Tumbleweeds

WELL, I didn't get my full outline revised and off to the CBC so there'll be cleanup over the weekend.

And the hardworking crew of The Border will be shooting well into the wee hours tonight. But after that, most of us will be on hiatus for a week. Not all - there's some second unit in Ottawa and Vancouver...but that's small by comparison.

Everyone's limping into the weekend, and I hope to read some books -- actual books - this week, see a play, some friends, acquire some life experience, you know -- all the stuff I don't do because I'm chained to a laptop.

Last night I was at The Spoke Club here in Toronto catching up with an old friend who's just shot a new pilot. Much shop talk, much fun, much bumping into old friends and colleagues with news and gossip and yore...

One of those delightful people, friend of the blog Jenncow, sent me an email this morning with a simple little tagline that I think sums up the quest in this business better than most...

Have fun, be nice, do good work.

So I guess I'll leave you with that. Blogging will be light til Labor Day. Have fun.

Don't Just Get MAD, Get Caught Up.

WELL, THAT'S PRETTY smart.

If you dropped off after the pilot or never got the chance to tune in, AMC is giving you all another chance to see MAD MEN.

Starting 9 a.m., Sunday, Sept 2, AMC will run the first 7 episodes in a marathon.

So there you go.
H/T to Maureen Ryan.

And what's all the fuss about? As she puts it:

Some shows are really good at one or two things (for instance, "Psych" is really good at inspired physical comedy and generally entertaining silliness). And that's just fine -- doing one or two things exceptionally well is no small accomplishment.

But then there are shows that wow you in a whole bunch of ways, and "Mad Men" is one of them. I love the detailed period sets and costumes; the cynical, witty dissection of the ad industry; the complicated gender politics; the dispassionate look at what it takes to achieve the American dream; and the startling glimpse of a time when racism, anti-Semitism and sexism were not only routinely ignored but hardly even seen as important issues.




And then there's the acting on the show, which is nothing short of spectacular. All the characters at the fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency are instantly intriguing, and Don Draper, the mysterious ad man played by Jon Hamm, is more fascinating every week. Who is Draper? What makes him tick? In a way, we know even less about him than we ever have, even after five episodes of the show have aired.

Mad Men airs Thursday nights at 10pm on AMC.

Panic in the Streets of L.A.

I'VE BEEN really enjoying Kay Reindl's blog of late. She rings truthful on so many things, and has a front-line reportage style and matter-of-factness that I appreciate.

Yesterday I asked about what people were looking forward to from the new fall schedule. It was partly a plant (and I knew this) because, of course, on the net everyone always favors the sci-fi or fantasy genre shows. But the other reason I was asking was because of the whispering. The whispering I hear-- even waaaaaaaay up here in Canada, is that nobody's too impressed. And there's a lot of dread going into this fall. But what the hell, I'm a million miles away. Let Kay tell you what it feels like in Studio City, CA:

Starting Monday, we've got a meeting a day all week. It feels like development season is cranking up. The studios seem to have just realized that holy CRAP, Labor Day's coming up! MUST BUY PROJECTS! I didn't think it was possible, but this year's even more fucked up than last year. Networks haven't bought a lot yet but the stories about pitching are pretty much the same across the board. Nobody wants to commit to anything. I think part of that is because of the mess that the fall season has become. More shows are in trouble at more networks than ever before. The networks and studios don't have any faith in the product they're putting on in the fall. They can't even pretend they do, because we've all heard the rumors. And you know what? Big effing surprise. The shows they bought are pilots, not TeeVee shows. They constantly order shows that don't have engines. There's a lot of firing of showrunners and actors going on. Too much. The main reason television works -- a vision -- is being excised from the process. So new showrunners are stumbling around in the dark, being forced to start from scratch with a show they didn't conceive.

Think about the best shows you've seen. They can all be traced to a singular vision, can't they? All I see with the fall season is TeeVee by committee, which has never worked. The show I'm enjoying the most right now is Mad Men and boy, does that have a singular vision. It's also got a complex, not always likeable lead character. This isn't something you get with a committee. Every episode of this show is a dark little gem. In episode three, we got to see the three different generations and how they saw each other. A WWII vet, a Korean war vet, and somebody who didn't serve. They don't understand each other at all, which is relayed in a brilliant piece of dialogue delivered by the underrated John Slattery. And last week, we learned more about Don's past. The last scene with his brother was one of the most complex, dark scenes I've seen on American TeeVee in a long-ass time.

