ANOTHER WEEK, wah.
I'll be on Q on CBC Radio again on Monday, talking post-Geminis and other TV related stuff.
Good Luck to the great cast of Rent-A-Goalie, who are up for Best Ensemble at the Geminis on Sunday night. There's a whole lot of sometimes deserved joking about the Geminis and what they mean or don't mean...but for a first season show to get that kind of nomination really recognizes how great all those actors are playing off each other.
I was at the second season launch party last night and they rode in on a Zamboni. It was awesome.
It was also fun as hell to see that second season premiere with James McGowan, who's Mr. Composed and Steely Leader on The Border, playing a crazed primadonna goalie arsonist. The guy's got range, yo.
RAG premieres Sunday at 9:30 on Showcase, with back to back episodes. I do believe the second one's written by a certain writer-blogger. I would be extremely remiss if I didn't point out that it was heavily rewritten by the RAG braintrust, who made it way funnier. That's what happens when you're a freelancer.
More thoughts next week. Good luck to everyone going to Regina.
Regina. Wow. Tres Jaloux.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Whose Fault Is It Anyway?
I THOUGHT A LOT about whether I should write this post or not. I don't really have a desire to go to war with people. I really don't. And you can just tell when someone won't really cotton to a little constructive criticism. So maybe I'll do the thing that you're supposed to do when you're giving big notes on a draft that needs a lot of work. I'll start with the good.
Onscreen, Jeff Seymour can be a very compelling actor. He has a dark, handsome, brooding look and a great voice and presence. He can play a hero, but he's best playing a kind of opportunistic guy out for his own ends. In any case, he's good on screen. He is.
Seymour emigrated to Canada from the United States when he got one of the leads on The Eleventh Hour, a CTV show that ran three seasons, but ultimately didn't really connect with an audience.
After the cancellation of that show, Seymour decided to stay here. Then after he produced a demo for it himself, CTV gave Jeff his own series. It was a half-hour, a comedy. Originally it was called Jeff@Work, and when it went to air, it was called Jeff Ltd. It ran two seasons on CTV and the Comedy Network, and was ultimately canceled due to low ratings. I wrote about it a few times.
Since the show was canceled, Seymour has, in increasingly public forums, heavily criticized CTV for not promoting the show effectively, especially in moving it to Saturday nights.
Last week, I sat through a very uncomfortable Gemini Awards gala that Seymour hosted. He did a lot of material that didn't connect, and didn't get laughs. And in one segment, he went after CTV again, from the stage. The sound of shifting and shuffling,the sheer uncomfortable vibe in the room was palpable. It practically walked up and smacked you in the face.
A performer can always have an off night. But the general consensus after the show was that this...this was kind of something else.
Now, in the latest issue of Playback, Seymour does it again:
Now that is truly a precipitous drop. But can it really all be blamed on a lack of promotion? The article in Playback goes on to point out that Robson Arms, the show that was paired with Jeff Ltd. in that Saturday night death slot, still managed to pull almost twice the audience.
Here's the thing: in TeeVee, massive promotion can buy you a big first week audience, just as blanket advertising can make for a big opening weekend. But you can't expect promotion to save or bolster a product that people simply don't want to see.
The first CTV show starring Seymour, The Eleventh Hour, had a similar viewer trajectory. It was heavily promoted and opened well -- I believe at least 1.5 million viewers watched it. And then the audience declined every week. People saw it, sampled it, decided they didn't like it, and moved on.
Then CTV heavily promoted the show for its second season premiere...and it got HUGE numbers. I think almost what it had got in the beginning. When viewers tuned into that premiere, they saw a show that ended in a very unsatisfying way. The next week, half the audience was gone. They never came back.
In the case of Jeff Ltd, a show that was paired with it (Robson Arms) not only got better reviews, it drew a bigger audience with the same lack of promotion. People felt more warmly toward it.
On Jeff Ltd., Seymour was the star. He was the Executive Producer. He wrote or co-wrote every episode. He was in charge of who got cast...he was personally involved in just about every decision made on that show. If you watched more than one show (as I did) you quickly saw that the scripts and gags were repetitive, and unfunny. The show was kind of a mess. Jeff made sure that his show was a one-man band. At what point do you take a bit of responsibility for it not connecting with the audience?
Break it down another way: Corner Gas moves every single season, but people still manage to find it. And it's not because the time change is all that well advertised. It's because there's a baseline of goodwill toward the show.
A Global cop show called "Blue Murder" repeats on a specialty channel here called Showcase. A recent broadcast -- of a years- old repeat, that's already aired multiple times, with no promotion, rated 260 000 viewers in Canada. That's more than two and a half times the numbers Jeff Ltd. got when it was canceled.
Under promotion IS a chronic problem in Canadian TV. But Jeff Seymour is not the standard bearer for it. That's a frequent problem in our industry -- we mix together things that are real concerns with stuff that are excuses that can't be justified. It makes us ripe for attack from those who'd try to choke off Canadian content altogether.
This is one of the things I was talking about when I wrote this post. Seymour talking about his show as an example of a real problem muddies the waters. It's like dealing with famine by having a supermodel talk about how starving she is: it's not good optically, and it doesn't advance the cause.
There are shows that I think could do better with better promotion. Intelligence is probably one (it also was better reviewed.) But I could be wrong about that. I don't know. I find it interesting that Intelligence has built its audience slightly over the last couple weeks, compared to the first two episodes.
