Oy Vey.

I HAD TO laugh at Jaime Weinman's latest article about the strange zombie-like existence of Til Death (with a tip to a linked article by Todd Vanderwerff, who's almost as astute an observer of the TV as Weinman.)

As VanDerWerff notes, It wasn’t exactly good, but it was some of the strangest material we’ve seen on prime-time TV in the past year, a testament to the weirdness that can arise when the writers have no audience, no job security and nothing to lose.

Yet more proof, Canadian creatives, that WE JUST AREN'T TRYING HARD ENOUGH!

Actually, after reading Vanderwerff's article again, I'm pretty sure that he's stumbled upon a pretty accurate description of what it would feel like to be in TV Writer Hell.

Writer Make Good

MY FRIEND Rob Sheridan wrote a lovely first person account of his career rise in the National Post.  Now imagine what would happen if Canadian papers thought to profile more actors, writers & directors BEFORE they left for the USA?  Hmm?

I'd always talked about making a go of it in Hollywood, but had never really tried. I sent out some scripts, took some meetings. Ten years earlier I had gotten so many rejection letters; now the same agencies were pitching me. I had a good meeting at Warner Bros. and my agent at William Morris helped negotiate me an offer on a blind pilot script deal. That means they're hiring me not for a specific idea, but on the strength of my work that they've read. It means I'll be playing in a bigger field.
I tend to spend so much time worrying about doing a good job that I'm not real good at allowing myself the opportunity to enjoy a moment. Last night, however, I was at a Beverly Hills restaurant, drinking a martini and my cousin was encouraging me to bask in my success. I'm trying to enjoy this, but generally speaking, I'm thinking about the work ahead.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=2971398#ixzz0mnmRIfPv

Chicken Wings & Sauce to Go Around: Less Than Kind

IT'S  A PUB in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood on a weekday night, and the table's swapping stories of the 2nd, newly charmed season of LESS THAN KIND.  (2nd Season premieres tonight, 8:30 p.m., HBO Canada, also available on Demand.  And you can watch the 1st show online here.)

It's me, Showrunner Mark McKinney, and Creators Marvin Kaye & Chris Sheasgreen.  

I have a lot of time for LTK, and not just because it's funny, well made, and now comes with a Cinderella-rebirth story attached.

And it's not cause I beat my friend Marvin's ass at the poker table on Superbowl Sunday. Seriously. Like a redheaded stepchild. He left before the game was over a broken, chastened man. (Full disclosure: when the show was first in development, I did a brief round of story editing on it. This was before McKinney's involvment)

Nope.  LESS THAN KIND is, at almost every level, a shining example of what can happen when everything goes right in the Canadian system.  Which is to say, as McKinney puts it, "We got lucky. Crazy lucky."

Let's stack up that luck looking backward.  LTK2 was supposed to be an orphaned show. The original broadcaster, Rogers-owned CityTv -- canceled the show before the 2nd season even aired.

"The people at City were great," says Kaye. "They ordered the show, they liked it, they were really supportive of it and let us make the show we wanted to make, and they picked up a second season even before the first went to air."

But when the show did go to air, the problems started.  Sandwiched after seasons-old reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and plagued by City's chronic bad promotion of homegrown fare, it floundered in a Monday night timeslot, and was subject to technical gaffes galore.  Shows aired in the wrong aspect ratio, out of order, with the music & effects track mixed higher than the vocals -- and then the show went away suddenly when City needed to simulcast The Bachelor for an extra half hour. It was a Canadian TV horrorshow tale.

Those few people who saw the show in its first season saw something that was, in many ways, the anti-Corner Gas.  Centred around the Winnipeg Blecher family, the show chronicles the coming of age of teenage son Sheldon.  Sheldon's sensitive, overweight, and adamantly refuses to learn how to drive.  (His father owns a Driving School.)  Sheldon desperately wants out of his crazy family, which includes a pyromaniac mother, his overbearing father, and newly-bounced back older brother -- a washed up actor who's still trading off minor fame from his seminal role in Thunder Bay, O.P.P.

You don't often see families like the Blechers on Canadian TV.  They're as dysfunctional as Roseanne Connor's brood -- and the eps have just about the same mix of the outrageous & the heartfelt as the best of the high-water mark of Roseanne's career.  The mordant wit of LTK, and its loopy, confident Canadianness is signalled straight from the start, with the theme song -- The Weakerthans' "One Great City," (whose chorus builds to the immortal refrain, 'I Hate Winnipeg.')