Ever since they started talking about the "showrunner school" I've been a little filled with trepidation by what I saw as the erosion of the U.S. writer-showrunner culture. Here in Canada it's my honest opinion (and Lord knows, I've said it before) that the main thing preventing us from creating truly superior product is the lack of this singular vision Kay talks about.

Shows in Canada seem to come largely in three stripes:

1. Inexperiened creator who is "helped" by more experienced producer/director (ie: nibbled to death by ducks or gothic power play between the different positions)
2. Tv by committee (where the network notes are dived on slavishly, everyone gets to weigh in, and the product is reduced to a fine paste)
3. Neverwas shows: shows by someone "with a track record" -- except that "track record" is usually as a U.S. line producer where the closest they ever go to creative was their lunch order.
   

Kay's dead right about Mad Men. Part of why this show is ricocheting like a bullet in my brain is because the layering, the detail, and the slow reveal is just so...measured. Professional. Well executed.

We have had these shows before in Canada: Durham County, Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys, Our Hero, DaVinci's Inquest, Intelligence, Slings & Arrows.

We just need to make more.

But it's awfully hard to make that argument when you see the edifice crumbling to the south of you.

Aw, bag it. Who wants pie?

CSI Why?

KATE TAYLOR has been taking a kick at the TV beat in the Globe & Mail in the absence of John Doyle, who I hope returns quite bloody soon. It's been hit and miss. But she absolutely nails CSI today:

I have been desperately catching up on my CSI watching in recent days because the CRTC has me spooked. Usually we can trust the broadcast regulator to nothing much of anything that might stand between Canadians and their American television shows, but recently it actually made a ruling. Its ruling was that History Television has until January to dump CSI: NY from its schedule.

History is a specialty channel with the mandate of providing programming that is historically significant to Canadians. It tried to argue that the show's occasional references to the events of Sept. 11 meant that CSI: NY fell within that mandate. For once, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, an organization much given to swallowing whatever codswallop Canada's private broadcasters have on offer, was not buying.

Okay, seriously, I have been watching the CSI shows, ubiquitous in summer reruns, only because I wanted to prove my thesis that CSI is not only the most watched dramatic series on television, it is also the most unpleasant dramatic series on television. The crimes it depicts are brutal and gory, and the forensic specialists who solve them are know-it-all, cold and glib with little sympathy for the bereaved (who often turn out to be murderers themselves or at the very least adulterers, gamblers or alcoholics).

Meanwhile, anyone who has been stupid enough to wind up as a dead body is subject not merely to a messy autopsy but also to contemptuous quips from the forensics team. These jokes are never funny, which may explain why no one in a CSI show ever laughs: These self-important dramas are completely humourless.

So why do millions watch CSI? I have two words for you: The first one is death and the second one is sex.

The forensic scientists themselves, the first ones in the history of policing to conduct interviews with witnesses and to wear Armani suits under their lab coats, never lose their cool. They never scream, they never cry; the most they ever do is squint a bit or make earnest declarations about the cause of justice.

In that same episode of CSI: NY, Detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) began to explain to Det. Bonasera why they had to correct a past forensic oversight that was about to get some guy wrongfully convicted of murder. Taylor was earnest, perhaps a trifle more earnest than he usually is, but to describe him as passionate on the subject would be an insult to lovers everywhere. Bonasera, however, proceeded to tell him she had not seen him this happy and animated about anything in the years since his wife was killed on Sept. 11. To me, the guy looked only one notch above catatonic, but that's what she said. (I hope that, in passing, you took due note of that significant history lesson: People who lost relatives on Sept. 11 are still sad.)

She goes on to stick it to David Caruso in CSI: Miami -- and here's where it gets interesting for me:

In the particular reruns I was watching, he comforted his sister-in-law - if you find deadpan delivery and some crinkling of the crow's feet a comfort - an awful lot. His brother, her husband, is an agent who is supposed to be dead, but actually has gone underground. She is, of course, very beautiful. (She's played by Sofia Milos and is long gone from current episodes of the show.) She, not being a forensics expert, sometimes gets tearful. He narrows his eyes.

