Oh, The Money (Shots) We'll Make...

SOMETIMES THE GLEE with which which I greet the news is completely unbidden.

The CRTC approved a bunch of new discretionary channels this week. Some are predictable and YAWN-y. Like Rogers Baseball TV -- real exciting sounding right? The sad thing is I'll probably get that one.

But I want you to think back of the fooferal that recently came down the pike about the Government's games with Bill C10. Buddy Boy Charles McVety clucking on and on about the horribly unwholesome tax credits extended to movies like YOUNG PEOPLE FUCKING.

Think, too, on Jim Shaw, Fatuous Gasbag and High School Chum of Prime Minister Shiny Hair, and his terrible pique over the disgusting and inappropriate antics of the Trailer Park Boys.

Think on those things as I tell you about the other new channel they approved: Northern Peaks.

Northern Peaks is, drumroll, please..."Canada's first adult video channel offering significant Canadian adult content."

The CRTC definitely did their job here, though, because they have required that Northern Peaks (get it? heh heh get it?) spend ONE MILLION DOLLARS on original programming in its first year of operation.

Other flies in the Canadian broadcast ointment will be undoubtedly pleased to know that the CRTC also demanded all the programming on this channel be close captioned. Thank heaven for that.

So, yeah, while your head is spinning -- your government doesn't want to be involved with YPF or icky movies or TV shows that might, you know, involve the gays or people doing morally questionable things...

But they WILL encourage that thing that we were ALL CLAMORING FOR...

..A DOMESTIC PORN INDUSTRY.

Because, damnit, we Canadians don't get hepped up unless everybody's really pasty.

It's comforting to know that if the whole rest of the industry goes in the tank, because of government and regulatory idiocy, maybe I can get work as a fluffer. I'm sure I'd be a good fluffer.

Oh, wait, you want more? One little nugget more? Okay. Here you go.

You know how every time there's an article that talks about the arts and etc, etc, all the trog complaints about "myyy txxxx dllllrrRRRS" seem to echo loudest from one particular province? You know, with the oil and stuff?

Well, guess who owns "Northern Peaks?" A numbered company based in....you got it... Alberta.

Say it with me, kids...

"Ma'am, I'm here to clean the pool..."

shwwakkka-wakkka-wakkka-wakka

H/T to Magee.

It Aint Me, Babe.

MAD PULP BASTARD Bill Cunningham sounded the alarum with two interesting new articles from WIRED about the future of TV and the Web. Alex put his take up as a follow up.

Gotta admit, I found both articles very interesting, but even though there's a persistent doomsaying tone, I'm not feelin' the worry. I'll get to why in a minute. First, here's some of the first article, with the charming, not-at-all alarmist title: "Fitting Network TV For a Toe Tag."

It may be time to perform an autopsy on network TV, which some have pronounced officially dead at age 60, the victim of a lifetime of big spending, hard living, and bad planning. Here's the coroner's report: The evening newscasts have been mowed down by cable's heat, spin, and round-the-clock immediacy. In prime time, nobody watches reruns anymore—and reruns, along with syndication, used to be the only way comedy and drama series, the heart of a network's prime-time business, made money. (The way they make money now is...well, the networks will get back to you as soon as they figure that out.)

Speaking of old-school, half-hour sitcoms: Once, 50 of them were on the air at a time. Today, they're all but gone. Suddenly, people just stopped liking them. Prime-time news magazines? Barely holding on. "Protected" time slots? Viewers accustomed to Web surfing and channel flipping at hyperspeed aren't going to watch a new show just because they're too lazy to change the channel after The Biggest Loser. The audience for daytime soaps, a profitable staple since TV's infancy, has shrunk so dramatically that the form may vanish within a few years. This is all very bad news for a medium that hasn't come up with a fresh format since 2000, when CBS launched Survivor, the gold rush in reality-TV competitions. (P.S.: Survivor isn’t what it used to be either.)

It's unlikely that a broadcast network is ever again going to create a megahit like The Cosby Show, which at its mid-’80s peak drew as many as 50 million viewers an episode. For several years now, TV's top event has been Fox's American Idol. Last season, it drew 28.8 million viewers a week.

