(Thanks to this lovely flickr set, as spied by Very Short List)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Be Sure to Gather All Personal Belongings As You Make Your Way Toward The Exits
A SAFE AND Happy New Year to You all.
(Thanks to this lovely flickr set, as spied by Very Short List)
(Thanks to this lovely flickr set, as spied by Very Short List)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Oh, Man.
SIGH. WALTON & EPSTEIN are going to be impossible about this.
But way to go, Montreal, anyway...
But way to go, Montreal, anyway...
MONTREAL -- In the 1970s, 80s and into the 90s, Montreal was saddled with scores of murders each year, a bloody battle that kept police busy and the crime tabloids happy. This year is closing out with a different kind of Montreal crime story: Homicides have hit record lows.Police report that, provided there are none today and tomorrow, 2008 is ending with 29 homicides, the smallest number recorded since the creation of the force in 1972.
Since murder is considered a reliable barometer of social violence, police cautiously argue that Montreal is one of the safest major North American cities. Attempted murders are down, too.
"Montreal is becoming like the suburbs," said Clément Rose, police commander of the major crimes division in Montreal. "People have this impression that Montreal is violent. That impression is false, really false, and these figures are real."
Year End List: Fuel for Inspiration 2008 (Part the Deux)
FOR PART ONE of this list, go here.
6) The Pause That Refreshes
It's interesting, and little sad, that we lost Harold Pinter a few days ago. Pinter famously popularized the formalized (pause).
Television has generally abhorred that pause. The theory is that you don't give someone the chance to change the channel. But many of the most memorable moments in TV over the last year have come from precisely that very real, very human impulse.
Michael Chiklis managed to make an extraordinarily long pause before his confession scene in the penultimate episode of The Shield into something of a bravura high wire act. You held your breath with him, wondering how he would start, what would he say? What would be enough?
It takes a dramatist with confidence to hang so much on the absence of words, and a special kind of actor to play it.
The brooding, quiet pause is the spiritual opposite of the needle drop broody montage -- a TV storytelling device that's gone from fresh and freeing to cliche in just a few short years.
It's the pauses after each line, the exquisite sense of a character weighing his responsibility to answer or her choice to stay silent as venerable, and important that gives Mad Men its stately, mesmerizing pace. It's the storytelling equivalent of the soft spoken person at the dinner who everyone strains to hear. There's a lot of bombast in TV. So when that pause comes, I lean forward and still to hear. I just can't help it.
5) Citytv
This is the saddest item on my list. There's a parking lot, for sure. And it was never paradise. But that Joni Mitchell phrase about not knowing what you've got 'til it's gone was never truer than when used to describe Citytv.
If you spent any time in Toronto in the 1970's or 80's and happened to turn on a television, you'd know Citytv the moment you saw it. Fiercely local, puckish and independent, the station made its bones in the early years by breaking rules. It got attention for the Baby Blue Movie on Friday nights, which was pretty much exactly what it sounded like. It was one of the first stations in North America to shoot the news on videotape. It eschewed the traditional anchor desk, and under the guiding hand of impresario and ringleader Moses Znaimer, pioneered a kind of television where the process was the story. A building was wired so you could plug in anywhere and shoot anywhere; walk, talk, shoot -- no studios, no fakery, just what happened.
They hired correspondents that looked like the urban city that Toronto was becoming. Instead of plastic haired white guys, you had the colors of the rainbow. They started a music video show, The New Music, that was one of the first, best, and most invaluable sources of music that was breaking not on the radio. Leading edge, not trailing. A few years later that show would be joined by other magazine formats that no one had tried before: Fashion Television. Who'd ever thought of running footage of fashion shows every week, and talking to designers on camera? Why would anyone wat...boobs? Hell. I'm in. There was also Movie Television, a show that treated movies seriously that grew out of Citylights, and the interviews of the great Brian Linehan, and mediatelevision, a show that I worked on for four years.
A show that did stories on the internet while CBC was still struggling to define what it was for its viewers; a program that had an email address before nearly any other program. There was also Citylimits, an all night free-for-all program that showed strange videos before that was the thing to do, and gave a young comic named Mike Myers exposure in the wee hours of the morning.
By the time the station moved to 299 Queen Street West, it had been taken over by the CHUM corporation. Soon after, the local station was joined by Muchmusic, which for my generation growing up in an era where the Baby Boomers had a chokehold on the radio, was so much more than just the Canadian equivalent of MTV. Like MTV, they had VJ's. Unlike MTV, these VJ's did their shifts LIVE. And you could go down and watch them working, through the window, or out on the street, as the city streamed by. Much's whole gig was TRL, long before TRL ever existed.
And then there was Speakers Corner. A video booth on the corner where you could pop in some change and spout off. And they'd run it -- on the air. Speaker's Corner gave rise to local celebrities, bands, political arguments -- anticipating YouTube by about two decades.
Citytv's programming, an eclectic mix of those magazine shows, ethnic programming, and recycled movies, wasn't the point. The atmosphere was the point. The fact that you could tune in and see your corner in a station ID, with Mark Dailey's voice intoning "From Leslieville," "The Beaches," "Taking a stroll in the Annex," "Hanging out at the docks," "Feeling the fruit at the St. Lawrence market ... wait for it... "This is Citytv...Everywhere."
And it was. When, in my job, I found myself having to sometimes visit local stations in other cities in Canada and the USA, I was always struck by how sterile and cut off from the city they seemed. One station in Houston seemed to me to be in a bunker. This was the farthest thing away from local tv.
Citytv suffered a decline through the nineties ... the old story ... it stopped innovating and started copying. All the things that the station did that blazed trails -- one person crews and videography, walk around newscasts, hand held shooting -- others caught up with it. The cult of personality around Znaimer became restrictive where it once was vibrant; the fact that so many of the people who worked there had never worked anywhere else became a liability, not a strength, as good ideas from elsewhere in the business never filtered in and filtered down.
City didn't pay its employees too well, but those employees were loyal. HR had two people. Accounting was tiny. The promo producers would cut eclectic and weird promos that were almost as funny as the programs. You'd hear strange back-announced V/O's at two in the morning and ask yourself, "did I just hear that?"
But in the 1990's, after two cable channels grew to six, then ten, then twelve and the number of employees went from hundreds to thousands, something started to get lost. The company was now a huge media company still trying to act like a mom and pop shop. You'd hear the exhortation to work harder and keep that maverick spirit going while you'd open your email and see that so-and-so was now a Vice President...and then a Senior Vice President....and now an Executive Vice President...
The legendary Film Fest parties and Muchmusic bashes started becoming wristband-only affairs. The perks of working there -- meeting the occasional pop star or actor or celebrity, got replaced with memos telling you not to look at Tom Cruise if you happened to see him in the hallway. The funny v/o's stopped. Promos became homogenized, and the graphics started to look like every other station on the air. U.S. consultants came in and started pushing Action Weather and the same old same... power within the structure became the goal, not the product...
By the time CHUM was sold a few years ago, much of the charm of what was once great about the place had evaporated or collapsed under the weight of ego or an inability to recognize the changing nature of the business, but CTV came in and said they'd bought a brand, and that they wanted to preserve that brand.
Last month, about a hundred employees in the building were laid off in the third or fourth wave of layoffs since I left the station at the end of 2000. I barely know anyone there anymore. Speakers Corner, The New Music, the sense of fun and informality -- it's all gone. The company's now split, with Citytv as part of the Rogers family, and the specialties under the CTV rubric.
In a few days, even the old number of the building 416 591 5757 -- will disappear, replaced by a CTV exchange.
The spirit of the place that I watched when I was a kid, the place I dreamed of working for when I was a teen, all of that's gone. You go for a meeting in that station now, and ... it's just another TV station.
Maybe that's inevitable. Change happens. But it's hard to argue that something essential hasn't been lost.
And the only good news is that like a lot of influential things that come and go in their time, the ripples spread out. Spy Magazine was a bright and short lived humor mag in the 1980's and early 1990's...but its spirit followed employees to places like Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, New York, and a hundred other places.
Likewise, you'll find some of those Znaimeristas out there directing segments for Rick Mercer, or producing entertainment at E! You'll see it in moments of George on The Hour, or CBC Radio 3, or writers who write comedy or drama shows.
In many ways, though, my reaction is one of relief. After watching a slow death by a thousand cuts, now you can say, "it's gone." And let it go.
But oh man, was it inspiring and fun while it lasted.