So if nobody saw it, how could it be called lucky?  Well, take your pick.  Maury Chaykin as the father.  Newcomer Jesse Camacho as the son.  Wendel Meldrum, an actor who's actually believable -- and heartbreaking -- as Sam Blecher's wife. "We found her through L.A.," says McKinney, who tapped the casting director he'd worked with as part of his season long stint on Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60.  But they also found local Winnipeg actors -- some of them with very little experience (including the standout Brooke Palsson as Miriam) who turned in hilarious, gifted, piquant and vibrant performances.

But on this night over Chicken Wings, the luck they're talking about is the move to HBO Canada.  As McKinney relates the story, they had shot the entire 2nd season, and were busy posting when the notes started to come in from City. They were odd notes.  They seemed to strike at the heart of the comedy, watering it down.  Eventually, the truth came out. Over the course of the year, Rogers strategy toward Citytv changed. They wanted to go for a more family friendly audience -- but LTK was a harder edged, unsentimental show.

What happened next wasn't supposed to happen.  Thanks to a friendly exec at HBO Canada, (who'd been involved with the show initially at Rogers) a deal was struck between the cable net and City to take over the show. The cut scenes were restored, leading to tonight's premiere.  Even McKinney admits that the show was always really a cable show at heart. And now it's come home.

Point is, that kind of wheely-dealing rarely happens in Canada.

The luck doesn't stop there. In fact, the funny thing about the luck of LTK, is that so much of it is actually not luck at all -- it's simply the best case scenario of the way things are supposed to work -- but rarely do.

The show was based on an autobiographical play by co-creator Kaye.  Kaye and Sheasgreen went through the National Screen Institute's training program with the property.  They found a network exec who was passionate about the show. They hooked up with a production company, Breakthrough, whose development and producer staff let the show be what it wanted to be.  They brought on Mark McKinney, who brought his perfectionism and two decades of comedy experience to running the creative.  McKinney & the creators worked together well, with mutual respect both for the material & each other.

In fact, another way you can see the "luck" of Less Than Kind at work is with the free and generous praise McKinney, Kaye and Sheasgreen pile on everyone involved.  Maury was fantastic...the production designer created a flooded basement that worked miracles this season...the writing room was stacked with greats like Garry Campbell and toward the end of the season, when they suddenly had to rewrite some scripts, Rob Sheridan.  "Rob saved our ass" says McKinney.  From the music, to the crew, to Directors like Kelly Makin, there's plenty of credit to go around.

McKinney marvels at a 2nd season scene of Sheldon's first kiss -- that had the whole crew practically in tears.  The show might have had to shoot in -50 Winnipeg winter weather, but in many other ways, it seems like a charmed production.

"We were also men alone," says McKinney, explaining the degree to which scripts were worked and reworked.  Long separation from families (All three have children, & Sheasgreen & Kaye's wives both had babies during the shoot) may have made for long nights, but it certainly meant that settling for "good enough", wasn't.

It shows.

The 2nd season opens with Sam in the hospital, close to death, picking up where Season 1 left off.  It features a very funny guest shot by McKinney's fellow Kid in the Hall, Dave Foley.

Less Than Kind's charmed rebirth on HBO Canada may have a few more chapters to it, still. The show's about to get some recognition (more I can't really say because of an embargo; I'll correct this sentence to be less cryptic next week.)  and they're currently breaking stories for a possible third season. Though it hasn't been greenlit yet, all three are optimistic.

And after the ride this show's had, they probably have every reason to be.  Interestingly enough for students of the comedy form, too, this year the LTK writers room is a real anomaly in scripted comedy -- there's a majority of women -- including writer/director Adriana Maggs (fresh from screening Grown Up Movie Star at Sundance,)  Morwyn Brebner (the upcoming Copper), Jenn Engels (who returns from season 1) and story coordinator Kim Coghill.  That's a lot of estrogen, and a chance to bring new energy & focus to the lives of the bold Blechers.


Less Than Kind airs Fridays on HBO Canada.


An earlier version of this story contained an error.  Bruce McDonald directed episodes of LTK. Incorrect info appeared earlier.

Let A Thousand Corners Bloom

FROM THE "Way It's Supposed To Work" file...