Conversations about the future of television tend to vault way past next week or next year into a world where schedules don't exist and 10,000 programming options are all available at any moment, half of them fully interactive. (Not enjoying this episode of Law & Order: Moonbase? That's OK—you can change the plot!)

It sounds like fun. But in reality, the number of cable channels has topped out. And the number of households that subscribe to basic cable—about 65 million—hasn't budged for a decade. That's roughly 58 percent of all American TV households and it's a much higher percentage of the total households that advertisers actually care about. People who have something to sell are attracted to viewers who have already demonstrated their willingness to buy something (like cable TV). The cable business is booming: Annual advertising revenues have jumped from $8.1 billion in 1997 to a projected $28.6 billion this year.

So network TV and the act of being everything to everybody is dead, but cable's topped out and may be next. Okay. Check.

Why am I not so concerned?

Well, a couple reasons. First, there's concern fatigue. See, I'm of a generation who's been told their whole lives that it was the worst time for everything.

There were fewer of us, sandwiched as we were between the "look at me" Baby boomers and their kids. So when I was younger, after I outgrew "kids programs" there wasn't really a lot of programs aimed directly at me. It was not a great time for "tween" tv. The word tween didn't exist. I watched M*A*S*H and Three's Company reruns and tracked my growing maturity by when I finally cottoned onto the fact that the former was a whole lot funnier than the latter.

When I was in High School, it was generally acknowledged that it was one of the worst times for fashion, and music. And just as people my age were about to start having sex for the first time, we were told it was the worst time ever to have sex in like, 40 years, because even though there was the pill, now Sex was going to kill you.

Then I went to University, and tuition was rising and it was a bad time. I got out in the middle of a recession. Worst time to seek a job. I quit my job and decided to be a writer for TV in Canada a year or two after the networks successfully bamboozled the CRTC into changing the rules so that they didn't have to do drama anymore. Dramas disappeared from Canadian airwaves. Worst time to try and be a writer.

Oh, and the first run syndication market collapsed.

So, you know, I've heard about worst case scenarios before. And yes, in Canada we have a government now who's absolutely hostile to anything cultural. And the dollar's strong, so Americans aren't coming here to shoot anymore.

And I say, "enough."

The reality is that in our history of media, there are some important distinctions to make, but they're not going to necessarily kill you, especially if you're a sensitive creative type.

When a new medium comes along, it does not replace an old medium. Television did not kill Radio. Television did not kill film. Film did not kill live theatre. And despite what you read, P2P and the Ipod did not kill music.

All of these things still exist and people still make money doing them. There are people doing theatre. There are careers in Radio, and there are musicans doing what they do...making music.

What we're really nervous about, is systems. Theatre didn't die, but Vaudeville did. Radio did not die, but Drama on radio did. Music didn't die, but packaged media, and the CD format, and huge expensive accounts and questionable accounting for major labels...well, it'd be rude to pronounce it yet, cause there's still breath on that little mirror. Barely.

Television will not die.

Network TV? Yeah, that might be toast.

But if you're creative, that's not your problem. I don't think Alex is going to have to start writing speeches. And neither do I think we're all going to go to pay-per-view. If you're a creative person, you should look at all the articles like the one above and keep abreast of what's going down...but don't get all suicidey about it.

Because it aint you they're coming for.

Now there are those who stand to lose. The writer boom of the 90's, with sick, crazy money -- is done. But that was over already. But the tradeoff is that maybe the cable series you write is more fulfilling creatively. Whatevs.

I don't necessarily think that the whole thing is going to be people working harder and harder in the salt mines to come up with content -- because it's hard enough. If you're smart enough and talented enough to be good at writing for TV, if that doesn't pay, you'll find a way to be good at writing for something else. And you're telling me that things like The Dark Knight are never going to happen again? The new reality is exactly the same as the old. What the market will bear. And once a market emerges, if more than one person wants what you're selling, you're gonna make dosh.

Maybe it won't be, you know, small South American Country GDP dosh, but what would I do with eight houses anyway?

What's interesting is that if you read the rest of the article, and then think about it in terms of the article on branding I came up with a couple weeks ago, the inescapable conclusion is this:

You think the U.S. networks are screwed?

That's nothing compared to Canada.