4) The 2nd Act Turn in The Dark Night
Mmm hmm. Yeah, Ledger's good. Wow. Great stunt. Ha. Michael Caine. Morgan Freeman's such a badass. Mmm. Yeah, cool Imax stuntage. Mmm. (Look at cell phone for time). Oh no! Wow, yeah that was cool. Mmm. Hum. Man, this is getting to be kind of long. Same old same, and...
...and then comes the two ferries, and the choice of the people on the ferries, and suddenly the Dark Knight became something other than an action movie.
I was so surprised by that turn, and the meatiness of the problem. Depth in an action picture? Who knew?
The final part of the list comes on New Year's day.
6) The Pause That Refreshes
It's interesting, and little sad, that we lost Harold Pinter a few days ago. Pinter famously popularized the formalized (pause).
Television has generally abhorred that pause. The theory is that you don't give someone the chance to change the channel. But many of the most memorable moments in TV over the last year have come from precisely that very real, very human impulse.
Michael Chiklis managed to make an extraordinarily long pause before his confession scene in the penultimate episode of The Shield into something of a bravura high wire act. You held your breath with him, wondering how he would start, what would he say? What would be enough?
It takes a dramatist with confidence to hang so much on the absence of words, and a special kind of actor to play it.
The brooding, quiet pause is the spiritual opposite of the needle drop broody montage -- a TV storytelling device that's gone from fresh and freeing to cliche in just a few short years.
It's the pauses after each line, the exquisite sense of a character weighing his responsibility to answer or her choice to stay silent as venerable, and important that gives Mad Men its stately, mesmerizing pace. It's the storytelling equivalent of the soft spoken person at the dinner who everyone strains to hear. There's a lot of bombast in TV. So when that pause comes, I lean forward and still to hear. I just can't help it.
5) CitytvThis is the saddest item on my list. There's a parking lot, for sure. And it was never paradise. But that Joni Mitchell phrase about not knowing what you've got 'til it's gone was never truer than when used to describe Citytv.
If you spent any time in Toronto in the 1970's or 80's and happened to turn on a television, you'd know Citytv the moment you saw it. Fiercely local, puckish and independent, the station made its bones in the early years by breaking rules. It got attention for the Baby Blue Movie on Friday nights, which was pretty much exactly what it sounded like. It was one of the first stations in North America to shoot the news on videotape. It eschewed the traditional anchor desk, and under the guiding hand of impresario and ringleader Moses Znaimer, pioneered a kind of television where the process was the story. A building was wired so you could plug in anywhere and shoot anywhere; walk, talk, shoot -- no studios, no fakery, just what happened.
They hired correspondents that looked like the urban city that Toronto was becoming. Instead of plastic haired white guys, you had the colors of the rainbow. They started a music video show, The New Music, that was one of the first, best, and most invaluable sources of music that was breaking not on the radio. Leading edge, not trailing. A few years later that show would be joined by other magazine formats that no one had tried before: Fashion Television. Who'd ever thought of running footage of fashion shows every week, and talking to designers on camera? Why would anyone wat...boobs? Hell. I'm in. There was also Movie Television, a show that treated movies seriously that grew out of Citylights, and the interviews of the great Brian Linehan, and mediatelevision, a show that I worked on for four years.
A show that did stories on the internet while CBC was still struggling to define what it was for its viewers; a program that had an email address before nearly any other program. There was also Citylimits, an all night free-for-all program that showed strange videos before that was the thing to do, and gave a young comic named Mike Myers exposure in the wee hours of the morning.
By the time the station moved to 299 Queen Street West, it had been taken over by the CHUM corporation. Soon after, the local station was joined by Muchmusic, which for my generation growing up in an era where the Baby Boomers had a chokehold on the radio, was so much more than just the Canadian equivalent of MTV. Like MTV, they had VJ's. Unlike MTV, these VJ's did their shifts LIVE. And you could go down and watch them working, through the window, or out on the street, as the city streamed by. Much's whole gig was TRL, long before TRL ever existed.
And then there was Speakers Corner. A video booth on the corner where you could pop in some change and spout off. And they'd run it -- on the air. Speaker's Corner gave rise to local celebrities, bands, political arguments -- anticipating YouTube by about two decades.
Citytv's programming, an eclectic mix of those magazine shows, ethnic programming, and recycled movies, wasn't the point. The atmosphere was the point. The fact that you could tune in and see your corner in a station ID, with Mark Dailey's voice intoning "From Leslieville," "The Beaches," "Taking a stroll in the Annex," "Hanging out at the docks," "Feeling the fruit at the St. Lawrence market ... wait for it... "This is Citytv...Everywhere."
And it was. When, in my job, I found myself having to sometimes visit local stations in other cities in Canada and the USA, I was always struck by how sterile and cut off from the city they seemed. One station in Houston seemed to me to be in a bunker. This was the farthest thing away from local tv.
Citytv suffered a decline through the nineties ... the old story ... it stopped innovating and started copying. All the things that the station did that blazed trails -- one person crews and videography, walk around newscasts, hand held shooting -- others caught up with it. The cult of personality around Znaimer became restrictive where it once was vibrant; the fact that so many of the people who worked there had never worked anywhere else became a liability, not a strength, as good ideas from elsewhere in the business never filtered in and filtered down.
City didn't pay its employees too well, but those employees were loyal. HR had two people. Accounting was tiny. The promo producers would cut eclectic and weird promos that were almost as funny as the programs. You'd hear strange back-announced V/O's at two in the morning and ask yourself, "did I just hear that?"
But in the 1990's, after two cable channels grew to six, then ten, then twelve and the number of employees went from hundreds to thousands, something started to get lost. The company was now a huge media company still trying to act like a mom and pop shop. You'd hear the exhortation to work harder and keep that maverick spirit going while you'd open your email and see that so-and-so was now a Vice President...and then a Senior Vice President....and now an Executive Vice President...
The legendary Film Fest parties and Muchmusic bashes started becoming wristband-only affairs. The perks of working there -- meeting the occasional pop star or actor or celebrity, got replaced with memos telling you not to look at Tom Cruise if you happened to see him in the hallway. The funny v/o's stopped. Promos became homogenized, and the graphics started to look like every other station on the air. U.S. consultants came in and started pushing Action Weather and the same old same... power within the structure became the goal, not the product...
By the time CHUM was sold a few years ago, much of the charm of what was once great about the place had evaporated or collapsed under the weight of ego or an inability to recognize the changing nature of the business, but CTV came in and said they'd bought a brand, and that they wanted to preserve that brand.
Last month, about a hundred employees in the building were laid off in the third or fourth wave of layoffs since I left the station at the end of 2000. I barely know anyone there anymore. Speakers Corner, The New Music, the sense of fun and informality -- it's all gone. The company's now split, with Citytv as part of the Rogers family, and the specialties under the CTV rubric.
In a few days, even the old number of the building 416 591 5757 -- will disappear, replaced by a CTV exchange.
The spirit of the place that I watched when I was a kid, the place I dreamed of working for when I was a teen, all of that's gone. You go for a meeting in that station now, and ... it's just another TV station.
Maybe that's inevitable. Change happens. But it's hard to argue that something essential hasn't been lost.
And the only good news is that like a lot of influential things that come and go in their time, the ripples spread out. Spy Magazine was a bright and short lived humor mag in the 1980's and early 1990's...but its spirit followed employees to places like Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, New York, and a hundred other places.
Likewise, you'll find some of those Znaimeristas out there directing segments for Rick Mercer, or producing entertainment at E! You'll see it in moments of George on The Hour, or CBC Radio 3, or writers who write comedy or drama shows.
In many ways, though, my reaction is one of relief. After watching a slow death by a thousand cuts, now you can say, "it's gone." And let it go.
But oh man, was it inspiring and fun while it lasted.
4) The 2nd Act Turn in The Dark Night
Mmm hmm. Yeah, Ledger's good. Wow. Great stunt. Ha. Michael Caine. Morgan Freeman's such a badass. Mmm. Yeah, cool Imax stuntage. Mmm. (Look at cell phone for time). Oh no! Wow, yeah that was cool. Mmm. Hum. Man, this is getting to be kind of long. Same old same, and......and then comes the two ferries, and the choice of the people on the ferries, and suddenly the Dark Knight became something other than an action movie.
I was so surprised by that turn, and the meatiness of the problem. Depth in an action picture? Who knew?
The final part of the list comes on New Year's day.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Am I? Or Not?
OKAY, STICKSTERS. Here's the problem. If you'll look over to left, you'll see a new poll. I'm at a crossroads here and I don't know what to do, other than to throw myself upon the mercy and/or wisdom of my readers.
