canadian TV industry. Because traditionally, we never go for the ten percenters. Ever.

There's a few ways you can get lost on the way to your audience.

• Assuming that the audience is dumber than you.

Audiences have (a la Stephen Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You) gotten used to watching Lost, and Heroes -- shows with rich narratives and lots of stuff going on. They watch CSI and they watch Ugly Betty and they have no trouble keeping all the characters straight. They watch E.R. and since the very first episode, they do not worry about jargon and medical stuff -- so long as the drama (or the comedy) is there, they are carried through all right.

But if you get 'noted' to over-explain everything; if you can never use jargon or shorthand, and if you always have to make sure that everything. is. explained. always. Well...then two things are going to inevitably follow: your pace will be deadly slow, and your audience will be bored. Remember the lesson of the ten-percenters.

• Assuming that the audience is you.

Some writers do this, especially new, starting out writers writing autobiographically, but it's far more common with network execs and producers: they extrapolate their single experience and make it universal. "Women don't think this way," "A man would never let himself be..." etc, etc. It's a deadly trap and it can derail a character or a story faster than just about any other pitfall. Insisting on a behavior, or an action without taking it through the questioning process in Step One above serves neither audience nor script.

• Making the audience surrogate character the blandest person in the piece.

You'd be surprised how often this happens. If so and so is supposed to be me, and they're as boring as a dog's ass because they're so chaste/perfect/virtuous/saintly/straight/buff/teetotalling/flawless ... well, then what are you saying about me?

• Surrendering to your agenda.

See: Canadian Drama. Your theme is not your story. It is one arrow in your quiver. If you desperately want to "say something," then may I suggest drafting a manifesto? This one can come from either side, but it's always deadly. We know racism is bad, people. You don't have to tell us. And tell us. And tell us.

...you could show us, maybe. How bout that?

• Adding a scene in to show us "more about the person's character."

Not if it doesn't move the story along, buddy. You're on the deadly pace express.

It's amazing how much you can deflect a trip down a bad road -- whether you're the network or the writer, by asking the simple question: "what is the audience feeling right now? why are they rapt? what are you showing them that makes them not care about reaching for that remote?"

This is where the proper definition of "fridge logic" comes into play. Some writers use "fridge logic" to be a bit of a band-aid to coverup bad plot holes. (But, if you're discussing the story like in Step One, likely those holes won't stand up to challenge, right?)

What fridge logic is, is those little bits of coincidence or plotting that won't interrupt the flow of the story for the audience. They're so named because they're the kinds of things you will only care about a half hour later when you're looking for something to eat in the fridge. Yup, there's probably some goof over on TWOP that will stand up and say, "they forgot about X and it ruined it for me!" but those people are not a large part of your audience.

In the end, one of the best definitions of fridge logic, and they way you can learn to tell the difference between fridge logic and a legitimate story concern is in the application of a fix. If the fix for the "problem" seems convoluted, long, or drags more than the problem itself...that's fridge logic. Solving plot problems -- real ones -- makes the story seem cleaner, not more convoluted.

This is a skill that any good note-giver can learn. But again -- it comes from centering yourself thinking, "what is the audience experiencing right now?" And it requires developing those critical skills. Research aint gonna help you.

Step Three: Stop Reading the Script and Start Seeing the Movie

This one, writers can be guilty of. Or story editors. Or network suits. Or anyone. And it comes from the willful forgetting of one very important fact:

The audience will never read the script.

Repeat that to yourself. What you are poring over, what you are slaving over -- is a transitional document. It is a physical representation of something that your audience is going to experience in an entirely different medium.

When you're reading to give notes, there will inevitably be some things that seem confusing on the page, that won't be confusing when they're filmed. Unfortunately, one of the only ways you can start to tell which is which is to go through it a few times. But in my experience, I've found that we often spend far too much time obsessing over details of presentation that just aren't going to read for an audience.

Reading a script is hard. There's a lot of detail to keep straight and you don't have all the visual and auditory cues: voice, look, manner, inflection -- that communicate character. We've all seen deleted scenes on DVD where a whole speech was cut to a line and a reaction shot, and yet nothing was lost. That is the magic of the medium.

