Whaddya Gonna Do?

UM. I just realized something.

Thanks to the Memorial Day Holiday in the USA, the absolute, last-ever episode of the Sopranos ever, ever ever... is not going to be June 3.

It's going to be June 10th.

On June 10th I'm not going to be in front of my widescreen HD TV. On June 10th, I'm going to be with a lot of other people ... at the Banff TV Festival.

Um.

No.

No. No. No. No. No.

This is not good. It's the TV FESTIVAL. I am, to quote the man, "prostate with grief." How am I supposed to avoid spoilers with a thousand people who work in TELEVISION?

Pssst. Hey there, TMN and Movie Central. How you doin'? That's a very nice dress you're wearing. It really brings out your exclusive output deal with HBO. Listen, do you mind if I lean in and whisper a few sweet nothings in your year?

Cough. Screening Party. Cough.

They Make TV Everywhere, You Know...

An old friend of the blog popped up on the comments of the last post, to raise a most excellent point.

I met Dennis Venter in my time in Cape Town, South Africa, when I was writing for Charlie Jade. Besides working on that show, he's written over 120 episodes of comedies and dramas for South Africa's (arguably) healthier TV industry. (Healthier than ours in some ways, but then again, the writers aren't unionized and don't make anywhere near the dosh we whining Canadians do. And guess what, kids? The job's just as hard.)

Anyway, Dennis writes:

When at Banff, look out for "Home Affairs", a finalist in the serial drama category. One of the shows I've worked on recently and a pretty good one overall.

One of the great things about the Banff TV Festival, if I remember correctly from the only other time I went (in 2001) is that the awards they give out are truly international. Onsite, there's a library where you can see some of the nominated shows - in many cases, shows that have not, and may not ever show up on North American Television.

When I was in South Africa, I got kind of hooked on a youth drama show they had there called Yizo Yizo. (They also got I'm Alan Partridge long before we did.) Yizo Yizo was crazy. A show in about eight languages every episode, set in an apartment block in Joburg, with all sorts of great and odd South African music on the soundtrack. I'd never seen anything even vaguely like it. Now, I have to look up Home Affairs. Supposedly there's a South African kind of West Wing show that's pretty good, too. Maybe Dennis can tell us the name of that. I'm looking forward to Green Wing and I've seen a bit o' The Street, but forgive us, world, the U.S. next door is just so bloody loud that we often can't hear some of the quieter siren calls from foreign program makers.

I know this blog gets a good international tradewind, so how 'bout it? Go to the Banff site and look at the nominated shows. Any of those shows that we North Americans haven't seen? Are they worth tearing yourself away from the pretty pretty Rockies to take a look? Let me know in the comments.

Skate of the Nation

WELL, I'M not doing all that well in the (Semi) Famous Writers' Hockey Pool (Suck it, Cunningham!) but eight full days of sitting in a too-cold office on my new show has borne great fruit. We've broken full three stories, exciting and meaty episodes all, and today we had a big, beautiful, enthusiastic meeting...the result of which is I shall happily be spending the next week or so of my life going to outline.

I say happily, which of course is a lie, because I don't think there's a TV writer alive who likes to write an outline. They're ponderous, painful, evolutionarily-deadening beasts, destined to be slopped and written over and trampled underfoot on the way to scripted glory.

But man, if you don't do a good one, you're setting yourself up to be pincushion one at the needle haystack rodeo.

(Look at that. All of a sudden I'm channeling Dan Rather on peyote.)

There's a certain something truly comical about where I am sitting right now. We're still in our temporary digs, at one room at the back of a massive, utterly empty production office that most recently served as the office for "Diary of the Dead," which I think is the latest Zombie-splattermasterpiece from George Romero which may also be a crossover with Anne Hathaway's character from the Princess Diaries.

I'm making that last part up, but tell me you wouldn't pay 12 bucks to see THAT bastard.

The point is, it's cold in this little office. It's really cold. Air Conditioning is set to "Kill The Planet" and none of us can figure out how to stop it. Oh well.