So I got a package a week or so ago. That's not unusual. My propensity for ordering things off Amazon at 3am, and the occasional TV screener from interesting P.R. companies that understand the value of sending bloggers screeners means I'm always getting packages.
but this one was different. It was weirdly shaped -- long and thin. I opened it up and immediately recognized it from my visits to a hundred TV production company offices through the years.
It was that long fancy-papered, calligraphied certificate noting that I had been nominated for a Gemini Award. There it is, "nominee" stamped in leaf. Or, um...ink. Anyway, it's very high quality printing. Litho'd, maybe? I don't know.
When you go into a meeting, there's usually a Vanity wall, where you see all these certificates framed and ready. Gemini Winner, Gemini Nominee, New York Festivals Gold, Houston Worldfest Silver, etc, etc, etc.
Now, sure, none of those have the psychic weight of an Emmy, or the physical weight of a Gemini statue, which, believe me, I would gladly display. But I don't have one of those statues because I lost.
So what do I do with this certificate thing? Do I get it framed? Put it up in the office? I mean, really? Am I that guy?
Or does it go in a drawer? I just....I mean, once you get the first one framed, aren't you committing to being that guy, with one of those walls? I'm really not sure I'm that guy.
What do you think? Am I that guy?
Vote at left. Thanks.
EDIT: Also, on the docket for discussion. Is it good to be that guy, or not? Discuss.
So I got a package a week or so ago. That's not unusual. My propensity for ordering things off Amazon at 3am, and the occasional TV screener from interesting P.R. companies that understand the value of sending bloggers screeners means I'm always getting packages.but this one was different. It was weirdly shaped -- long and thin. I opened it up and immediately recognized it from my visits to a hundred TV production company offices through the years.
It was that long fancy-papered, calligraphied certificate noting that I had been nominated for a Gemini Award. There it is, "nominee" stamped in leaf. Or, um...ink. Anyway, it's very high quality printing. Litho'd, maybe? I don't know.
When you go into a meeting, there's usually a Vanity wall, where you see all these certificates framed and ready. Gemini Winner, Gemini Nominee, New York Festivals Gold, Houston Worldfest Silver, etc, etc, etc.
Now, sure, none of those have the psychic weight of an Emmy, or the physical weight of a Gemini statue, which, believe me, I would gladly display. But I don't have one of those statues because I lost.So what do I do with this certificate thing? Do I get it framed? Put it up in the office? I mean, really? Am I that guy?
Or does it go in a drawer? I just....I mean, once you get the first one framed, aren't you committing to being that guy, with one of those walls? I'm really not sure I'm that guy.
What do you think? Am I that guy?
Vote at left. Thanks.
EDIT: Also, on the docket for discussion. Is it good to be that guy, or not? Discuss.
Year End List: Fuel for Inspiration 2008
SO, 2008. AN inordinately high number of people of my acquaintance seem to be saying stuff like, "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, 2008" or "Good riddance," or the pithy and short, "Fuck 2008, man." I guess some of that happens every year, but it seems a little more, shall we say pointed, this year.
And why not? Everybody's RRSP's and 401K's are bleeding red, both Canada and the U.S. endured nasty (and in the case of the U.S., nearly endless) elections, and if you're in television or film, apparently the sky is falling. Ah well. What can you do?
For myself, 2008 was a more modest year. Not quite as many scripts produced, only one show staffed on, the start of a new development deal, and a decision to move on from that show. (Last year at this time I had never been on a show that went two seasons, and now I'm leaving a show that just got picked up for a third. Funny world.)
There were creative conflicts along the way -- as there always are -- but hey, I learned to like being on set, and I won an award from my peers. (A Canadian Screenwriting Award for Across The River to Motor City, waaay back in April) I also got a Gemini nomination. My first, so I guess now I can get on the bus. (Provided I have the fare, I mean...)
We got a few new voices in the Scribosphere, Canadian Division -- and we also got to hear from a Director, which provided for a much needed perspective check. The problems of regulation, indifference, incompetence and privilege -- the four horsemen of the Canadian TV apocalypse, continued to sow their oats. But we're kicking out the jams, bit by bit. We'll get there eventually. Or, you know, die trying, I guess.
When I look back on what inspired me this year, it's a split and strange list. Pieces of things rather than the whole -- testimony maybe to my constantly shifting attentions through the year. Clearly somebody needs to focus.
What were your inspirations this year? Have at it in the comments below.
Again, this isn't necessarily a ranking. Just a list. Here's the start of it, anyway:
Year End List 2008, Fuel for Inspiration:
10) Neil Young: Canterbury House, 1968 & ACC, 2008
Reinvention is a funny thing. Imagine you're just a few days shy of your 21st birthday. You were in a band that did pretty well, but they broke up six months ago. Nobody really knows who you are. You're about to release your first solo album.
You get booked to do a couple of solo shows in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And the place sells out. Everybody's shocked -- nobody more than you. You're scared. They practically have to push you on stage.
You're Neil Young. But nobody really knows what that means. Yet.
The recording of those Canterbury House shows, released officially just a few weeks ago, 40 years after the shows themselves, is something I've listened to obsessively over the last couple of weeks. I just can't stop. It's so amazing to hear this guy who I know as grizzled and prickly strumming up there, dorky and unsure of himself, chatty as hell. (Neil Young! Chatty! I know!) He tells funny stories about Canada and working at Coles' bookstore. And then he does Sugar Mountain and you don't breathe for about three minutes.
The sound of an artist finding his voice is unbearably moving to me. Something about this recording just feels like it should be private -- that somehow its secrets should not reveal themselves to us. But that's the thing about art, isn't it? It always reveals more than you want it to, which is probably one of the reasons why you do it.
If you're any sort of an artist starting out, unsure of your voice, this CD is going to help you. It reminds you with humility that we all start out somewhere. And that, incredibly, who we're meant to be is something you can hear from the very start -- maybe only in a bit here and a piece there. But you can hear it, if you listen.
A few weeks ago I got to see the other end of that journey. A sold out concert at the Air Canada Centre, where Neil came out and wowed the crowd while barely saying a word. The electric, the acoustic sets were sublime -- his voice fuller and less ragged than I've heard it before. All that and a closing cover of "A Day in the Life." One of the best concerts I saw this year. (Thanks, sis.)
The two things are inextricably linked for me -- like bookends. I guess that's when you know you're getting on a bit -- when you find longevity itself inspiring!
9) Tina Fey: Actor, Writer, Palin
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I can't possibly add anything new -- certainly not to the excellent Vanity Fair profile now on the stands. But Fey proved this year that the trust that comedy aficionados had put in her was not misplaced. Her triumphant return to Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin might have gotten all the attention (and maybe even influenced an election,) but it benefited 30 Rock, too, and that's what I cared about most. Iamatvjunkie has a handy dandy Year in Tina Fey recap here.
Through it all, she's maintained perspective, humility and a refreshing groundedness.
Sometimes the good girls win. And bitch is definitely the new black.
8) David Milch on The Complete Deadwood
It's a gorgeous package, of course. But the true gem on the excellent series set of Deadwood is a dreamy, stream-of-consciousness disquisition by Milch as he walks the empty standing sets of Deadwood. "The Meaning of Endings: David Milch on the Conclusion of Deadwood."
It's twenty-two minutes long, and at turns hilarious, ineffably sad, educational and frustrating.
For fans, the juice here is that Milch admits on camera that those Deadwood movies are probably never going to happen, which gives him license to explore and reveal some of the plotlines that might have been. And they are juicy. The struggle to civilize the camp in Season 3 leads up to weightier fare -- including the real life fire that consumed most of the town in 1879.
But for the writer, it's a wake. Milch lectures on the impossibility of endings, of venerating how things end as the most important part of all. That in life, we never know our endings. It's partly that professorial thing that Milch always does, but it's also a guy bucking against the restrictions of an audience who demands closed homilies -- things that add up to a point; things that offer tidy conclusions so unlike the messy, dropped threads of a life.
It's a wounded walk. It's creativity and regret spilling forth. It's raw, and wonderful and heartbreaking.
7) Tom Stoppard's Rock & Roll
Back in February, I got to see Tom Stoppard's play Rock & Roll in New York. Here's what I wrote about it at the time:
That power, for a cultural product to get you thinking about something else you're concerned about -- the power to inspire lateral connections, to, in essence, momentarily rewire your brain -- is ultimately why I do what I do. To entertain is to inform. There is no difference for me. Proof positive is the rest of that February entry -- what seeing Rock & Roll told me about my industry and how the system works here: how we, too, are salt eaters. I read it back now and it's probably one of my favorite entries.