Like all possible relations between CSI principals, this one can never be consummated. Sleeping with your sister-in-law! Please, that's the kind of low behaviour one might expect from a secondary character.

Heh heh. Thank God. Anytime someone looks at a CSI show and goes, "huh?" I feel a little bit better about the fact that I CANNOT STAND THE FRANCHISE. The coldness, the humorlessness

How much do I hate CSI? Last Christmas, I found myself in a hospital emergency room with a sick relative. I was there waiting for 4 hours, at 2 in the morning. There were no magazines. The only thing to do was the one TV where Showcase was rerunning 3 episodes of various CSI's.

I opted to stare at the wall.

By the way, Sofia Milos is a very fine actor indeed. Which is why we're so very jazzed to have her in a multi-episodic guest part on The Border.

She's awesome. And in January, you'll get to see how awesome for yourselves.

Golick breaks down Blood Ties

JILL GOLICK'S GOT a breakdown of the Blood Ties pilot up at her digs. Go read.

On the mystery side, Mohan follows not only the investigation but also the villain. In many mystery series, we see the crimes only from the detective's p.o.v. Starting right in the second scene of the teaser, we meet Norman, the villain (he's one of the villains anyway and the guy who calls the evil demon into action). This is great for cranking up the stakes and this storyline provides the scenes for every act breaks except the final curtain on Act Four.

On the premise side of the story, Vicky is introduced to us in the first scene of the teaser. As a result we see her as the central figure in the series and since she's a former cop turned private detective, we quite naturally follow her into the mystery. And since her ex-partner-ex-beau is the cop investigating the same crime his involvement is also organic.

But the third player -- Henry the vampire -- is a little trickier to pull into the story. Mohan introduces him in the third scene of act one. Like Vicky, his first scene is purely for character purposes and only in his second scene does he learn of the crime that he too begins to investigate. He's investigating because the crime looks like it was committed by a vampire and he's afraid that he'll be blamed.

By mid-way through Act One, we have two story lines that are independent investigations of the third story which features the crime unfolding. That puts all three on a collision course.

Short Hits

RIGHT NOW, I'm limping toward a hiatus. There are DVD's piled up beside my TV's that I want to watch. There are six or seven candidates for "book I'm going to read" auditioning themselves on the table beside the couch. And I'm trying to get feedback on one outline and give it on another.

I've got idears for posts, but I'm vamping for a bit while I find the time to do them. Let me break it down for a minute, baby:

• There is now a completely linked and inverse relationship between my love for Entourage and my love for Flight of the Conchords, which HBO recently gave a second season. The latter is as fresh and winning and smile-making as the former is dreary. I thought it was interesting that Entourage this week was a whole lot better simply because Ari was involved with the boys' plot. I don't care about his kids' school. I never did. As for Flight of the Conchords, there simply is nothing bad anyone could ever say about Bowie's In Space:

• Thanks to a friend at NBC/Universal, I've seen the Bionic Woman pilot, and I have thoughts. I'm hoping to write those up in the next couple days. I'm bummed they canned the deaf sister subplot though. I thought that was pretty cool. Oh, and I hope the series stops looking like it was shot on Planet Vancouver.
• I went back and forth about getting a pass for the Toronto International Film Festival this year. But the combination of the fact that I'll be in prep for an episode then, and the fact that they bumped the Industry Pass by 100 bucks on August 7 kind of made my decision for me. But that doesn't mean I'm opposed to seeing films. If you've got your suggestions, or better yet, stray passes to this or that, feel free to set daddy up.
• I'm interested in a reader poll, and here it is: One show from the new fall lineup, and only one -- that you're looking forward to. Not two. One. If you could only watch one, what would it be? I'd like to see if there's any difference between the Americans and the rest of the world on this one.
  

Just Between Us Girls

I SAW A rough, rough cut of my first episode of THE BORDER today.

Episode 103 -- Directed by John Fawcett.

Edited by Brett Sullivan.

And...

Um....how to put this?


Yessssssssssssssss.