We're already the last place that scoops up all those U.S. shows, no matter how crappy. Everybody else in the world these days waits to see what shakes out -- waits for the C.S.I.'s to rise above the Kidnappped's, before buying in.

Now they've got a business model with nothing else behind it, based on someone else's decision making. I would HATE to be a Canadian network person right now. They've never really had to think about their business before, and now it's almost too late.

And come to think of it, it's not like the Cable Lords are doing much better. I mean, how badly has Rogers handled the IPhone intro? And bungled the attempt to bring NFL games to Canada? And Shaw certainly has his little P.R. problems, too.

These are the captains of industry? And every newspaper article you read has plenty of trogs complaining about artists with their head in the trough. (Not, you know, networks asking for money on your cable bill or continued protections, or cable co's demanding that their protected monopolies continue.)

Interesting times, man. My skill's portable. I'm fine, Chico. It aint me you're looking for, babe.

The casualties to come are the people who insist that carbon paper will live forever. If you can write, or direct, or act -- relax, you're going to be fine. You may have to move -- because the people running your government or your regulatory organizations or your BDU's aren't exactly stone cold Brainiacs, but hey, that's hardly the same thing.

The second article, on Web series, is arguably more interesting. And here's the most interesting bit to me, at least from a craft point of view:

A seasoned film and television writer, Friedman left Hollywood three years ago for Electronic Arts, where he wrote the best-selling Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and the soon-to-be-released Tiberium. At EA, he had to relearn scriptwriting, because the conventions of TV don't work in interactive media. In a one-hour drama, he explains, "you put the characters together over some beers and let them bring out the plot. It's exposition disguised as dialog." But games dispense with the entire first act, the part that sets the plot in motion. "When the story begins, you're in-world — you have a gun, all hell is breaking loose, and your job as a player is to stay alive and figure out where you are." Web video gets subjected to that same compression algorithm. "We're starting every episode with Anna on the run," Friedman says. "She's already in the second act — the part where everything goes wrong."

But Friedman's ambition is to merge television with videogames in a form of storytelling that engages audience members on multiple levels — and not just with the narrative but with each other. So while Anna dodges "sims" (simulated life-forms, with their telltale orange stigmata) and agents from the mysterioso outfit known as Gemini Division, fans will be able to log on to the show's Web site and get transmissions from Anna's partner in the police department. Users will be recruited as Gemini agents themselves, at which point they can talk with other agents — er, users — by webcam. "I think this is where entertainment is heading," he says. "It's where I want entertainment to head, because that's what I want to experience."

See, the writing part is interesting to me, about starting in the 2nd act. But the whole experiential thing? Uh. I guess. I don't know. Really? Be interesting to see if he's right. And if he is, fine. I'll adapt. And so will you.

There was an article in the NYTimes on the weekend. A profile of Peter Gabriel. Gabriel's always been forward thinking on technology, always pushed his music or business strategies in new directions. A lot of those directions haven't paid off. But then again, one just made him 40 million dollars.

I interviewed Peter Gabriel about 15 years ago, in my past life, for a show I was working on at the time. He didn't know where it was going, either, for him. But he wasn't worried. And what do you know? He might not be top of the charts, but it's worked out fine for him.

If you're a creative storyteller, these are your dating years. Don't get married. Have lots of irons in lots of fires, don't get locked in. And if there's a bit of time to fill, well, say a little novena or two for the Canadian types who've ignored the creative world for so long.

Sure, it's ironic that the kind of thinker they need right now is exactly the type of person they've done everything to ignore. Yup, the digital marketers and branders and what have yous are way, way, way behind here, because they've never cultivated anything other than the safe before. You could call that Karma. But I'm going to try not to do that. Don't be so petty as to hate them for it, or to enjoy their coming misfortune. It's sad, and they've got enough to worry about.

Hope, instead, that they find some peace in whatever they wind up doing in their next careers.

And then, when the dust settles, it'll be us, the cockroaches, and Ryan Seacrest standing.

Believe it.

The Line

I'VE GOT A WEIRD day today. Lot of triage, going back through dailies, thinking ahead, fretting, lathering, rinsing, repeating. Maybe a bit of weeping, gnashing of teeth, donning the hair shirt, throwing yourself histrionically at the bed and mouthing the words, "murther..."

Anyway, a bit of a do.