Later in the Playback article, the CFTPA makes a case for one way to fix the chronic under-promotion problem:
When Michael Bay blamed his cast and just about everybody else for the failure of The Island, he was roundly ridiculed for it. His reputation took a big hit. I don't think anyone should be ridiculed here. But there should be a reality check.
Before we crown a standard bearer for the problems facing Canadian TV, we really need to have a consensus that the project is actually an example of the problem -- and we're not just glomming onto a real problem to escape our own culpability.
So long as we mix the bad and the good, the real problems and the excuses together -- it's never going to get better.
Good shows fail. Bad shows succeed. It happens. But when the audience votes with their feet, it's another kettle of fish altogether to suggest that they'd choose differently if you shoved a few more promos down their throats. Seymour's complaining doesn't pass the smell test, and it makes it harder to attack and rectify the real cases where maybe promo IS the problem.
Onscreen, Jeff Seymour can be a very compelling actor. He has a dark, handsome, brooding look and a great voice and presence. He can play a hero, but he's best playing a kind of opportunistic guy out for his own ends. In any case, he's good on screen. He is.
Seymour emigrated to Canada from the United States when he got one of the leads on The Eleventh Hour, a CTV show that ran three seasons, but ultimately didn't really connect with an audience.
After the cancellation of that show, Seymour decided to stay here. Then after he produced a demo for it himself, CTV gave Jeff his own series. It was a half-hour, a comedy. Originally it was called Jeff@Work, and when it went to air, it was called Jeff Ltd. It ran two seasons on CTV and the Comedy Network, and was ultimately canceled due to low ratings. I wrote about it a few times.
Since the show was canceled, Seymour has, in increasingly public forums, heavily criticized CTV for not promoting the show effectively, especially in moving it to Saturday nights.
Last week, I sat through a very uncomfortable Gemini Awards gala that Seymour hosted. He did a lot of material that didn't connect, and didn't get laughs. And in one segment, he went after CTV again, from the stage. The sound of shifting and shuffling,the sheer uncomfortable vibe in the room was palpable. It practically walked up and smacked you in the face.
A performer can always have an off night. But the general consensus after the show was that this...this was kind of something else.
Now, in the latest issue of Playback, Seymour does it again:
The topic of how much broadcasters promote Canadian shows is a delicate one, but Jeff Seymour makes no bones about it - he believes that his comedy Jeff Ltd. died after two seasons due to insufficient support from broadcaster CTV.
The half-hour show, starring Seymour as a conceited advertising exec, premiered in March last year in the plum Wednesday timeslot after American Idol to nearly 900,000 viewers, with subsequent episodes averaging solid audiences of 700,000. But those numbers plummeted quickly to the 100,000s after Jeff was moved to the Saturday 9 p.m. timeslot toward the end of its first season, which is where it remained for its second run, though bumped to 9:30 p.m.
"[CTV] didn't really announce [the scheduling change]. I can't tell you the countless people that assumed my show was over...they couldn't find it," Seymour told Playback, just days before he joked about Jeff's fate as a host of the third night of the Gemini Awards in Toronto...
Jeff was paired on Saturdays with the Vancouver-set comedy Robson Arms, which averaged 311,000 viewers at 9 p.m., compared to Jeff's 176,000 second-season average. Robson Arms has been renewed for a third season.
[CTV VP of Communications Scott] Henderson says Jeff simply did not perform, noting that of the 10 original productions on CTV during the 2006/07 season, Jeff ranked number 10.
"The data that was coming in was showing us that viewers were not coming to the show...We let it take its natural course," he says. Numbers provided by CTV indicate Jeff's audience dropped 65% from the first to the second season.
Now that is truly a precipitous drop. But can it really all be blamed on a lack of promotion? The article in Playback goes on to point out that Robson Arms, the show that was paired with Jeff Ltd. in that Saturday night death slot, still managed to pull almost twice the audience.
Here's the thing: in TeeVee, massive promotion can buy you a big first week audience, just as blanket advertising can make for a big opening weekend. But you can't expect promotion to save or bolster a product that people simply don't want to see.
The first CTV show starring Seymour, The Eleventh Hour, had a similar viewer trajectory. It was heavily promoted and opened well -- I believe at least 1.5 million viewers watched it. And then the audience declined every week. People saw it, sampled it, decided they didn't like it, and moved on.
Then CTV heavily promoted the show for its second season premiere...and it got HUGE numbers. I think almost what it had got in the beginning. When viewers tuned into that premiere, they saw a show that ended in a very unsatisfying way. The next week, half the audience was gone. They never came back.
In the case of Jeff Ltd, a show that was paired with it (Robson Arms) not only got better reviews, it drew a bigger audience with the same lack of promotion. People felt more warmly toward it.
On Jeff Ltd., Seymour was the star. He was the Executive Producer. He wrote or co-wrote every episode. He was in charge of who got cast...he was personally involved in just about every decision made on that show. If you watched more than one show (as I did) you quickly saw that the scripts and gags were repetitive, and unfunny. The show was kind of a mess. Jeff made sure that his show was a one-man band. At what point do you take a bit of responsibility for it not connecting with the audience?
Break it down another way: Corner Gas moves every single season, but people still manage to find it. And it's not because the time change is all that well advertised. It's because there's a baseline of goodwill toward the show.