Ironically, Lee Goldberg picked up on my short comments re: Heather Havrilesky this weekend. Goldberg's a great blogger and a very successful writer. But lately he's taken to writing about Canadian TV with a typical American's understanding of the actual problems of the industry. Which is to say, not much. Wonder if he'll read this one?
More from the list tomorrow or New Year's Eve.
For past lists, click here.
And why not? Everybody's RRSP's and 401K's are bleeding red, both Canada and the U.S. endured nasty (and in the case of the U.S., nearly endless) elections, and if you're in television or film, apparently the sky is falling. Ah well. What can you do?
For myself, 2008 was a more modest year. Not quite as many scripts produced, only one show staffed on, the start of a new development deal, and a decision to move on from that show. (Last year at this time I had never been on a show that went two seasons, and now I'm leaving a show that just got picked up for a third. Funny world.)
There were creative conflicts along the way -- as there always are -- but hey, I learned to like being on set, and I won an award from my peers. (A Canadian Screenwriting Award for Across The River to Motor City, waaay back in April) I also got a Gemini nomination. My first, so I guess now I can get on the bus. (Provided I have the fare, I mean...)
We got a few new voices in the Scribosphere, Canadian Division -- and we also got to hear from a Director, which provided for a much needed perspective check. The problems of regulation, indifference, incompetence and privilege -- the four horsemen of the Canadian TV apocalypse, continued to sow their oats. But we're kicking out the jams, bit by bit. We'll get there eventually. Or, you know, die trying, I guess.
When I look back on what inspired me this year, it's a split and strange list. Pieces of things rather than the whole -- testimony maybe to my constantly shifting attentions through the year. Clearly somebody needs to focus.
What were your inspirations this year? Have at it in the comments below.
Again, this isn't necessarily a ranking. Just a list. Here's the start of it, anyway:
Year End List 2008, Fuel for Inspiration:
10) Neil Young: Canterbury House, 1968 & ACC, 2008
Reinvention is a funny thing. Imagine you're just a few days shy of your 21st birthday. You were in a band that did pretty well, but they broke up six months ago. Nobody really knows who you are. You're about to release your first solo album.You get booked to do a couple of solo shows in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And the place sells out. Everybody's shocked -- nobody more than you. You're scared. They practically have to push you on stage.
You're Neil Young. But nobody really knows what that means. Yet.
The recording of those Canterbury House shows, released officially just a few weeks ago, 40 years after the shows themselves, is something I've listened to obsessively over the last couple of weeks. I just can't stop. It's so amazing to hear this guy who I know as grizzled and prickly strumming up there, dorky and unsure of himself, chatty as hell. (Neil Young! Chatty! I know!) He tells funny stories about Canada and working at Coles' bookstore. And then he does Sugar Mountain and you don't breathe for about three minutes.
The sound of an artist finding his voice is unbearably moving to me. Something about this recording just feels like it should be private -- that somehow its secrets should not reveal themselves to us. But that's the thing about art, isn't it? It always reveals more than you want it to, which is probably one of the reasons why you do it.
If you're any sort of an artist starting out, unsure of your voice, this CD is going to help you. It reminds you with humility that we all start out somewhere. And that, incredibly, who we're meant to be is something you can hear from the very start -- maybe only in a bit here and a piece there. But you can hear it, if you listen.
A few weeks ago I got to see the other end of that journey. A sold out concert at the Air Canada Centre, where Neil came out and wowed the crowd while barely saying a word. The electric, the acoustic sets were sublime -- his voice fuller and less ragged than I've heard it before. All that and a closing cover of "A Day in the Life." One of the best concerts I saw this year. (Thanks, sis.)
The two things are inextricably linked for me -- like bookends. I guess that's when you know you're getting on a bit -- when you find longevity itself inspiring!
9) Tina Fey: Actor, Writer, Palin
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I can't possibly add anything new -- certainly not to the excellent Vanity Fair profile now on the stands. But Fey proved this year that the trust that comedy aficionados had put in her was not misplaced. Her triumphant return to Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin might have gotten all the attention (and maybe even influenced an election,) but it benefited 30 Rock, too, and that's what I cared about most. Iamatvjunkie has a handy dandy Year in Tina Fey recap here.Through it all, she's maintained perspective, humility and a refreshing groundedness.
Sometimes the good girls win. And bitch is definitely the new black.
8) David Milch on The Complete Deadwood
It's a gorgeous package, of course. But the true gem on the excellent series set of Deadwood is a dreamy, stream-of-consciousness disquisition by Milch as he walks the empty standing sets of Deadwood. "The Meaning of Endings: David Milch on the Conclusion of Deadwood."
It's twenty-two minutes long, and at turns hilarious, ineffably sad, educational and frustrating.
For fans, the juice here is that Milch admits on camera that those Deadwood movies are probably never going to happen, which gives him license to explore and reveal some of the plotlines that might have been. And they are juicy. The struggle to civilize the camp in Season 3 leads up to weightier fare -- including the real life fire that consumed most of the town in 1879.
But for the writer, it's a wake. Milch lectures on the impossibility of endings, of venerating how things end as the most important part of all. That in life, we never know our endings. It's partly that professorial thing that Milch always does, but it's also a guy bucking against the restrictions of an audience who demands closed homilies -- things that add up to a point; things that offer tidy conclusions so unlike the messy, dropped threads of a life.
It's a wounded walk. It's creativity and regret spilling forth. It's raw, and wonderful and heartbreaking.
7) Tom Stoppard's Rock & Roll
Back in February, I got to see Tom Stoppard's play Rock & Roll in New York. Here's what I wrote about it at the time:
ROCK N’ROLL is Tom Stoppard’s story of the life and times of several characters from shortly after the end of the Prague Spring in 1968, to the end of the “Velvet Revolution” which brought Vaclev Havel to power in 1989.The show unfolds the stories mainly through the eyes of two protagontists. Max, played by Brian Cox, is one of the last unreconstructed Soviet-style British communists. Jan (Rufus Sewell,) starts out as one of Max’s students as Cambridge, but returns home to Prague to look after his mother.
But what Rock N’ Roll is really about is the intersection of culture and politics. It also, at the margins, tells the story of the Czech band “The Plastic People of the Universe,” whose persecution in the 1970s led to a sensational trial, and Charter 77 – a manifesto of sorts that for Havel and other dissidents, started the reclamation of their society from the Communist jackboot.
The love Jan has for music transcends politics, which is precisely what the above passage is about – it’s what makes it so dangerous. Through his thirty year journey, Jan, who starts out politically agnostic, is gradually pushed into dissidence simply because his desire to be left alone, to listen to the Plastics and music, can’t be accommodated.
Rock N’Roll is ultimately about so much more – the wilting promise of the sixties, paganism and freedom of thought and expression; a love story, a lament for Syd Barret (really). It’s meaty and provocative and vibrant and moving.
I’ve never been to Prague. I know very little about Syd Barret, pitifully little of the writings of Vaclev Havel – but such is the power of culture that I’ll be seeking each of these things out now.
That power, for a cultural product to get you thinking about something else you're concerned about -- the power to inspire lateral connections, to, in essence, momentarily rewire your brain -- is ultimately why I do what I do. To entertain is to inform. There is no difference for me. Proof positive is the rest of that February entry -- what seeing Rock & Roll told me about my industry and how the system works here: how we, too, are salt eaters. I read it back now and it's probably one of my favorite entries.
Ironically, Lee Goldberg picked up on my short comments re: Heather Havrilesky this weekend. Goldberg's a great blogger and a very successful writer. But lately he's taken to writing about Canadian TV with a typical American's understanding of the actual problems of the industry. Which is to say, not much. Wonder if he'll read this one?
More from the list tomorrow or New Year's Eve.
For past lists, click here.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Schadenfreude Watch: Meanwhile, in Other Mediums...
EVER HAVE ONE of those days where everything you see and hear seems to be of a piece? Well, further to the bitchslap doled out by Salon to TV, here is a series of articles about other media in trouble, in transition, or both -- all gleaned from today's New York Times.
First, an intriguing article about what used to be called the "Sunday Funnies" are trying to survive the doom-and-gloom downward spiral of the modern newspaper. Leslie Berlin's article hits close to home for me. Not only was I one-time comics fanatic (I used to buy a paper I hated just to get their superior comics on the weekend) who's largely fallen out of the habit, but I also can identify with the wistful edge to Stephan Patsis, the creator of Pearls Before Swine, as he describes getting into a medium that he's always loved when the party seems to be over:
Well, for one thing, you could mourn the death of the Polaroid.
