It's All My Fault

SO, HERE'S how the story ends:

OSHAWA -- No, a plane did not crash in Oshawa on Thursday.

The twin-engine aircraft sitting in the middle of Stevenson Road was there as part of a shoot for a TV miniseries -- but the unusual sight did prompt a few concerned phone calls.

"We've had a lot of calls from the media and some people out walking around were wondering what happened," said Stephen Wilcox, manager of the Oshawa Municipal Airport. "Today is the one day it's OK if you see a plane on the road."

from newsdurhamregion.


At one point yesterday, 680 News radio was actually reporting that a plane overshot the runway. Way to go on the local journalism, guys.

Now that that's out of the way, and the Director and his heap godlike awesome crew mercifully got our day, here's how the story starts:


My standard joke about Canadian TV production is that if you call for someone to drown in the ocean, they'll ask you to make it a bathtub.

Then the next day they'll come down and tell you you can't have any water.

So it was that when I came to craft my first episode of THE BORDER, I started thinking in terms of a long, distant CGI shot. I mean, a plane? C'mon.

I've been through two series in a row where the challenge was always, always thinking big while writing small. And you naturally assume that's how it's going to go.

But THE BORDER is a different kind of show for Canada. It's an action adventure show. It's about high-stakes and skullduggery along the United States-Canadian border, and the plucky squad of agents from Immigration and Customs Security who keep us safe from all manner of baddies looking to smuggle drugs or guns or objets du terreur across what used to be called "the longest undefended border in the world."

Of course, since 9/11, that border has gotten a lot pricklier, and the Americans have gotten a lot...weirder. And so THE BORDER is about that too. The show went through five years of development under Executive Producers Lindalee Tracey and Peter Raymont. A pilot shot last fall. I've been working on the series since early May.

Anyway, back to the story. This episode I wrote, "Bodies on the Ground" will run third in the series, but it's being shot first. So this is the big one out of the gate.

The first surprise I got was when the Director, John Fawcett, (at right) shook his head and immediately discounted the idea of the CGI plane. And in that way that writers never think of, he had the A-1 simple reason why:

It's a hand held show.

Ulp. I didn't think of that. But part of the energy and excitement of Fawcett's pilot is that it, indeed is shot all hand held. The camera's always moving. The pace is fast. There are lots of cuts. And to drop a shot of a distant CGI plane into that...well...

It wouldn't work.

So it came to be that I found myself sitting quietly in the corner of meetings as they talked about the logistics of shooting near an airport, finding a road where you could tow a small jet to the middle of the road to make it look like the plot of the story -- where a small jet puts down with fugitives in a lonely stretch of Quebec road.

The night of the first "plane" conversation I went home and sweated through my sheets. It feels like having the power to curse someone. You mean, I just write something down, and it happens? Is no one going to tell me 'no?' Someone always tells you no.

(pic above: not quite dead)

And so it went. Through all the planning sessions, the boarding and the scheduling, you see the sequences sitting there, ready for the jet day and part of you thinks, "they're not really going to do this, are they?"

And the funny thing is that the Jet isn't the only "big" part of the episode. There's gags with bullet hits, and stunts, and oh yeah, I think a car blows up too.

Nobody said no.

I scripted in JTF2 commandos. And on the day, suddenly there they are. And ... um... there sure are a lot of them. More than I pictured.

But nobody said no.

Every show, big budget or small, marshalls its resources. Battlestar Galactica and 24 are two shows I've noticed which are particularly good about harnessing and amortizing their budgets. You'll see a few episodes where lots of big stunts or CG happens, and then there's a few smaller character episodes. X-Files used to do this really well too.

Part of the brief of doing a big action adventure episode like this means that down the road you need to have different types of eps, where the drama is intense but the staging is easier. We've already got a couple of those episodes of The Border scripted, and they're great for totally different reasons. The next episode I write will probably be one of those kinds of eps, too. It's a chance to flex different muscles in your writing -- funny clever, not so much boom boom.

But while they're prepping the boom boom, I gotta tell you, heap god, it's a thing of beauty.

As I stood out on a road in the middle of Oshawa yesterday, watching the crew and actors who'd braved the rain and the heat to make 6 2/3 big pages happen, it was kind of awesome.

Less awesome? All the fingers pointing at me as someone said, "this is the guy who ordered up the plane."

Aw. Um...wait...I...uh...

Now, there's nothing I can do. I'm the high rolling writer. I'm the guy who demands planes in the middle of the road.

Actually, there's two planes in the episode...and two more that we don't really see...uh...but that's perhaps saying too much.

A few days before we started shooting, the cast gathered in a board room at the production office and read the script aloud for the first time. Producer Brian Dennis was there too, reading all the action descriptions, and as he read aloud, I got to hear things like, "the plane sits in the middle of the road....DENIS." And "the car explodes....DENIS."

Sigh. Nobody said no.

Actually, that's not entirely true. Because there's a search plot in the episode, at some point along the process somebody wanted a scene where we saw the JTF2 commandos ready to go in with dogs. And so I wrote one in.


And Brian came to me one day and told me how much the dog would cost. And I got a "take it out." And a couple of askance looks from people saying, "can you believe the guy? asking for a dog?"

I didn't even bother mentioning that the dog hadn't been my idea in the first place. And I took it out. And taking that dog out made me feel just a tiny little bit better. I swear, I slept a bit better that night.

So to review, plane in road, second plane, commandos-a-go-go, squib hits, fake blood, police cars with windshield gags, fireballs and stunts: A-Ok.

Just don't write in a dog.

I don't understand this business at all.

(pic above: Co-Showrunner David Barlow blames me for the plane, too.)


The Border premieres on CBC Television in January 2008.