A Global cop show called "Blue Murder" repeats on a specialty channel here called Showcase. A recent broadcast -- of a years- old repeat, that's already aired multiple times, with no promotion, rated 260 000 viewers in Canada. That's more than two and a half times the numbers Jeff Ltd. got when it was canceled.
Under promotion IS a chronic problem in Canadian TV. But Jeff Seymour is not the standard bearer for it. That's a frequent problem in our industry -- we mix together things that are real concerns with stuff that are excuses that can't be justified. It makes us ripe for attack from those who'd try to choke off Canadian content altogether.
This is one of the things I was talking about when I wrote this post. Seymour talking about his show as an example of a real problem muddies the waters. It's like dealing with famine by having a supermodel talk about how starving she is: it's not good optically, and it doesn't advance the cause.
There are shows that I think could do better with better promotion. Intelligence is probably one (it also was better reviewed.) But I could be wrong about that. I don't know. I find it interesting that Intelligence has built its audience slightly over the last couple weeks, compared to the first two episodes.
Later in the Playback article, the CFTPA makes a case for one way to fix the chronic under-promotion problem:
The CFTPA is now pushing the CRTC to facilitate collective producer agreements with broadcasters, according to Brinton, who says "these terms of trade" would create a framework of basic practices.
"Things like [lack of promotion] wouldn't happen, because the broadcasters would have pre-negotiated levels of commitment for any productions before they enter into specific agreements with that individual show," he says.
When Michael Bay blamed his cast and just about everybody else for the failure of The Island, he was roundly ridiculed for it. His reputation took a big hit. I don't think anyone should be ridiculed here. But there should be a reality check.
Before we crown a standard bearer for the problems facing Canadian TV, we really need to have a consensus that the project is actually an example of the problem -- and we're not just glomming onto a real problem to escape our own culpability.
So long as we mix the bad and the good, the real problems and the excuses together -- it's never going to get better.
Good shows fail. Bad shows succeed. It happens. But when the audience votes with their feet, it's another kettle of fish altogether to suggest that they'd choose differently if you shoved a few more promos down their throats. Seymour's complaining doesn't pass the smell test, and it makes it harder to attack and rectify the real cases where maybe promo IS the problem.
Meanwhile, on the Fatuous Gasbag Beat...
OH LORDY LOO. There's now letters a flying, thanks to Jim Shaw, CEO of Shaw Communications (at left, *may not be exactly as pictured.)See, bad enough that he's winner of the random genetic lottery who somehow thinks he's a visionary mogul. But he also would really like to control how TV gets made in this country. The last time Jim Shaw last got all yappy, the Writers Guild of Canada encouraged people to write in and provided a template form letter to crib from or copy. Now, WGC members are starting to get form letters back. Here's what Shaw's saying now. I've added a few annotations.
We have received many form letters like yours criticizing our initiative to reform the
CTF. We are sure the policy makers will note the level of your personal support of the
CTF – which seems to be limited to copying someone else’s form letter and sending it
off to the policy makers.
(See, this is where I'm dead sure the real way to get to this guy is to ridicule him. That's a classic bully opening salvo. His entire investment in this issue is on a child-level, and look at the breathtaking pissiness of that opening line. By the way, this letter was sent to a Shaw Cable subscriber. Implied message: fuck you -- shutup and send us your money.
This attitude continues through the letter. Note the entitlement and the POV. Effectively what he's saying is: "Policy makers should not listen to you. They should listen to millionaires like me who can spend money on ads and take out time to whinge to the CRTC."
Shaw has such contempt for form letters -- and he responds with...you guessed it, a form letter. From a purely optical sense, what is the message here? "Form letters won't make an impact. We don't care. Your opinion matters so little that I'm going to...tada...send you a form letter response!"
Hey Henshaw, this is really the horse you're backing?
The disingenuousness continues below where he dodges the fact that in every interview he gives, he mouths off about Trailer Park Boys.)
As you know, we have been engaged in a long drawn out process to try to change the
way Canadian television programming is funded. We continue to pour some $50 million
per year of our subscriber’s money into the Canadian Television Fund with no
measurable results.
Last year we stopped paying monthly stipends of this annual tax on our customers into
the fund. In doing so, we finally created enough of a fuss to force the Government and
the CRTC to address the issue.
(I am Spartacus!)
We were prepared to continue our funding revolt on behalf of our subscribers before a
Parliamentary committee in February when the CRTC Chair announced a serious
review of the CTF.
That review has taken place and we contributed to it by appearing in front of the CRTC
commission and offering concrete suggestions about how Canada could derive more
benefit from supporting unique Canadian Television production.
A final report was expected in August and has been delayed.
(Because the CRTC got a shitload of replies and interventions, most of them overwhelmingly negative to the interim suggestions prompted by Shaw's review)
Over the intervening months, we have tried to keep the pressure up to force the
government and the CRTC to deal with this issue. We have written letters, made our
views known to the media and lobbied government and CRTC officials.
(I have lots of money. I can do this. You can't. Go the fuck away.)
We started this campaign because we believed that the CTF was broken and needed to
be fixed. Canadians and cable subscribers deserve to get real value for the money
taxed away from them. The CTF simply has not delivered value for the enormous sums
of money that have been entrusted to them.
Neither I nor my colleagues at Shaw Communications want to determine what Canadian
programs are to be funded by the CTF. We do not want to control decisions on content.
We believe television should entertain us, inform us, inspire us, and make us all think –
as Canadians. We support the development of original Canadian programming and we
want to ensure that money is well spent to produce programming that matters.
