When It Clicks

Today I'm not making the drive out to Maple Ridge. I'm going to be sitting at my living room table in the East End of Vancouver, doing my best to pound out the penultimate episode of the first season of Blood Ties.

Somebody once said that when you're doing TV, six is a mint; thirteen is a stretch; twenty-two is a war. Blood Ties' showrunner, Peter Mohan, told us a story yesterday of an old show where he had to deliver twenty-six episodes. And it was a difficult series with a lot of problems. I have to hold my head just thinking of it.

Meanwhile, I don't happen to think that six is anything to sneeze at, having just written the bulk of a six-pack myself -- a process that necessitated the loss of much of the remaining hair I have left.

Six is also the number of weeks that I've been on this show. So I'm new and fresh-faced, but I'm already tired. In a sense, I guess that's because the time that everybody else got to take off at Christmas I spent finishing work, prepping to come out to Vancouver, boning up on this show and actually starting work. When this gig's over, the first thing I'm going to do is put on a snorkel and some flippers.

I can't commit to going somewhere where I can use them, yet, of course. One step at a time.

Six weeks is long enough to discover something else, though. And it's this:

This is a great movie.

Every movie has its own set of problems, to be sure. But when I compare the look-around I have now to some of the projects I've worked in the past, there's an inescapable conclusion: Blood Ties is a wonderful place to work.

Why? Well, let's break it down. There's laughter in production meetings. Lots of it. When the producer walks in to a meeting, there's usually a bit of banter, not scowls and hushes. People give the production designer a bit of stick -- and he takes it and laughs it off. The writers laugh their heads off every day.

For the first time in my life, I'm working with another Dennis. And you think it would be confusing, and sometimes it is. Denis/Dennis isn't one of those names that you get a lot, so you don't get used to people calling it out and not meaning you.

Then there's Denise, who runs the office. I had the sublime pleasure of getting an envelope with a contract in it yesterday marked, "To Dennis and Denis from Denise." That's poetry, man. You can't make that shit up.

Just so the confusion doesn't run too much toward French farce, the two Den(n)ises have fallen into a shorthand. There's "Good Denis" and "Bad Dennis." It may surprise some people who know me well to know that I am actually the Good Denis.

Then again, you've never met Dennis. Dennis has a black, black heart, my friend. Where the joke ends for you, it starts for him. This is the part, the joy of being a professional writer, that's just impossible to convey to you spec monkeys out there. Often, the best part of finally clawing your way in is not in benefits or payments or production fees or onscreen credits -- (though don't get me wrong, those are all nice things) it's the simple joy of this: being able to work and interact with smart people who just make you laugh.

Put the Good and the Bad with the Pretty, our fearless Story Coordinator, Travis, (who's getting his big first produced writing credits on this show) And you've got a great team. I met Travis when he went to the Film Centre. And I must admit when I met him I never guessed how good he would be at taking the merciless hazing that we throw at him. Course, he may yet kill us. I think maybe I caught him yesterday measuring my head for a box. Time will tell.

It's a dog friendly office, too. I'm a sucker for that. Most days you can see one of a few pooches wandering around. I was stuck on some really rough bit, sitting in my windowless, pea-soup yellow office, and this little terrier wandered in, sniffed the boxes in the corner, gave me a look that seemed to say "can't you throw those out already?", turned around three times, cocked his head and walked out. Amidst my broad smile -- there it was. The answer. I had solved my logic problem.

I'm not giving the dog a co-write.

Somebody - it may have been my father - said years ago that one of the best ways to gauge the quality of a work experience is: Am I still learning? And the answer here is definitely, absolutely, yes.

First, let me tell you what I've learned from the actors. We've got a core cast that is so committed and professional that it makes me give my head a shake. It's like winning the lottery.

Writers carry plenty of cliches about actors, not always undeserved. There's often a lot of eye-rolling when a version of, "but my character wouldn't say that" gets busted out. Now I'm not saying there aren't egomaniacs out there, and difficult actors -- just like there's difficult people everywhere. But when you have professional actors, who really read the script, try to work their way through it and are trying to work with you to make it better, here is the single greatest thing they do:

They never let you get away with anything.