But the other night I was out with a couple of delightful friends and somehow we got talking about lines from TV shows...not favorite lines, not lines that you found memorable or even well-written, but lines that fucked you up.

I'm talking game changers here ... earworms that flipped across the transom of your mind and never left. They just stayed, and took up permanent space in the mindscape like kudzu.

For me there's two. One comic, one dramatic.

The dramatic one is one that I still think about just about every day. It hit me like a hammer and I feel like I'm still vibrating from the impact.

It's when the ghost/phantasm of Nate from Six Feet Under appears over Claire's shoulder as she prepares to get into her brand new Prius in the show's finale.

"You can't take a picture of this," Nate/Claire's inner Nate/Whatever tells herself. "It's already gone."

Messed me up.

Then there's the great comic construction from 30 Rock, the sensei/grasshopper moment that is funny and I'm not even sure why.

It's when Tracy Jordan tells Kenneth:

"Well well, the manatee has become the mento."

Laugh? I thought I'd die. And I'm not even sure why.

So I'll throw it open to you. Not your favorite line. Not the line you wish you'd written. The Television line that fucked you up.

We All Fall Down

JUST AS I vow that maybe I'll try to take a break from the "industry-saving," (yes, yes, that's why it's in quotes, dumbass.) along comes Our Glorious National Government's Latest Debacle.

It's not the kind of thing that makes big news, especially when you assiduously try to bury it by leaking it on a Friday.

So the Conservatives continue the cynical policy that began with Bill C10 -- trying to punish those that might espouse a point of view that veers one iota off their approved right-wing script. Despite what people might write, this isn't just a matter of bloody minded punishment to dissenters or red meat to the base-- it's actually a calculated gambit for survival.

If you poll Canadians on most social issues, little has changed -- the populace, by and large, tacks left of centre on most issues. The Conservatives are in power because of the vagaries of the multi-party system at play in this country. They can count on their base, but outside of it, most people are left of their stated positions on just about everything. The only hope is to cynically frame things in terms of trumped-up cultural outrages. If you tamp down and cut off speech that disagrees with you, then maybe you have a chance of fooling people a little longer -- and squeaking out another election win.

You cut two programs designed to fund arts organizations, and export CanCulture abroad, and cynically claim (as is this government's only refrain -- that you're spending more on the arts than the previous Liberal government.)

As it was put in Michael Posner's Globe & Mail article:

Mr. Feldman disputed the contention that the Tories have been more generous to the arts. "If they are spending more, it's in adjusted-for-inflation dollars. This is about some right-wing troglodytes in the party overcome with self-righteous indignation that people like [Toronto broadcast journalist] Avi Lewis received funding." He estimated that programs like Trade Routes deliver a 10-to-1 return on investment. "Would we not love to get that from our stock portfolios? If these cuts will save the country's economy, God help us. We're in worse shape than I ever thought."

Mr. Lewis, now reporting for the English-language affiliate of the Al-Jazeera network, said the cuts were "a window into the Machiavellian political tactics of killing a small but crucial government program."

Public funding for the arts is a proven economic and cultural stimulus that the majority of Canadians embrace, Mr. Lewis said in an e-mail yesterday.

"The government knows ... that if the story is framed honestly, there will be little support for killing the program. And so, in the middle of a summer when Canadians are having trouble paying for gas, they find a few examples of grant recipients that will enrage their conservative base ... and use that as a political rationale for doing something that would otherwise hurt them politically. Now they've succeeded in framing the story in terms of who deserves public funding, rather than who supports it - and that is cynical in the extreme."

Director Ken Girotti managed to connect a few of the dots over at his digs. Small investments in culture -- as is understood in just about every country in the world -- including the USA -- pay off in a big way. But this government's stewardship of the economy is shortsighted in other ways.

Item one: "That popping sound you hear is canada's commodity bubble" is a piece written by Jim Stanford in Report on Business. It shows how effectively our current leaders have set up the Canadian economy for the fall.

Item two: two stories, but really one message: fuck the arts and pass the light sweet crude. Simon Houpt has a piece entitled, "without the arts our image grows dim abroad," and coupled with Michael Posner's story, "Ottawa axes second arts subsidy in two weeks," it paints a dim picture of this government's sickeningly narrow point of view.