There is nothing in the world more dehabilitating for a writer than to have to cut something because the person reading it wasn't reading it closely enough. Nothing will take the fight out of a writer faster than going through that experience a few times. You start to feel, "what's the point?" You make your peace. And the next thing you know, greatness has escaped out the door once again.

Seeing the movie takes time. It takes more than a cursory read. And it might have to involve you going back to step one a couple times too: maybe you do need the scene explained to you. That's no matter. That doesn't mean you're not good at your job. And it doesn't necessarily mean the scene isn't working. You'll know if it does by what happens when the writer tries to defend it. If they're unclear, then you're right: the scene isn't working. Maybe you can come up with something better, together.

Step Four: Review Your Notes and Don't Allow Contradiction

There are some people who read all the way through and then give overview and specific notes, and there are some people who give notes as they go along. Ie: if they don't get something, they note it right away. I tend to like to do the latter -- even if that means that I do a "take back" note. ie: Page 8 - OK, that explains my confusion, page 5...never mind...but is it too long a gap?"

By reading and giving notes that way, I feel I'm doing my best to approximate the audience experience -- feeling my way through the story in real time, imagining I'm watching it.

Your notes should be written, as succinctly as possible. Don't lecture or hector. Know your writer: some need more praise than others. Sometimes, a checkmark or a good goes a long way.

What's desperately needed at the end of this, though, is a final clean and wash. If you've expressed thougths or questions about the character acting in a certain way in Act One, you can't give the opposing note in Act Three. Your writer is working very hard to try and have internal consistency in the story as it progresses. Doing the same thing with your notes is the very least you can do.

In Canada, we do a lot of international co-productions. And inevitably, different sets of notes come from different countries and the notes all contradict each other. I'm not sure if you can always make those notes agree...but if you've got different people in the same organization reviewing the material, you should take the step to harmonize those notes and present a unified front.

Otherwise, writers heads tend to explode. And it's the middle of the summer. No one likes to be covered in viscera.

There are good notes out there, and there are people who give good notes. And though it may not always be a Kumbaya festival, it is always rewarding, and it always makes the script better. And there's not a writer I know who wouldn't want to work with someone who approaches notes like I've outlined here, again and again and again.

Reprint: In Conversation with Greg Daniels of The Office

While all the Banffers are shmoozing, I toil. So you get to read this from last year - one of my fave craft posts. Now all in one handy blog entry!.

IN PERSON, Greg Daniels is in many ways, the comedy writer in my head. That is to say, he shows up for our interview late, distracted, in a long coat. He's a bit harried -- the interviews have started earlier than he thought they would, and I'm first up. I have a sneaking suspicion he got lost on the way to the room. The Banff Springs Hotel can be kind of cavernous and medieval that way. No paintings that follow you with their eyes, though...which is a shame.

If you didn't know The Office was an American remake, based on characters created by Gervais and Merchant, you'd swear that you were seeing a character who was a bit of Jim Halpert, and Ryan at his most harried. Playing the writer-as-performer game is always a slippery slope, but the heck with it -- I see a bit of Bobby Hill in there, too.

Daniels gets more animated as he gets talking -- and he's downright passionate when he speaks about he craft of writing. TV also runs in the family - his wife, Susanne, is the President of Lifetime Networks. All the best comic minds, I find, aren't shy about showing their serious side, and Daniels is no exception.

Diane Kristine also did an excellent, wider-focused interview with Daniels for Blogcritics, which you can accces here .

DTOS: I guess one of he first things I'd love to know about the show relates to the show I'm working on now. I'm struggling with the size of the ensemble and the cast, and how you service all those characters. And you have an enormous cast. And all those characters breathe, and live, and I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the fact that some of those actors are writers as well. Does that help you service all those characters?


GREG DANIELS: I think that probably is true. Some of the characters are working on the show in a different capacity. So they don't care as much if they don't have as much screen time. So that helps with three characters at least. But it's very difficult, mostly because it's very expensive. I came from doing animation for the last ten years [King of the Hill] and one of the fun things is that people do multiple voices, so you get an actor who does three voices, you get three characters out of them, and you can have a giant cast of characters to play with, where in ordinary tv terms you don't have that because if you want an ongoing character, you have to make them a series regular, which is very expensive. And you generally have to guarantee that they'll be in every episode, or seven out of 13, or ten out of 13. So we recently made series regulars out of a few fantastic actors that we've had, such as the character of Darryl, Craig Robinson, and Ed Helms and Creed Bratton...but you know, it's expensive. It's very hard to do starting off.