Time was that the talented would find the scary truth of Canadian TV -- getting your first break wasn't the problem ... sustaining a career was. Too often "breaking in" meant finding that there was no second or third job down the road for a TV writer or actor. No matter how good your notices or scripts or work was, the smallness of the hatbox industry & the tendency to "spread it around" meant that the mid-career stall often drove you down and south. (To L.A.)

But then Corner Gas changed everything.  By training a stable of writers, CG has made the unlikely tenable -- the chance to think of having a comedy writing career in Canada, if that's what you want to do.

So that show's six season run trained a group of comedy writers; and follow up opportunities allowed those people to stay, so that the next generation of Canadian scripted comedies don't start over from zero. Again.

Already upcoming is Hiccups, CTV's next series from Brent Butt, starring his wife, Nancy Robertson, and Dan For Mayor, a charming little show starring Fred Ewanuick (Hank from CG), created and written by three generations of CG Showrunners -- Paul Mather, Kevin White, and Mark Farrell.

Now today from CBC comes the next drop of the shoe:

TORONTO -- The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has picked up a sitcom from E1 Television based on the popular Canadian curling movie "Men With Brooms."

The TV adaptation follows an earlier pilot written by Paul Mather ("Corner Gas") about four regular joes who hang out at the local curling rink. 

Canada's public broadcaster also picked up a second half-hour comedy, "Insecurity," from Verite Films and produced by Virginia Thompson. 

Virginia Thompson also produced Corner Gas, & Insecurity's creator is Kevin White.  Sounds like Kevin & Paul will be busy for the next little while.  Of course, Mark Farrell I think is also back involved with 22 Minutes... slackers.

Now all these shows won't be clones of Gas, to be sure.  I've known Kevin for 20 years and he's one of the funniest guys I know. It'll be interesting to see the nuanced differences in each of the shows. Still, from one successful training ground spawns four shows -- and those shows will train more writers, and actors, and maybe more producers & directors who understand how to make half hour comedies -- one of the hardest genres out there.

Sniff. It's almost like we have a merit-based industry all of a sudden.

So thanks, Corner Gas.  Whether you were a fan or not, it's the gift that keeps on giving by giving people the chance to do what they love without automatically becoming expatriates.

2040Haha

GREAT ARTICLE in Huffington Post (by Omri Marcus) about what's going to be funny in 30 years...(further to the below, I guess.)  I'm not going to excerpt because you really should go read the whole thing.  (H/T to Jill Golick via Twitter)

On the other hand, here's an article that really isn't very funny at all.  What, now, 52% of the population, and 58% of the TV audience or something?

Oh, and the delightful Jude Klassen passes along this link that goes very spicily with the article above.

Death & The Shuckton

SO EP3 of THE KIDS IN THE HALL'S "Death Comes to Town" airs tonight on CBC at 9pm.

I found the first episode funny, but last week's left me a little flat. Seems like the ratings also flattened considerably, which have -- in that oh so Canadian way -- inspired a weird level of glee in certain quarters.  (As opposed to Glee which inspires a certain level of Canadian to play quarters. (Seriously, two points for Sue, & while you're at it, take a drink every time the fashion-forward gay kid changes outfits.))

Well, CBC was nice enough to send me a screener of tonight's episode, and I'm happy to report that there's plenty of weird, great laughs -- including a funny autopsy, a fine use for a garbage disposal, and what's rapidly becoming my new TV favorite -- RAMPOP!

Again, this show is very much in the vein of the Little Britain/League of Gentlemen  (and can someone out there remind me of the other British one where two people play all the characters in the town?)

If you like the Kids in the Hall kind of anarchy, it's well worth your while.

And if not, well, Glee is now available on DVD.

Scott Thompson on "Death Comes To Town"

KIDS IN THE HALL's Scott Thompson had a pretty wonderful, candid conversation about Death Comes To Town with the blog Torontoist.  John Semley's interview is well worth reading:

Was there any hesitance doing something long-form like a mini-series after the experience of working on Brain Candy? Why not a sketch special of new material or something like that?

We knew we couldn’t do a sketch series. We could never improve on what we did before. There would be no point. For years we were burdened by our reputation, and this was a perfect way to do something new where even if we blew it we’d still have our sketch show. It’d be like a failed experiment. In our own careers, we’ve all gotten much better chops as writers and actors. Sure, many of the projects we worked on may not have been great. Many have never been seen. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t learn from them. We knew that we could do this. The idea was great. It was a large canvas we could work with. Large themes and multiple characters.Brain Candy came during a period in our lives when we were all messed up, by many things, one of them being fame. But by this time in our lives we had dealt with all those things...Making this mini-series was a joy. For me, personally, it was an absolute joy. I’ve had some personal problems, as I’m sure you probably know.