I'm serious. You fanboys and fangirls out there tracking continuity errors or logic errors -- I'm not saying that actors solve the problems (the last thing we need is more people thinking that actors just make up all their lines and deserve even more of the glory than they already get,) but sometimes, an actor bump, just like a network bump -- is exactly the thing you need to Get you right with God on your script, and stop trying to paper over something that shouldn't be papered over.

My first script for the show finished shooting yesterday. A week ago, at the read-through, the lead balked at an action that she was supposed to take in the last act that she needed to take for story's sake, that maybe didn't 100% make sense. In the back of my mind I knew this, but I quieted the voice that said, "uh uh," because every solution I came up with seemed to unnecessarily complicate the story at the end -- right at the point where you're trying to bring everything into port and end the show quickly. Endings have their own momentum, and the last thing you want to do is shoehorn in another beat. To do so can throw off that race to the finish and murder the pace of the show at exactly the point it needs to be tightest.

So you gulp your apple juice and write the scene and cross your fingers and hope that nobody asks.

Actors -- good actors -- always ask.

In the end, the solution to the problem flipped the end scene a bit, and opened up an opportunity to bring back some mythology from the backstory. That solution, though, created a logic problem for another character. That objection led to a two-line on-the-day rewrite that added a whole other layer to the scene - all without slowing up momentum.

And NONE OF THIS would have happened if the actors weren't doing their jobs above and beyond saying their lines, and selling the drama. Good questions bring great solutions. And you see, again, just how the collaborative process is supposed to work.

Then there was the case of the other lead. I sat in the showrunner's office yesterday and studied this actor's face as he tried to work through what was definitely a difficult, challenging scene for him. It's a scene where the actor has to play two very specific things -- and those things are fighting within him, both bubbling up. And he was having trouble with the dialogue getting him there.

And you know what the solution was? Cutting two lines. Because they were head lines, at a moment where the reaction needed to be all heart.

Actors are cool.

Now, let's talk about the people actually making the movie.

The Director of my script, Andy, came up to me several times this week and just ran blocking by me. In every case his blocking was spot on; he and the actors discovered a way to stage the scene in a way that exactly communicated my intent in the scene -- even though -- and this is important to note -- it often deviated from what I had down on the page.

In the majority of cases I've had up til now, I've gotten used to "The Trade." The Trade is where you look at the scene as it was shot and you suss out what was gained and what was lost. If you're lucky, you can make peace with what the director added and paper over or accept what was lost.

Where you get into trouble is where the thing that was lost was supposed to presage or tip something that was coming down the line. Because the problem with series, of course, is that one ep is only part of a whole. Writers often have to change direction for a million different reasons: you cast an actor as a love interest or nemesis and it doesn't work, so you have to switch gears. That's the nature of the game.

But it's hard -- really hard -- when you work on something, and you lay something into a scene because you want it to have a build that may not pay off for another three episodes, and the director just summarily decides not to shoot it. Up to now, my mantra has always been, "it doesn't matter if you don't do exactly what's there, so long as you add something to replace it." The beat has to be there.

I'll give you an example of a case that didn't work, that always bothered me. On a show I wrote, I wanted to play a moment between two characters. Here's the situation: they've just slept together. It's the morning after. What I don't want to have is the standard, "it's not you baby, it's me..." conversation. But our hero can't commit and the woman playing opposite him is supposed to be tough, but someone who's just opened up and gotten it thrown back in her face.

So in the script, I busted out our old friend the objective correlative. I set it in the kitchen. She's made breakfast. He enters the kitchen. She serves it -- with all the hope and the vulnerability of someone saying, "is this something?" "is this going somewhere?" And our hero, bastard that he is (at this point, I must qualify,) starts in on his variation of "it's not you, it's me." And our she, she's so clever, and she's been here so many times before that she gets it even before he's said it -- she takes the plate of eggs off the table, and walks over, and dumps them into the garbage. All without a word. Then she turns and plays the rest of the scene -- but you get it already, right? From that action you get what she's going through.