That means the CTF should be an active participant in supporting shows that people
actually watch. They should be as great as this country; they should tell our stories and
they should be aimed at commercial success.
Okay. Now here's the kind of amusing response that's going back to old Jimmy:
Thank you for your form letter criticizing my use of a form letter. I have heard from
fellow writers who have also shared their opinions regarding the CTF that they have also
received the same form letter. Do not mistake the use of a form letter for a lack of
passion for Canadian television. As you yourself have demonstrated with your form
letter, at times a form letter is an effective method of communicating to many people at
once. I am a concerned individual and do not have the resources to hire lawyers and
public policy experts, buy full page ads or fly to Ottawa to lobby politicians and senior
bureaucrats. Instead I share resources with other like-minded individuals and we share
the same passionate letter.
I must reiterate my position that when you purport to speak for subscribers and Canadians
you do not speak for me. The CTF is accountable for its activities through its Board,
which is made up of industry representatives, and its contribution agreement with
Heritage. The CTF provides the public with detailed reports on its spending along with
analysis of the patterns of the spending. The structure of the CTF has allowed it to revise
its guidelines over time to become more efficient and effective in fulfilling its mandate to
support quality Canadian programming. The CTF needs to be left alone to do its job and
not spend significant resources defending itself from attacks in the media.
In ads, letters and submissions you have repeatedly made broad generalizations about
programs that Canadians are not watching and what kind of programming the CTF
should be funding instead. These generalizations have been misleading and unsupported
by facts. It is disingenuous to say on the one hand that the CTF should not be funding
certain programs and on the other hand write in your form letter that you do not want to
dictate what programs the CTF should fund. As an objective fund, it is the broadcasters,
who know their audience best, who chose the programming funded by the CTF. The
system works as evidenced by the recent large audiences for “Little Mosque” and “The
Rick Mercer Report”, two CTF funded programs that earned audience numbers higher
than U.S. shows “ER” and “Prison Break”. These are facts that are publicly available at
the BBM Nielsen Media Research website. I have seen no similar facts to support your
assertion that CTF funds programs that Canadians do not watch.
I support the CTF and defend my right to share my opinion as a concerned citizen.
That's a pretty good letter. But it's not going to pierce the thick skull of arrogance of a privileged asshat like Shaw.
I'd also like to point out that as far as I know, people like me who went and wrote their own letters have so far received bupkiss. In Shaw logic, I care enough to actually intervene and construct my own argument -- but that still doesn't rate a response from him. Nothing like keeping your arguments consistent.
(If you wrote a non-form letter to Shaw and got a response, I'd love to hear about it.)
Also...let's peel back the disingenuousness once and for all here. Jim Shaw doesn't give a crap about Canadian content. Jim Shaw is so concerned about Canadian content that one of his many grudges is about how the CRTC turned down his request to be able to carry the ... USA Network.
So if you're keeping score at home: regulatory decisions that offer protection to Cable companies like Shaw = Good.
Regulatory decisions that benefit existing Canadian broadcasters, or Canadian Creatives = Bad.
Millionaires, man. They don't have to give a shit about optics, eh?
If you'd like, if you want, I offer you a template for another form letter.
Dear Jim Shaw,
It takes a special kind of craven genius to criticize someone for using a form letter...in a form letter. Well done for that.
Read your rhetoric-heavy response. And it raises a question -- a big one.
You (or your people) wrote: "Neither I nor my colleagues at Shaw Communications want to determine what Canadian programs are to be funded by the CTF. We do not want to control decisions on content."
Yet every ad, comment and interview you've given does specify the kind of content that you think is not appropriate. Unfortunately, one of your consistent examples is a program that's beloved by a great many Canadians, and that spawned a successful movie last year.
So here's the thing, Jim. If you're so out of touch with the taste of Canadians that you can't even recognize or acknowledge a show that IS reaching an audience, then why should anyone believe you know better about the CTF?
By the way, your ad also keeps talking about a show with "shape shifting aliens with a grudge against the government." Respectfully, sir, what the fuck are you talking about? None of us can figure the show you're referring to.
Kisses,
So and so, blah blah blah.
Feel free to adjust the salutation. I just think maybe if this guy got more kisses and hugs, maybe he wouldn't be such a bully. Can't help it. It's the humanist in me.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Golick is Mad! Mad, I Tell You!
IT'S A LITTLE logrolling, since I'm now writing about a piece Jill wrote because I wrote about a Maureen Ryan interview in the Chicago Tribune with Matthew Weiner -- but lay all that aside, for now.Go read as Jill lays out the perfect intricacy of Mad Men's story construction:
Massive spoilers if you haven't seen the end of the season yet.Now that I’ve seen a whole season and lapped up Weiner’s every word, I’m in a bit better position to dissect his story telling style.The episodic stories are unveiled in a series of sequences; groups of scenes that tell little stories. Together these sequences take you some place unexpected and yet inevitable. Each sequence is it’s own entertaining little story, filled with character revelations and detail that may or may not feed into the larger picture of the episode. There were somewhere between 14 and 19 of these sequences in the episodes I dissected with the help of the episode guide.
The sequences do not drive the story forward as they do in so many other series. Instead, they come at the story sideways, like a bank shot in a game of pool. The story beats aren’t as obvious as they usually are, but they do connect up with the larger story.