Of course. I wasn’t going to bring it up.

I don’t mind at all. Honestly I’m so thrilled now to be where I’m at. You can ask me. I don’t mind at all

Read what Thompson has to say about the "male energy" of comedy & how that challenge inspired him, and how he managed to fight cancer while shooting the show, here.

Death Comes to Town, Parties With Mayor

THE SECRET IS TO GET your bias out there, up front. So here goes.


I love, love, love Kids in the Hall.


When I was a struggling poor Ryerson student in the late 80's, early 90's, twice-weekly tapings of The Kids' first CBC Television series at the old studios on Mutual Street served as a prime source of much-loved (and admired) free entertainment. You can still hear my barrel laugh on way too many of those old episodes.


Those tapings also unwittingly contributed one of my fondest (and most disturbing) broadcast memories -- the late Barbara Frum, in full hair and on-air getup, plus makeup bib, wandering up and down the street calling for her dog. Bizarre.


The Kids in the Hall also unwittingly taught me one of my first lessons about writing for television.


Like a lot of people plugged into Queen Street, I'd seen them develop their act at the Rivoli over several years. And the first season of their TV series ate up all that huge backlog of sketches. When it came time for season two -- they had nothing. They had to hire a few new writers, buckle down and start over -- or so the story goes.


Ulp.


Well, last night in Toronto wasn't exactly a start-from-scratch. More like a victory lap.


People packed into the upstairs at the Rivoli to see the first new Kids in The Hall series in years. Episode 1 of the eight-part "Death Comes To Town."


The series had its Genesis out of the sucessful tours KITH did last year in Canada. And the General Manager of CBC English Television, Kirstine Stewart, was glad to claim them, pronouncing their return to the CBC as a "homecoming."


It was hard to argue in the packed-too-tight confines of the Rivoli. There everyone was -- a little older, maybe. A little wrinklier. And that's just the hipster audience. Ba-DUM.


I started yesterday morning in New York City, screaming for the Lincoln Tunnel at 7AM just on the hope that I could make it back in time to see the episode screened.


And so I did.  I was not disappointed.


I'm happy to report that if you're a fan of Kids in the Hall, you're going to enjoy it very, very much. Death Comes To Town isn't quite like their sketch series of old, but you'll recognize riffs on many of the group's iconic characters.


In the years since, of course, many of the Kids have done time in the trenches of U.S. Network TV. Mark McKinney worked for Aaron Sorkin and now oversees one of Canada's brightest new comedy programs, Less Than Kind. Dave Foley had his years on Newsradio, and Bruce McCulloch has directed several half hours in the last few seasons. Kevin McDonald and Scott Thompson, too, have never been too far from television screens, popping up in guest spots here and there.


Death Comes To Town follows the ambitious trail blazed by shows like The League of Gentlemen, and fuses the Kids in the Hall's outrageous characters with an ongoing story.  (The poster art and little collectible buttons of various characters they were handing out made that clear.)  In Episode One there's a lot of setup and new people to meet. The series keeps gaining comic momentum through the run -- and the results are, well...


Let's just say that, in the current context where it seems like the most important thing ever is considering your U.S. sale, Mark McKinney's Death character does a couple things in the Pilot seem tailor-made to prove that, um, well, that's not a priority here. (One involves the bible and the other involves a let's say more recreational than Holy use for the Human Soul.)


One of the nice things about launch events like this is the ability,  to witness nice little showbiz synchronicities. I sought refuge right at the front from the too-packed room, and found myself heel to toe with an old friend, Mike Booth, I haven't talked to for awhile. Mike works for His Worship, the Mayor of Toronto, David Miller. David got called up quickly on stage in the introductions and tried to demur to the stars of the night, before saying something quick before the credits rolled.


One of the highlights of Death Comes to Town's first episode is Bruce McCulloch's sleazy Mayor, who comes complete in true Kids fashion with an alcoholic wife and "special" son, and who's maneuvering for the 2028 Olympics results in a form letter and public humiliation from the IOC.