DTOS: I know you've probably answered this question a thousand times before but hopefully I'll try to get at it a slightly different way. One of the first things I noticed about the American version. that I thought, "that's interesting, that's a very smart American translation" is that the Jim character doesn't seem to hate his job like the British character did. So now that you've got three seasons under your belt and you know these characters arguably better than we did in the British version I'm wondering how you view-- now--those differences. And what makes your Office American, versus the jumping off point.


GREG DANIELS: Well. (long pause) I don't think a lot of these differences came into play until the second season. Some of them might have, but we were really respectful of the original, the first season. Maybe a little too respectful. But we didn't really start to do our own thing as much til the second season. We certainly had a lot of psychological discussions. I like to have a lot of psychological discussions before writing. And the idea behind Jim and why he was still there was, was at first he was there because of Pam. He would have left but he had this unrequited crush. But then I think we started to decide that he had a few character flaws that kept him there, like he was a little bit of a slacker, uh, I mean you can consider these flaws or not depending on your point of view. But you know...I sometimes think about the Jimmy Stewart character in "It's a Wonderful Life" kind of, how he spends his whole time, his whole time there and he realizes that he hasn't had all the adventures his brother has, but he's become very important to all the people in that town. So, it's kind of like, well, perhaps there's value in that too. So I think we started off thinking that a guy like that would be ambitious and do all these other things, and now we're kind of coming to the conclusion that just being ambitious and moving to New York is not the measure of a good person.


DTOS: I'm a huge fan of your version, and I have been since the beginning. But it's funny, as a viewer, but also as a writer, I can look at one early episode and think, "wow, this show is really finding its feet" and that's where the episode where you managed to do what nobody in America can do right now, which is deal head on with the subject of race.

GREG DANIELS: The Diversity Day episode?

DTOS: To start with, yeah...

GREG DANIELS: Wow, that was our second episode. I was at least thinking that you'd pick one at the beginning of the second season -- but that's pretty good!

DTOS: But that was the one to me that was the shot across the bow. I know a lot of people who watched the first episode and went, 'meh' but to me, this was what you would have to deal with in an American version, and you didn't shy away from it.

GREG DANIELS: Well if you know about the realities of TV production, you'll know that first episode was filmed a year before the other one. The first episode was the pilot, and the script had to be a situation where, you know, you're trying to get picked up. And since they had bought an adaptation, completely starting from scratch would be a very risky thing to do. So you know, that was the episode where we hired all the people, we didn't know who any of the actors were when we started shooting. The second episode is...The first episode really should be buried, really, of any new series. Because you don't know who the actors are. The second episode we knew it was Steve Carell in that part, we knew all the other actors, we knew Stanley was black, we knew all these things that we didn't before. I'm glad you liked it. I liked it too. But that was also one of the things where, Howard Klein and Ben Silverman and I went to England to talk to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and one of the things we talked about, this was before even the pilot rewrite, was that a big issue in American offices would be race. Huge. Bigger than class. That would be the equivalent to class in Britain. So that's why we hit it dead on.


DTOS: There's another key scene, I think that defines what's surprising about the show. And this one's from last season. Where you finally showed everybody out on the sales call. And the thing about that, the scene that almost had me getting out of the chair was the scene where you show that, despite everything, Jim and Dwight work really well together -- that they're a really good team. I thought that was brilliant.


GREG DANIELS: Thanks. There's a lot of deleted material in that. I'm trying to remember what actually aired and what didn't. But there's ... I think in the mythology of the show they used to go on sales calls a lot, but they got so irritated with each other that they didn't anymore.

NOT ONLY has Greg Daniels co-created one of the two best animated tv series of the last 20 years, King of the Hill, but he also wrote for the other one. (The Simpsons) He's written for Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live, and won Emmys galore. In fact, three of Daniels' Simpsons episodes are ranked as among the most popular Simpsons eps of all time. That's a feat.

This is the conclusion to my conversation with Greg Daniels, Creator and Executive Producer of the American version of The Office, which took place at the Banff Springs Hotel during the 2007 Banff World Television Festival.