I'm hoping for a good tuck in tomorrow and great progress on my first story. It's a challenge because unlike my last two shows, a) I'm not coming in late where there's a whole bunch of scripts and cuts already to judge the character voices, or b) I didn't spend months creating it, so I haven't locked into the voices that way.

So instead, I'll painstakingly rewatch the pilot, try for the actors' cadences -- take every scrap I can from what the Showrunners say about each character, and then go in there and try to bulletproof a story.

Because that's all you can do.

Somewhere in this whole process there will be an outline, and a poker game, and then notes and revisions and then a trip to Vancouver to see The Police and then a first draft and then a Banff.

So. Um.

Yeah.

Lots of stuff coming up. Oh. And if we want to be sticklers, I suppose I also owe a couple of book reviews and maybe a promised interview with the writer of Durham County, and maybe some thoughts on some of the scripts for fall shows that I've read and Oh yeah I think I may buy a car.

So...Somebody order me one. I'll be back when I can.

If the waitress wants money, Cunningham's buying.

Sensitive Men Everywhere Go "Ooohh!"

Oh Jenna, Jenna, Jenna:

NEW YORK (AP) - Jenna Fischer of "The Office" has fractured her back in four places, but it could've been a lot worse.

Her publicist tells the New York Daily News that Fischer fell down some stairs at a bar where a party for "The Office" was being held. The publicist says Fischer "avoided anything scary near the spine and she'll make a full recovery in time to shoot season four of "The Office" this summer.

Now, I admit, I've been a bit of a "Karen is way hot" guy this season. But after walking over hot coals and her scene last week, and now this, all I can say is:

PAMMMM!

Midweek at the Upfronts, And...

Can't say I'm too excited.

Oh sure, I didn't hold out a lot of hope for VERONICA MARS, but still...a few years from now, when Kristen Bell is a much bigger star off much lesser material, there will be no comfort. I still sort of resent the whole post-MY SO CALLED LIFE career of Claire Danes.

I'm sorry to see that JERICHO went, too, as I think scheduling killed that show, and now they have to pay the sins of the new reality of the TV business:

Maybe you can't take breaks with your big shows.

If that lesson is learned, then maybe Jericho will not have died in vain. Not holding my breath, though.

Many people told me THE CLASS was worth another look, but I never got around to it. And now I don't have to.

I can't say I'm too impressed by the Vampire P.I. series going in after Ghost Whisperer on CBS. Besides the fact that I've seen that show a million times, and even worked on a show that tried to give that premise a fresh spin, I read the pilot. And it was meh.

The fact that I know I'm going to love VIVA LAUGHLIN (I loved the British original, BLACKPOOL) is tempered by the fact that I know it's going to be almost instantly canceled.

Josh Schwartz, two series. Woo. Hoo. Try not to burn through eight seasons worth of plot by Christmas...

I don't think I can take two more seasons of 24. Jack Bauer, your show is tired. I SAID YOUR SHOW IS TIRED!

To tell you the truth, the only thing that got a smile from me was at least HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER got another season. That's fairly thin gruel.

And let's have a moment of silence for the writers who are currently, or will soon be, trying to come up with a second joke that could propel the Geico CAVEMEN past the 30 second mark.

Oh wait.

Oh.

Oh man.

I just had a thought. What if the CAVEMEN pickup is fake? Maybe -- just maybe -- ABC is going to put hidden cameras in that writers' room and all the offices and watch as the specially-cast writers slowly go insane and one by one by one commit ritual suicide.

Man. That, I'd watch.

Gina Holden is One of The Good Ones

IN CANADIAN Television, you sometimes hear a bit of grumbling about the actors. "They're just not experienced," you hear. Or "disciplined..." you hear that a lot too. Or...they don't have that "star" quality, it will be sniffed--until they go south and get cast in some big show in the States. Just you watch, within about two, two and a half weeks, you're going to see an article in your local paper profiling "all the Canadian faces who will be on U.S. screens this fall."