Ugh.
Just as I'm reaching for the Advil, and saying to myself, "yes, but Box Office receipts are up!" comes Michael Cieply to tell me it aint necessarily so...
Of course, to bring everything full circle, and back to my little corner of the mediasphere... let's point out that at a time when hype has become so efficient and effective that we think everything's a blockbuster even if it isn't, that the Canadian Film and TV industry still gets failing grades in the very basics of publicity: phoning people back, sending out screeners, mounting innovative events, coming up with a coherent marketing message for a movie, spending money on effective ads for a broadcast premiere, etc, etc, etc.
Hollywood is staying afloat on an oceanliner of hype. And we can't even figure out how to point our dinghy at the open sea.
Right. That's it. Daddy needs a lie down and three fingers of the quality.
And no more papers today!
First, an intriguing article about what used to be called the "Sunday Funnies" are trying to survive the doom-and-gloom downward spiral of the modern newspaper. Leslie Berlin's article hits close to home for me. Not only was I one-time comics fanatic (I used to buy a paper I hated just to get their superior comics on the weekend) who's largely fallen out of the habit, but I also can identify with the wistful edge to Stephan Patsis, the creator of Pearls Before Swine, as he describes getting into a medium that he's always loved when the party seems to be over:
IN many ways, Stephan Pastis is living his dream. In 2002, after years of frustration, he quit his job as a lawyer to pursue cartooning. Today his daily strip, “Pearls Before Swine,” appears in more than 500 newspapers. He says he answers his fan mail “in groups of 100.”From Comics and their attempts to stay relevant in a post-Newspaper world, let's go to satellite radio, where Mel Karmazin is fighting a very different battle, and one that's unthinkable from the panicked strata of TV and Radio: subscribers are going up; so is revenue, but it still may not be enough:Nevertheless, he can’t help worrying.
“Newspapers are declining,” he says. “For a syndicated cartoonist, that’s like finally making it to the major leagues and being told the stadiums are all closing, so there’s no place to play.”
The conversation in TV right now is all about alternative revenue models, and product placement, and sponsored programming -- anything to replace the current broken advertising model. Yet if we take a peek at the canary in a coalmine -- the music business -- Jon Pareles finds a world where the term "selling out" has lost its stigma. As the music becomes a marketing tool for product, rather than a product itself; are artists facing new pressures to tailor their output to be marketing-friendly -- putting their creative expression behind the imperatives of the marketing machine it's selling ou--sorry -- synergizing with?“If you take a look around at all of the media space — I’m not trying to paint the rosy picture because we have challenges connected to our liquidity and certainly our stock price is dreadful,” Mr. Karmazin says. “But, you know, our revenues are growing double digits. We’re growing subscribers. We’re not losing subscribers.
“So if would be unfair to compare us to a newspaper business that’s losing circulation and losing revenue, traditional television, traditional radio,” he adds. “They have fundamental company flaws or industry flaws.”
But Sirius XM does have a serious flaw in its capital structure. Its costs, which include servicing its pile of debt, appear to be too high to make the business viable.
Mr. Cheen, the analyst, agrees with Mr. Karmazin that satellite radio is a delightful product and gives him credit for showing revenue growth amid the economic downturn. “But you don’t have any unlevered, free cash flow, dude,” he says of Mr. Karmazin and his company. “In this environment, how do you walk on water?
“This is the drama of it all,” Mr. Cheen continues. “No one is suggesting this media is not a viable media. It’s just poorly capitalized.”
I mean, hell yeah, I downloaded that Chairlift song cause I heard it on the Ipod Nano commercial. But I also got the Glasvegas song cause I heard it on SiriusXM. Oh Lord, what's an aging hipster to do?
With telling ambivalence, Brooklyn Vegan, the widely read, indie-loving music blog, recently started a column, “This Week in Music Licensing: It’s Not Selling Out Anymore,” but soon dropped the “selling out” half of the title. There’s no longer a clear dividing line for selling out, if there ever was.And as music becomes a means to an end — pushing a separate product, whether it’s a concert ticket or a clothing line, a movie scene or a Web ad — a tectonic shift is under way. Record sales channeled the taste of the broad, volatile public into a performer’s paycheck. As music sales dwindle, licensers become a far more influential target audience. Unlike nonprofessional music fans who might immerse themselves in a song or album they love, music licensers want a track that’s attractive but not too distracting — just a tease, not a revelation.
It’s almost enough to make someone miss those former villains of philistinism, the recording companies. Labels had an interest in music that would hold listeners on its own terms; selling it was their meal ticket. Labels, and to some extent radio stations and music television, also had a stake in nurturing stars who would keep fans returning to find out what happened next, allowing their catalogs to be perennially rediscovered. By contrast, licensers have no interest beyond the immediate effect of a certain song, and can save money by dealing with unknowns.
Well, for one thing, you could mourn the death of the Polaroid.
Ugh.
Just as I'm reaching for the Advil, and saying to myself, "yes, but Box Office receipts are up!" comes Michael Cieply to tell me it aint necessarily so...
Looking back, in fact, 2008 may be remembered as the year when Hollywood succeeded in redefining the Big Event.
A “movie of the century” — something that made you want to dress up, get in line, and act silly just to see it — used to come along every year or two. The “Star Wars” films had that quality. So did “Titanic,” in a quieter, dreamier sort of way.
But heart-stopping film events like that have been popping up every few weeks this year.
Or at least it felt that way if you were willing to close your eyes and take a ride with Hollywood’s marketing mavens and those who help them along in the media, old and new.
It’s all great fun — and, in the heat of the moment, can seem tantalizingly real. Remember the high-heeled stampede toward “Sex and the City”? What a romp! Cosmopolitans. Bus tours. Girls’ nights out.
Eventually, about 22 million tickets were sold. That puts it on a par with “Steel Magnolias” in 1989 or “The First Wives Club” in 1996 — movies that played to about the same number of viewers, but did so with considerably less noise.
“It’s certainly easier to create a media event, if you have the right stars and get the right traction,” said Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist who, with Michael Levin, has made a study of contemporary publicity in a book, “Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?,” which was recently published by Portfolio Hardcover.
The problem, Mr. Bragman said, “is that there’s shockingly little relationship between the publicity, i.e., the hype, and butts in seats.”
Of course, to bring everything full circle, and back to my little corner of the mediasphere... let's point out that at a time when hype has become so efficient and effective that we think everything's a blockbuster even if it isn't, that the Canadian Film and TV industry still gets failing grades in the very basics of publicity: phoning people back, sending out screeners, mounting innovative events, coming up with a coherent marketing message for a movie, spending money on effective ads for a broadcast premiere, etc, etc, etc.
Hollywood is staying afloat on an oceanliner of hype. And we can't even figure out how to point our dinghy at the open sea.
Right. That's it. Daddy needs a lie down and three fingers of the quality.
And no more papers today!
Havrilesky's Hilarious J'Accuse
SALON'S HEATHER HAVRILESKY weighs in with a hilarious and bracing J'accuse against the powers that be in the TV business. When I think of how sensitive Canadain creators get to critics like John Doyle, it makes me positively giggle. Havrilesky manages to take square aim at almost every network, and many of the top shows, in a broadside entitled "The Year The Small Screen Fell Flat."
In fact, the manner in which the intelligence and intricacy of "Lost's" first seasons devolved into self-parody mirrors a larger problem with the way TV shows are staffed and managed: Trusted, known talents create stunning pilots that are picked up on the basis of one episode and a loose mess of ideas and plotlines for the first season. With a rare combination of luck and network support, the first season is declared a hit, and then the talented showrunners depart for various multimillion-dollar development deals, leaving their heirs -- less headstrong, less inventive writing teams -- to imitate their original work until they've successfully run that big, lovely ship into rocky ground once and for all. The talented showrunners are then called back from their respective highly paid but mostly half-assed secondary creations to bring the original show back to its former glory, only to find -- surprise! -- that it's beyond saving.
Show me your favorite drama that lost its luster after a season or two, and I'll show you a creator or team of co-creators who departed for greener pastures a long time ago. Let's not mince words here: The TV industry is badly run, and there's far too much big money flashed around every corner for sustainable efforts to take root. The shows that maintained their quality over several seasons -- "The Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," "The Shield," "The Wire," "Deadwood" -- were all run by stubborn, outspoken eccentrics who 1) set the bar high for themselves, year after year, 2) believed in their creation above all others and placed that belief above the big money they were offered elsewhere, 3) had faith in the network that supported and embraced their creation (in most cases, HBO), and knew that the show would never have found such a welcome home elsewhere, and 4) had no interest in drawing out their stories indefinitely, "ER"-style, past the point where hey should naturally conclude.
