You Either Break the Story...

...or the story breaks you.



Mommy, make it stop.

St. Elsewhere Season One on DVD

Over the holidays, I've managed to finally dip into my DVD set for St. Elsewhere, which I got a few weeks back.

The set contains all 22 episodes for the 1982 season, with commentaries from Mark Tinker on some, and a couple of featurettes. 1078 minutes total program content. (Yes, chickens, shows were longer in the olden days. We'll get to that.)

I approached this with some trepidation. St. Elsewhere isn't just a show -- to a lot of TV writers working today it can almost seem like the Rosetta Stone.

St. Elsewhere was the show that Joshua Brand and John Falsey created before Northern Exposure. It was Tom Fontana's big break. Bruce Paltrow produced it, back when he was a big TV producer, and not just Gwyneth's late dad. 15 Emmy Awards, and over 60 nominations during its six year run.

It mixed realistic (for the time) medical conditions with social commentary, with character, and with offbeat humor in a formula that was completely new for network TV, which had become calcified into restrictive, unbending 1970's dramas. (To compare: the only other medical drama that was on at the time was Trapper John, M.D. Go, try to watch an episode of that today, see if you get through it.)

In short, this was a show where a group of talented people cast off the soap opera pretensions and general dopiness of 70's TV and started blazing the trail to The Sopranos.

But then again, we said that about Hill Street Blues, too, and when you watch the early episodes of that show, they just don't hold up. Too much has changed in policing, in our culture, in...everything. Hill Street seems, sadly, like a relic.

I'm happy to report that St. Elsewhere fares a lot better. There are still dated elements that clang every once in a while, but there's plenty to enjoy from a story and a character point of view. And if you were a fan of the early years of E.R., you'll be blown away by how much the latter show owes to the former. For one thing, Anthony Edwards and Noah Wyle need to send David Morse a fruit basket.

David Morse, of course, was the centrepiece of a strong ensemble cast which included Denzel Washington (in a smaller part than his placement on the DVD box suggests -- naughty, naughty marketers) Howie Mandel, pre-game show bald, Ed Flanders, and Ed Begley, Jr. to name a few.

David Morse also apparently did this series when he was twelve. Oi. He looks young.

I tend to watch older TV shows with a historical eye, trying to see where the lessons for what we do came from and seeing if, perhaps, we missed some things along the way.

With St. Elsewhere, looking back, I have to say that a lot of the revolutionary things about it now seem directorial instead of writerly. The "hand-offs," as Tinker calls them, where you'd be in one plot, a character would walk by and you'd follow them to another plot -- that seems natural today, but back then it was a big deal. Although I guess scripting them to be that way would seem a bit bold. St. Elsewhere doesn't have E.R.'s ever-moving steadicam, which makes the handheld work all the more impressive: long takes following people onto elevators and off, long runs of dialogue make for a fluid, faster-paced show than just about anything else you saw at the time.

Which is not to say that St. Elsewhere looks modern. It doesn't. And the sniggers go beyond the sartorial quirks, like, "did everyone wear glasses the size of satellite dishes?"

There's a bad synth quality to the score that's unfortunate. They didn't have the money to license songs back in the day (though they were forward thinking in trying) so they had a guy do sound alikes. Well, on this set, even the soundalikes have been stripped out and replaced by soundalikes of the soundalikes, which are pretty awful.

The other thing that's sociologically interesting is seeing the change in acting styles. The less said about David Birney, the better. The guy walks through every scene looking like he's waiting for Marcus Welby to drop by. But even Morse, in the pilot, has a scene that I remember being very emotionally affecting back in the day, which now seems like scenery chewing. It's not a bad performance -- it's just a performance from another time, when the demands of TV were different.

Coming out of the 1970s, TV's main acting influence, it seems, was still soapy. And when scenes called for emotional, everyone went big. Compare Morse's recent run on House to his work here and you'll see what I mean. The one exception is Ed Flanders -- always understated, always sad-eyed.

It sounds like I'm ragging -- but I'm not. Let's be clear: the advantages of this set massively outweigh the disavantages. The Cora & Arnie episode is still as great as I remember. This is an episode which -- unheard of for the time -- actually did a plot about the Homeless. Doris Roberts and James Coco both won Emmys, and their performances are stellar. It's wonderful to see Roberts do drama like that again. (And hilarious to listen to her self-promotion on the commentary track. What. An. Actor.)