For the most part, this will probably mark the first time an article has ever been written about these actors in Canada, even though most of them have been working for years. Way to go, Canadian journos!

But one of those other criticisms that gets whispered a lot is, "they don't know how to be a lead." And that one isn't always false.

A lot of Canadian actors make their bones by appearing in small parts in (usually American) shows shooting here. So you'll do two, three, four days on a show -- even if you're a featured cast member or villain for that week.

When you're a lead, you're on screen a lot more than that. A lot more. It affects how you have to prepare, the number of lines you have, how you build a character, how you track that character's journey through the show...

...it can freak you out a bit. You get to the end of your tricks, all those little games and actor-y things you do that have always served you so well, and lo and behold...um....

Now they want something else.

Most actors I know have also been entirely responsible for building their own character's backstory. Either the script is flat and they are functionary and they have no clue who they are, or the Director is completely disinterested in the old dayplayer. They just want to track the big fish.

Directors, in my experience, deserve a lot more of the brunt of criticism for actors not being great on screen than they ever cop to. I was having a conversation with a far more experienced hand than I yesterday, and we both wryly came up with four or five examples of actors who had worked in this country, but not well, who had never been too impressive, and then suddenly went down to the USA and got a whole lot better. Fast.

Maybe they improved their craft, right?

Uh huh. In one pilot season? Maybe they finally brought their A-game?

Or...maybe the difference in most of these performances is, for the first time, they were actually directed. They were challenged and tasked in such a way that they weren't just another set piece being moved around.

When an actor is asked to direct themselves, the results are never very pretty. Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor have both astonished me in various roles, but nothing could save them from their performances in the second Star Wars trilogy. (And don't blame greenscreen...there's some great performances in Dark City, for instance.)

There are a whole lot of name-brand directors in Canada (people you've heard of) who are famous for not being able to talk to actors, at all. It's a big problem -- because with our smaller budgets and tighter timelines we're often flying through ridiculously scheduled shoot days...and an adrift, flailing actor has no way to help themselves. But the only person they can turn to can't communicate in a way that makes sense to the actor. (Hint: "say the line like this" does not work.)

I've had the pleasure of being on a few sets where the director really was able to pull great performances out of mediocre actors, and elevate the performances of actors who were doing pretty well themselves. It's like Night and Day. Which is why, I guess, I've always had a bit of razzie for the directors who only like to geek out over the shot and the action. It's about the actors. They're the greatest special effect you have.

Oh my God, I swear, this blogging thing is not representative of the writing I usually do. This stream of consciousness thing really is interesting because what was supposed to be the two or three graph intro to the post has now eaten the whole thing. I better get to it, though, because I've got to be in my car driving to work in about twenty minutes.

Hmm... So.

Back in "how to be a lead" territory. Most showrunners will tell you that their secret fear is that their actors will turn into unmanageable monsters. There is something latent in the actor gene code, maybe it's there from those years of go-sees and auditions where they were humiliated and poked and prodded and rejected, but there is a real danger of bad behavior sucking up all your time.

And then there are those actors who are so great that you just think, "this person's golden, and game, and somebody should build a show around them."

Gina Holden is an actor like that.

I've said before that one of the best things about Blood Ties was that we had an absolutely amazing cast. From the leads on down, a nicer, more professional group of actors you would never want to meet. I ran into Kyle Schmid in a bar in Toronto last week, and his ear-to-ear grin actually lifted my mood. And there are those people out there who know me who will testify that that, is a feat.

But right behind Kyle and Christina and Dylan, all season on Blood Ties (at least the half I worked) there was Gina. Gina had the job of Vicki's assistant, Coreen. It could have been a thankless role. She had to get out a lot of exposition -- which is always hard for an actor...but she'd spit out those names with aplomb. Gina would patiently wait as they put her in one crazy goth-costume after another. And this woman who was anything but goth would disappear behind the makeup.