For Part I, go here. To hear an NPR feature on writing The Office with Daniels and Mindy Kaling (writer, "Kelly") go here.


DTOS: I hate to go to the lame place -- this whole journalist driven, "death of comedy" thing -- but one of the great things about The Office that maybe points what's missing in a lot of other tv comedy today is the idea of truth. There is something true in the work you've done, both in King of the Hill and now in The Office. I recognize the America I see in The Office. And the America that I saw in your years of King of the Hlll. And I don't see that on Television a lot.


GREG DANIELS: Well, we have a couple of things that we do. And one of them is I get these reporters notebooks for the writers, and pass them out. And for King in the Hill we used to go to Texas and go around with our reporters' notebooks and here we're always going to offices, talking to people, and so there's a lot of observational comedy -- seeing what's going on and making humor out of that, rather than coming up with the comedy first. So that's one reason. But another thing is that the cameramen on The Office, specifically Randall Einhorn, although Matt Sohn his number two is also very good...but he's our DP and I used to sit him down when I told him what we were looking for and I'd say, "truth and beauty. we're going for truth and beauty." He really responded to that. "Cool," he'd say -- he lived in Australia, he'd go, "Truth and beauty, mate!" And then he'd go out...so he was always trying to find that moment of behavior, or that thing in the camerawork. So I think that's a lot of -- well, it's a combination of a lot of factors, but I'm glad you pointed it out -- because that's always our sort of secret thing we'd talk to him about.


DTOS: From a standpoint of...for the writer geeks reading this, now. Is there anything in your process that you've learned -- your secret "Office" weapon, the way that you do things that is a better way to do things than maybe a lot of other shows are doing?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I think surprise is extremely important. Which means originality. And I think people have to be really careful when they're doing creative writing that they're not remembering things. Because I think a lot of times you're going, "oh wow, that would be really cool if this happened, and then that happened" and you're not really thinking of it for the first time. You're actually remembering bits and pieces of things that you've seen on other TV shows. Or movies or something. And I would try and steer away from other shows and look toward real life to try and make the writing be fresher. And find stories that people tell you. Stuff like that -- not go, "remember that classic Lucy episode? Well a couple of tweaks and adjustments..." I think a lot of people do that, you know? "I know, how about a 'locked in a' something episode? That's always worked before." And I think that's just the wrong way to think about coming up with ideas. It's so much better to get these little skinny reporters notebooks that fit in your back pocket and try and go out and try and look at things and think of what would be funny in the things that you see out in the real world.

DTOS: Just because you've been so great with it, and have tried so many experiments with it -- what have you learned on the show about using the web, and the internet, and webisodes?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I would love to do way way more stuff on the web. Right now there's certain, um...Guild considerations, which I'm very respectful of, because I think the Guild is a great way to protect a good life for creative people and they've identified that these things are not appropriate for Guild members to do. And for some reason, the companies have not wanted to set a precedent by negotiating a Guild-covered agreement, which is silly because it's the same price, you know. But I guess these are issues that are coming up for negotiation in the next Minimum Basic Agreement, so no one wants to touch it now, which is too bad. If they did, I would be all over the web with all sorts of programming. As it is now, you know, once you pick around all the Guild issues -- we're still trying to do a lot of stuff. Just not as much as we would do. Why do it? To me it's because the whole thing with our show is that we've made it much more disposable because it's a fake documentary. So if there's a boom in the shot it's okay, and the lighting doesn't have to be perfect. And that kind of relaxes everybody in the sense of, they can try weird things. And if it works it works, and it goes in. And if it doesn't it doesn't and we haven't wasted an enormous amount of time and money. It's the ease of production -- and I think that's even more true with the web. Because nobody expects glossy, Hollywood values on the web now. So it's really all about the writing and the ideas, not the execution. And it makes it easier for people to just throw their ideas on. So to me if we have weird ideas, that we don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars of the studio's money on because I can't justify it, cause it's just too weird. I still could maybe justify a couple of thousand dollars. And that, creatively is maybe is the most exciting part...these weird, late night kind of ideas. The 1am sketch at Saturday Night Live.


DTOS: The five to one, yeah!