Like the Simpsons and the Sopranos, the opening moments of a Mad Men episode don’t telegraph the ending. We start one place, end up some place very different.
I'll go out on a limb here and say that though I can understand not liking Mad Men, I cannot understand anyone who wants to be a TV writer not liking it. So there.
On Other Blogs...
FROM REMOTE ACCESS:
If you're in the USA, you can check out Blood Ties on Lifetime, 11pmET Fridays. This week's episode, 5:55, was written by Travis McDonald, the story coordinator who put up with mondo-shit from the two Den(n)ises earlier this year. And he never once went postal.
Because we failed. We simply didn't try...hard...enough. Jimmy the Bat could learn a thing or two from that Travis kid.
(picture from the Blood Ties wrap party. L to R: "Evil" Dennis Heaton, "Slightly Less Evil" Denis McGrath, Travis McDonald, and the great Kyle "Henry" Schmid.)
As for Moonlight. Hmm. I can honestly say this show was a supreme disappointment. We’d DVR’d the first four episodes and I finally caught up with it this weekend.Word.
I watched the first episode. Meh. But there was promise. And I’ve always liked vampire shows.
The second. Still an awful lot of exposition. I’m willing to give it a third shot.
The third. Halfway through, I still didn’t care about a single character, deleted the recording. Erased the fourth episode without watching and stopped the automatic weekly recording of the show.
It basically felt like to me a poor shadow of the pretty darn decent Blood Ties, which aired on Lifetime last spring. Blood Ties is far superior, with better acting and much better writing.
Wanna see a show about a vampire and private detective? Check Blood Ties out instead.
If you're in the USA, you can check out Blood Ties on Lifetime, 11pmET Fridays. This week's episode, 5:55, was written by Travis McDonald, the story coordinator who put up with mondo-shit from the two Den(n)ises earlier this year. And he never once went postal.Because we failed. We simply didn't try...hard...enough. Jimmy the Bat could learn a thing or two from that Travis kid.
(picture from the Blood Ties wrap party. L to R: "Evil" Dennis Heaton, "Slightly Less Evil" Denis McGrath, Travis McDonald, and the great Kyle "Henry" Schmid.)
Old Girlfriends
ONE OF THE things that I miss least from the days when I had a (more or less) 9-5 job is the idea of office politics. I have many friends -- men and women, whose lives suffer greatly from their forced, unending proximity to people they despise. I sometimes wonder if I still worked in an office, if I'd like The Office as much as I do. Would it be cathartic, or un-bear-a-ble?
This is not to say that there aren't situations in film and TV where you hate your coworkers. That happens all the time. Everyone has the story of the first screamer they worked for, or the producer who made them cry, or the weird grip with the dead eyes who you're pretty sure you saw on America's Most Wanted a few months later. Don't kid yourself. TV and Film has more than its share of ... oddballs.
The thing is, you may bitch and moan about those people for the length of whatever show you're on -- but the show ends. They all end. And most of the time, you know exactly when they're going to end. So it's only the most insane, outrageous, or unreasonable colleagues that ever really drive you over the edge. There's a certain power to being able to think, "in X days, I will never, ever have to see you again."
It's not the personality conflicts that make office situations untenable. It's the fact that there's no reasonable expectation of the thing ending. Ever. That's what kills you.
There's another way in which work relationships you have in film and TV differ from office relationships -- intensity.
Because a TV show or a film is a runaway train, that gets moving and happening all at once and chugs or careens down a hill, there really is no way to get a sense of the whole production when it's happening. All interactions are truncated. Intense. Good producers know how to have a knock down argument in three minutes, because that's all the time you have to keep a crew waiting.
This intensity means that sometimes, revisiting those old work relationships after the project wraps makes them feel more like interactions with exes, rather than ex-coworkers.
I have made friends at work, and I still see them occasionally. But for the most part, when I see someone I didn't know very well or have any great feelings about when I worked with them -- I don't feel anything. It's like a nod, or a 'hi.'
But run into someone you worked with on a production, and it's way more like running into someone and poking the bones or sifting the realities of your past romance. There's a sometimes shocking intimacy to it. You compare notes, recall the 'big events' from the shoot, and invariably there's a Rashomon-like feeling that kicks in. With so much happening at once, no one ever gets the full story. You find out things months, or years later, that completely change how you view that work experience.
Writers miss a lot of this, as we're locked away in our above-the-line garrets -- and onto the next thing before shooting's even done. We miss it at our peril, though -- because it's one of the most interesting parts of the trade.
Jumping from job, to job, to job is not for everybody. But if you get into it, after a while it's addictive. You meet all new people. Some you hit it off with immediately, some you never really get to know, some you decide you don't care for. Some people become friends. Some drift away. It's the closest thing an adult can get to going back to school and having a whole new group of classmates. Most of us graduate college, and watch our opportunities to meet new people shrink. Not in TV and film.
And just as the knowledge that the job ends leads you to tolerate and not obsess over a coworker's bad behavior -- it also leads to another strange sort of freedom. Once you get your professional reputation to a certain point, and you're not worried about where your next cheque's coming from -- you get to pick and choose who you work with. And the further you get into it, the more you start to really consider shows based not only on the material, or the money, but on the people involved.
"Life's too short to work with assholes," is a mantra I've heard a lot in the last little while. And it's a hard thing to argue provided, a) you're good at what you do, b) people know this about you, and c) you're not actually an asshole yourself.
That last one may seem self-evident. You'd be surprised.