The sisterly-relationship that Christina Cox and Gina played so well became a big part of the show in the back half of the season, and as the Vicki/Coreen bond grew, I think Blood Ties found a resonance that we all recognized was something special. All of it unplanned. All of it because Peter Mohan had the great idea to make Coreen Vicki's assistant, and because he cast a great actor who crackled onscreen with our lead.

Christina, too, was kind of protective of Gina in her role -- because, she said, she played exactly the same type of role back on F/X. That's class -- a lead actor who steps up, and wants her fellow cast members to have good material to play, too. Like I said, our cast was the best. Smart, engaged and talented, too. Was I in heaven, or Maple Ridge?

What I remember most about Gina, though, is that she was game for anything. She had bugs put all over her in one episode. Great! "Did you see it?" She would beam. She had an unbridled enthusiasm. Several time after scripts went out, she would come up to the writers and be excited, and thankful. She would always laugh at the good lines during the readings -- and not to speak for any of the other writers, but the fact that Gina and Christina had a funny energy that was totally different than the energy between Christina and Kyle or Christina and Dylan was manna from heaven -- it gave us somewhere new to go. You have no idea what it's like to realize that all four of your main actors, if need be, can actually sell a joke. It's awesome.

Not to spoil or anything -- but Gina figures prominently in the BT season finale. And because everything in a series IS about the lead, Coreen and her part, gives Vicki a chance to emote, deal with a big problem, and show heart in a way, in a depth she hasn't before. It's amazing stuff. She does great work, and she helps Christina and all the other actors do great work.

It's exactly the kind of behavior you reward. And it's what you're looking for in a series lead.

So this week I read that Gina has been cast as Dale Arden in the Sci-Fi Channel's new Flash Gordon series, which will be airing soon. If there's a second season of Blood Ties, and I go back to it, I will miss writing for her, and I'll miss seeing her, because an actor with that level of enthusiasm is something that just gets to be infectious.

But she's going to be an awesome Dale. Good luck, Gina!

Dude!

Seriously, Dude. Seriously.

Look What's Taking Schrute...

25 Episodes of Earl?
30 for The Office?

Whatever can it mean?

Weinman says this:

In the case of The Office this might enable NBC to sell the show to syndication a year earlier than usual -- 30 half-hours plus the 50 they've made already will be 80 episodes, which is short of the magic number of 100 but is sometimes enough to get syndicated. So NBC may get a double whammy: fewer reruns, and perhaps some syndication money to cover the cost of producing more episodes.

Hmmm. Imagine a world where they order MORE episodes?

Sigh.

OH, CHRISSY.

The Fresh, The Familiar, and The Impossible Trick

TODAY WE'RE going to geek out a bit about process and psyche here, and it will be insidery and not necessarily pretty. You've been warned.

Friend of the blog blueglow waded in a with an interesting couple of comments in the post below, where I talk about the upfronts. Here's a taste of what he had to say:

This is a little off topic with regard to the body of your post, but it's something I've been thinking about since i started reading the various blogs about writing and screenwriter and since I am currently in full procrastination mode... what the hell...

I have no idea how you guys do it.

If I was ingesting the amount of info about the biz and the trends in programming you do on a daily basis I don't think I could write a word...I know when I have tried to pay attention to shows of a similar ilk to the ones I'm working on it stops me dead because it makes me feel like there in not a single original thought in my head so why bother...How do you manage to navigate thru a story when you are so aware of all the other stories and series that in development or are going on around you -- obviously you're able to do it (you're working tons right now) but I know if I was paying as much attention to the media as you do I would feel like there was little point in adding to the clutter....the question I guess I am asking (because people work in different ways) is, do you take into consideration all the other shows that are being kicked around or are on the air when you work at the most fundamental elements of plotting and characterization?

The short answer is Yes -- not necessarily the shows that are upcoming (not in any real organized way) but certainly shows that have come before that have a similar area.

This answer is going to be a rough mix of process and the much muddier psychological whys. (I was trying to lay out one then the other, but I can't figure out how to do that because they're so mixed.)

