I was a little unsure - is it an article, or a letter to the editor? It's not marked as a letter to the editor but it's signed at the bottom like it is. In which case ... just another guy with way too much time on his hands, looking for something to be offended by? I hope so, because otherwise it's an embarrassing piece of "journalism".
I don't know about sounding like he's four, but he does seem to be whining. I've met grown-ups who whine, so I can't accuse him of sounding like any particular age.
Still trying to make sense of this myself. Planning to listen to a certain NPR interview ASAP, in order to get more details so I can sort out the confusion I'm suffering through here(as you'll have likely noted from my posts elsewhere on the matter)...
As I started to read this article, I could see his overall point and thought, "Maybe Denis is being too hard on him."
By the end of the article, I was thinking, "Man, what a fucking baby.
See, I've met Canadians who wouldn't watch a show set in Saskatchewan (sad but true) -- the fact that he expects better from Americans is just hilarious.
I think 'Little Mosque' and 'Due South' have proved that, if you do it well, Americans will climb on board. This journalist should keep that in mind.
Hate to disagree with everyone. Only read the article quickly, but I have always hated the whole 'let's make this anywhere North America so that we can fleece the American's' bullcrap. We were doing it decades ago with Night Heat, we still do it, and I understand why it's done, but I will never write it. Ever. I love specificity of place in what I watch. I want it in what I write. I don't think he was being childish at all. Love you Dennis, but I don't think he was being childish at all.
Well, aside from the obvious, the fact that from the beginning the creative team specified that Mosque was deliberately set in Saskatchewtoba -- a non-specific prairie setting, just like Springfield on the Simpsons is never specified (and joked about) specificity of place is meaningless when you're creating a fictional town ANYWAY. It's simply not important, or relevant.
But where the guy really goes off the rails is twisting himself into a knot, to make this about our favorite bullshit subject, AGAIN, big bad Toronto.
Even though the trope is exactly the same as Corner Gas -- someone escaped an unsatisfying life in the big city to come to small town (the reverse of the usual migration) -- even though it's the same trope used in Northern Exposure, or any number of other series that have the same DNA as Mosque and Gas, this guy wants to make it about the CBC being arrogant and Toronto-centred.
Heaven forbid the show should be funny, or work on that, or be able to use the universality of "the prairie" setting to pull in the widest net possible. Never mind that for the purposes of the storytelling or setuup, the (again) FICTIONAL town's exact location doesn't matter. By all means, what's really important is that we make this another example of the CBC doing wrong, because people in Toronto are bad and don't understand the rest of the country.
Honestly, it just makes me want to weep. No wonder we can't get any traction and focus on the important stuff.
Everybody would rather argue about the color of the fucking paint.
Not that it makes the guy any less of a gleeb, but from the format, this looks to me like a letter to the editor rather than an article. It has his name and city of residence at the bottom.
So he's a private citizen gleeb, not a journo gleeb. I don't know this particular outlet, but I've noticed for years that papers seem to love printing letters from gleebs and get slo-mo flamewars going on their opinion pages.
I work on the show but, for the record, it's obviously set in Canada: the male lead is from Toronto, they watch hockey night in Canada, they meet a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent, a character is refused entry to the United States because he's on the no fly list so they travel to the American consulate... later on in the series there will be actual red-coated Mounties. I could go on.
For what it's worth, I agree it would be tacky to set a series in "maybe the U.S. maybe Canada." But we didn't do that.
What Diane said - totally agree. And what's some dude from Picton doing reading the Leader Post anyway?!
Hey Someguy, just a question. Why would it be tacky to set a show maybe in Canada and maybe in the US? If the geography isn't critical to the storyline, it makes it more saleable. If it is a story about relationships, why is that a bad thing? Not dumping on you, just wondering why you feel as you do.
I'm actually working on a project right now that is quite ambiguously set on the northeast coast of North America ... could be Maine, could be Nova Scotia. It doesn't really matter, because the story will never leave the village it is set in.
As for what the Picton guy is doing reading the Leader-Post...have I reiterated recently that I'm from Saskatchewan myself? I live in Ottawa now, but up until the local newsstands discontinued carrying that paper, I still bought the odd copy to try to keep up with what was going on back there.
I dunno it just strikes me as tacky. In the past it was done so clumsily -- you'd watch the show and know it was Canadian, but everything would be "generic North American city."
I think Canadian locations are attractive to Canadian audiences -- they can tell if it's a Canadian show, and if it's generic I think it's a turn off.
(Look at the reaction to this Mosque story -- some people have shrugged and said who cares, and some people have been pissed off, but no one has said "cool, it's set in a generic location that could be the states -- I should check that out!")
On the other hand, I'm not convinced Canadian locations hurt sales overseas -- but I know less about that.
I do know a show has to be successful in Canada in order for you to keep making it -- a show can't survive on foreign sales alone. Ergo, Canadian locations make sense to me.
On the other hand, one of the the producers of "Made in Canada" told me when they tried to sell it overseas, the distributor guy asked to change the title. And the producers said why. And the distributor guy said you might as well call it "Don't buy this." So it was sold overseas as "The Industry."
Regardless, I think when people watch these shows for more than two minutes, they know they're watching a Canadian show. Or, if they're watching from the states, they at least know it's a foreign show. So I suspect a Canadian location makes no difference.
Sorry for using the word "ergo" a couple paragraphs back but there you have it.
I actually only became a fan of Made in Canada when I saw it when I was in South Africa. I was like three eps in before I realized "the industry" was the same show I'd known as "made in canada"
I don't know why Mercer wasn't a tipoff, but hey, I was tired and in Cape Town, so there you are.
