Linkslutting Alex's Chat With Ronald D. Moore

ALEX EPSTEIN does the Lord's work with his revealing and thoughtful interview with Ronald D. Moore, the TV genius behind Battlestar Galactica and a man with hair so lustrous it almost eclipsed the Rocky Mountains. Just a taste spoon, then you can go get the rest from Alex...

CS: Are there any aspects of the way you structured the mythos of Battlestar that you might have done differently with hindsight?

RM: We wouldn't have had Boxy. The intent was that you had Boomer and you had Tyrol and Boxy as a sort of nuclear family going into the series. We tried to work him into episodes, but the character wasn't organic to our show. He was an idea that started and then stopped. We weren't even invested enough in him to kill him -- it seemed gratuitous just to kill him. Even for me.

We weren't going to deal with the fact that Boomer's a Cylon for a long time. We'd have these three forming a family. When I was writing "Water," the second episode, I said, "And she starts realizing she's a Cylon."

If we'd know that, we probably would have set her up differently in the miniseries.

We wouldn’t have thought certain things about the series that turned out not to be true. For example we intended to go to other ships in the fleet. We were going to go out to the fleet -- to the hospital ship, the prison ship, we were going to track a serial killer through the fleet. That was part of the sales pitch for the series. It's not just claustrophobic aboard this aircraft carrier and Colonial One.

That turned out not to be practical. The prison ship with Tom Zarek destroyed our budget. It was so far over pattern we had to make major cuts in the next five episode. So we realized we had to put all the action aboard Galactica and Colonial One. The series pivoted at that point and became very much about the characters on those two ships. And that meant that stories had to be about the overall story arc. Had we been able to go find stories on the other ships, maybe we could have gone another season or two. You would have had more shows not about the mythos. Instead we had to put the key cast in the heart of the action all the time, and that meant you had to go to the main story.

So we wouldn't have gone to the prison ship so early, to start that language of going to other ships.

We probably would have yanked Lee out of the flight suit sooner. Laura Roslin didn't really have anyone to complement her in the political world. It would have been good and useful to have him in conflict with her; we could have told stories more easily.

CS: Do you feel the DVD market has changed how writers write TV?

RM: It’s changed the audience consumes TV. And it’s probably given writers like myself a sense of “they’ll watch it on the DVD, that's where it will live forever. That's the real version." So when the cut comes in twenty minutes over, I'm thinking, "I've got to cut this thing down, but the real episode will be on DVD.

Alex Essays Ron Moore From Banff

THINGS ARE ABOUT to get pretty hairy for me at work. Second Draft due, and the first flurry of big prep meetings, so I don't imagine I'll be able to do too much blogging this week. So in the meantime, I'll vamp.

Here's a wonderful entry -- my friend and colleague Alex Epstein transcribed a lot of the Ronald Moore Masterclass at Banff.

Moore had covered a lot of the same ground in the session he did with the Showrunners earlier in the day, but I can't write that up as the session was screens down. Still, Alex gives you a lot of the flavour for what this extremely open, affable, and transparent creator has to say about his process.

Shmanff

SO MUCH TO process here in the Canwest Showrunner Program at Banff.  Much good, much notso. We had a great day today with Rene Balcer, the showrunner for Law & Order.  The ep that I watched today, as well as a few others I've seen recently, were a bit revelatory for me because the show seemed different, and much fresher than I remembered.

Balcer filled in the blanks:  he came in with a mandate to "dirty the frame a bit" which means that they shoot in a looser, more naturalistic style -- which also has implications for lighting.

But there's also a big difference -- though subtle -- in the way they tell their stories. They spend way longer in the teaser, getting to know the people who wind up being the victims.  (HOUSE is probably the vanguard of this trend, still, it's an interesting and profound change to a format that we all probably think of as set in stone; not so...) I was also interested in how they eliminated a few scenes toward the end -- instead of catching a suspect, they cut straight to him in interrogation and merely talked about how he was caught.

Now a lot of the time that would maybe seem like a lame "Canadian style" dramatic compromise. But Balcer argued it was the right scene to cut first, since it's in the home stretch when the ending is in sight, and people are on a tack of figuring out, not needing to see the action. I thought that was a very different way to look at it.  

The pacing was also very different. Not your father's Law & Order.  

Also spent a great hour and change with The New Adventure of Old Christine's creator and showrunner Kari Lizer, who's as warm, funny, present and normal as you'd ever want from someone in this sometimes crazy business.  