GREG DANIELS: Yeah, the five to one, they just throw it on! Yeah, I'd love to do more of those. That's what the web is to me.

New episodes of The Office return to NBC this fall.

Mmmmm. Fresh From the Oven Banffy Goodness

OH YES, WILL DIXON, Mmm. Tell us of your parties and lunches with the hoity-toits of Showrunner stardom, like Friday Night Lights' Jason Katims:

As far as writing and producing the show, Katims spoke at length about the FNL process...which also fell into the groundbreaking category. As he told it, they have no standing sets or even swing sets. No sets...that's like unheard of for a TV series, no?! Apparently it's shot in small town Texas, and they just walk onto a location, light to shoot (not for 'shots' or 'coverage'), and off they go. No rehearsals...no marks...no measuring with tape measures...just 3 camera's roll as the actors start performing and they 'discover the blocking of the scene' as it happens.

They call their camera operators 'snipers' because they just have to find the shot and take it.

Cool.

Katims likened it in some ways to the shooting of The Office, but for a one hour ensemble drama filmed on location, it's pretty unique. And they move really fast. He said they had 8 days to shoot an episode when they began, took it down to 7 days last year, and are going to be shooting them in 6 days this summer. That's fast...and he attributed it primarily to the speed with which they can burn through scenes filming them in this way.

I know this style contributes to the authenticity and 'reality' of FNL, but I wonder if we don't see more and more drama shows being shot this way.

Mmm. Yess...Mmmm. Let's suck the marrow. Mmmmm. Goood..

In other news, looks like Little Mosque on the Prairie finally wrapped up not a U.S. sale -- but at least a U.S. Format sale, as reported by the Canadian Press:

The deal also involves another Westwind Pictures show currently in development; Fox will help Westwind develop the show and then determine if it wants to buy it.

The CBC show, about a community of devout Muslims living in a small prairie town, won't be changed drastically for an American audience, Darling added.

"It'll be 'Little Mosque in Minnesota,' if I have my way," the Minnesota-born Darling said with a laugh.

A year ago, U.S. cable network the CW debuted the critically acclaimed "Aliens in America," which explores Americans' cultural ignorance of the Muslim community.

Darling speculated that by securing the "Little Mosque" deal, Fox was "trying to broaden their horizons and become a bit more of a serious player."

Well, that's good news. Great to see Fox trying to become a serious player.

Fox.

As in, "Twentieth Century."

Jesus Martinez.

Well, that's it for Banff updates. I have to go to set now.

Serious player. Wow.

Reprint: Rebecca Eckler Knocks Up Judd Apatow

This is a little out of date -- but seeing as the "how do I keep somebody stealing my idea" stuff still seems to be number one with a bullet on the questions list, I thought it beared a bit of revisitin' Does anyone know if this lawsuit is still ongoing?

FOR WHAT it's worth, I've met Rebecca Eckler a few times. Back in the previous life, when she wrote for the National Post and I worked at the Sci-Fi Station, she came by and did an article on us and talked to me and some of my compatriots. Eckler and Leah McLaren have taken heat for years for being the young pretty female writers at their respective papers (the Post and the Globe.) Sometimes the criticism shot their way made me feel a little oogy, because you could never quite lose the feeling that at least part of it was sexist in nature. Ie: if the reporters were male and young and good looking, there wouldn't be quite the focus on the looks, or the dismissal. Then again, the young male writers probably wouldn't specialize in the confessional stuff. And both McLaren and Eckler did trade in a certain kind of solipsistic...

Oh, who knows? Anyway...

The news that Eckler is suing the makers of Knocked Up for copyright infringement on her similarly titled memoir is cringeworthy for a number of reasons.

First, any time writers sue other writers, it's bad. Second, it taints the rise of a guy who's done a lot for refreshing movie comedy in the last little while. Third, because you know at least somebody is going to try and make this a little Canadian vs. The Big American kind of thing, and I hate, hate, hate that shit.

But finally, the reason why it makes me slap my head is that it's probably completely bogus.

Now, there's going to be no shortage of people bashing Eckler, so I want to link to the story she wrote for Macleans, because I think at least it paints a sympathetic portrait.