For all the sturm and drang that gets tossed on this blog about the state of the Canadian industry, there's a huge secret info-train of gossip and intel that no one talks about -- but it just bubbles under and shapes the industry.
There are several projects I've heard about in the last little while who have had trouble attracting talent in various job categories because "so and so's not worth it." Three years ago, I would have never guessed that. When you're trying to break in, it seems impossible to think of a time when you might find yourself in a position to actually say no.
Because it's not my side of the biz, here's a specific example I can give: right now, Toronto has a serious, serious shortage of lifestyle and factual editors. It's true. I know people who have bumped their rate three times in the last year. There are companies that have been effectively blackballed, shut out of all the top editing talent because they're a nightmare to work for, and they burn people. If you can cut, and you're good, it's the yellow brick road for you right now, my son.
I think that's kind of cool. If the editors in Toronto ever get organized, man...there's going to be trouble. The Canadian industry is lucky there isn't a WGC for Editors.
The other half of that equation, of course, is this: never burn a bridge. You never know who's going to be sitting across the table from you. And since it's so rare to know the full story of any production when it's going on, it's probably best to not burn a bridge until you know the person on the other end is actually a sociopath, and not just someone seeing an entirely different piece, and dealing with entirely different shit from you.
The part about not burning bridges gets said to people all the time -- but the other part -- the part that suggests that yup, you do indeed have some power yourself...that gets said less often. And it's true. The first time you turn down work because the money's not good enough feels kind of good. The first time you turn down work because even though the money's good you decide it isn't worth it? That feels completely different. That actually feels...dare I say it...sexy.
You may wonder why I'm writing about this now...and the truth is that it's inspired by kind of a happy accident. In the last couple weeks, I've run into four people who I worked on three different projects with, that I haven't seen since. And the sharing of those old stories -- those production tales...it always mines nuggets of understanding...and well, that's why we TV film types relentlessly talk shop (Much to the chagrin and forbearance of our non-industry friends, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc, etc.) Yup, it's navel gazing and solipsistic. But man, it sure is fun.
Today I saw one of the Actors from a show I did last year in a casting session, and it was like Old Home Week. And there was another actor I know socially. And one of the Camera Operators on The Border opped my short film a thousand years ago. He just moved up from focus puller. And now, the guy who directed all six episodes of Across the River To Motor City, Michael DeCarlo, is currently directing an episode of The Border. And he's (I hope) gonna get me into a location I've always wanted to see. Score.
The other day at the production meeting, just before shooting, there was a moment going through the script where I sort of flashed back, and realized that a whole year has elapsed since we shot Motor City. And there's Michael sitting across the table from me -- different project, different team, different story being told -- both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. And as I'm thinking this, he looked up, and he smiled.
I smiled back. With nostalgia or bemusement, I couldn't tell you.
But I do know this:
Beats the hell out of having to see Oscar in Accounting every day.
This is not to say that there aren't situations in film and TV where you hate your coworkers. That happens all the time. Everyone has the story of the first screamer they worked for, or the producer who made them cry, or the weird grip with the dead eyes who you're pretty sure you saw on America's Most Wanted a few months later. Don't kid yourself. TV and Film has more than its share of ... oddballs.
The thing is, you may bitch and moan about those people for the length of whatever show you're on -- but the show ends. They all end. And most of the time, you know exactly when they're going to end. So it's only the most insane, outrageous, or unreasonable colleagues that ever really drive you over the edge. There's a certain power to being able to think, "in X days, I will never, ever have to see you again."
It's not the personality conflicts that make office situations untenable. It's the fact that there's no reasonable expectation of the thing ending. Ever. That's what kills you.
There's another way in which work relationships you have in film and TV differ from office relationships -- intensity.
Because a TV show or a film is a runaway train, that gets moving and happening all at once and chugs or careens down a hill, there really is no way to get a sense of the whole production when it's happening. All interactions are truncated. Intense. Good producers know how to have a knock down argument in three minutes, because that's all the time you have to keep a crew waiting.
This intensity means that sometimes, revisiting those old work relationships after the project wraps makes them feel more like interactions with exes, rather than ex-coworkers.
I have made friends at work, and I still see them occasionally. But for the most part, when I see someone I didn't know very well or have any great feelings about when I worked with them -- I don't feel anything. It's like a nod, or a 'hi.'
But run into someone you worked with on a production, and it's way more like running into someone and poking the bones or sifting the realities of your past romance. There's a sometimes shocking intimacy to it. You compare notes, recall the 'big events' from the shoot, and invariably there's a Rashomon-like feeling that kicks in. With so much happening at once, no one ever gets the full story. You find out things months, or years later, that completely change how you view that work experience.
Writers miss a lot of this, as we're locked away in our above-the-line garrets -- and onto the next thing before shooting's even done. We miss it at our peril, though -- because it's one of the most interesting parts of the trade.
Jumping from job, to job, to job is not for everybody. But if you get into it, after a while it's addictive. You meet all new people. Some you hit it off with immediately, some you never really get to know, some you decide you don't care for. Some people become friends. Some drift away. It's the closest thing an adult can get to going back to school and having a whole new group of classmates. Most of us graduate college, and watch our opportunities to meet new people shrink. Not in TV and film.
And just as the knowledge that the job ends leads you to tolerate and not obsess over a coworker's bad behavior -- it also leads to another strange sort of freedom. Once you get your professional reputation to a certain point, and you're not worried about where your next cheque's coming from -- you get to pick and choose who you work with. And the further you get into it, the more you start to really consider shows based not only on the material, or the money, but on the people involved.
