Motivation

I've got about three big scenes and a wash-and-read through the whole script left to do. And here, outside my window in Vancouver, is the motivator for getting it done:

I'm not entirely sure what it is. It almost looks like a giant, flaming ball of incandescent gas. I have dim memories, like from childhood, that seem to suggest that this thing is good and desirable. It's frustrating, though, because those memories seem oh so distant now. I hope the villagers of Vancouver do not fear this thing and attempt to kill it before it eats the sky.

At least before I finish my draft, anyway.

Hand Waving

..is what we call it when, usually in an outline, you've got something not totally worked out yet but it depends on an action sequence or something cool happening, but it will be totally great on the day...

As in: "Lot of hand waving in Act three."

"Yeah, I know."

Anyway, this is me handwaving. Deeeeep in first draft country. Trying to finish today. Hoping to get a chance to write up some stuff on the weekend. In your meantime:

• May I direct you to Will Dixon's fine first part of a post profiling his friend and BONES creator/showrunner Hart Hanson. Lots of good TV stuff, and some Canadian TV stuff too.
• Matt Watts has a plea for people trying to pitch comedy to a Canadian audience. For those who don't know him, Matt's a very funny actor and writer who was on The Newsroom, among other things, and has also created a couple of great radio series for CBC Radio. I've got thoughts on his definition, too. But those will have to wait til later.
• A reader passed along this link to an article in the Vancouver Courier that makes some interesting points about Little Mosque, that I very much agree with.
  
• Jaime Weinman, on his Macleans' blog, has a great rundown of the Colbert style interview and how it trumps CNN. I'll have something more to say on this, too, when I get the chance. (It won't let me link to it for some reason...stupid innertubes...but go to Macleans.ca, click on TV Guidance, and scroll down to 18 January, Papa Bear Meets Baby Bear.
  

And oh yeah. "Hey Honey, you want to go see that new documentary about Horse fuckers?"
Hand waving out!

Little Mosque: Episode 2

Overnights: 1.2 Million viewers.

That's a little less than a 50% drop, but...

...the initial number was off-the-charts large. Two million two is a ridiculous number for a TV show in Canada. That's CSI, Grey's Anatomy numbers. So the question is, when is a loss of half your audience not a bad thing? There'll be no answer to that question for another week.

...the CBC screwed up by moving the timeslot, and by confusion over the Monday showing being new or a second repeat.

If the dropoff in week three isn't major, even if it retains somewhere around the million mark, this will be a monumental piece of good news for CBC. Even with that hanging over, my guess is we'll hear about a pickup of 13 episodes very soon.

Best part about that is that now I won't feel like I'm piling on when I write about how I think the show could be a lot better. But that's for another day when I have time. For now, I think there's a lot of people at CBC changing their drawers. At least I hope they are.

Thanks to my secret-squirrel spies.

Welcome To The 1970's

I've discovered the secret to writing on the West Coast: stay on East Coast time.

Not that I've had much time to do it, but it struck me last night when I tuned in a half hour too late to catch Little Mosque on the Prairie's second episode, that my TV life is radically different, and distantly familiar, than it is at home.

Monday, I had to rush out of the office at 7:00 p.m. to catch the second part of 24. After I tuned in CBC last night, I realized maybe I'd gotten the time wrong and wanted to make sure. So I had to tune to the onscreen cable channel, and wait for CBC to scroll around again. It only showed me what was on for the next hour.

Last week, I had to choose whether I would watch Intelligence, or House. This weekend, any plans I have are at least partially structured around knowing I have to be home Sunday night to catch Battlestar Galactica.

I'm ruled by the broadcast schedule clock. I have no VCR. I cannot pause live TV, rewind to see something again, watch an earlier feed, or skip a single commercial.

Out here on the West Coast of Canada, the crafty cablecos have fixed it so you can't even rent a PVR, so that's out. I'm looking at getting a digital package so at least I have timeshifting options. I can't really justify buying a VCR for a few months, even if they are sixty bucks.