Together these articles illustrate how completely parochial Stephen Harper's world view is. To save a few nickels the Conservatives cut arts programs set up to sell Canada around the world, while at the same time they preach to the choir with their complete shift of economic priorities to the resource economy.

Parochial, and Provincial, are two words that get thrown around an awful lot. But in the case of culture, when it comes to Canada, it's sadly the norm, and set to go even further down that road.

Canadians tend to have this charming view that "everyone thinks of Canada as a great place to live," etc, etc -- they're stories that Canadians treasure, told in shopworn anecdotes about backpackers greeted with glee at the sight of Canadian flags moving through Europe; or the once-upon-a-time national myth that "Canadians are renowned as peacekeepers."

In its own way these comfortable Canadian fictions have always been this country's own version of the charming tendency of Americans to declaim "we're number one" in everything, whether it's true (military spending!) or not (great health care system!)

Its these comfortable fictions that actually make it easier for the Tories to kill the two programs. For the reality behind it, you have to actually listen to some people who've, you know, been there and not drunk the Kool Aid.

First, let's take J. Kelly Nestruck first, a twentysomething journalist now writing Theatre Reviews for the Globe and Mail:

Now, on the subject of touting our artistic accomplishments abroad, I am baffled and infuriated by the news that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has axed its $9-million Trade Routes and $4.7-million PromArt program, both of which help send artists abroad.

Here's why: When I moved to England a couple years ago, a friend of mine who was returning from a few years there told me to prepare myself for a shock. "Canada is never mentioned," she told me. "You never hear anything about it. It's completely off the map."

Well, she was right, and she was wrong. Sure enough, Canada came up in the news only on very rare occasions, usually when there was a quirky story like a whole bunch of feet washing up on the coast of BC.

As an example of how Canada is often viewed, take the reaction I got from my boss's boss when I resigned to move back to Toronto and take up this here post. "You're leaving to go back to Canada?" he said. "But it's barely in the G8!" (Before you get too aghast, it was a joke. Kinda.)

And yet, and yet - while Canada rarely made the international news pages in the UK, I came across Canadians in the pages of the major newspapers on a daily basis. Where? In the arts section.

In London, I was working mainly on a music website, so this struck me most in terms of our musicians. If Neil Young or Feist or even Holy Fuck passed through London, they got reviewed. There were reverent articles about Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen from the older generation and Arcade Fire and Crystal Castles from the younger. The appeal of Nelly Furtado was analysed at length. Rufus Wainwright was adored - much more so than he is here. NME put out a special Canadian issue with a CD of music stuck to its cover. My site did a special podcast on Canadian music - and it was my editor's idea, not mine.

All this made me - and I know this is very unCanadian - proud of where I came from.

Our artists are our ambassadors abroad. Without them, on the international stage, Canada exists as a bus beheading and a video of Omar Khadr. Is that what we want?

Simon Houpt, New York based writer for the Globe and Mail, put it this way:

It's hard to overstate how low a profile Canada has abroad. If that's the way the government wants it, that's their decision. But if we want our voice to have influence in the rest of the world, to be the moral beacon we believe it is, that requires marketing Brand Canada. Sending artists and writers abroad is an integral part of that marketing that happens to be extremely cost-effective.

A little while ago Pamela Wallin told me that when she served within DFAIT as the consul-general of New York, culture was an indispensable tool to create a broader understanding of Canada within the United States. “It's all about presence; it's all about being top of mind. The more stages we continue to take ourselves off of, the more difficult the overall mission becomes,” she said.

“In order to be more than the Great White North, or more than just a trading partner like others, I think we have to show how interwoven the connections are, and how broad that cultural mix really is.”

She noted that the consulate also often used Canadian artists visiting New York to soften potential trading partners.

“It's an entrée point, it's a way to deal with people other than at the office, nine-to-five, about economic matters.”

That's why it was smart foreign policy to have Feist headline the Canada Day show in Central Park back in 2006, shortly before she became the iPod girl and a four-time Grammy nominee.

Even the United States, which invented the globalized free market in culture, has a long tradition of spending government money on so-called cultural diplomacy. During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department sent jazz musicians Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and others to the Middle East, Asia and Europe to spread American values. The U.S. is spending more than half a billion dollars a year on TV and radio broadcasts that bring American music, comedy, and drama to the Arab world and other territories.