"Life's too short to work with assholes," is a mantra I've heard a lot in the last little while. And it's a hard thing to argue provided, a) you're good at what you do, b) people know this about you, and c) you're not actually an asshole yourself.
That last one may seem self-evident. You'd be surprised.
For all the sturm and drang that gets tossed on this blog about the state of the Canadian industry, there's a huge secret info-train of gossip and intel that no one talks about -- but it just bubbles under and shapes the industry.
There are several projects I've heard about in the last little while who have had trouble attracting talent in various job categories because "so and so's not worth it." Three years ago, I would have never guessed that. When you're trying to break in, it seems impossible to think of a time when you might find yourself in a position to actually say no.
Because it's not my side of the biz, here's a specific example I can give: right now, Toronto has a serious, serious shortage of lifestyle and factual editors. It's true. I know people who have bumped their rate three times in the last year. There are companies that have been effectively blackballed, shut out of all the top editing talent because they're a nightmare to work for, and they burn people. If you can cut, and you're good, it's the yellow brick road for you right now, my son.
I think that's kind of cool. If the editors in Toronto ever get organized, man...there's going to be trouble. The Canadian industry is lucky there isn't a WGC for Editors.
The other half of that equation, of course, is this: never burn a bridge. You never know who's going to be sitting across the table from you. And since it's so rare to know the full story of any production when it's going on, it's probably best to not burn a bridge until you know the person on the other end is actually a sociopath, and not just someone seeing an entirely different piece, and dealing with entirely different shit from you.
The part about not burning bridges gets said to people all the time -- but the other part -- the part that suggests that yup, you do indeed have some power yourself...that gets said less often. And it's true. The first time you turn down work because the money's not good enough feels kind of good. The first time you turn down work because even though the money's good you decide it isn't worth it? That feels completely different. That actually feels...dare I say it...sexy.
You may wonder why I'm writing about this now...and the truth is that it's inspired by kind of a happy accident. In the last couple weeks, I've run into four people who I worked on three different projects with, that I haven't seen since. And the sharing of those old stories -- those production tales...it always mines nuggets of understanding...and well, that's why we TV film types relentlessly talk shop (Much to the chagrin and forbearance of our non-industry friends, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc, etc.) Yup, it's navel gazing and solipsistic. But man, it sure is fun.
Today I saw one of the Actors from a show I did last year in a casting session, and it was like Old Home Week. And there was another actor I know socially. And one of the Camera Operators on The Border opped my short film a thousand years ago. He just moved up from focus puller. And now, the guy who directed all six episodes of Across the River To Motor City, Michael DeCarlo, is currently directing an episode of The Border. And he's (I hope) gonna get me into a location I've always wanted to see. Score.
The other day at the production meeting, just before shooting, there was a moment going through the script where I sort of flashed back, and realized that a whole year has elapsed since we shot Motor City. And there's Michael sitting across the table from me -- different project, different team, different story being told -- both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. And as I'm thinking this, he looked up, and he smiled.
I smiled back. With nostalgia or bemusement, I couldn't tell you.
But I do know this:
Beats the hell out of having to see Oscar in Accounting every day.
Monday, October 22, 2007
FIRST BLOOD!
OH LAUGHLIN, we never even had a chance to Viva.
CBS is singing the blues over “Viva Laughlin,” which has been officially canceled after just two episodes.
“Laughlin” becomes this season’s first scripted series casualty.
Mo Gets Mad with Weiner
I'M LATE GETTING to this, but in case you haven't seen it, Maureen Ryan did a simply stellar interview last week with Mad Men writer/creator Matthew Weiner.
What's great about Ryan's long profile is that it gets so much into what makes the show good from a writer's perspective -- the level of truth, the conception, the execution. This isn't a puff piece about actors, this is two smart people talking about a medium they both love. And what makes a show work, from a craft, thematic, and intellectual perspective. It comes from a place of giving the audience credit. It goes to a sense of crafting something in a different way than a lot of TV.
Mad Men may not be high rated, but there's a reason why it's got such a high concentration of big money advertisers...the people who are watching are a high concentration of people making over 100 000 K a year.
Go read the whole thing, by all means...this is just a short excerpt:
What's great about Ryan's long profile is that it gets so much into what makes the show good from a writer's perspective -- the level of truth, the conception, the execution. This isn't a puff piece about actors, this is two smart people talking about a medium they both love. And what makes a show work, from a craft, thematic, and intellectual perspective. It comes from a place of giving the audience credit. It goes to a sense of crafting something in a different way than a lot of TV.
Mad Men may not be high rated, but there's a reason why it's got such a high concentration of big money advertisers...the people who are watching are a high concentration of people making over 100 000 K a year.
Go read the whole thing, by all means...this is just a short excerpt:
When you’re thinking about the writing of the show, do you think first about what’s going on in a character’s head or mind or soul, or are you thinking about, ‘I need to get to this plot point?’ Or is it both?
“Well, first of all the plots are very elaborate. They are real plots. They are like the plots we did on ‘The Sopranos.’ I hide it a lot. I hide it the way they do on ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘The Sopranos.’ By saying here’s the show, it starts off and you think it’s going to be about this, but it’s about that.