You also get to see what, in his words, is Tim Robbins' first onscreen appearance, playing a "terrorist." Lay aside for a moment the sense of queasy dislocation you get hearing that word thrown around about a spoiled rich kid who set off a bomb in a bank. Robbins is good as a young punk. You can see his charisma, you can see the beginnings of the talent he would later bring to bear -- but he's still way unformed. Between the commentaries and a small featurette on Robbins, you get to hear differing interpretations of how green he was and what that meant to the set. (Let's just say it involves a Clash concert.)

The episodes tackle stories that put them way ahead of the curve, like addressing the spiralling costs and limitations of the U.S. healthcare system. But the stories, again, sometimes drag. I found myself wondering, simultaneously, what could we do with that extra seven minutes today, and marveling on how, even in a quality show like this -- how little the audience was trusted to put two and two together. I guess Steven Johnson was right about how TV has gradually made us smarter. (No, I still haven't read the book. I'm getting to it.)

In the past few years, St. Elsewhere has become mainly known for its mindblowing ending. (And some scary, scary internet fans have gone to town and taken that to a scary place.) But it's nice to see the show again. I enjoyed my stay at St. Eligius. Skip the spoonful of sugar. This medicine goes down just fine on its own.

My Boys

Everyone I know is sipping eggnog and playing with edible body paint or watching DVDs or something. I am indeed feeling sorry for myself having to work. I never worked in this week when I had a job. But now...

I know. I know. You don't care. Nor should you. Yes. I'm complaining about having work. It's bad form.

Bite me.

So, TV. Thanks to a l'il TBS mini-marathon this week, I've finally gotten the chance to see My Boys. I tuned in mainly because of the incandescent Jim Gaffigan, of course. But the lead, Jordana Spiro, was apparently a big deal in that Must Love Dogs movie. I will take this as read since, of course, I've never seen the movie. Because I have a penis.

Spiro plays, in a nice twist, the real male fantasy woman:

The sexy, sports-loving tomboy who gets along (for the most part) better with men than women, and who has a gaggle of male friends to prove it.

Just to drive the point home, they take it to a ridiculous extreme: she's a sports reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.

I know.

If Sex in the City was a female fantasy (and ladies, it was: it was your world as filtered through the sensibilities of gay men, though I'd argue the show became much more interesting in its later seasons when a group of very talented female writers took over), then My Boys is the straight male version. The guys are allowed to be guys, and care about guy stuff, and lo and behold, the centre of the piece is a woman who thinks vaguely the same way -- the kind of woman who maybe you would have as your best man -- and who would understand you wanting to hang with your friends every once in a while; but who's also female enough to set you straight and not judge your ex-fiancee just because that woman who liked to wear a Ramones shirt at 23 turned out different at 30.

Reviews have been good to middling, with Virginia Heffernan's NY Times damn-with-faint-praise take being pretty representative of the bunch:

Her posse of buddies — a ragtag gang that includes her brother and a bunch of other dudes — surround her without hitting on her, which seems at first implausible, but makes sense as her persona emerges as a mix of sisterly, collegial and abrasive.

There seem at first no pitfalls to this guy-friendly act. Isn’t this the kind of easygoing bonhomie that young men always say they want from women? No makeup, no pressure, just insults, beer, nights of poker, sports talk?

The show goes with that hypothesis only so far. On tonight’s episode, P J, after serious scheming, finds herself in bed with Bobby (Kyle Howard), another sports writer. She comes on strong, to say the least, and clearly doesn’t understand even the most elementary push-pull of seduction. Her odd behavior is almost startling — but she takes Bobby’s unease as evidence only that he has problems, and concludes that the whole world of dating is just badly rigged.

As she puts it in voice-over, speaking of sports: “Can you imagine what it would be like if the foul line was always moving? Or if sometime it was two strikes and you’re out?”

And then she wraps up, “If you’ve ever tried to date someone, you probably can.”

At this point, her character — a woman who is intrinsically rule-bound and who prefers well-built games to emotional improvisation — comes into sharp focus. Her boyish swaggering seems to reflect almost a cognitive impairment. But that impairment is absorbing, even attractive. P J may yet be a terrific character, and “My Boys” is certainly a charming knockoff.