Though I completely understand your approach, and I understand everything you're saying, the thought of working the way you do terrifies me, because how would I know if I was doing something that a similar show had already done? If you don't know what else people have done and are doing in the genre, how can you possibly know when you're being original? See, same question, same neurosis, opposite entry point.

I tend to go into things for television from a craft entry point anyway, because that has so much with how I view the idea of originality on TV.

Simply put, I think when we talk originality on TV we're using a different mixture, or recipe, than when people talk originality in art or in the novel or even the movie. Originality in TV to me is more akin to originality in popular music.

When you hear an unbelievably catchy song on the radio (these days, if you're talking a new song you haven't heard before, I'm probably talking, on the satellite ratio) the thing that gets you is that most of the time it pulls off an impossible trick: it simultaneously feels and sounds fresh and familiar. Maybe there's something about the bassline or the chord progression, or maybe it's built upon a sample from an earlier song you liked...but to me the pleasure comes from feeling that it's both new and familiar - both receptors in your brain go crazy, and that's why some songs you hear for the first time and go, "that's amazing!" and you love it right away.

I think that's kind of like what we do in TV. TV is about constantly pulling off the impossible trick. When you drag people out to a theater (and I'm talking about viewers here who aren't 18 year old boys with no sense of history) you have a bit of a higher burden on creativity -- it needs to not be something you've ever seen before, or if it's even the slightest bit pastiche, it better be great pastiche, like The Departed. Same is true of a good novel, I think.

But at home you're competing with laundry and the kids and pilates and dinner and the effing cat, and most of the time you really need to draw in your viewer quickly or they'll choose one of their other 278 entertainment options. And of course, because your timeline is longer -- rules of characterization are completely different. Imagine trying to paint a character like Tony Soprano in 2 hours and 30 mins.

When I sit down with a series idea, my entry always is 1) Okay, what's this like? 2) Now, how's it different? 3) What am I going to give the audience that surprises them -- something they haven't seen before?

And I go from there. When I'm writing off a bible I didn't create, it drills down to the episode level. What's the shorthand of this ep? Is it a Frankenstein story? Is it the Telltale Heart? (genre room, now) or What's the obstacle here: (action show, now) ticking clock bomb, secret that can't get out, etc. etc. I can't speak for my compatriots, but when I was on Blood Ties, I was very aware of Buffy and Angel, and would often when bumping up against something, think, "how'd they do this?" to actively try to go in another direction. (I didn't much consider Forever Knight, since I've only seen maybe a half dozen eps of that show, and it was long enough ago now that I think the statute of limitations has run out on story-messing.)

The thing is, I enjoy working this way. When I see a series that's cross-pollinated two genres, I'm delighted and giddy to see if it works. When I see a refinement of an idea that's out there already, I love it. Raines, to me, was kind of genius-y because it took that Medium/Ghost Whisperer vibe and gave it a secular twist that men and women could watch equally. I'm not gonna watch Medium because I don't really buy the whole psychic mom thing, and the less said about Ghost Whisperer the better. To me, Raines was that idea 2.0, in that because he knew his conversations were all in his head, you were automatically off the hook in believing in heebiejeebie, and it was also a great extension and twist on the defective detective area Monk introduced a few years back. His vision/conversations told you about him and revealed his character, not just plot. I'm constantly looking to do something like that. I want to pull off the impossible trick.

I also have this need to figure out when a show fails, why it fails, beyond bad timeslot or poor promotion. I'm not as good at that, but I think I'm getting better. But. But. I worry that more and more of the shows I find fresh and original don't catch on. I'm not quite at the point where I'm second guessing my own tastes yet -- not really -- but I can see that being a potential problem in the future.

Some people might look on my way in as setting the bar lower, but, fine, let them go off and get work then, I couldn't care less. Working my way cuts me a little more slack because the boulder you still have to roll up the hill is huge, but at least you've got all those giants who came before helping you push. I tend to think that execution of an idea is all.