Here she writes about the similarities:

The movie Knocked Up features a woman named Alison who becomes pregnant after getting drunk. While she gets drunk going out celebrating a promotion at work, I got drunk, and knocked up, celebrating at my engagement party. Both my book and the movie feature one night of passion and the nine months that follow. Fine. Whatever. But what got me was the fact that "Alison" was an up-and-coming television reporter; in my book I was an up-and-coming newspaper reporter.

There were other similarities that hit close to home. In my book, I have a best-friend- with-screaming-children named Ronnie, who I go to often for advice. In the movie version, Alison has a sister, named Debbie, with screaming children, who is her sounding board. Both "Alison" and I did numerous pregnancy tests. What also got my back up was that Ben, the man who gets Alison knocked up, is not only Jewish, but from Canada, like my man. (I still can't figure out why the fact that someone was Canadian would add value to any movie.) And then there's this one scene in the screenplay and movie, where Alison and Ben are having sex. Ben stops. Ben, in the screenplay, says, "My dick is like, four inches away from its head. What if it kicked on purpose 'cause it didn't like it?" I actually wrote in my book about a joke I once heard, "A man and his pregnant wife had regular sex throughout her pregnancy. When their son was born, the father held him in his arms. The baby looked up at his new father and, without warning, punched him. 'See?' said the baby. 'Now you know what it feels like to be bonked in the face.' "

Now. What the whole article does well is give you a feel for how sweaty and awful it must feel to be in Eckler's position. My heart goes out to her. It really does. But in that excerpt above, you start to see a lot of the inherent problems in this kind of thing.

Simply put: in the realm of "originality," none of the concepts she's talking about are that off-the-charts original. Calling a story of an accidental pregnancy Knocked Up? It's clearly the vernacular way to describe that situation. Having a character with kids as a sounding board? A Screenwriting 101 choice that most writers would look to make. She even admits that she heard the joke about the baby punching his father from someone else. Of course she did. We've all heard that joke. She makes other, similar points -- the image of a martini glass and a pacifier -- a simple, easy image that encapsulates the character she's talking about.

Right there in the excerpt is the line that blows everything away: Apatow's wife was pregnant at the time he was writing. And as for the "why make him Canadian and Jewish?" Well, by now you've probably read something about Apatow's comedy other half, Seth Rogen...who's...umm...Canadian. And Jewish.

Sigh.

I know that everybody thinks that their pregnancy experience is a unique and beautiful flower. But like weddings, like christenings, like most passage life experiences -- essentially, every one is the goddamn same.

The simple truth is that none of the concepts in either Eckler's book or the similarly titled movie are that original. They're both derivative, and recognizable. That's why she sold her book. That's why he sold his movie.

Once you get past that, it all comes down to execution.

In fact, this is what I was talking about a few weeks ago the last time when we talked about ideas, and where they come from, and the difficult concept of originality in film and tv media.

It's also, by the way, a spoke of the whole fanfic argument. The fanficcers continue to link here and go off stamping their feet on their little livejournals about what a big ol meanie I am. But this kind of ugly fight, this kind of thing, is exactly what skeeves me out about fanfiction so much -- and especially the out of touch members of the community who write extensions of stories already written and turn around when they show up on the real show and ask, "hey! did they steal from me?"

Originality vs. Derivative work. Ideas vs. their execution. Being hired vs. writing on the side. Fanfic vs. Spec Scripts. All of these can be nuanced arguments -- but not when you're coming from an utterly emotional, not-grounded in the real world kind of place. A professional attitude is just that. We don't get to stamp our feet. And we better think three times before filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement.

Eckler vs. Apatow shows the scorched earth result. I'm pretty sure that Eckler probably won't work in Hollywood now. She probably will have trouble optioning or selling any future book to the movies. And you know what? It does suck that now she probably could never sell film rights to her book. That's a pain. But it happens. As for Apatow, I'm not gonna be too worried about him, but... his movie is now under a cloud, whether there's merit or not to the suit.

The only one who comes out ahead in this thing, is, predictably, the lawyers.

Of course, there's the bogeyman lurking in the background. Dan Brown might have cadged from a whole bunch of better non-fic books (like, say, anything by Karen Armstrong) when he was writing his DaVinci brick. Or he might not have. But the guys who sued him didn't prove their case.