When you can see the show and get excited about it at the rough cut, well nelly, you may just have something there.

Across The River To Motor City Canadian Dates Set

FRESHLY CONFIRMED. Read the Playback story here.

Across the River to Motor City will face Global's Shark and CTV's Big Shots when it goes to air this fall, stepping into the Thursday 10 p.m. slot on most Citytv stations in late November.

The six-parter by Devine Entertainment and Jonsworth Productions will bow on the Citys in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver on Nov. 22. That date is also the 44th anniversary of the JFK assassination, which seemingly has something to do with -- although producers have been coy on this point -- the murder mystery at the heart of the series, which is set half in the present day, half in 1963.

Winnipeg will be the first to see the series. The City station there will debut Motor City on Nov. 19, at 10 p.m. CT.

The series was co-created by Robert Wertheimer (Charlie Jade, Bollywood/Hollywood) of Jonsworth and the very busy Denis McGrath (Blood Ties, The Border). Wertheimer was also showrunner, cowriter and exec producer, working with execs David Devine and Richard Mozer. Michael DeCarlo directed with David Greene as DOP.

Nov 22 preem date = way cool.

More later -- the "very busy Denis McGrath" has to run off to a read through.

Bless Me Shelley For I Have Sinned.

EPISODE TWO of Californication, and...

...still interested.

And for the life of me I don't know why. I'm not like Alex at Complications Ensue, who generally has a problem with unlikable main characters. But this guy has so little to recommend him. The middle aged writer who women of all stripes throw themselves at is a ridiculous construct. But there's something about the other people that I just find compelling. And Duchovny too, I guess. Although he better do something quick or I'm gonna get bored. And Evan Handler hasn't been this wasted for a long time. And every time I see Pamela Adlon, I mourn Lucky Louie.

At least they got the new husband character right. However much you don't like Duchovny, that guy's way worse.

It can't be just that, like the main character, I hate L.A., can it? I mean, that's crazy talk.

Meanwhile, Mad Men is turning into some heap big interesting Walter Mitty gothic fantasy -- with the revelation that Don Draper's greatest sales job is his own identity. I know I'm not the only one who thought when he went into the box in the last ep that maybe, just maybe, he was going to take care of his newfound brother Sopranos-style. It's testimony to the fact that you don't know this character at all. You don't know what he's going to do -- which was always the sick fascination with Tony. Me likey.

Will has been speculating lately that the stake has finally been driven through the "tv season" and I tend to agree. I fully expected that once the Sopranos, uh...stopped in mid frame, I wouldn't turn on my TV the rest of the summer.That's pretty much been my practice for the last several years. But this year it seems that there was always something to fill a (lighter) viewing schedule. There was enough to watch that I even was able to opt out of some stuff: I didn't go back to Big Love, I dropped out of Rescue Me -- I should have dropped out of John from Cincy after the big parking lot speech...'m on the edge of doing the same for Entourage -- though I kind of want to see the big Cannes episode.

Anyway, if anyone can tell me why I like Californication, I'll offer you a guided tour of my soul. Bring a poncho. The first three rows are going to get wet.

I don't even know what that means.

Blood Ties Tonight!

THE WAIT is over for long-suffering Canadian fans. If you receive via your cable box thingy either the Toronto or Winnipeg feeds for Citytv, you get your chance to see the two hour premiere of Blood Ties tonight at 8 pm.

Calgary and Vancouver, you're up later this week.

Vinay Menon in the Toronto Star has an ouch-y but quite hilarious review -- just click the "Toronto Star" link back there a few words, like.

Enjoy.

The Terrible Twos.

I GOT IT wrong last year. Turns out that today is actually the second anniversary of my first post.

And, as is traditional on this date, I reveal for those who occasionally ask, how this blog came to be called "Dead Things on Sticks."

I've had a run in the last year that even I can't believe. There's a sick sense when you hit a run of being in demand -- you know it's not forever, you feel like you can't possibly turn anything down, lest you never get another job again.

But there's just no getting around the fact that I've had a great run of luck, in an industry that's perpetually on the brink. I am extraordinarily grateful for that good fortune.