(Nothing makes me angrier than a great idea poorly executed. Seriously, I can't understand for the life of me once you've caught the tiger by the tail and have a great idea that you don't do the work to make it good. Arrrrgh.)

Let's face it, TV only has a truly 'revolutionary' show once every few years. And the revolutions are constantly being re-fought, because people have no memory. All In The Family made certain topics OK for tv, and now they're not again. Hill Street Blues gritted up the drama. E.R. amped the pace, made jargon and complex research okay, then de rigeur -- and The Sopranos signalled that Cable was now the tastemaker. Most of the stuff that is really groundbreaking (Hello, Twin Peaks) burns bright and out fast. Those shows leave marks on us all as creators, without necessarily re-shuffling the landscape.

Now a bigger question is: why am I this way? Well, I've got a theory.

I'm in the first Sesame Street generation. That show, The Electric Company, and even Mr. Rogers -- those shows were made for me.

Those were the last shows that were made for me.

I don't want to back and refight the great and stupid GenX-Boomer culture war, but the truth of it is, when I was growing up, I and most people my age were cultural refugees. We'd come home from school and watch Three's Company and M*A*S*H, shows that were in NO WAY aimed at us. (Seriously, could you imagine a 10 year old today watching reruns of West Wing? I know they watch Friends, but Frasier? Not so much.) The culture was obsessed with boomerdom. I watched the old SNL and watched the cast change to the Eddie Murphy SNL, and then the ringer years where the old boomers came back. But it wasn't aimed at me. Letterman was aimed at college students when I was still in high school. Parents were watching Carson. I watched and appreciated them both. Because I wasn't locked into stuff that was aimed directly at me, I surfed and cadged a lot more from various places. I discovered jazz early, and my parents were quite puzzled when I got hard into Sinatra at 15 or 16. To them, that was their parents' music: but to me, it was all the same. All culture talked about events that happened before I was born, or referenced things I had to go look up. That's just the way it was. I didn't give it a second thought.

While this was going on, the whole pop culture ascendancy came in, too. Entertainment Tonight came on the scene. 24 hour news became a factor. Then MTV and Muchmusic -- which was the only part of the culture that I felt aimed at me, and even then, for only about eight minutes. Weekend box office totals started making the papers.

By the time I got to University, cultural marketers had started to finally cool on the boomers in order to go after their kids. A Young Market was identified and people started actively going for it. The entire concept of 'tween shows' still freaks me out a little, because, man, where were those shows when I was that age?

I'd look at SNL, and Sandler and those guys came in and I sometimes found them funny, but not all the time. And the boomers clucked "Saturday Night Dead" and how bad it was, while the people a few years younger than me were getting it. And for a while it was, "wait a minute...where's our cultural moment? Oh, don't tell me it was that fucking TIME magazine article, the Coupland book and Reality Bites...C'mon...I'm gonna fucking kill somebody!"

The came Britney...

And...

Oh..oh man. These people behind me...they're not going to be cultural refugees, are they? Hmm.

Part of having to spend all those years parsing things that weren't meant for you made my brain work in a way where it kind of always stands apart and analyses. Very rarely do I ever get fully immersed in a story or a movie or a TV show. I'm always clocking where they're going, and what they're doing... Once upon a time I thought this was just the famous GenX cynicism, but I've come to understand that that's merely a symptom, not a cause. It's not so much cynicism as it is distance. A distance that comes from spending those big teenage years not as the focus, but on the outside of a culture looking in.

So it is any wonder that now that I'm making culture that I feel comfortable working that way?

I don't know how it's going to work for those coming up behind me. Because I have to assume that the marketers klieg light is going to shift again. Now we have the "Most Praised Generation" entering the workforce, and there are hilarious articles like this, all I can think is, "what's going to happen when these guys find that the experience they've had all their lives is shifting? How will the people who've had stories aimed at them their whole lives react when they have to tell stories for someone else?

I guess we'll see.

I'm gonna keep my head down, clock what's out there, and keep on trying to pull the Impossible Trick.