Watching Miller guffaw at the antics of his fictional Shuckton equivalent, (who's the kind of guy who not only takes a bite of your burger, but makes out with your wife in front of you) was sublime, and not only because it showed the reaction of a true fan. Miller recently announced in an emotional press conference that he wouldn't be seeking a third term as Toronto's Mayor. Seems that his relationship with his wife and kids is slightly better than Shuckton's Chief Executive, and he'd like to keep it that way.


Was I reading in when I saw something more in Miller's laughs at his onscreen counterpart? As outlandish as his antics might have been, things like the quixotic Olympic bid had to resonate a little deeper there than with some of the rest of us shlubs packed into the upstairs pool hall. Maybe there, the enjoyment and nostalgia that we all felt was tinged with something entirely more human -- a twinge of -- dare I say it? Relief.


Death Comes to Town premieres tonight at 9pm on CBC Television, and continues Tuesdays at 9pm.

(picture credit: my Iphone.  The Kids in the Hall call Toronto Mayor David Miller to the stage from a beam of strange alien light.  The Rivoli, Jan 11, 2010.)

18 To Life Premieres Tonight!

REMEMBER, 18 to Life, CBC's new comedy, premieres tonight at 8pm.  Great buzz for this show.  Here's a (slightly different) trailer:

UPDATE:  In Andrew Ryan's very positive Globe & Mail review today, he raises -- without expanding on it -- a very interesting point, when he writes:

More impressive are the two young leads. Honed from four seasons as Derek on the family sitcom Life with Derek, Seater is a naturally gifted comic actor who has mastered the art of delivering witty dialogue with a blank expression. If you think that's easy, talk to Michael Cera.

The winsome Farber is a solid match for Seater and rises to the occasion now that's she's removed from the histrionics of Degrassi. Together, they make the perfectly adorable teen couple, which naturally puts viewers on their side for the wedding brouhaha, while the parents are left to sputter.

The significance just below the surface here is belied a bit earlier in the article where he repeats the tired old canard about Canadians being good or known for comedy... No, we're not. We're known for shipping our talent south before they really get a chance to do anything here because there's such a lack of opportunity.


That lack comes from consistently having to start over. I remember hearing stories from before my time about how when Seeing Things ended, everybody scattered and they lost everybody who'd learned anything.  How many vets of TRADERS went on to get shows immediately after? (Without going to the USA?)  Pat McKenna won Gemini after Gemini in that show -- why's he not a lead in something?


In the case of Farber and Seater -- one thing we DO have in this country is an actual bonafide tween/teen show industry -- mostly for U.S. partners, but still. The shows keep going, the crews work, and actors like Farber and Seater hone their craft and get really, really good at what they do so that when they're presented with an opportunity like this, they've learned the ropes. They're poised to deliver.

CTV, just out of Gas, gave both Brent Butt and a bunch of Gas writers the chance to create sitcoms. Just rolled them right over.  That's how it's done.


It's called "building an industry." And it works for crews, writers, directors, and everybody else too.

Holy Cow.

UM.  WHEN DID Parks & Recreation get so damn funny?

Death of the sitcom, my overwatered kiester.

Kinda Exciting

IF YOU'RE A TeeVee Geek... from the NYTimes:

After devoting most of his energy in recent years to feature films and cable, the writer, director and producer Larry Charles is returning to network television. Mr. Charles, left, who wrote many episodes for the NBC hit series “Seinfeld” and “Mad About You” in the 1990s, is to write and direct the pilot of an as-yet-unnamed series for NBC. In this decade Mr. Charles has directed Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” and “Brüno” films, and also directed, produced or written episodes for the HBO hit series “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Entourage.” The new NBC show is to have an ensemble cast and be set in a small town. Mr. Charles told The Hollywood Reporter that the show would try to depict “contemporary American life through the prism of a do-it-yourself homemade aesthetic that will mix mediums.”

A Whole Bunch of Questions Without Easy Answers

I'VE BEEN DOING a lot of work or thinkin or whatnot with the WGC lately. Between that and my own development stuff, I find myself in the peculiar position of having a whole, whole bunch I would LOVE to talk about here, but simply can't.

This isn't a new phenom. It's been building like a slowly-boiling lobster in the pot for more than a year now. And I suppose it's inevitable when you try to both be inside an industry and comment on it too. In many ways, I'm envious of my friend (and mentor) Howard Bernstein, who sketched out for me twenty years ago, at the beginning of my career, what he'd say about the business as he knew it, if only he could do so in some sort of column or what have you.

Well, Howard's retired now, and he's doing it, in spades, and pulling no punches and I think that's grand.