13 comments:
I was a little unsure - is it an article, or a letter to the editor? It's not marked as a letter to the editor but it's signed at the bottom like it is. In which case ... just another guy with way too much time on his hands, looking for something to be offended by? I hope so, because otherwise it's an embarrassing piece of "journalism".
Hi Denis.
The answer is clearly yes.
Well, at least he is.
He's also quite unable to tell the difference between the producers and the CBC as two distinct, separate entities.
Oh well.
I don't know about sounding like he's four, but he does seem to be whining. I've met grown-ups who whine, so I can't accuse him of sounding like any particular age.
Still trying to make sense of this myself. Planning to listen to a certain NPR interview ASAP, in order to get more details so I can sort out the confusion I'm suffering through here(as you'll have likely noted from my posts elsewhere on the matter)...
As I started to read this article, I could see his overall point and thought, "Maybe Denis is being too hard on him."
By the end of the article, I was thinking, "Man, what a fucking baby.
See, I've met Canadians who wouldn't watch a show set in Saskatchewan (sad but true) -- the fact that he expects better from Americans is just hilarious.
I think 'Little Mosque' and 'Due South' have proved that, if you do it well, Americans will climb on board. This journalist should keep that in mind.
Hey Denis,
Hate to disagree with everyone. Only read the article quickly, but I have always hated the whole 'let's make this anywhere North America so that we can fleece the American's' bullcrap. We were doing it decades ago with Night Heat, we still do it, and I understand why it's done, but I will never write it. Ever. I love specificity of place in what I watch. I want it in what I write. I don't think he was being childish at all. Love you Dennis, but I don't think he was being childish at all.
Well, aside from the obvious, the fact that from the beginning the creative team specified that Mosque was deliberately set in Saskatchewtoba -- a non-specific prairie setting, just like Springfield on the Simpsons is never specified (and joked about) specificity of place is meaningless when you're creating a fictional town ANYWAY. It's simply not important, or relevant.
But where the guy really goes off the rails is twisting himself into a knot, to make this about our favorite bullshit subject, AGAIN, big bad Toronto.
Even though the trope is exactly the same as Corner Gas -- someone escaped an unsatisfying life in the big city to come to small town (the reverse of the usual migration) -- even though it's the same trope used in Northern Exposure, or any number of other series that have the same DNA as Mosque and Gas, this guy wants to make it about the CBC being arrogant and Toronto-centred.
Heaven forbid the show should be funny, or work on that, or be able to use the universality of "the prairie" setting to pull in the widest net possible. Never mind that for the purposes of the storytelling or setuup, the (again) FICTIONAL town's exact location doesn't matter. By all means, what's really important is that we make this another example of the CBC doing wrong, because people in Toronto are bad and don't understand the rest of the country.
Honestly, it just makes me want to weep. No wonder we can't get any traction and focus on the important stuff.
Everybody would rather argue about the color of the fucking paint.
Not that it makes the guy any less of a gleeb, but from the format, this looks to me like a letter to the editor rather than an article. It has his name and city of residence at the bottom.
So he's a private citizen gleeb, not a journo gleeb. I don't know this particular outlet, but I've noticed for years that papers seem to love printing letters from gleebs and get slo-mo flamewars going on their opinion pages.
Hey:
I work on the show but, for the record, it's obviously set in Canada: the male lead is from Toronto, they watch hockey night in Canada, they meet a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent, a character is refused entry to the United States because he's on the no fly list so they travel to the American consulate... later on in the series there will be actual red-coated Mounties. I could go on.
For what it's worth, I agree it would be tacky to set a series in "maybe the U.S. maybe Canada." But we didn't do that.
-p
What Diane said - totally agree. And what's some dude from Picton doing reading the Leader Post anyway?!
Hey Someguy, just a question. Why would it be tacky to set a show maybe in Canada and maybe in the US? If the geography isn't critical to the storyline, it makes it more saleable. If it is a story about relationships, why is that a bad thing? Not dumping on you, just wondering why you feel as you do.
I'm actually working on a project right now that is quite ambiguously set on the northeast coast of North America ... could be Maine, could be Nova Scotia. It doesn't really matter, because the story will never leave the village it is set in.
As for what the Picton guy is doing reading the Leader-Post...have I reiterated recently that I'm from Saskatchewan myself? I live in Ottawa now, but up until the local newsstands discontinued carrying that paper, I still bought the odd copy to try to keep up with what was going on back there.
I dunno it just strikes me as tacky. In the past it was done so clumsily -- you'd watch the show and know it was Canadian, but everything would be "generic North American city."
I think Canadian locations are attractive to Canadian audiences -- they can tell if it's a Canadian show, and if it's generic I think it's a turn off.
(Look at the reaction to this Mosque story -- some people have shrugged and said who cares, and some people have been pissed off, but no one has said "cool, it's set in a generic location that could be the states -- I should check that out!")
On the other hand, I'm not convinced Canadian locations hurt sales overseas -- but I know less about that.
I do know a show has to be successful in Canada in order for you to keep making it -- a show can't survive on foreign sales alone. Ergo, Canadian locations make sense to me.
On the other hand, one of the the producers of "Made in Canada" told me when they tried to sell it overseas, the distributor guy asked to change the title. And the producers said why. And the distributor guy said you might as well call it "Don't buy this." So it was sold overseas as "The Industry."
Regardless, I think when people watch these shows for more than two minutes, they know they're watching a Canadian show. Or, if they're watching from the states, they at least know it's a foreign show. So I suspect a Canadian location makes no difference.
Sorry for using the word "ergo" a couple paragraphs back but there you have it.
I actually only became a fan of Made in Canada when I saw it when I was in South Africa. I was like three eps in before I realized "the industry" was the same show I'd known as "made in canada"
I don't know why Mercer wasn't a tipoff, but hey, I was tired and in Cape Town, so there you are.
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