See? Spiro's character doesn't get it and can't review emotional cues, so therefore it's a cognitive impairment. Because, you know...women's emotional intelligence never steers them wrong, ever, dude.

Sex in the City was based around the trope of Carrie discovering some sociological quirk and detailing it in her column. The quirk was usually external -- Women making sense of "the city" around them. That struck a chord with its audience.

What's nice about My Boys is that it's a more classic setup; it's internal and intrapersonal conflict at play - P.J. is wrong more than she's right, and most of the problems come from within the dynamic of the friendships, or the neurotic nature of P.J. herself (which, in itself, is a more male comedy trope than female. The neurotic male usually gets to be lovable. The neurotic female is usually portrayed in unflattering terms.) This gender reversal is actually what makes My Boys fresh.

But just like a lot of women don't like/get/trust women who have more guy friends than girls, I think you'll probably continue to see a lot of dismissal of My Boys by women who prefer, say, the documentary-like portrayal of relationships on Grey's Anatomy.

In the end, the show's as much a ripoff of Friends as SitC, and therefore, by my TV math, it's not really a ripoff of either.

And just to go a little further through the looking glass? Sex in the City, which gave women their voice, was brought to TV by a gay man, Darren Star. My Boys' creator is Betsy Thomas.

Take that, easy categorizing stereotypes!


What My Boys is, is well written and familiar, peopled with a truly likable cast of characters (would that anyone on The Class was this likable.) And it's a little shaggy, too.

Not everything works.

The Sex-In-The-City/Grey's Anatomy voiceover thing needs to be taken out behind the building and given the Old Yeller. But considering the fact that TBS is new to the original programming game, this is a pretty impressive first entry. Considering that there are so few great sitcoms right now, you could do a whole lot worse than spend time with My Boys. It's a solid base hit. A double, with a good chance of stealing third down the line.

(Part of the reason I crashed together this review today when I should be doing something else is that the last two eps in Season 1 run tonight at 10pm on TBS. Give it a look and let me know what you think.)

Reprint: The Importance of Knowing Your Franchise

Originally published April 17, 2006.

Last week I was in a room for a series that's plotting out its second season. What amazed me, off the top, was how clearly they knew their characters and franchise -- what stories worked, what it was about, how to complicate the plots, etc.

This show was a comedy. I flip back and forth in my career between comedy and drama. (I meant in the shows I write, but now that I think about it, that phrase could actually just as cleanly refer to the actual state of my career.)

The first lesson I took out of the room was this: how to use coincidence.

One of the notes you're going to get from execs all the time in Canada (maybe everywhere) is isn't that coincidental?

If you go through comedy, you're going to find a lot of coincidence. It's one of the shorthands you simply need to make plots work. And out of the discussions in this room came what I call the coincidence rule: In comedy, coincidence can always kick off a plot. It can sometimes complicate a plot. But it can never provide the solution to a plot.

If you employ coincidence as your solution, you're going to leave the audience unsatisfied -- and it's going to smack of deus ex machina -- which hasn't worked too well since the Greeks leaned on it so heavily back in the day.

The temptation to use coincidence to solve your problem can be strong. Because on first blush, it seems like a great, neat, all items tied in a bow thing. I give you Escape: The Pina Colada Song. Go. Google the lyrics. I'll wait. Now, that seems tied up nice and neat, doesn't it? But really, admit it, deep down in your bones, doesn't it suck? Just a bit? It's glib and trite, isn't it?

To put it another way:

Frasier and Niles can run into their fencing instructor who terrorized them as children in Cafe Nervosa. That's a coincidence, but it's doable. The Fencing instructor can be married to the woman who runs the publishing house where Frasier's trying to get a book published. That's fine. But Niles can't come in at the end of an episode where he's been challenged to a duel and say it's no problem because he just happened to run into their old fencing instructor, and he told Niles what he and Frasier have been doing wrong in their fencing technique all these years, so now Niles has the confidence to win the duel. Or...even better -- the fencing instructor will stand in for him in the duel.

That would suck. But...if the fencing instructor shows up and finds out that Niles' opponent has engaged a second, and the second is the Fencing Instructor's Fencing Instructor -- well...that's not solving the problem, it's a big coincidence -- but it still plays. See? Because the solution is what comes next, and involves Frasier and Niles getting out of the mess they've gotten into.