Meanwhile, I have to put up with the swirling of the "things that should be said" and the very careful dance of trying to figure out how much I can say. And I do so with the ongoing, angry-making knowledge that there's just so many people out there who could very well join in, add to the discussion, help make things better, but don't because good old fashioned Canadian timidity gets in the way.

So I sit, stumped, starting posts in my head and very quickly getting to the, "are you fucking kidding? You can't actually say that" point, trying to tell myself that it's OK, you do what you can, and hell, you still go way further than those Producers who seem to email John Doyle after every column he writes in the Globe.

But the ju-jitsu is getting a bit exhausting, frankly.

Which is why I'm so happy to find somebody else who writes thoughtfully, and who takes a look at things going on in the biz and isn't afraid to do more. Peter Typing Faster is a blog by a recent CFC Prime Time TV writing graduate. He's a pretty smart cookie and has something great to say all the time.

Recently, he's posted a number of articles that put fresh eyes on an old subject in TV Land -- eyeballs vs. demos. He hangs his musings on some of the frankly, astonishing data that's started to come back about FX's Sons of Anarchy.

In Canada, the switch to Personal People Meters is quietly rippling through the biz and it's got everybody talking; nobody knows what it means. Yet. The truth is, that Canadian Broadcasters are so conservative that any innovation in how they slice, dice and sell the numbers probably won't catch on here til long after it's figured out down south. But change doesn't just come in the "it's all moving to the web variety." There are real, actual things to pay attention to in conventional TV. There's life in the old girl yet.

Also, for anyone keeping score and track of the ebb and flow of prediction and pundrity...what is there to make of the fact that, we've heard about the decline of comedy for the last four years now? Article after article proclaimed the genre just about dead. And yet what's performing well this fall? Hmm. Curious. Curious indeed.

If changes like that can happen and upend the conventional wisdom so quickly, let's all take a pill and a grain of salt and pause before we worship at the new gloom-line that advertisers are gone for good and never coming back to TV.

Really? Like the dead half hour comedy? See, smart people know it's never that simple.

One final, final thought -- Battle of the Blades is now consistently way, way higher than any scripted show on the CBC. Mercer comes close, and that's it.

So what are those two shows giving the audience that the scripted fare isn't? And what does it mean that other scripted stuff on the CBC is trending down, but Being Erica seems to bounce around like a pinata, with 20% jumps and drops from week to week?

That's all I can say. Really. Talk amongst yourselves, chickens.

New Podcast: Canadian Writers Talking

FOR THE LAST two years or so, WGC Council VP & Blogger Jill Golick has been hosting eight-times-a year screenings & discussions about new Canadian TV shows, called "Writers Watching TV" in Toronto. More than a networking opportunity, it's a chance to get a sneak peek at new shows and also to get a window into the process of making them. Past editions have included screenings of The Border, Being Erica, ZOS, The Latest Buzz, Flashpoint and many others.

Well, now you can listen in on sessions, with a new podcast. The first features the showrunners of the new tween comedy show Overruled!

You can listen to that here.

Canadian Funny

JIM HENSHAW hipped me to this Brent Butt Twitter from last night, and I thought it was so good that it's worth passing on from the Apple Store in Century City, where I'm just...looking. Ahem.

Via @Brent Butt This made me laugh: I was having a beer in Toronto with Don McKellar. A woman came in and saw us together and said "Is Paul Gross coming?"

Now come on. THAT's funny. The reaction to last night's Little Mosque premiere? Ooh. Maybe not so much.

Also... kudos to the Amaze Film & TV folk and Creator/Showrunner Sheri Elwood for repatriating Brandon Walsh himself for Meet Phil Fitz. This show hasn't even started shooting yet and already there's buzz! Nice!

SitCommentary

WHAT'S THAT YOU say? All this reprint stuff is making you the depressed? Well, fudge to you, hippy. Temp's in the high 70's and I'm renting myself an Escape Hybrid. I can be part of the problem and smug at the same time!

Meantime, for you, dear reader, for you there is Professor Jaime Weinman's disquisition on sitcoms this fall, and generally. You could choose not to read it, I guess. But that would just make you a goof.