This is lost on DFAIT, where PromArt and its antecedent programs were never really understood. One long-time bureaucrat in the department told me recently: “Anyone caught doing culture, it was a career killer.”

So separate and apart from the ego-reasons for Canada sending artists abroad. (They like us, they really like us!) with Houpt and Wallin, you see the foreign affairs implications. Again, it's something that's easier to sneak by because of this persistent view that somehow, Canada is in fact thought of as something other than "America's Hat."

It's not.

My own experience with cultural exchange was a particularly frothy and funny one. (At least it was to me.) When I was in South Africa working on Charlie Jade, we had an interesting crew made up of a lot of South Africans, some Quebecers, a few American/Canadian dual citizens, and a group of Other Canadians.

The South Africans kind of understood the Quebec separatism thing, while still (due to their history) being leery about the desire to separate on linguistic or ethnic lines. But the real fun came with tracking their utter bemusement when the Canadians would try to define and explain how they really, really were different than the Americans. The South Africans, of course, saw no difference whatsoever. The more the Canadians tried to explain, the more mystified the South Africans got.

Anybody know any New Zealanders? Yup. Same thing.

There is a school of Canadian thought that is outward looking and internationalist in view. Part of that sensitivity to world events comes from living next door to the most self-absorbed country in the world. But there is also that constant fight -- because you have a culture that negatively defines itself (Here's what we're not, not what we are) it makes it harder to make your case on the world stage, because you're not sure who you are yourself.

I've known a number of musicians and actors and other performers in my time who went abroad. And, strangely, once you get out of your comfort zone, the warm self-defeating, don't be a tall poppy, oh well, everbody loves us blanket of Canada, something changes. Every artist I know who's spent time abroad comes back more focused with a better sense of themselves. I think that's probably true of everyone who travels, not just artists, but artists offer an opportunity to judge them through their work, rather than just through their personality -- which is subject to all sorts of other factors, and can always be concealed or affected...

Once upon a time, too, Canada's outward looking nature gave rise to some of the most trenchant observers of social trends and, especially, media trends. Harold Innes, Marshall McLuhan, Naomi Klein...even people like Cory Doctorow and Malcolm Gladwell...it's amazing that such a small country has produced so many forward thinkers. People who come to shape the larger, world culture.

It's when we look outward, as Canadians, that we find the best in ourselves. So, in a sense, the Tory program killing isn't just small-minded and parochial, it's practically self-annihilating.

We live at a time when the key to our continued economic strength is going to be yoked not to manufacturing or commodities but to the kinds of people and thinkers Richard Florida talks about in The Rise of the Creative Class.

The programs that were just killed encouraged this kind of thinking, travel, exploration and development of artists. And in return, it helped Brand Canada. That's a huge payoff for something that was a very small line item in the overall Canadian budget.

But it threatens a party and a government that needs to count on people remaining parochial and provincial. And if it drives even more of the free thinkers Florida says are the future to emigrate or seek their fortune elsewhere, well then, sure, maybe it does sell out the future...

...But it sure makes it easier to control a message and win an election.

Canadian Internet Journalists Cost Me Money

WELL, ONE INTERNET PUBLICATION kind of scooped the news that I was hinting at back in June.

When that story broke, I was of the mind to say, "we need to get out in front of it." Because, of course, I'm used to those rabid, crazy American fans who parse and goose and shred every piece of info and blog it to death six ways to Sunday.

I made a fatal mistake, it seems. I forgot: Canadian show, Canadian bloggers, Canadian "meh." We stand on guard for, you know, whatever. Man, I lost that bet, hardcore.

On the other hand, it took about six seconds of the Canadian Press picking up the "official" press release-word of Battlestar Galactica's Grace Park's multi-episode stint on The Border for me to read an article that was in German talking about the news. The French article came next. Seriously, wire copy, man -- you can't beat it.

It's no secret that in 2008, with the net, it's hard to keep a secret. Unless, I guess, you expect a Canadian blogger to run with it!

So, welcome Grace. Everybody at THE BORDER is way excited to be working with you. It's a great character and a great jolt for what's shaping up to be a really interesting, intense season. Grace is on a tear with really different and exciting, sexy roles in both the A&E show The Cleaner and The Border. We're psyched to have her aboard!