As I said, this is comedy. I think Drama is a lot less tolerant of coincidence. Even if you pile tons of them on top of each other and pretend like you're making it all a deep allegory. (Yes, Best Picture 2005, I'm looking at you.)

The other thing that I learned in this room is that there's two ways to come up with a plot. Because I'm a drama writer, too -- I tend to try to come up with a workable structure and story and then try to make it funny. That can sometimes work, especially in comedy/drama hybrids.

Far more effective, however, is to try to come up with plots and situations that are inherently funny in and of themselves. Story funny. That way, you're not working hard to hang jokes on a plot -- you're laughing because the situation or dilemna your characters are in is funny even before you come up with dialogue. Again, sounds simple... in practice, sometimes, not so much.

What doing it this way also gives you is it probably makes you aware of mining that which is unique about your franchise. This is a drama example, but I thought the nadir of the post-Aaron Sorkin West Wing era was the episode where "there's a bomb in the White House..." just because I'd seen that plot on E.R., or any other John Wells show. If the plot you're working could graft just as easily into any other show, you're probably going to have to work really hard to make it funny/interesting, and about your characters.

When you're trying to come up with a new show, or even a unique spec idea for an existing show, it really helps to try and come up with the thing that could only happen to your characters, or someone in their specific situation. That is your franchise.

And if you figure that out quickly, you can save a lot of heartache.

Finally, one other thing I learned, or at least heard said very well, last week. This was said at the University class I spoke to by one of my fellow panelists, a successful Canadian animation, children's, and comedy TV writer. On the subject of having your characters change and grow:

"Comedy characters can't grow the same way characters in a drama can..the kind of growth a character on a comedy will go through in five or six years is about the same as one season of Desperate Housewives or Grey's Anatomy."

Like I said, I'm aware of that sentiment, and have had painful meetings where I tried to explain it to people who were hell-bent on killing the comedy by having the character "learn something," but I just think that's a very elegant way to lay it out.

I Still Say it Was the Wolverines

My paranoid friends insist that he covered up JFK's assassination as part of the Warren Commission. But to me he will go down as the doddering guy who was the first President I ever saw lampooned on SNL, and the first President I ever saw who got beat in the election. I didn't even know, back in that bicentennial year, that that could actually happen. Maybe I was a child autocrat or something. But hey, it was Florida. I was young. So long Gerry. Hope you were wearing your helmet.

More Labour Pains

Further to the post directly below, commenter Caroline made a lot of good points below. So I'm exercising Executive Privilege and promoting them to post-status.

See what I did there? Got a day's free content? Hey, this broadcasting thing is easy!

Caroline writes:

I think the producers are pushing back because they're getting squeezed harder than ever before by the broadcasters, who won't put up full budget and most are looking to recoup their investment in first profit position in order to greenlight a show. And because the broadcast landscape has centralized so much here, producers are forced to make bad deals and cut corners. I think your point about companies who got fat on service work is valid, but maybe 40% of companies did foreign service work so it isn't fair to tar and feather them all as fat cats.

I sympathize with ACTRA but have also found first-hand that their negotiators are less than, well, flexible, and if you want to be treated like a partner you'd better treat others that way, too. I've always found that the compromise position with everyone feeling they gave a little is the best course, but they won't give. I also figured that a small piece of any pie is bigger than none and again, that argument didn't fly with ACTRA.

I've worked on treaty co-pros where we made up our points on everything but actors and never hired an ACTRA performer in the production.

For a long time, I think all the unions have been at cross purposes. If they spent more time working together to lobby, they would be more effective as a whole, not just with the CFTPA/AFTPQ, but also in raising their concerns to higher planes like the CRTC.

And for the record, I've been following the press release chain on the negotiations this round and all sides have conducted themselves shamefully.

I can't really quibble with any of those points. So I won't. No quibbler, I.

Labour Pains

It's amazing how, after a while, when you have to read lots of outlines in a row, everything seems to become boring or unoriginal, even when it's not.

This flattening of experience and judgement really makes me both feel for and fear Network executives and Readers who have to do this stuff all the time. It makes me think that the critical disease -- where something, anything that's different stands out, sometimes undeservedly, is one of the greatest problems facing continued storytelling in this medium. Between out there and one-in-a-million and Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, there's a huge middle ground of solid, interesting stories that might be getting hosed just cause, you know, we've all read too much of this stuff in one sitting.