As I said, you may quibble over some of her individual program choices. (For my part, I find Sons of Anarchy kind of bracing, with characters at least as compelling as early Sopranos, and I also think that LOST successfully righted a two-season long slide at the end of Season 3. I can't complain much about Season 4 because as a viewer I really quite enjoyed it. But to describe Heroes as "one long, CGI-punctuated discussion between two precocious teenagers on the nature of good and evil"? Ouch.)
But it's Havrilesky's summation of the true shape of the problem facing the U.S. industry that gives me the greatest agita:
But the TV industry is scrambling to adjust its business model in a cruel and unforgiving new world, where viewers suddenly expect to watch any show they want, whenever they want it. Like newspapers, book publishing and the music industry, TV networks and cable channels are trying desperately to distribute their shows in new, convenient ways while still delivering the advertising that keeps their multibillion-dollar industry afloat.
Although DVRs have been around for several years now, 2008 was the year that regular broadcast programming seemed to lose its hold on the population once and for all. The advent and immediate popularity of Hulu, which NBC launched earlier this year, underscored how many viewers were willing to try out new formats and watch their favorite shows on new platforms. Not surprisingly, ratings have been dismal across the four major networks all year, and now advertising cutbacks due to the recession are forcing the TV industry's hand like never before.
But even as the networks scrambled to offer their shows online, hoping to bring back the audiences they were losing elsewhere, they remained confused about how to milk adequate advertising revenue from this new model. Just look at "Gossip Girl," a smart, sophisticated teen soap that sank in the traditional ratings while it remained hugely popular online. Reflecting the same bad judgment that pushed "Easy Money" off the air while salvaging "Privileged" and "90210," the CW foolishly attempted to cut off its online episodes to hungry fans, thereby alienating one of its few sources of loyal viewers.
Even if the networks figure out a way to keep their profits high under this new paradigm, they can't change the fact that their pie is being cut up into smaller and smaller pieces, shared among hundreds of cable channels, original Web programming sites, and untold new, cheaper sources of content moving forward. Shelly Palmer, author of "Television Disrupted: The Transition From Network TV to Networked TV," writes on his Web site, "When the dust settles, there will not be room for four major broadcast networks all producing high-end shows, all week long."
Why is this so scary?
Because I work in Canada. And in Canada, they haven't even mastered the art of listening to or managing talent at any level. In Canada, the discussions about how to extend the life of the broadcast TV model don't go much farther than "go to the CRTC and see if they'll give you free money from cable subscribers."
The changes that have come down the pike in the last year -- the speed of them -- is truly astounding, and the simple, shit-scary fact is that Canadian broadcast business does not have their traditional two or three year window to dick around and figure out how they're going to cherry pick a solution.
The business model here -- buy U.S. shows at dumped fire sale prices, and show 'em at the same time while you paste on your commercials -- was always a far more fragile model than the one in the USA. But as the model that made their piggyback-industry possible crumbles, all the signs point toward the mandarins here taking in exactly the wrong lessons, and doubling down on a dying strategy.
The development infrastructure here is poor and listless, without clear goals. There's still the hangover of thinking of homegrown fresh product as afterthought. And Canada, even more than the U.S., does not do well with embracing original thinkers, stubborn people committed to a singular goal, or obsessives. The Tall Poppy rules are in full effect.
There's a gunfight coming, and from where I sit, it looks more likely than ever that someone here's going to get their head blown off without ever having had the guts to take the safety off.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Arrogance, Humbling, and Surrender
WELL LESSEE. I normally try to avoid Saturday posts because they're pretty low traffic days, but I'm going to guess that everyone's a little familia'd out right now and might be drifting back to surfables for some fresh intel.
Not sure I've got that. This is more of a little process observation.
A few weeks back I was talking to a class of writing students at Humber College. And the subject of writer's block came up. I don't know if I brought it up or they did, but I gave my standard answer in those cases, which is that I think it's mostly kind of a precious construction; that working screenwriters didn't really have time for it. When you're on deadline in a TV show, with a crew waiting to prep an episode, not delivering is simply not an option. If you're "not feeling it," you have to simply grind through and deliver a less confident draft -- and hope that you have a wonderful and generous story department that will help you trowel over your shortcomings and sift through the blasted rock of your painful first draft to bring out the gold.
I mostly believe that -- that writer's block is 90% affectation. I again default, if you haven't read it, to Steven Pressfield's excellent procrastination-killer The War of Art, where he talks about the phenomenon of resistance. As he puts it in his author's note:
Not sure I've got that. This is more of a little process observation. A few weeks back I was talking to a class of writing students at Humber College. And the subject of writer's block came up. I don't know if I brought it up or they did, but I gave my standard answer in those cases, which is that I think it's mostly kind of a precious construction; that working screenwriters didn't really have time for it. When you're on deadline in a TV show, with a crew waiting to prep an episode, not delivering is simply not an option. If you're "not feeling it," you have to simply grind through and deliver a less confident draft -- and hope that you have a wonderful and generous story department that will help you trowel over your shortcomings and sift through the blasted rock of your painful first draft to bring out the gold.
I mostly believe that -- that writer's block is 90% affectation. I again default, if you haven't read it, to Steven Pressfield's excellent procrastination-killer The War of Art, where he talks about the phenomenon of resistance. As he puts it in his author's note:
I had an excruciatingly difficult time facing my fear to write The War of Art. It's stuff that's been boiling inside of me for years. The book is all about facing down the enemy within ourselves, what I call "Resistance": the emotional/psychological force that stops writers from writers, painters from painting, and all creative people from being creative. Resistance was working on me too, overtime, and giving me a million reasons not to do it. I was getting extremely depressed. Then I finally plunged in and everything got clear.I've read books by writers about writing. I've attended seminars and workshops. But, in all of my years, I never heard a word about the phenomenon of Resistance. I've been fighting it every minute of every writing day and watched it break up my marriage and screw me over in a hundred ways for years and years. Was I the only one? I couldn't be, because I saw friend after friend crap out on writing projects and other creative enterprises, all because of Resistance and fear. In the end I had to write the book, just because I knew what I was fighting was real and other creators were fighting it too. The War of Art is one working artist's report from the trenches, sort of "this is how it feels to me; does it feel this way to you?"
I hope it helps. I hope it tells aspiring artists and entrepreneurs that they're not crazy to be feeling the fear they feel. We all do. It's part of being human. And I hope some of the tricks of the trade I've learned can help too. Resistance never goes away. I've had to reread parts of the book myself already, just to keep me firmly planted in my writing chair and working on my next project. It helps!
The reason why "resistance" to me is such a cool word is because it properly puts the onus back on you. "Writer's block" sounds like some evil external force that's doing this to you. And that's not what it is, at all. You can't let yourself off the hook that easy.
But...
Over the last few weeks -- and here's where the humbling comes in...I've discovered that resistance does sometimes have its uses.
But first let's talk about the arrogance.
When setting up a delivery schedule for the pilot that I'm currently developing, I made a serious, grave, and in retrospect silly mistake. I overpromised.
I took my experience over the last few years writing on TV shows, and how long it took me to work out the outline, and I padded it out a bit and said, "I can do this."
What a mistake.
What I'd left out of the equation was the effect of having an already established canon of characters and template can do for you. It's the reason why in a pinch, I can write a good draft in five days, and why I can knuckle down an pump out an outline lickety split, too. That's the single most-overlooked skill from the novice screenwriters I talk to in classroom situations or informally -- they don't yet realize that writing well is important, but that equally important is writing fast.
But writing fast requires some work ahead of time. It's like the difference between chopping and prepping all the ingredients in a stir fry and pulling them out of the fridge where you cleverly chopped and prepped them the night before: only one of those methods is going to get you a stir fry inside of ten minutes.
So it goes with outlines and scripts.
And especially pilot scripts.
My first massive bout of resistance on the current project was conceptual. There were a couple of hairy things about it that we always knew I was going to have to work out at the outline stage. But it wasn't until I had some down time, and was sitting out in the Florida sun in early November that I realized the true shape of what was missing. It took a few days of thought, after which I came back and wrote it all up and circulated a three page document amongst my partners. It slightly rebooted and reframed the idea, and locked down the other stuff that had been out in the ether. It got a great reception, and I immediately thought that now I could proceed to quickly writing the pilot script.
Uh uh.