Since I started the blog, I've worked on six series. I've story-edited about seven or eight projects for other writers. I've had four shows in development -- one of which was greenlit. I've worked on two other projects for friends of mine -- one of them was a comedy series that so deserved to be on TV that I will always be shocked by the decision not to pick it up. But that's the game.

When I started the blog I was feeling dislocated and disconnected. It was hard to feel the "where" of this industry. In Canada, TV production is spread out in a way that it's not in the USA. And the mechanics of the industry here almost feels sometimes like it's designed to keep writers apart.

One of the aims I had starting this blog was to figure out where and if the heart of this industry lay; if there were other writers out there who thought like I did.

I don't know where that heart is any more than I did then. But I know that it's a tenacious bastard and that anybody trying to kill it better bring the big fucking hob-nailed boots. We will not be stomped under easily.

I have met, through this blog, more people than I can count. We are a community that has not rallied in the past, and I think that's changing, however slowly. That change can't help but be good for the industry.

I'd like to thank a few of the people who have taught me much about what I do, through their insights, comments, and general examples -- Alex Epstein, Will Dixon, Jim Henshaw, Mark Farrell, Shelley Eriksen, Peter Mitchell, John Rogers, Rob Sheridan, Bill Cunningham, Jill Golick, and all the various and sundry others who've stopped by and joined the conversation. (Also, apologies to anyone I'm forgetting and to anyone whose clever little handles I haven't managed to decode yet. Cheeky monkeys.)

I also want to publicly apologize to Diane Kristine, who I managed to infect with the desire to track Canadian TV. It's a measure of just how inadequate publicity in this country is that her "TV, Eh?" site has become the defacto starting point for anybody looking for info on Canadian TV. And it's entirely a labor of love...not even love, exactly, because Diane, like all of us, has a fraught and sometimes puzzled relationship to Canadian TV. When our heads start to disappear up our collective recti, it's the Dianes of this country we have to remember.

There's a new generation of people working in this country who love TV, and want to make TV not as a consolation prize because it's too hard to get into film -- but because that's the medium they love best.

It's worth it, guys. Despite everything. If you don't mind working your butt off, suffering the occasional WTF??? and putting your life on hold sometimes to meet your deadline, it's so worth it.

The WGC, by the way, I think, has figures showing that over 85 percent of their members earn their living in TV... that's food for thought, hmm?

And while we're on the subject of the WGC, I gotta tell you guys, if you haven't joined yet -- consider moving up that timetable. The WGC has come to my aid on several occasions already. Maureen Parker, the Executive Director, works harder for Canadian writers than anyone can possibly know. If we hang on, we hang on largely because of the efforts of Parker and her team.

I write TV because, I'm convinced, I'm not really qualified to do anything else. It's what I love to do. I managed to go to a gathering last night that was essentially a 20th High School reunion. Being able to say, honestly, that you love what you do and you're satisfied, even happy with your professional life? Like the ad says -- it is priceless.

I come from the school where you complain constructively, because you want things to be ever better. I believe "good enough" isn't good enough -- and that that attitude needs to be scourged from our industry because the audience deserves better. I have seen great talent, and great talent that's coming up. Speak up. If you don't, you deserve to be taken advantage of.

This blog picked up some readers through Blood Ties -- so thanks to Peter Mohan for bringing me on board that show. I can't wait for viewers to see my episodes, cause I think they turned out really well. If you came for hot vampire lovin' and stayed for the babble, then thanks for that, too.

And my agent, Glenn Cockburn, deserves a shout out, along with everybody at Meridian Artists, because they've always supported what I try to do here even if it has occasionally made them a bit nervous.

I keep hearing that there is a date for Across The River To Motor City -- and I will put it out here when it's confirmed. And The Border starts in January 2008 -- so it should be a busy couple of months.

When I started this, I thought maybe I'd get a hundred hits a day. I'm humbled by the number of people who tune in and drop by to read what is essentially a very, very narrowly focused conversation. I relish the discourse and the introductions this blog has brought me. It's been a positive force in my life, and I thank you all for being part of that, and for putting up with my perpetual first drafts. First drafts suck, you know. So you've been very gracious about them. But no, I'm still not going to write shorter entries. Too hard.

By the way, my couch is very very comfortable. So don't let anyone ever tell you that there's no such thing as progress.