As it is, though, single-camera shows spend more money than their multi-camera counterparts to make the public laugh less. And the ones that do manage to include more jokes than usual, like 30 Rock or Arrested Development (where Mitch Hurwitz said that he was aware of the feeling that “single-camera comedies are less funny than multi-camera comedies,” and wanted to do a show that would have as many jokes as a good multi-cam show) often wind up getting so heavily-plotted and frenetic that they lose the one thing a sitcom must have to succeed: a sense that these are characters the viewer wants to hang out with. (Dramas can get by with plot, with solving the mystery or stopping the terrorists. Plot is almost a secondary thing on a sitcom, where the reason most people watch is simply to hang out with people they like.) An exception, again, is The Office, which has managed to create that “hanging out with friends” feel that a hit sitcom must have. It could be that the mock-documentary format helps a show sidestep the usual problems of single-camera, which could be a good sign for Modern Family (though I have my doubts; the characters feel too paint-by-numbers to me).

None of this is to say that networks shouldn’t make one-camera shows; some of the biggest hits of all time are one-camera, though again, history shows that it helps when the show is not absurdly expensive to produce. (You’ll have better, more durable luck with a mostly studio or backlot-bound show like M*A*S*Hor The Office than something like My Name Is Earl that requires many different locations, guest actors and camera angles every week.) But the current development slate shows the networks putting a lot of money and effort into a type of show that is usually no more than a niche success: the one-camera, movie-style, innovatively-told comedy. That’s usually Malcolm in the Middle numbers at best. The opportunity is still there for the next great traditional sitcom (again, BBT isn’t it in my opinion; in another era it would be a good sitcom, not state of the art), an opportunity that the networks have been surprisingly slow to seize.

If you're pitching or developing right now, this is some thoughtful, high level, creative ninja shit. Go read the whole thing.

You Can't Beat The Prince of Lies

BIG UPS & CONGRATS to my friend "Evil" Dennis Heaton for his triumph at the New York Television Festival yesterday.

My Pal Satan, produced as a web series pilot for the Canadian Film Centre, won the award for Best Web Series, as well as Best Theme Song.

If you haven't yet checked it out, go. Go do so.

For a full list of New York Television Festival winners, go here.

Gelbart on Writing

I SAT DOWN to start this short little entry thinking one thing, and now my fingers are ready to to type another. What I was going to type is that walking around Manhattan today I've been thinking a lot about the late Larry Gelbart. And I didn't know why. But I think I've maybe got some of it now.

I saw Billy Elliot last night. And never having seen the movie, I was surprised and frankly, a little moved by how much it tackled the story of the British Coal Miners. I remember that strike well from when I was in high school. The coverage of that strike and the stories that I heard and read at the time was probably what shifted my political consciousness from centre right, leftward.

It was a real trip seeing all these well-heeled middle and upper middle class types (me included) sit there in a theater in New York listening to Americans struggle to replicate the Geordie tones and talk about the decline of the British Working Class.

That kind of social commentary in comedy is a rare breed in TV these days. When you go back and watch the early, Gelbart seasons of M*A*S*H, you realize what an incredibly subversive show it was for its time. On CBS, of all places.

Anyhoo. I have more exploring and more work to do. But for now here's a bit of writing advice from the last interview Larry Gelbart ever gave, ( to Mike Sacks, from this month's Vanity Fair) --

Any advice you'd care to give to those writers out there just beginning their careers?

When you're writing and come to a rough spot and the ideas just aren't flowing, put down dummy text and keep on moving—especially if it's at the end of the day and you're going to stop. Your brain will never stop for the day, even if you have stopped working, and there's a very good chance you'll come up with something better. Also, at the very least, you'll have something to come back to the next day, instead of a blank page. That's important.

But in general terms, just sit your ass down in a chair and hope your head gets the message. Isaac Bashevis Singer's advice for the struggling young writer was to stop struggling and write. As for me, I don't have any other advice. If I did, I would have had a far more trouble-free life and a much, much better career.

And as a bonus, here's an NPR interview Gelbart gave in 1996.

Alan? Is That You?

OKAY, THIS COMES courtesy Matt MacLennan. I laughed so hard I think I might have dislocated an intestine.

Every Day's a Good Day for a Comedy Wank

JAIME WEINMAN, with his usual delightful minutae, analyses the various joke-telling styles employed on The Colbert Report, calling attention to the departure of the Executive Producer, an article in Vanity Fair, and eventually tracing it back -- as any good fan of modern comedy will -- to the Marx Brothers. An excerpt:

Silverman described a typical Colbert Report day in this recent interview excerpted in Vanity Fair, which also includes a great discussion of what she calls “status shifts” in a comedy scene: how a lot of the comedy comes from who is in control of the scene, and how a good sketch can transfer control (and with it, power) from one character to another and then back again, instead of just sticking with one relationship (straight man/stooge) through the whole scene.