I got three acts in and was seized with despair. I truly felt I was spinning wheels. What I thought was five acts of my story wasn't. Now my instincts were telling me that my Act Four out and Act Five were chock full of events that had to go into Act Three. I had an ending. I had a strong start. I just didn't have the right tentpoles.
I was paralyzed for about three days. These three days also happened to coincide with some WGC business, and a bit of personal crap, and a couple of other things. But the fear was there. The fear never left. And the fear, the resistance, the block -- whatever it was -- was telling me that I had a serious, insurmountable, terrible problem with the material.
Oh, guess what? I had a cold, too. Yeah, when it rains.
Sitting here comfortably on the other end, I can't tell you exactly how I got through it. But there was a combination of factors. Some of it was putting that sage Pressfield advice about avoiding resistance to work. Some of it was stubbornly just putting in ass-in-seat time. But the third thing was something akin to surrender. It was a result of the churn and the sturm and the drang, and the panic that I'd felt. All of that roiling emotion made me go back and look at each scene anew. And the fear and angst gave me new eyes.
In the end, here's how the floodgates opened: I had a key reveal scene at the end of act two, where one character revealed something profound and surprising about themselves to our main character. It was a big bombshell. It was the kind of big bombshell that we don't often get dropped on us in life. It happens a bit more often on TV because, well, it's TV. But it sure was big.
And it was at the end of Act Two.
I like nice meaty act outs as much as the next dude, but suddenly I felt, "Hey, maybe this is too much." And I started thinking about what happens when we have to tell people big things like that, and how often we tell half truths. Or the truth up to a point.
And suddenly, there it was. This character had to tell my main character enough to get her to go off on a tangent, but not so much that she saw the person, or herself, differently. That had to be saved for the end.
I know that, especially without the details, that must seem an incredibly simplistic solution. But that's the point. Most solutions are. And if they're not simple, then you probably really have gummed up the works and have to go back to the drawing board completely.
By holding back the why of what this character revealed, I had a new denouement. And then it rippled forward, and within the space of five minutes, I'd found a plot point in Act one that could echo and resonate and come back in Act 4. Characters who had been functionaries lengthened and deepened, and started to reflect the main character's quest. That one logjam broke, and the better part of a week of worry gave place to two full acts worth of discovery and breakthroughs in the space of about five hours. And then, the outline was done.
That's the bloody thing about resistance. Sometimes it's like that little spinning "wait" symbol you see when your computer's CPU is chugging along. Calculations are being made in the background; you just have to be patient. Before you force-quit and start over, you need to stop. Sometimes the thing that you think is the resistance, isn't. In this case, the resistance was telling me that the whole thing had to be torn apart.
I thought the resistance was the inability to focus. But it wasn't. The resistance was the fear telling me that the problem was more serious than I thought, and more serious than it subsequently was. Does that make any sense?
So, lessons learned: Don't overpromise. And be sure to...uh...be sure what the resistance is really telling you.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
A Life Less Wonderful
WHAT A STRANGE experience it was watching It's a Wonderful Life last night. It must be easily the tenth time I've seen it all the way through. Its rhythms and quirks and charms are as familiar to me as my own hand, at this point.
Yet this is the first time that I've seen it with eyes wearied by the economic meltdown of the last little while. The original audience for the film would have had not-too-distant memories of a time when runs on banks were a disturbing reality. But for years that wonderful scene of Stewart doling out his honeymoon money must have played as slightly otherworldly. Yet here we are again, with banks failing and people worried about their every last nickel.
What's even more interesting about It's a Wonderful Life, though, is the difference between its economic vision and the reality that we find ourselves in. In Life, as opposed to Life, the ramshackle Bailey Building and Loan is the instrument by which simple people who otherwise couldn't afford houses work to afford that dream. It doesn't make a lot of money, but it does help people out, and their lives are better off for it.
All that talk of home ownership, and mortgages and foreclosure kind of hit like a faceslap in light of the last year or so, but when you ponder the world of Bedford Falls, two things ring out for me. The first is the exhortation by mean old Mr. Potter that George will be run out of town on the rails when people hear about the missing money. Potter gives the solution to Bailey, but with a sneer. He tells him, mockingly, that he can go to the people for help, and see if they'll bail him out. But they won't.
In our world, of course, the word "bailout" is dirty. Because we've convinced ourselves that we're bailing out Mr. Potter, not a bunch of potential George Baileys. And that might be true, as far as it goes. Which is not very far, really.
The other thing that struck me on this viewing was that sign on the main street. "You Are Now In Bedford Falls," it says. Not, "Welcome to.." not, "Now entering," but "You are now in..." an odd construction that makes it seem like Bedford Falls, far from being a town, is almost a state of mind.
We all know how It's a Wonderful Life ends. What Potter mocked, comes true. The people do come to the aid of George Bailey, rewarding his basic decency and goodness and getting him out of trouble with the Bank Examiner. Tellingly -- and the reason why I think people misread Capra when they accuse him of being a polyanna -- though George is saved, Potter goes unpunished. The rich industrialist is not put in his place. If anything, he comes out $8000 ahead. Capra didn't want to overpromise what Bedford Falls could deliver.
But the people do help each other out.
The other thing about Life, of course, is a very un-American kind of way of looking at the world. The American myth is a positive one...yet the route that takes George Bailey to the end of that movie is anything but positive. Capra suggests that, in fact, it's our hardships and how we bear them that shape us, not our triumphs. During the course of the movie, George endures one setback after another, one hardship after another -- and it's what makes him the decent man he is. I think we screenwriters sometimes believe in that "true character is revealed only through adversity" stuff more than civilians do. But Capra dares to put it out there for all to see.
Here's the thing, though. In our world, it's the biggest banks, and the richest people who cooked up these dubious mortgages for people who couldn't afford them. There was no George Bailey, not anywhere. The lack of oversight, the deception and greed and fraud at play over the last few years would have made even old Mr. Potter blush. We live in the world where George Bailey was never born. We're in Pottersville.
I don't know if we can get back to Bedford Falls. I don't know if there ever really was such a place -- in history, in America, in the hearts of people. But on this day where reflection and peace is on the agenda, take a minute and ask yourself how much George Bailey is in you, and how much more you can let him out. And remember that the hardships and the setbacks you've faced in your own life isn't a reason to keep him in. Because that's what makes him worthy of Donna Reed, and Clarence, and Zuzu's Petals.
Have a Merry Christmas, and here's hoping we can one day look up and look to one another and say, "You Are Now in Bedford Falls."
Pinteresque
HAROLD PINTER died of Cancer yesterday.
He was a fearless writer til the end. I wrote about his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech here.
Now is a time for fearlessness. For calling it as you see it. For uncompromising self-examination and intellectual honesty. The world is poorer for having lost one of its finest dramatists, and excoriating critics.
If you've never read one of his plays, I encourage you to pick them up. You'll find the language bracing, and the sharpness of his pen exciting.
He was a fearless writer til the end. I wrote about his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech here.
Now is a time for fearlessness. For calling it as you see it. For uncompromising self-examination and intellectual honesty. The world is poorer for having lost one of its finest dramatists, and excoriating critics.
If you've never read one of his plays, I encourage you to pick them up. You'll find the language bracing, and the sharpness of his pen exciting.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Lights, Please? An Appreciaton
THIS STORY WAS first posted on Christmas Eve, 2005. It's sort of a tradition to post it every Christmas Eve now. And I don't really feel like writing anything else today. This year we lost the great Bill Melendez, Animation Director, voice of Snoopy, and kind of an inspirational figure to me -- he died at the age of ninety-one.
He'll be missed. A lot.
Hold tight to those you hold dear this Christmas. And Peace unto you and all that.
It's not such a bad little tree.All it needed was a little love.
In 1993, I was still a TV producer, and I got a good TV-producer like break. A gallery in Yorkville was selling cels from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and they were bringing in one of the creators of that landmark 1965 special to do some interviews. I pitched the story. My producer wasn't sure. I re-pitched the story. We wanted a way to do a fun Christmas-like story, but since our show was about media, it was kind of hard to come up with an angle that wasn't the usual, "Oh, has the selling of Christmas gone too far?" I made every argument I could think to make, but the Producer still wasn't budging. I tried to tell him that baby-boomers might not understand the significance of a Charlie Brown Christmas, but to people just a bit younger, it was everything. No dice. Finally, I got him on the content: that hoary old "has the selling of Christmas gone too far?" I said, "How can you not want to do a story on this special? They basically anticipated that whole question by about 20 years." When I pointed out the similarities between the philosophy underpinning our show, and A Charlie Brown Christmas, I got a bit of traction. So I dug in. I was doing the story.