And good for you, Canada -- for keepin' the secret. I'm serious.

Sorta.

As for you Sci-Fi Fans, who may have never ever heard of THE BORDER before and might be surfing in now from a stray hit on Grace's name, I can say in all seriousness that maybe, just maybe, you might find something in THE BORDER to love. It's a show about Canadian action heroes on the front line of fighting terrorism and threats to North American security.

...and believe me, in some politcal circles, that certainly qualifies as science fiction...

On The Take

WHY CAN'T I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart?

Hank Williams knew what he was talking about. But of course, sometimes the coldness isn't a lack of romantic ardour. Sometimes it's a deadness caused by too little exercising of the muscle. We all verge toward our comfort zones. It's human nature. But it's also the nature that can seriously muck up a writer. And that cold, cold heart gets colder sometimes, simply by virtue of where you're sitting.

One of the things that I truly feel is the responsibility of any writer is to get the heck out of their comfort zone and go do something. You don't have to die scaling K2, but for pity's sake, get out of your garret and go talk to some different faces now and again.

I live in a place that makes that inordinately difficult. Toronto is a famously cold city, and I'm not talking temperature. Toronto is one of the only places I've ever been where you can go out with a group of four reasonably gregarious people and find that at the end of the night, you've only talked to those people. Attempts to rectify this are rebuffed. There's a standoffishness that prevails, a pass down from the city's disapproving Orange roots. It says, "keep to yourself, don't challenge, don't engage, let everyone be." That's a way to get along, to be sure. But it's no way to create, or to set yourself an atmosphere in which to create.
The worst thing about this, though, is that daily routine conspires to make this seem normal. You forget that other places, other cities aren't like this. The coldness gets inside. After a while you forget that once upon in a time your doubtful mind wanted to melt something. What was that again? Hmm?

Though Toronto's my city (for now) and I've lived here many years, it's one of this burg's least attractive qualities.

Of course, the only problem with that analogy is that the city that could engage in a little foot-stomping glee over that, Vancouver, is actually a thousand times worse.

Please don't write me paeans to either city pointing out how wrong I am, how I've only been talking to the wrong people, etc, etc, I realize that I'm making a massive generalization here. And it doesn't mean that either city isn't lovely. They are. But my generalization here is borne out with much experience of both cities, and a lot of discussion of same with former and current residents.

The thing is, where you're from and what you experience has a lot of influence over your 'take.' And when you're a writer, your take is the most valuable thing you have. If you're from a place where new ideas are suspect and everyone acts or demands to be regarded in some orthodox way, that shrinks your take. It's why most artistic people find the need to leave their small towns and travel to somewhere where they feel they can fully express themselves.

But you can fool yourself by going to the big city, too -- if the city doesn't have a warm spirit, an openness, an energy that encourages mixing rather than many solitudes, you miss it. It dulls your take. And it causes you to think provincially.

Montreal has a lot going for it in this regard. People do talk. You can't walk anywhere in the summer without hitting some sort of street festival. But there's that language barrier that makes it not quite perfect. Spending time in Montreal always makes me curse the fact that my French isn't better. I feel like I'm missing the most interesting conversations.

Because, um...I probably am.

When Canadians venture to New York or London and get drunk on the feeling and excitement there, I think that's what they're feeling -- not the city's size. Toronto has a few festivals each year -- Pride, Caribana, Doors Open and Nuit Blanche, where part of the visceral excitement seems to be that the invisible barriers between people come down, and you can smile at a stranger or engage them in conversation without getting an alarmed "You're clearly a serial killer and I'm reaching for my whistle" expression in return.

I just got back from another city like that. For the last few days I've had laughs with strangers, explored a vision of optimism and wonder and seen stuff that made me vibrate with the joy of being alive, and the joy of living in a beautiful teeming city. I'm hoping to carry that forward with me for a few days, to not succumb to the Toronto shrink as quickly as I can. We'll see how it goes.