It's also humble-making, because I'm reminded again that no matter how good a teleplay or an outline may be, it's still just a blueprint, not a whole work. It's important to keep that top of mind, always.

Anyway, I was all set to hiatus for a bit more. There's the list of the next three topics I want to blog about all on sticky-note -- and this post isn't one of them. But suddenly the call I thought I had got pushed, and I've got a bit of time, and a commenter below asked a really interesting question in regards to my post on the looming possibility of a Canadian actors' strike:

The offer, according to other sources was actually 1/2/1, same as agreed to with the WGC, albeit with a year freeze on 10 out of 10 drama (which I guess would make it 0/1/2). Two questions: as a writer, would you be willing to take less of a raise than the performers? And working on a 10/10 show, would a freeze help spur more Canadian drama?

This is the problem with Canadian TV. Eventually it always comes to this -- arguing over formulas and arcana. It's our version over the endless, useless, fruitless fight over the possessory credit in the WGA.

I happen to think that the last contract for the WGC was a pretty good one, not stellar, but certainly okay to good. Most other WGC members agree with me, since it passed by a wide approval margin. Also, the thing to keep in mind was that the main issue for writers in Canada in the last negotiation wasn't necessarily wages. MOW wages got a bigger bump, and more insurance contributions, and that's great. But one of the main things we were going for was one unified agreement between the two producer's unions in Canada -- the CFTPA and APFTQ (which covers Quebec.) It was a pain in the ass, and it delayed the agreement, but it went through.

Why is that important? Well, ask the actors. They've got multiple agreements right now. The B.C. performer's union doesn't expire until March 31. That has implications for films that might have filmed elsewhere in Canada. So long as they can get them lensed by the end of March, suddenly Vancouver looks way better than Toronto right now.

The WGC also got all animation writers covered, and we got the producers to agree to WGC jurisdiction over things like webisodes, mobisodes, blah blah blah.

That's part of what ACTRA's fighting for. I'm going to lay aside the "I heard through sources" since I'm just going with what was reported. But to your first question:

as a writer, would you be willing to take less of a raise than the performers?

This is my opinion only, but I'd give that a qualified yes. Why? Well, honestly? I think if you can write, you're actually already further ahead than most actors. I think you also probably have a longer average career.

There are way more actors than writers, and way, way, way, way less of them are going to be working at any one time. As much as we complain about their outrageous and borderline personalities and insatiable egos, I do sometimes think that the average actor gets a rawer deal than the average writer. I feel sorry for them when they come in and audition. It's hard. And so few of them make any money doing it. And every time they do something, it's up there forever and they have the burden of being typecast.

On the other hand, having the actors set the agenda for the industry isn't necessarily the best strategy either. You hint a bit at that in your second question, which I'll get to in a minute. But I tend to look at it in terms of writers vs. the crew unions.

NABET/CEP and IATSE have been at war in Canada for the last few years, fighting over turf on shoots. And for the longest time, their crew agreements were tailored to the service productions that came up from the USA. Most of the crew agreements really spoke to those kinds of shows. The WGC members, who were locked out of that kind of work, were kind of lone-ily talking about the domestic industry, and getting drowned out because there were way more people working crew (or acting) than writing.

Writers were the canary in the coalmine for the downturn in the Canadian business. We got kicked first. Things sucked for us way before they dried up for the actors and the crew people. So, you know, it shouldn't be surprising that our issues as writers are a little different. We're playing a different game.

And working on a 10/10 show, would a freeze help spur more Canadian drama?

Again. My opinion only, your mileage may vary. I doubt it would do so on its own. There is a way that the Producers' have a point here, though. If you can't raise all your money domestically (which you can't) then you have to have something to deal with. And one of those things you might have some leverage on is casting an American star (or British, point is, a "name.") If you could do that, and still be 10/10, then maybe you could raise that last bit of money. I have sympathy to that position, which is something ACTRA is dead set against. I'm not sure ACTRA is totally realistic on that point.

Then again -- there are lots of sleazy dodges that the producers have pulled on writers, too. One of the reasons why we have a dearth of Canadian showrunners is because there was a fast and loose push to "certify" a lot of American guys who'd fly in and be the top Exec on a show here. They'd use courtesy credits to back door in on a 10/10 show and the real decisionmaking power wouldn't be in the Canadians' hands.