Most of the 'wisdom imparted' in these sessions is in camera and off the record sort of stuff, but it was extemely heartening to see and hear workaday knowledge from two people who manage to maintain both their sense of joy and sense of humanity in the business. Inspiring.

Then it was the St. James' Gate after an extended Disco Nap, and various and sundry wonderfuls.  Good to catch up with Maureen Parker,  and KL Ashton, J.J. Johnson, Children's Producer Extraordinaire, making the jump to drama for us old kids; the mighty Will Pascoe, Mike Kiss of the golden voice, writer/performer and bon vivant (and brand new Jeans wearer) Tracy Dawson, Montreal writer Cynthia Knight and the Heroic Film Company's secret weapon Jennifer Morrisette. 

And I talked to a real live CRTC guy too...but that, my friends, was just between us girls.   Still, an interesting exchange of viewpoints and passions and concerns and perspectives...smart people in a room -- you can never go wrong.  Well. Sometimes with booze. But not tonight.

The trend at Banff this year?  Cheap.  Crackers and cheese at receptions.  The Banff Bag looks more like a recycled cat.  You can't find a coffee anywhere. And today, we were reduced to scarfing saltines at 4pm for some sustenance.   It's kind of like "Survivor" but without the challenges.

Oh and there were awards too. 

Tomorrow is a session with BSG's Ron Moore.  Must set my geek to "low."

For more Banff Insight, check out Will Dixon's post here.   

Guest Post: Banff 2009: For those left behind…

THIS GUEST POST comes courtesy of Playwright and TV writer Mike McPhaden, who besides being a talented writer is a most excellent affable chap. Which makes the seething jealousy of this post all the more delicious. Like a chicken wing somehow dusted with bacon.

[Reader Advisory: The following post contains references of an Inside Baseball nature. The references could be medically harmful and are not necessarily healthy, safe, or suggested.]

* * *

We are the many, the not chosen.

Whether it’s because we’re too busy, too broke, or the Friday Night Lights spec in our Global Writers Apprentice application just didn’t reach John Callaghan-esque levels of raw humanity, the result is the same:

We are not going to Banff this year.

We will not see the mountain dawn. We will not breathe the mountain air. We will not walk the mountain sidewalks.

We will not enjoy the meditative calm of waiting twenty-five minutes to take a four-minute cab ride. Twice a day.

We will not listen eagerly as U.S. showrunners, brave-faced in these hard times, share their secrets for making a decent episode for only two million dollars.

We will not gape at the cavernous beauty of the Van Horne Delegate Lounge, wishing we’d been way, way more specific about where we’d meet our ten o’clock.

We will not get to make that little “meep” sound when someone casually spoils the finale of the series we’re secretly a season behind on.

We will not taste the delicious awkwardness of having Lunch With A Decision Maker, peopled by 1) a bleary-eyed exec, 2) a guy who’s annoyed he didn’t get a seat with an American decision maker, and 3) and actor in full costume, mumbling the lines to her “Sex and the City in the olden days” pitch.

We will not feel the sting of shame when we hear ourselves try too hard to sound worldly: “ABC? Which one?”

We will not savour the secret that our “big meeting” at 5:30 is actually a yummy nap and some Maury.

We will not gather every night at the St. James Gate, we will not breathe its beery air, we will not brag and glad-hand amid the clamour of obscure TV references. Mutey the Mailman. Robot Santa. After M.A.S.H.

We will not feel the heart clogging ache that only comes from eating Alberta Beef four meals a day, a sensation the locals call “aortal sex.”

We will not get the satisfaction of crashing the Oasis/Blueprint party by arriving late and telling security, "I'm Tecca's ride."

We will not drag our tired, partied-out bodies into Wednesday’s 9am session on “Maximizing Ancillary Revenue Streams,” but then again, neither will anyone in Banff.

No, we will be staying home. And when those who went return, with their stories of meals and deals in Beautiful Banff, where the mountains touch the sky and the streets were named by babies, what will we do?

We will lie, and say we missed them.

Banffed Again

AS YOU READ this, I'm in the air. At least, God, I hope so.

I'm on my way to Banff for the TV festival, and participation in the Canwest Showrunner Training Program. I can't promise that I'll have a whole lot of coverage up -- the sessions of the training program are screens-down-in-camera-just-between-us-chickens sorts of things, and my schedule is so packed that I won't have a lot of free blogging time.

Oh, yeah, and there's that little more than full time job that I still have to do while I'm there, too.

I get to do a rewrite on my eight hour St. John's to Calgary flight. Should be fun.

Anyway, if you see me in Banff, come say hi. I'll be the tree with glasses and a hat.