Then there's Art Buchwald...oooh...now there's a bogeyman to be feared. Because he won. The producers of Coming to America had to settle with him.

Occasionally, someone does try to rip you off.

But the Occam's Razor explanation -- usually -- is that similar experiences lead to similar stories being created at roughly the same time.

Which is all the more reason why -- if you're a powerless and just-starting-out writer, you may as well swing for the fences in the originality department. If you'd written Pan's Labyrinth I bet you could have shopped that script for a lot longer without seeing something similar on screen than if, say, you'd written that definitive slacker working in a video store movie.

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.

Reprint: Questions From Newbies

It takes a while to learn how to throw your feces really effectively, and become a real, gush-durned word monkey. So as a public service, I will be periodically answering questions from you, my readers. This is the first in an occasional series.

Dear Dead Things On Sticks Dude,
Is it acceptable to accept other forms of payment besides cold hard cash?

Good question. In the beginning, before you have credits, you might find yourself doing all sorts of work, non union style. It's good to become a pro writer and join the union and all, and if you find yourself competative for union jobs, you should join the union. But once you do that, you can never go back. In both Canada and the US, once you're union, you can't take non union gigs. Timing when to join is very important.

Until you join, you may find all manner of payment awaiting you. I know someone who got paid in clothing. Someone else had to defer their salary, but got four or five pairs of hockey tickets right away. That's pretty sweet, if you ask me.

I once offered to do spec field producing work for a show I was on for the price of six pints of Guinness. And they turned me down. The fools.

But here's one thing to always keep in mind. It's very important. Never, ever agree to be paid in conflict diamonds. That shit will come back and fuck you up proper. Make no mistake. Karma IS a bitch.

Dear Dead Things On Sticks Dude,
What is with Robert McKee's eyebrows?

They are fearsome and awe-inspiring. The way they pick up the chemicals from the more or less constant chain-smoking he engages in on breaks, sometimes makes them shimmer in the gloaming like those wondrous images of oil wells burning, burning in the Iraqi desert. They hold shaman's power. Do not look directly at them, lest ye shall be lost utterly.

Dear Dead Things On Sticks Dude,
What's your favorite screenplay, and why?

Dramatic screenplays, it's a tie. Chinatown, and Network. For comedies, I'd probably say Broadcast News. And if you have to ask why, you haven't seen those movies. And if you haven't seen those movies, you should be ashamed of yourself. No banana for you.

Dear Dead Things On Sticks Dude,
Do writers masturbate as much as Charlie Kaufman seemed to indicate in Adaptation? Because that's nasty.

Fine sociological query. The answer is no. Most writers actually would rather keep their masturbation keystroke related, like, say, answering fake letters from readers.

Dear Dead Things On Sticks Dude,
Seriously, what's with the Geena Davis thing?

Oh for crying out loud, it's a thing, okay? Same with Mary Louise Parker. It also extends to Rachel McAdams, okay? I'm a man. I'm a straight man. I'm a straight man who lives by myself. Who died and made you Judgey Judgerson?

Dear Dead Things On Sticks Dude,
I'm writing a spec for Two and a Half Men--

I'm sorry.

...Uh, I wasn't done.

Yes you are.

Real Life Gets in the Way of The Blog

AND SORRY TO SAY, in those cases, the blog loses.

I''ve got a read through at lunch today for my first episode. Tomorrow we start shooting. I'll be continuing to refine my outline for the next episode I have to do on set. And I'll be spending long hours on the set starting tomorrow.

So I've spring loaded some loving craft posts for your (re)perusal through the week.

I'll pop in if I have a chance. But til then, play nice. Stay cool.

Inside The Temple of the Holy...

TODAY'S NY TIMES has a special EMMY AWARDS pullout section, and nestled in there theres' a fun little peek inside writers rooms!

Writers' rooms are as idiosyncratic as writers themselves: a system of organization has to be devised to keep track of plots and characters. Some writers prefer lots of stress relievers to play with during their usual marathon script-writing sessions; others like to stay as focused as possible. Food — what's permissible, when and where it can be eaten — has to be negotiated. And often the sensibility in the room ends up being reflected on screen in the finished show. Here's a look inside the rooms where the staffs of five of this season's acclaimed series ply their trade.