Except the director didn't shoot it. She just takes the eggs and puts them on a counter -- not that you really even see her do that, because that's not focused on, even in a glancing way.

Maybe they couldn't find exactly the right garbage can. I have no idea. But the result was a flat, flat, flat scene like a scene we've seen a million times before, where her character just stood there and had nothing to do. She didn't reveal that she knew it was coming, she didn't anticipate, she didn't show her anger or her strength with one motion, and there was no object, no objective correlative of the subtext underpinning the scene.

It played like a scene where she cooked some eggs.

Now contrast to that to the experience I had this week. This week I learned that you can get most of what your intent was in the scene -- AND have the Director make it way, way, way better. You can preserve the arcs and beats you have in your head for down the road -- and still add to the whole scene. You don't have to accept the trade.

I mean -- this is the way it's supposed to work. I am over. the. moon.

I've only been to set a few times. I still think a writer on set is kind of like a fish with an Indy car...you don't have a job and you just get in the way. But when you go to set, what you see is a crew doing their best to keep upbeat, do their work. The director calls for something, and people haul ass. They come together on other things, too. They've worked on someone's music video on the weekends. There are signs up for birthday parties.

It's hard to say this, being Toronto-based, and with Toronto taking a hit now because of the ACTRA strike and all, but to my eyes, you can really see the difference that TV series culture has wrought here. This is not a show with all the money in the world. Yet it's definitely the most professional set I've ever been on -- and that includes all the sets -- some of them big shows, that I visited as a journalist before I started writing professionally. The last time I was on a set in Vancouver, it was as a journalist, and it was about nine years ago. And it was...um...not like our set. Thank You, X-Files. Again.

I overheard someone say yesterday that there's thirty days left in the shoot. I'm the new guy, the interloper -- and I spend most of my time upstairs anyway, but there's no denying that this group is something special; and I hope that the show hits and shoots right through to a second season, because when you get a group working this well together, breaking them up and apart seems a colossal waste.

On that score... we've started to see more and more of the cuts come through. We're seeing the work, and it's good. I think we've done it. I think this is actually a fresh, fun, sharp spin on the vampire story. There's humor, there's pathos, there's comedy, there's spookiness and scariness. It's good!

And in just under three weeks, Americans will get to see it on Lifetime. (I am sorry, my fellow Canadians, you will have to wait till the fall. But look at it this way: maybe you'll know if you're committing to a series that's going to continue by then.)

Oh, are my fingers crossed. People working at the top of their game have made something special here. I can't wait for you to see it.

And I feel very lucky being six weeks on something that other people have slaved away on for months.

We have one more story to break -- a story that will end the first season and reshuffle the deck and scream out for more stories of Mike Celluci, Vicki Nelson, and Henry Fitzroy.

As Lifetime's slogan goes: A detective to keep her cool. A vampire to keep her warm. Some women have it all.

So do some shows. When it clicks, it's like no other job in the world, people. It really is.

EDIT: I actually have been reminded, much to my embarrassment, that I have worked with a Dennis before. In South Africa. I guess we didn't really play the confusion beat too much though because he had that plummy accent and I was a bloody Yank. Still, I'm red faced. Sorry Mr. Venter. Mea Culpa.

Reprint: This Cup Can Make You a Better Writer

Working on a new post about my "Best of the Year." But since Boxing Day's a holiday in Canada too, well... slack. Cut me some.

Originally published 03/01/2006

Do you recognize this cup?

If you're a New Yorker, I'm sure you do. In fact, if you've spent any time in New York at all any time in say the last forty years, you probably recognize this little sucker right away. And I'm betting that there's a hint of a smile on your face.

