Live From Train 78 to Toronto, It's the Banff Guest Blogger wrap-up!

(10:37 p.m. This post was edited for clarity)

I'm really tired, and the beverage cart does not nearly have enough vodka. There comes a point in the scouting process where it just feels like wandering around. You know, like a college Saturday night when you've just had a great big hoolie.

Saw some interesting things, and talked to some interesting people in Detroit and Windsor. They've helped me to see my project in a new way, which is always a plus. There have been some shifts and some course corrects, and a bit o' inspiration just from walking the streets and seeing what's what.

The other great thing about getting out of the writing room and out from behind the computer, of course, is the fact that you get to interact and hear some really interesting things from people like Production Designers and A.D.'s. In production, I find it helps to be "idea neutral." A good idea is a good idea -- no matter who comes up with it. I'm continually surprised when I find people who don't work that way, but they are legion.

But boy, am I tired.

Anyway, enough about me.

My anonymous Banff blogger sends this final dispatch...and just to be contrarian, I'll pop in with little comments o'my own.

David Shore was asked about network censorship, and said there has been very little from Fox on House. But he recounted a story about working on Traders, where there was a line in the pilot (written by Hart Hanson of Bones, which Shore had rewritten – he thinks the line was Hanson's): "We should nail his balls to the wall, you should pardon the expression" or something like that. A producer asked Shore if the network had had any concerns with that line, but they hadn't objected to it. Producer person told Shore to call them up to ask them about it, to make sure, and while Shore figured that was a sure way to make them object, he reluctantly did. He said after waiting on hold for 5 minutes while a room full of execs discussed it, his contact came back and said they thought "you should pardon the expression" sounded too Jewish. Shore said he didn't fight that battle and changed that part of the line.

I love that anecdote like a cold beer on a hot day.

Terry David Mullgan was the interviewer for Shore's Master Class, and read out Shore's quote from the Maclean's interview about American TV being higher quality because writers are in control, versus films and Canadian TV, where they're not. He agreed with himself, saying while there are bad writers, and talented directors and producers, the best chance of having a cohesive vision of the story is by having a writer in charge. At the end, an audience member said Canadian TV has changed since Shore left, and that writers are more in control, and pointed to the success of shows like ReGenesis and ... other shows I haven't seen. He apologized if his comments were out of date (though reading this Dead Things blog, I'm not so sure ...).

Sometimes in Canadian Television it helps to read between the lines. Writer-Showrunners in Canada are still seriously, seriously, seriously in the minority. That's as much to do with the fact that writers aren't trained up with the skillsets they need to run a show, as it is with the particular faults of anyone who is running any individual show. (I call this the no-fault defense.)

When you have enough shows that people can rise through the ranks, taking on greater responsibilities as they go, and eventually graduate to showrunner, then that's one thing.

As I've said before here, lots of times people get shows here who really don't have the experience to run them. And sometimes they're listened to too much. And sometimes they're listened to not at all. The fact that there are Producers who don't know writing really well running things can sometimes just be a function of experience. You won't get really well written shows if the show isn't run by a writer, but if the writer isn't someone who understands production, your show will never get finished. So what do you do then?

Of course, the thing that makes it worse is this old chestnut: everyone thinks their ideas are great and beautiful snowflakes; everyone thinks they can write. And everyone's willing to entertain auteur Directors in Canada, but beyond Haddock and Finkleman, there really are no auteur writers.

There may be five really great writing showrunners in Canada, but I'm pretty sure there aren't ten.

Shore's point is true, but it presupposes that there's a way to rise through the ranks. If you don't have that, then what's the solution, really?

Is the situation getting better? Yes.

Fast enough? Mmmm. Mmmm.

Sorry, they just brought Pringles.

Ali LeRoi, co-creator and showrunner of Everybody Hates Chris, reiterated what many other people said: "You can't write a hit show, but you can write a good show." He said a convergence of events have to take place to make it a hit, and for EHC, part of that was the dearth of good comedies, especially on UPN – in fact, he cited the dearth of anything good on UPN, so the publicity that came from appearing in an unlikely place: "It's a good show on a network that usually puts out piles of shit – that gains attention." He compared it to a nice girl coming out of a whorehouse.

About getting notes from the network, he said you "can't dismiss people who are giving you money to fulfil your dreams. It's rude." But he talked about the frustration of having execs try to make a script funnier, saying he knows how to make people laugh, and it's a skill like being a pilot. So when a plane's going down, you don't get a focus group together to see what to do about it.

He says a good sitcom has to have a central premise about conflict. With EHC, it's that Chris never gets what he wants. With Cheers, it was Sam Malone wanting Diane Chambers (and then Rebecca) but still wanting his former glory of being a famous baseball player/womanizer. He says Joey failed because there was no conflict.

Ouch. He's right. And no wonder he's running a show about the alter ego of Chris Rock. I an see why the two would get along.

***

Howard Davine of Touchstone Pictures (ABC) talked about costs per episode: $2.5 million per episode for a new network show, $1.8 million or less for a cable show. He said Bill Carter's book Desperate Networks was pretty accurate when it came to the story of Lost. That pilot costs something like $15 million to make, but they figured it was a worthwhile risk. He said if they had hard and fast policies or caps, Lost and Desperate Housewives wouldn't have happened. Warner Brothers giving away Desperate Housewives might have been a huge mistake in hindsight, but Davine said ABC's rejection of CSI was probably a worse decision.

He is annoyed at the sense that the three camera sitcom is dead, and single camera sitcoms are preferred, because he says the audience doesn't really know the difference – they just want to see something funny, and single camera comedies are more expensive. He said producers and writers are pitching what they think the networks want, and they think they want single camera now.

He gave stats like of more than 100 scripts in development, only 25 pilots were made.

But by far, my favorite anecdote from my guest blogger was this one:

I went to a product placement session that had what seemed to me a contentious premise, but there wasn't a lot of time for audience questions – some seemed very on board with it, but I heard rumblings that suggested some comments grated. One woman who represented an agency that puts together product integration deals for her advertising clients said that if writers complain about having to write specific products into scripts, and want to get more money for doing it since it's entering copywriting territory, they're going to be talking themselves out of a job. The moderator, who seems to work with a similar company, said he's doing writers a favour by bringing them ideas to integrate into their scripts.

I spent four years doing stories on advertising for a show called Media Television. I spent many, many hours talking to lots and lots of people involved in advertising and marketing. Some of them, of course, are nice people with mortgages and wives and husbands and adorable kids.

And some of them are Advertising Types.

And here's the thing: Advertising types really, really, really do think like this. Have you seen Thank You For Smoking yet? It's like that. Seriously. That movie was a documentary. If you take away the piles of money they make, it is this kind of attitude, I believe, that is the only thing that keeps true Advertising Types from fulfilling their destiny. When they go home each night and stare at their evil hack faces in the mirror, it's this attitude alone that keeps them from blinking through their tears and actually finding the courage to use that gun that they've got stuffed in their mouth. The one they take out of the drawer every night as they taunt themselves in their hacky, hacky bathroom mirror.

Go on, coward. Do it. Do it.

Paul Scheuring of Prison Break said he worked in features for 10 years prior to going to TV with PB, and he and his writing partner were paid to write 15 screenplays, of which one got made – A Man Apart. He called it a dreadful movie, and the worst of the 15.

Typical. Oh so typical. Everyone has a credit they hate. The day when it drops off your resume is the happiest day of your life.

Thanks again, guest blogger!