It's an interesting experience. A cold splash of water that demonstrates candidly just how much television has changed.

NATPE, SHMATPE?

"The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit."

Tom Petty

One of the Producers on the show I'm working on right now blew out of the office yesterday afternoon to catch a flight to Vegas.

I hope he has some fun while he's there. Lord knows I always have. But fun isn't why he's going.

Right now, the NATPE conference -- short for National Association of Television Program Executives, is going on in Vegas. This is one of the most important conferences in the TV business for selling stuff. Well, depending on who you talk to. Most will probably say MIP, but MIP's in France and I think all those fuckers just want to go to France.

I went to NATPE once, when it was still in New Orleans. (Ah, New Orleans.) It was interesting to see that side of the business up close. I fought for an interview with Johnnie Cochrane, who was joining CourtTV. Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless showed up to kiss station owners' asses. So did Cybill Shepard. And Ed Koch, the new host of the People's Court (at the time.) And Springer. And Sally Jessy Rafael. And Chris Carter was there flogging the X Files because it was going into syndication. Everyone was deadly serious about announcing their 'clearances' in the rest of the country. I think one of the hot shows they were hawking was Nightman. Yup. You heard me.

It's on this side of the business, the side that I don't particularly understand or care about, where the shit-scary changes that are roiling the whole industry are going on. If The Business is the World, then NATPE is kind of like Lois Lane in the Car at the end of the first Superman movie. Oh, the earth's opening, bitches. She's going in. But because this aint no fantasy, there isn't a strapping young, ablebodied Chris Reeve anywhere who can fly round the globe and turn the whole thing back. There aint no turning back on this one. But if you're looking to toil in this sweet demi-business we call TV, you, and I, absolutely have to grok the kind of fault-line panic going on at places like NATPE. The issues that are being talked about there aren't theoretical, and they're not five years out. The business model is broken now. The scrambling is happening now.

Both Will Dixon and Jim Henshaw have current takes on what NATPE looks like now. Jim thinks it's good for creative people. Wouldn't that be a kick? Will's got a link to a Broadcasting and Cable article explaining why syndication is so messed up. That article blows by one more funny thing: the messed up nature of syndication is exactly why shows like DaVinci, Corner Gas, etc, are starting to sell into U.S. syndication. They're buying them for the same reason the Canadian nets fill their schedule with U.S. shows: they're cheaper.

I suggest you go read 'em. And stop waiting for Superman. He aint coming.

Dude, I'd take Krypto.

ABC Showrunner a-go-go

There's various versions of this session from the Press Tour found on the net, but I think the Toronto Sun's Bill Brioux captures it well as any.

ABC Showrunners Speak.

Seriously.

I drive like a 75 year old Grandmother. When did that happen?

Bothered By Bauer

24's politics have never really bothered me before. I know people have pointed to various parts of the show (especially the whole subplot with the "Amnesty Global" lawyer last season) and said it runs with a hard right Republican agenda. It certainly doesn't endear the show to me to know that it's one of the favorites of the Rummy and Cheney crowd. But there's always been just enough feints and jabs in my political direction to keep me faithful.

So why did I feel so wrong watching the end of last night's four hour first block? Sure, there were things in there that made me sad. And as a writer, I was pretty shocked too. I mean, if you're going to blow the Nuke in Downtown L.A. in episode FOUR, you're burning through some very serious story, my friend. Those seasons are never 24's best. It's starting to look like Day 6 may be more like Day 4. Remember that one? Can you remember anything about the plot of that one? There were like, nine plots in that overcooked day.

It's not like the viewpoints that I bring to bear on current world events weren't given airing. The President, the President's sister -- everybody seems to be saying the right things. Even the idea of working with an ex-terrorist who wants to go straight is a provocative idea. (I'm waiting for the discussion of blowback, although I guess Curtis fit that bill, too.)