Or what about all those shows a few years ago that were shot in Toronto, but had their writing rooms in L.A., employing L.A. based writers with Canadian passports? That flouted the spirit of the agreement, but it was pretty commonplace. Labour is Labour and Management is Management, and traditionally, the adversarial system does tend to go to the "if they give a centimetre, they take a kilometre." (We're in Canada. We're metric. Deal.)

I think probably it would be good to help out the producers a little. I believe them when they say they need a bit more flexibility with casting if they're going to sell the project abroad.

Just don't give away the store.

But none of that has to do with the fact that the Producers have, for some reason, decided that they're going to go in ultra hard line and not give away anything to the actors this round, because their business is so hard. Well, it is hard. But then again, where were they when they were growin fat off all those service jobs in the 80's and 90's?

Suddenly they woke up and decided that TV is hard. And they want everyone else to pay. Well, you know what? You guys are the producers. Produce. Sweat a little.

No one's going to get anywhere in this country by screwing a group who's supposed to, ultimately, be your partner. See: CBC Lockout, Employees, Ratings, One Year Later...

Reprint: This Cup Can Make You a Better Writer

Working on a new post about my "Best of the Year." But since Boxing Day's a holiday in Canada too, well... slack. Cut me some.

Originally published 03/01/2006

Do you recognize this cup?

If you're a New Yorker, I'm sure you do. In fact, if you've spent any time in New York at all any time in say the last forty years, you probably recognize this little sucker right away. And I'm betting that there's a hint of a smile on your face.

In the pre-Starbucks days, this is the coffee cup you would get when you grabbed a coffee at any deli anywhere in Manhattan. I've gulped from a cup just like this walking through the East Village. I downed a mouthful of cold coffee out of a cup like this outside CBGB's (along with a handfull of Advil.) One time, when I was about twenty, I picked a cup like this off the ground and put it in the garbage precisely two seconds before the karmic lightning bolt hit and I caught the impossible- to-find-cab- in-the-middle-of- the- rainstorm- when-you're-late- for- the-theater-matinee- because- your-girlfriend- took- such-a-long-time-on -her-hair.

In its own weird way, it's as much an icon of New York City as the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, or the Twin Towers.

I got thinking about this little cup the other day when my friend Rob was over at Dead Things HQ. Awhile back, I was checking out the MoMa reno in the City, and found this little cup in the gift shop. It's a ceramic replica of the famous paper-coffee cup. At ten bucks, it made me smile. (If it does the same for you, you can get info about how to purchase one here.)

Anyway, Rob was over and we were trying to break a nettlesome story for his series for, like, the sixth time, and he complimented my coffee-making skills. It was good coffee. (Yes, the entire conversation went like this. Very Grade-three-Gay. And don't give me shit for describing it thus...Dan Savage says I'm in the clear.) Anyway, more than the coffee itself, Rob really liked the cup. It evoked in him the same feeling it evoked in me, an instant nostalgia for all things New York.

What struck me later was not how he instantly recognized and responded to the cup the same way I did. I found that utterly unsurprising. Of course he'd dig it. It's yet another case of how our sensibilities are similar.

See, at that point, that little cup could be considered the objective correlative of both our friendship, and of our separate, warm memories of New York.

It's been a while since I talked about the Objective Correlative. Even then, I didn't get into it too much. Danny Stack followed up on the idea with a longer post here.

I guess the reason why I'm returning to the idea again is because lately I've been reading a lot of scripts where people talk about things, but where there isn't a real clear sense of the objective correlative working through the drama. It reads as flat. The simple realization that a tiny object like a coffee cup could make me think of my past, and reaffirm a friendship...well, that's interesting stuff. It's not just drama -- it's life.

T.S. Eliot came up with the Objective Correlative, in his writings on Hamlet. Here's what he said:

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

That's exactly what happened with me and the coffee cup.

My reaction to the cup evoked everything I mythologize about New York. And later, it indicated camaraderie between me and my friend -- so it took on a separate, instant meaning in a different situation.

Interestingly enough, this little cup's gotten quite a workout -- because now that I think about it, I remember that about six months ago I had a woman over and we were chatting. We'd been out a few times, and it was at that point where you're not sure which way it's going to go. She asked about the cup. I told her the story, and she was utterly unimpressed. She'd been to New York several times. She vaguely remembered the cup. She just thought it was a little...stupid.