Lest you think I'm just engaging in a bit o' Canada bashing here (because Lord knows, that defensive muscle doesn't need a lot of pressure to be exercised) one of the most provincial places I think I've ever been is Los Angeles... L.A. is a town where the solitudes don't mix, ever. As an industry town, you may find yourself cheek to jowl with exactly the calibre of people you want to be in business with, but all they want to do is talk about the business. And I think you see that in the creative that comes out, certainly over the last little while. There's a great number of people who once upon a time might have had a truly different, truly original take who've been seduced by the easy living or the comforts of the like-minded. L.A. is a bubble, and a bubble is never a place that lets you hone your take.

Changing location is one way to burst that bubble, but it isn't the only way.

A few weeks ago I was at a local watering hole with a group of writers, and one particularly, perennially dyspeptic friend of mine demanded that we not talk shop, for once. And we didn't.

And the conversation that ensued was glorious and different and odd and touching... surprise, surprise ... get together with a group of smart articulate people and if you mine it a bit, turns out they have all sorts of things to say that could really rock your world.

I've had girlfriends and other civilians suffer through tablefuls of writer shop talk with rolled eyes and pinched faces -- blowing past this very simple truth. And yeah, I know, everyone talks shop. But office workers who get together and never seem to get much past the topic of how much of a dick the boss is aren't in the business of trying to create worlds and characters, and interesting daily situation. And that's why, for writers there's an extra burden of not falling back into that comfortable, shopworn view of the world. You must remember an essential truth:

Sometimes changing the mind's landscape is all it takes to refresh your take.

But every once in a wild, when you've built up too much crap, the sharp corrective of the landscape change does the job nicely. Kind of like changing the oil. Or descaling. Or... well, you get the idea. All I'm saying here is that if you're a Toronto guy or an L.A. girl or a Vancouver...TG...sorry, I went there... you have to remember that -- like people who live near the highway or down the street from the nuke plant -- you're at a heightened risk of dulling your take.

If you're a writer and you haven't been challenging your bubble lately -- if you've grown comfortable in your routine and don't engineer some kind of upending now and then, it's time to book a flight or drive your car or hitch to somewhere different. See who you are there.

Remember that every story we craft is all about a protagonist who suddenly has their world upset in some way. How can we do that if we blithely cruise along in our own little bubbles of smug self-satisfaction, or rectitude, or religious ecstacy, or liberal pride, or smug marriedom, gay camp, punk nihilism or hipster chic?

Refresh your take.

And if you do, I highly recommend taking in a Cubs game.

Almost Back.

SO, ANYTHING HAPPEN while I was away?

Sadness for Bernie Brillstein, and Bernie Mac and Issac Hayes too. Interesting thoughts following the Canwest business story over the last week. (Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone other than a doing-it-for-free blogger took at look at this from, say, a creative point of view? As in, "hmm, what happens when your easy-money business plan goes away and you have nothing else behind it?" Ah, never mind.)

Will's got a post up on the definitive Canadian show. Terms of Trade discussions aren't going well, if you cotton to this skinny from commenter Caroline (who also filled in one of the blanks in a topic we had raging a few weeks back, about how Canadian nets have some of the lowest license fees in the world):

The CFTPA intended to negotiate a minimum standard of terms of trade with each broadcast group ... if you as a producer could better your deal, great, but it was supposed to set at least a benchmark. The broadcasters have banded together and refuse to negotiate as individual companies and are instead insisting on one common terms of trade agreement for each genre. Quite unfair given the very different financial and business situations at each network. I know it will probably be unpopular to say, but the producers are getting squeezed even harder than writers and if they don't get some support, the pain is just gonna trickle down the line. I'm already hearing bad bad stuff about CanWest demanding a 50/50 back end split and not even allowing enough margin in distribution and expenses to get yourself a decent international distributor.

With regard to Australia, they have a similar system to us ... not quite tax credits but a tax based scheme. Inherent difference is that Aussie shows consistently outperform most foreign ones so the broadcasters can justify spending big dollars on them because they get viewers and ergo advertisers. When last I checked, broadcasters were kicking in 40-70% of budget, averaging 50%. With tax kickback and a small (10-20% worldwide) distribution advance, you are pretty much at budget there.

I've also been thinking a lot of where I want to go next, with this little blog. There's a lot about it that's had me quite dissatisfied for the last little while. I might share some of that or I might not. In the short term, I think I might take a tack toward some more craft-related stuff. We'll see.

Regular posting resumes later this afternoon.