I guess what bothers me, though, is that the United States portrayed in this season of 24 is the United States that Bush & Co have been trying to build in the public's mind for six years: the terrorists are wily and they're here and they can attack anytime. We have an incredibly well organized (as they always are) terrorist group, plotting and succeeding with multiple missions over an 11 week period. They're cool, they don't make mistakes, and they've got the United States on its knees. And you definitely get the sense that the three-months inaugurated President Wayne Palmer maybe isn't up to the task of doing what needs to be done to stop them. Because he's not resolute, see. He's not the Decider.

The 9/11 attacks were horrible. But the fact is, there hasn't been a bunch of attacks on U.S. soil since. And the 9/11 attacks didn't hit any of the places from where Bush draws (or drew) his strength. And yet still -- all of those things they talk about on 24. How people are scared and are turning on each other, how they're ready to shred the Constitution? Well, most of that has actually already happened, with nary a peep from the populace or the nation's media -- at least until recently.

In the world of 24, if not our world, the doctrine Bush & Co are pursuing seems measured and logical. A country on its knees maybe can't afford to think about the niceties. But America - the real America - is not that country. Except, in the real America, you have people talking about 'the terr'rists' in Montana and Birmingham and Odessa, Texas -- where they're likely never going to show their faces.

When the fooferal over The Path to 9/11 happened, one of the most disingenuous things ABC and the program makers' did was to say that it was based on the 9/11 Report, even though it contradicted a whole bunch of stuff in that report, then turn around and say, basically "it's only tv."

The whole point of TV images is that they have great impact. Greater impact, in fact, than articles or cool news reports about this or that. Everyone knows this. So when the Producers of 24 show a U.S. under siege, basically the worst Bush nightmare that's been sold and sold and sold -- and whose power was starting to wear off, finally, after they went to the well so many times. Well...I think that maybe the escapism that 24 offers just isn't fun anymore. I think it's a bit of a cheat, and maybe, just maybe, the agenda isn't entirely 100% gripping TV. In the world of 24, unlike our world, we've already been shown that torture works.

The thing that really worries me is this: could dear, doomed, tragic Jack Bauer actually be working for the wrong side?

OMG! Americans like Us! They REALLY Like Us!

U.S. reaction on the press tour to Slings & Arrows, because though you all deny it, it really, really, really matters to you Canadians what Americans think:

But once in a very long while, a Canadian series somehow makes its way across the border to be embraced by an American audience: SCTV. Red Green. Kids in the Hall. Due South ... Add to that list Slings & Arrows, the third – and for all intents and purposes, final – season of the smartly satirical Stratford spoof now set to air on, and partially financed by, the American Sundance Channel.

For which we can thank Canadian Laura Michalchyshyn, Sundance's executive vice- president and GM of programming and creative affairs, hired away in 2005 from a similar position at Alliance Atlantis.

"When Robert Redford and I hired Laura two years ago," recalls Sundance CEO Larry Aidem, "she had only one condition and it was that we permit her to buy as much Canadian programming as she wanted, with a floor of 50 per cent and a ceiling of 90 per cent.

"And we said very quickly, `Number one, what's the catch? And two, where is Canada?'

"But seriously ... our audience does not distinguish between the kinds of original programming that we make and the kinds of acquired programming that Laura and her team selects, often from around the world. At the end of the day, they're either good or not and they're exclusive to us, and in this case the audience just loves it."

As do the American critics, at least a half dozen of whom have come up to me this week to rave about the show (as if I had anything to with it, aside from being born in the same country)

(It will be interesting to see if they can resist the siren call to do a Season 4. Between that and the news that the LOST producers are trying to negotiate an end date with the network, somebody's gotta ask: Is U.S. tv finally ready to change a bit and embrace something other than the open-ended 22 episode season?)

Or are Canada's newspaper writers ready to be a little less provincial? Back to that Lost presser again: looks like, um...no.

Jack Bauer Sucks

I find it extremely ironic that I'm currently writing on a show about a vampire and yet I'm humbled, really, at the thought that I'll not be able to come up with anything as cool as Jack Bauer gnawing on a guy's carotid artery.

I mean, damn.

Seriously. Buffy never kicked that much ass.