I once wrote a sketch on Late Night With Conan O’Brien that I liked because it dealt with some issues that were on my mind at the time.

The sketch started with Conan returning from a commercial break and saying something to the effect of, “I’ve got to tell you, sometimes being a talk show host makes me feel a little guilty. I could have been a lawyer or a doctor—that would have been way more valuable to society.”

There was an actor in the audience who piped up, “Excuse me, Conan. I am a doctor, and I just wanted to let you know that you couldn’t have become a doctor, so just stop worrying about it. You just don’t have the skills to be a doctor—or the intellect!” The “doctor” then injures an audience member and demands that Conan prove that he actually could have been a physician. Conan manages to treat this “patient” brilliantly.

It starts with a switch: At first, Conan is in charge and says, “I could have been a doctor.” The doctor says, “No, actually, I am in charge, and you couldn’t have become a doctor even if you’d wanted to.” And then it switches once again.

She discusses this in reference to a Conan O’Brien sketch, but it’s very applicable to the world of The Colbert Report: part of the fun of a good segment is that even when he’s alone at the desk, he bounces back and forth between having and losing control.

For the full article and Weinman's contention of why the Marx brothers did it better, click here.

New Routines & No Surprise Mondays

I REMEMBER when I used to be surprised by movies and TV shows. Something that I tuned into thinking it would be lame and awful would turn out to be delightful. It used to happen a lot.

Now, I used to go see a lot more movies in the theatre, granted. And I'd even take a chance on movies that I thought would probably suck. It's been forever since I did that.

I was a little surprised the 2009 reboot of Star Trek was as good as it was -- but I wanted to see that movie, and I was rooting for it to be good. So that's different.

But that sense of delightful surprise, of really discovering something special, tends for me now to be restricted to shows and films I've never heard of at all. It's easy to be surprised by something when you have no preconceived notions about it. But overcoming that jaded, Spidey sense? Not so easy. It's like years of plaque has built up on my joy receptors. If I think it's gonna be crappy -- it's usually crappy.

Which is why recently I was so surprised, and delighted by I Love You Man.

I have a certain low-level, seen it before expectation from that Apatow school of movie. Forgetting Sarah Marshall had a few great laughs, but wasn't as good as Superbad, etc, etc.

So I was shocked watching I Love You Man to see that at its heart, it's actually a pretty elegantly told story. And it made me think that maybe the key to subverting the expectation of the jaded, seen-it-all viewer is to not swing for the fences on the big twist -- (that's soooo 1999) but just to subvert constantly, through little choices you make at every point in the plot.

I Love You Man does this in a dozen different ways. (Mild sort-of-spoilers follow.)

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(Bruce Willis is dead from the beginning)

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Okay. Andy Samberg's gay brother is more macho and guy-guy than Paul Rudd. Rashida Jones finally gets to play a character in one of these things that isn't a type, or a cardboard cutout. You're with her in every reaction. In fact, one of the nicest things about the film is that there's not really any bad guy. You can understand the choices made by every character, and most are acting not out of any crazy movie-logic, but as a real person might in that situation. (Sure, there's Favreau and the rival real estate agent, but even something about the two

of them stops short of the usual "bad guy" trope in a film like this.)

Jason Segel isn't unhinged. He's not crazy. And the central idea -- a romantic comedy where the object of affection is not the romance, but the bromance, well, hell. Never in a million years did I think that was going to work. I thought that was going to be Baby Mama lame.

But it wasn't. From the dorky Rush jokes, right down to the failure to find a nickname, the slappin' the bass riffs, and ... uh... Lou Ferrigno.

I'm just blown away by how much I really enjoyed this movie, and thought it was well written, funny, and true.

So anyway, there you go. Every once in a while the old dog sees a new trick.

Have you had a similar experience lately?

Been surprised by a film or a book or a TV show that you were convinced was going to suck, but actually turned out to be enjoyable? (And not in that shameful guilty pleasure kind of way -- I've watched Showgirls with the commentary on, too.)

Have at it in the comments.

I'm back into trying to get a new routine going -- in preparation for getting into my new office next week, so I don't know how much I'll be blogging this week. We'll see.

Again, anybody want to try a guest post, email me and we'll talk.