Jose Cuauhtemoc Melendez was born in Mexico in 1916, which would make him 89 years old now. To the world, he was known as Bill Melendez, and besides working on Fantasia, Bambi, and Dumbo, he was there during the birth of all those classic Warner Brothers Cartoons. The man worked with Bob Clampett.
When it came time to animate Charles Schulz's Peanuts world, it was Bill Melendez who did a lot of the heavy lifting. He and his team came up with all the groundbreaking stuff we don't even think about anymore: they resisted the impulse to have Snoopy talk (Snoopy's unique vocalisations would eventually be performed by Melendez himself,) they decided to use real kids for the voices, and brass bleats for the voices of all the adults. They hired Vince Guaraldi.
Most of all, they resisted any attempts to cute-up or pull punches with the rather melancholy, serious subtext that beats at the heart of that special.
It's an amazing feat, now, looking back at this thirty-year-old special, and soberly realizing that practically none of those decisions would likely have stood today, in our market-researched and thoroughly-picked-over network culture. I mean -- a jazz soundtrack?
But Melendez and his team stuck to their guns. Sparky Schulz trusted them, and the result is, at least to my eyes, a special that is enduring because it manages to be both simple and profound all at once.
I loved Charlie Brown when I was a child. I went through a cartooning phase when I was in Florida -- obsessed with the Disney types, wondering at why Mickey went from his stylized and interesting 40's guise to the bland, more-childlike visage of the 1970's. I loved Bugs, and Daffy, but most of all, above all -- I loved Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Linus. Especially Linus.
I guess even then I was destined to drift into writing.
In my drawing phase, I would work tracing, trying, erasing, trying to reproduce the comics that I saw over and over again. There were two things I could never get. Linus' head gave me trouble long after I perfected the Charlie Brown circle. The blanket never seemed right. And though I could do a passable Snoopy on his doghouse, I never could assay what for me was the vision of Snoopy at his most sublime: the dog dancing.
Flash ahead to 1993, and on a cold December day, I'm with my cameraman in this tiny, tony Yorkville gallery. And in walks Bill Melendez. He was a sprightly 77-year-old then, with a thick head of hair and his signature mustache trimmed and crisp, turning up at the sides with a Salvidor Dali-like puckishness. He shook my hand firmly -- so firmly that I mimed the old "ow, that handshake is too much" schtick. And that's when I got to hear the laugh.
You can tell a lot about a man about the way he laughs. Melendez's laugh was long and uninhibited, the laugh of a man who does what he wants, and knows that what he does has an impact. It was the laugh of a man for whom joy was a daily visitor; who savored the good in life. In short, it was the laugh of a guy who'd come up with something iconic like A Charlie Brown Christmas, that speaks through being, not preaching.
I don't remember too much about the interview anymore. He knew I was about the age -- the age of his first audience, the same age as the first of the Sesame Street kids. He talked about the creation of that early special, and his characters, and what you got from working with children over adult voice actors. He spoke warmly and admiringly of Sparky Schulz, and gave a few tips and tricks and well-worn stories from the creation of Charlie Brown and his friends over the years.
All too soon it was over. I had a big old smile on my face and so did he. He'd been drawing for part of the interview (gotta get those cutaways,) just doodles, really. But once we were done and the cameraman started breaking down the equipment, I said to him, "you know, this interview really meant a lot to me." I explained the history, being a kid in Florida, the obsession with drawing, and then I did something that I couldn't believe. I said, "You guys actually made me want to do this." And I pulled out a pad and within thirty seconds, I'd drawn my best Snoopy-on-a-doghouse. And I gave it to him, and he smiled. What the hell was I doing? This is why I'm not a journalist. So there I am beating myself up and he just smiles at me and says, "you have to sign it. And date it." And I did, and he took it, and gingerly put it inside his portfolio. And I said, "I feel a little dumb right now. You just need to know that the work you did, And Charles Schulz... it's just meant more to me than I can say."
And he nodded, and he said, "can you do anything else from Peanuts?" And I smiled and clocked through my specialties. And I confessed that no matter how, or when, I could never master Snoopy Dancing, or Linus.
And so he sat down and drew me two drawings. They hang framed in my apartment, now. One is a glorious Snoopy in mid canter, and it's signed, "A Dance for Denis." The other is a simple 12 x 17 of Linus with Woodstock, and it says, "To Denis, Who Draws."
I look at these every day. Amidst the writer's block and the life problems, the rough patches and the joyful noises, the crunchy and the smooth, they never, ever fail to make me smile, or remind me of the generous spirit who produced them.
I don't have the Christmas spirit this year. It's just been lacking all round. Too much bustle, too many parties, too much smug preening over stupid things-- like the "War on Christmas."
But this morning among my Bah, Humbug I looked up at those drawings that I know so well, and I caught something new in Snoopy's eye and it just made me laugh. And suddenly, I want to throw on that Vince Guaraldi. There's the spirit. What took you so long?
I guess that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Border Bye Bye
SO SINCE LAST night, I've gotten a couple of emails about the season finale of the second season of THE BORDER, which ended explosively with a couple of characters all-but-for-sure cooked and many others in peril.Part of the test, I think, of when a series goes beyond the "Canadian" threshold (where the Canadian-ness of it is either a pro or a minus, but is always the first thing discussed) is when people start asking the same questions as they ask about any other show on TV.
"Is Layla really dead? What about Gray's dad? And when does Season 3 start?"
Those are all good questions to be asking, and the fact that there are people asking them on message boards and to me bodes well for the long term health of the show, I think.
That being said, one thing the impatient TV fan should understand, at present, um, I don't know how to break this to you but...there IS no season 3. Yet.
Both seasons of The Border were shot roughly May-November. What makes it seem more telescoped than that is that 26 episodes aired in 2008. Season One was shot May-November 2007, and shown starting Jan 8/08, and Season Two was shot May-November 2008, and shown Starting 29 September 2008. In other words, the seasons were shown pretty much back to back, and last night's finale and my ep the week before were shot less than 2 months ago.
What happens now is a short hiatus. Season 3's 12 episodes will start shooting sometime in May, which means the writers will probably start working on them in February or March, and the Season will most likely premiere in September 2009.
And that's just about the last question I'll be able to answer about THE BORDER. As I wrote before in this space, I'm not going back to the show. I'm presently writing my own pilot, shopping a couple of others, and meeting about other new projects and challenges. I've got a stack of scripts and DVD's to read and screen over Christmas. So we'll see.
Henceforth, I'll follow the show same as you, as a fan. It will be interesting to see what fresh blood on the writing staff can add to the mix, and what new directions are in store for the show.
Finally, a couple of other emails I got asked me what I thought of John Doyle's column in the Globe yesterday. And I think that probably deserves a comment. John Doyle is one of Canadian Television's most steadfast supporters, and probably the most interesting television critic in the country. It's his job to write what he thinks, and he is perfectly entitled not to like The Border, and to say so if he wants. To whinge about that, especially if you are connected with the show in any way, would be unseemly. In any case, he followed up today and seemingly walked back what he'd written. I hope that wasn't due to any pressure from the network or anybody connected with the show. I do think it's interesting that he feels uncommonly frustrated with Canadian creatives right now. Interesting and unfortunate.
I've said in the past that even in posts where he lambasted the show, Doyle still gave ink to The Border, which is the important thing. The true weapon of the critic is not to slam you; it's the power to dismiss or ignore you. I also found it frustrating that a lot of the time when creatives in this country read a bad review, they never ever seem to see the things beyond the harsh words to the actual trenchant and fair criticism underneath. I think that was certainly true with Doyle and The Border. There was much that he wrote about the show that I thought was fair, and changed how I approached some of my stories and eps.
I think that people who make shows should put their energies into making them; not trying to spin how they're received. Nobody asked me, or anybody else to make TV. You make a product, the people get to receive and review that product as they see fit. That's the compact.
Doyle's written nice stuff about me and my work in the past, and he's leveled criticism at me too. Such is the business. To get all china doll about the latter and only accept the former makes you a hypocrite. This isn't Emily Post. It's not "if you have nothing nice to say don't say nothing at all." I think we'd probably be a lot better off if Canadian creatives learned to man up a bit and take the crunchy with the smooth.
I hope that someday soon I write something that gets a positive nod from Doyle. But if I don't, that's of no consequence. If the price of that nod is a passionate advocate for TV being forced to pull his punches, well, then that's a price too dear.
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