Writer Elisabeth Jensen then takes the reader on a quick tour of the rooms for House, Damages, How I Met Your Mother, Flight of the Conchords and Weeds.

THERE is a rule in the “House” writing room: No eating on the pool table. It’s left free for the show’s creator, David Shore, who can be found playing a game with a colleague there nearly every afternoon. The rule is important because the table is a tempting surface in a room that is more a daily lunch spot than the site of writing sessions, for a staff of more than a dozen. Mr. Shore — who is also an executive producer of this Fox series, starring Hugh Laurie as the cantankerous Dr. Gregory House — said the “basic gumshoe-type work” of researching the obscure maladies that form the core of each episode is done by individuals outside the room, as is much of the script writing.

The writers’ room really comes into play only when it is time to map out the multi-episode arcs of the characters, Mr. Shore said. “Every few weeks we get together in that room and discuss where we are with the characters and where we’re going and options we should go with,” he said. The sessions clarify “little character traits that are coming out with or without writerly help.”

He noted that the staff members take advantage “of those white boards the same way House does” when trying to make a diagnosis. Although they probably wield their markers with more tact than House. The process is “quite amicable,” he said. “We mock each other’s ideas, but good-naturedly.

Check out the full article here

Those F$&*@ing Young People, Again.

WHAT'S IN A NAME? Did Young People Fucking bring the new censorship debate on itself? Or is it doing what it's supposed to do?

(Or, Denis caps off a busy week by pimping his commenters as fresh content. Again.)

From the Con side, regular commenter ladycanuck:

While I'm against Bill-C10 (I just wanted to make that clear) I think the producers of YPF were just asking for trouble giving their film such a controversial name. After all, as it's funded partially by government money, it's gonna show up on a lot of government documents. The censorship/familyfocus type lobbyists were looking for an excuse to change the film/television system and the YPF producers gave them a goodie. I think the current Bill C10 problems can be placed partially on the shoulders of YPF.

I know what the movie is about and the content is good but I do have a problem with the title. I know the F-word still upsets a lot of people. Try explaining to a person like my mother (for example) who immensely dislikes swearing how a film called Young People Fucking has been financed with government money. The producers crossed the line by giving the film the title they did. Sure the controversy got the film a lot of attention but at what cost?

And the Pro, courtesy of the Mad Pulp Bastard:

For every one of you that is "disappointed" by the choice of the title, there will be 20 who will want to see this movie based on the title alone. Many will see this on DVD and believe me - this title sells.

The producers are smart because yes, controversy sells. It sells their movie and it sells the idea that left wingers who want to stick it to an "oppressive government who wants to censor critically acclaimed movies" needs to see this movie.

See, it builds a movement of anti-censorship and places its must-see movie directly at the center of it. It is a clarion call for people to wake up. You don't have to like the title or the movie for that matter - you just have to hate the idea and the execution of censorship.

If the title were the innocuous "Young People in Love" or something equally "oatmeal", so as not to offend anyone, then the movie would disappear into the landscape and die a well-deserved bland death. But YP FUCKING gets press. Millions and millions of dollars of free publicity that says "YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE. NOW."

The title is not "costing" them anything.

YOUNG PEOPLE FUCKING is a GREAT FUCKING TITLE.

And there it is, kids, very cleanly stated, the entire shape of the argument. Both have good points. Both things are actually true. At the same time.

It's all about choices, in the end. What's yours?

Have a good weekend.

Banff TV Fest 2008

WELL, I'M NOT going to be there. Sadly, I have a script shooting starting Tuesday, so it's just not a good time. But if you want to catch all the reportage straight from the front lines, you have a couple of other blogger options.

Fearless Will Dixon will be rockin it over at Uninflected Images.

And Diane Kristine of TV, Eh? Fame will be doing her usual fine reportage for Blogcritics, unencumbered by the need to tsk me for my apparently unending bitterness. Heh heh.

Now I better go. I have to go to my tiger meeting.

That's right, bitches. You heard me.

Oh, and even as we speak, I'm pouring out a 40 of Colt 45 for Robson Arms.

Respeck.

Canadians Get Mad

FOR CANADIAN VIEWERS who don't get AMC, remember that this weekend is your chance to see Mad Men, the best show of last year, over the air, on CTV.

The first ep airs Sunday at 10pm.