“A perfect example is the vomiting show [‘Red in the Face’], when the boss was coming over to dinner. What we learn on the way to the boss coming over to dinner is that the boss is older than Don, and that Don is already more attracted to other women – we see that at the bar. And then it becomes this issue about masculinity, which is also reflected in the Pete [chip-and-dip bowl] story, [it’s] a thematic thing.
“You have this plot that’s a revenge plot, which is based on the reality that you cannot punch your boss. You can’t. You can on TV, but you can’t on this TV show, because we’re following those rules.
“When Pete blackmails Don [in ‘Nixon vs. Kennedy’], one of the things I’m most proud of with that episode is, I said, I’m going to do this for real. How would you do that? It’s really hard to do, to blackmail another person. You see it on TV all the time, envelopes are exchanged and violence is threatened. But in most cases, people don’t murder each other. For the most part, people are like, ‘How can I get out of this?’ and how does the other person actually do [the blackmailing]?
“So I have a plot, and then I try to avoid the lie of – I wouldn’t say the lie of TV, it’s a dramatic lie, often, of trying to escalate it to such a huge proportion that it somehow [false]. They always say, ‘raise the stakes’ but if the stakes are in a real world, [they don’t need to be raised in a melodramatic way].
“If you’re really worried about Don’s relationship with Betty, then her finding that phone bill is a serious piece of tension. Whereas in a normal [show] – on ‘Desperate Housewives,’ people find that all the time, and then all the drama is them throwing [things] at each other. So I try to take that stuff seriously, and the way I approach story, usually is, I have incidents and I have a theme and I try to approach it from character. How is that person going to behave in those circumstances?
“With Sal [the closeted gay man who fled a potential romantic encounter in ‘The Hobo Code’], I knew I wanted Sal to be tempted. But then I started thinking – well, what does Sal know so far? Who is Sal? Is Sal ready for this? And what does the audience expect?
“I mean, this really trivializes the show, but I think a lot of what draws people into [the show is akin to when] someone’s expecting a phone call and they walk into the room and the phone is ringing but they don’t answer it right away. They don’t want to know what it is. Which is the way we are.
And Then There Were Three
So after a weekend catching up and relaxing, and clearing off the PVR systematically, I've reduced the fall season to three new shows that I'll continue to watch until they're moved or canceled:
Journeyman - It's still about McKidd for me, but the peek at the morality of what he does, the continued strain on his relationship, and the intriguing peek at the hand behind it all has me in. 'Course it's also Monday at 10pm -- and that's a good time for me to watch TeeVee.
Pushing Daisies - I didn't think they'd be able to pull the 3rd ep off, but they did. I like it, and what's more, I don't have much whimsical comfort stuff that I watch regularly.
Life - I still like it. I like him.
I checked out two more Dirty Sexy Money's last night and I just don't see it as a must see. If I'm home with time, maybe.
Kristen Bell joining Heroes comes at just the right time because I'm right about on the edge of giving up.
Journeyman - It's still about McKidd for me, but the peek at the morality of what he does, the continued strain on his relationship, and the intriguing peek at the hand behind it all has me in. 'Course it's also Monday at 10pm -- and that's a good time for me to watch TeeVee.
Pushing Daisies - I didn't think they'd be able to pull the 3rd ep off, but they did. I like it, and what's more, I don't have much whimsical comfort stuff that I watch regularly.
Life - I still like it. I like him.
I checked out two more Dirty Sexy Money's last night and I just don't see it as a must see. If I'm home with time, maybe.
Kristen Bell joining Heroes comes at just the right time because I'm right about on the edge of giving up.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Rent-A-Goalie returns, and I Shamelessly Self Promote
SOMEWHERE I MISSED that tonight is a good night for Canadian TV. Global continues with the second ep of Da Kink in My Hair at 7:30, but the big news is on SHOWCASE.The movie spinoff of Jim Shaw's favorite show, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie is on the air tonight, and following that it looks like they're sneaking the first episode of season 2 of Rent-A-Goalie.
The fun starts at 9, with the RAG preview going at 11:05 ET. (It repeats overnight.)
The "other" 2nd Season Premiere of RAG is a week tonight -- with two eps, at 9:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. The 2nd Ep is written by yours truly.
In fact, I have to start clearing off the PVR-- after almost a year with nothing actually on the tube, I've got about 11 episodes of 3 shows airing on various Canadian and U.S. channels in the next several weeks.My 3 Blood Ties episodes start with The Devil You Know, which airs on Lifetime in the U.S. on November 9th, at 11pm ET.
Then the next week, it's Drawn & Quartered, which I co- wrote with fellow Den(n)is, Dennis Heaton.
The penultimate ep of the season, We'll Meet Again, airs on Lifetime December 7. (Citytv stations in Canada are about five weeks behind, and Space is even further behind in the season, so check your listings if you're in Canada.)
Finally, the miniseries I co-created and did the bulk of the writing for, Across the River to Motor City, bows the week of November 22 on Citytv stations in Canada. (Nov 22, Citytv Toronto, Winnipeg Nov 19)Whew. It's funny how things come in waves in this business. It would be great to have stuff on steadily throughout the year, but I went through this exact thing a while ago when a bunch of the stuff I had written all aired at once.
I haven't seen the final versions of any of my BT stuff, so I'm looking forward to seeing the special FX and score in place. I loved the cuts I did see. Some very juicy stuff for fans of romance and backstory and Vampire Lovin...and who isn't a fan of Vampire Lovin?
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