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Procrastination just entered the 21st century.

"I got a fever ... and the only cure is MORE COW BELL."

Go check it out. I'll wait.

What Writers can Learn from George W. Bush...Part Deux

So Georgie Boy withdrew Harriet Miers as Supreme Court Justice. He says it's because of a dispute about "White House Documents." She's the lawyer, see? She'd rather withdraw then put Presidential Privilege in jeopardy.

Do your best Dr. Evil with me now:

Riiiiggggght.

A few days ago, Charles Krauthammer suggested this as a way out.

Then on Monday, this happened.

When George W. Bush was asked this morning about a report that the White House is thinking through contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers' nomination, he responded with what we thought was a non sequitur: Rather than confirming or denying the report, the president said that he will refuse to release documents reflecting the advice Miers has given him as a member of his White House staff.

That Georgie sure is silver-tongued. It's like someone asked him not to think about elephants, and the first thing he says is "Elephant!"

While the Beltway waits for indictments, and the whole administration seems in tatters, it's interesting that the lies continue, so battered, anemic, and laughable that only the fiercest dittohead right wingers could stomach them.

His audience is the nation. Your audience is your reader, and eventually, if what you're doing gets made -- whoever sees it. You do have a responsibility to them. In its most simple state, it's this: they agree to give you an hour, or two, of their time: you agree to give them an engaging story. You agree not to cheat to get to the end of it. You agree that your plot will logically progress, that your characters will not change without explanation, that your resolution will be earned and not come out of nowhere. In short, you agree not to lie.

Because if you lie often enough, even the most dedicated audience falls away.

Frankly, I'm shocked, shocked! he didn't raise the terror alert. Surely someone must be planning something? After all, they attacked us on 9/11...

Four Acts, Five Acts, Six Acts, More!

There was a discussion of this over at WriterAction. A couple of showrunners reported that, yes, there is a deliberate choice at some networks to change the act structure. The idea is to get rid of the ads at the end of a show, so that people don't change channels before the next show starts.

Of course, those ads have to go somewhere. And where they go is into a newly created act break.

Best,
Jacob Sager Weinstein

All righty, then.

This is not happy news in Sticksville. I've been going through an old sitcom/old TV drama phase lately, watching a lot of older shows. It's interesting, because the old drama model, with slower moving stories, is hard to watch. But with the comedies, it's amazing to see the amount of space one had to tell a story, and be funny. These days, a half hour is barely 21 minutes. An hour is 44 or 45 if you're lucky. It's hard to craft any kind of meaningful story in that amount of time.

Of course, in this context, we're talking about ACTS as simply the amount of time before a commercial break comes in. Maybe this move toward five and six act dramas, and three act comedies explains the growing number of 'soft' outs I've been seeing lately.

Time was, you only went out on two things: jeopardy or new information. But if the days of even 12 minutes of story before a commercial are over...if you have to come up with six turning points in your stories, I start to wonder at one point the weight of the structure starts to turn in on itself. Six turning points in forty-odd minutes? How you do that?

Maybe MOW writers will be the new series writers. I don't know.

Anyway, food for thought.

As for me, I've just had the crappiest salad in creation. Now it's back to the room.

Forms & Format

So, almost off to Day Three in the room, after two hours of tweaking a script this morning. Tonight, it's teaching.

A long day.

Anyhow, a question to ruminate over (and feel free to chime in on your comments):

Traditionally comedy on TV followed a two-act structure, plus teaser and tag.

Has it now moved completely to three acts, so they can fit in an extra commercial break?

I seem to be noticing the same thing among hour dramas -- LOST, for instance, unless I miss my guess, has five acts. ALIAS too, I think.

What are other people finding?

Not enough hours

It's good when you get back into a work hum...but less good when that reminds you of the great pile of things left undone.

I'm cranking out finessed pages on a long-delayed half-hour comedy right now. I need to deliver the script midweek, which is a tighter deadline than I'd like, but for all sorts of legit reasons, it has to be that way. Sometimes you take the lumps. Especially when you're the guy who created them.

Add to that, the truly exciting news, that tomorrow I get to go into a room for three days for the first time since Charlie Jade last year. And luckily, I only have to go about ten K from my house to do it, not 8000...

...it's a development comedy, solid idea by a good friend of mine, and our task is to break story for the pilot and one other episode. This is also the first work I'll be doing for a Canadian channel that I've wanted to work with for a while.

All's that apologia to say that I may be light for the next few days. Talk amongst yourselves.

The DaVinci Code (not the #@%*#! unreadable book)

So there's an interesting thing going on in Canadian TV right now.
Not so much with the talk of the sucking.

Or at least that should be the story -- in Canada, it seems, it never is. The problem with a lot of Canadian TV criticism is that it ping pongs back and forth between undeserved boosterism and lukewarm or lazy sins of omission.

But one thing gets Canadians interested real fast. Always. Predictably...
the second the United States takes notice.

That's why Canadian TV is interesting right now.

First, the Trailer Park Boys went to BBC America, and made the leap to a Ivan Reitman -produced big screen incarnation, debuting sometime next year. If you haven't seen TPB, well, let's just say it's an acquired taste. But if you acquire that taste, the taste is not unlike the crack. (Not that I know anything about the crack. I'm taking poetic license here.)

Next, Slings & Arrows got rapturous reviews -- and eyeballs --on the Sundance Channel.

Corner Gas may not show in the US, but thanks to internet buzz, there's curiousity about it, and anyway, even without US interest, it continues to pull about 1.5 million viewers a week -- which is an astounding number for a country of only 30 million people.

Let's not forget that Cold Case, that CBS hit show, actually got to its beat second, after years of a grittier show on CTV called Cold Squad -- which had the exact same premise (more or less.)

Finally, last month, came the last linchpin: DaVinci's Inquest, a truly superior crime drama, debuted in syndication in nine U.S. top markets, and lo and behold...it's killing.

DaVinci is just about the only thing on the Canadian Broadcasting Corproration drama slate that they should be desperately proud of. It's that good. It's also the show that has a strong writer-showrunner behind it (Chris Haddock.)

It amazes me that the CBC doesn't realize the value of the writer-showrunner system. They have slate shows that go to auteurs: George Walker on This Is Wonderland, Ken Finkleman's increasingly vanity-driven projects, but there it is, the one show they've had for years that's undeniably good, and they don't think "hey, why is it good and how do we do more shows like that?"

It's tough when you live in a country where it seems like they're always trying to re-invent the wheel. In any case, if you're an American that's just discovered DaVinci's Inquest, you may find it interesting to know where it's going...

Read about it here.