Guess what I realized in that moment?

"Damn You, Objective Correlative! Damn You to Hell!"

As I've gotten older, I'm fascinated by the fact that I'm much more interested in Sports than I was when I was younger. My Dad and My Uncle used to take me to Yankees and Blue Jays games, and my Grandfather was a huge Mets fan -- some of my earliest memories of him are watching the game with him on an old black and white TV set. He died when I was seven, so that's a pretty potent memory. But still, I managed to sail through my teenage years and most of my twenties without reading the Sports section daily. Not anymore.

I think part of it is that as we get older, Sports increasingly becomes the objective correlative of male friendship. The game allows you to express emotion, bond, catharsis, the whole magilla. The Poker Craze, I believe, is part and parcel of the same thing. I read Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch and laughed my ass off, and I don't give a fig about Soccer.

By looking and finding the objective correlative of emotions in your life you start to unlock the inner life; the one you don't express consciously, but imbue to objects or situations. I think that helps you to unlock a trove that can help you weave the objective correlative more successfully into your art.

Understanding and recognizing the objective correlative in life makes you a better writer.

One totally non-scientific thing I've noticed, for instance, is that women who understand men's attachment to sports, or who appreciate men's penchant for silly or gross humor, kind of tend to understand men better in general.

An acquaintance of mine was having problems in his marriage, at the same time that his old car was constantly breaking down. This went on for a couple of years. One night, like a bolt out of the blue, he realized that he and his wife fought every time there was a problem with the car. Sometimes it was when she had the car -- and he probably blamed her. Sometimes it was when he was driving it, and it made him irritable. It went on and on, and they fought and made up. Then he got a new car. For two months, they didn't fight. But one night, when they did -- they nearly broke up. Their marriage was at the brink, and it caused them to finally face some of the big, structural, ugly things at the core of their marriage. His wife said a lot of the same stuff she'd said before...but finally, finally, he got it. (They're still together, by the way.)

Now...did that have anything to do with the car? Did the car being there offer a valve, a distraction, a symbol that kept them from getting to the core of things? Did removing it remove that valve and force a confrontation? I don't know. What do you think?

I'll tell you what, though, it's a damn sight more interesting than any of the other stories I've heard from half a dozen guys about how they fight with their wives (or ex-wives, as the case may be.)

Writing drama is about coming up with an effective shorthand for life, and putting it down on the page.

Seems to me that old T.S. Eliot gave us a great gift. I knew he did a lot more than come up with those damn singing cats.

I was going to come up with a few more examples from movies and TV -- but maybe that could be the audience participation portion of the post. So come on: what are your favorite filmic examples of the O.C. at work?

Now, I have to go and write a one-pager that basically demonstrates how the O.C. works in my choice of venue for a series pitch I did recently. They bumped on the setting in the meeting, but thanks to a conversation I had last night, I think there may be a way to better explain what I mean. The O.C. is everywhere.

Remember the Cup, Luke.

Hit It One More Time, Then Quit

Please, Please, Please, Please, Please Remember him Always for What He Did Best.
The Godfather of Soul.
Goodbye, JB.

By the way, I think this officially now makes Ryan Seacrest the hardest working man in show business.

I know. I know. Don't get me started.

Yup, I did.

When I was about three or so, we lived in an apartment on Broadway, in the South Bronx. A nice section of the Bronx called Riverdale. Well, apparently one Christmas, I got this fire truck. This was 1970 or so, so toys were still big and made of actual metal, not formed plastic.

I was a rambunctious kid, and did a lot of rambunctious kid stuff, like running around and going crazy because it was, you know, Christmas. Well, anyway, this fire truck, which was cool, but made of metal, had a jagged part. And I fell down on it, and sliced my ear open pretty good. Wound up in Emergency. Needed stitches. A plastic surgeon had to look at the ear. That was fun. I think maybe I woke up on the table, too, and probably gave the doctor and my dad a fright.

By way of contrast, tonight I watched Night of the Iguana, which I taped off TCM, had a coffee with some accoutrements added in for flavoring and festivus, and changed my blog template.

On the whole, I gotta say I prefer this Christmas to the bullshit with the fucking truck.

Happy Christmas to everybody. Be gentle to each other.

And don't bitch out the template. I was bored, yo.