In the pre-Starbucks days, this is the coffee cup you would get when you grabbed a coffee at any deli anywhere in Manhattan. I've gulped from a cup just like this walking through the East Village. I downed a mouthful of cold coffee out of a cup like this outside CBGB's (along with a handfull of Advil.) One time, when I was about twenty, I picked a cup like this off the ground and put it in the garbage precisely two seconds before the karmic lightning bolt hit and I caught the impossible- to-find-cab- in-the-middle-of- the- rainstorm- when-you're-late- for- the-theater-matinee- because- your-girlfriend- took- such-a-long-time-on -her-hair.

In its own weird way, it's as much an icon of New York City as the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, or the Twin Towers.

I got thinking about this little cup the other day when my friend Rob was over at Dead Things HQ. Awhile back, I was checking out the MoMa reno in the City, and found this little cup in the gift shop. It's a ceramic replica of the famous paper-coffee cup. At ten bucks, it made me smile. (If it does the same for you, you can get info about how to purchase one here.)

Anyway, Rob was over and we were trying to break a nettlesome story for his series for, like, the sixth time, and he complimented my coffee-making skills. It was good coffee. (Yes, the entire conversation went like this. Very Grade-three-Gay. And don't give me shit for describing it thus...Dan Savage says I'm in the clear.) Anyway, more than the coffee itself, Rob really liked the cup. It evoked in him the same feeling it evoked in me, an instant nostalgia for all things New York.

What struck me later was not how he instantly recognized and responded to the cup the same way I did. I found that utterly unsurprising. Of course he'd dig it. It's yet another case of how our sensibilities are similar.

See, at that point, that little cup could be considered the objective correlative of both our friendship, and of our separate, warm memories of New York.

It's been a while since I talked about the Objective Correlative. Even then, I didn't get into it too much. Danny Stack followed up on the idea with a longer post here.

I guess the reason why I'm returning to the idea again is because lately I've been reading a lot of scripts where people talk about things, but where there isn't a real clear sense of the objective correlative working through the drama. It reads as flat. The simple realization that a tiny object like a coffee cup could make me think of my past, and reaffirm a friendship...well, that's interesting stuff. It's not just drama -- it's life.

T.S. Eliot came up with the Objective Correlative, in his writings on Hamlet. Here's what he said:

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

That's exactly what happened with me and the coffee cup.

My reaction to the cup evoked everything I mythologize about New York. And later, it indicated camaraderie between me and my friend -- so it took on a separate, instant meaning in a different situation.

Interestingly enough, this little cup's gotten quite a workout -- because now that I think about it, I remember that about six months ago I had a woman over and we were chatting. We'd been out a few times, and it was at that point where you're not sure which way it's going to go. She asked about the cup. I told her the story, and she was utterly unimpressed. She'd been to New York several times. She vaguely remembered the cup. She just thought it was a little...stupid.

Guess what I realized in that moment?

"Damn You, Objective Correlative! Damn You to Hell!"

As I've gotten older, I'm fascinated by the fact that I'm much more interested in Sports than I was when I was younger. My Dad and My Uncle used to take me to Yankees and Blue Jays games, and my Grandfather was a huge Mets fan -- some of my earliest memories of him are watching the game with him on an old black and white TV set. He died when I was seven, so that's a pretty potent memory. But still, I managed to sail through my teenage years and most of my twenties without reading the Sports section daily. Not anymore.

I think part of it is that as we get older, Sports increasingly becomes the objective correlative of male friendship. The game allows you to express emotion, bond, catharsis, the whole magilla. The Poker Craze, I believe, is part and parcel of the same thing. I read Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch and laughed my ass off, and I don't give a fig about Soccer.

By looking and finding the objective correlative of emotions in your life you start to unlock the inner life; the one you don't express consciously, but imbue to objects or situations. I think that helps you to unlock a trove that can help you weave the objective correlative more successfully into your art.

Understanding and recognizing the objective correlative in life makes you a better writer.

One totally non-scientific thing I've noticed, for instance, is that women who understand men's attachment to sports, or who appreciate men's penchant for silly or gross humor, kind of tend to understand men better in general.

An acquaintance of mine was having problems in his marriage, at the same time that his old car was constantly breaking down. This went on for a couple of years. One night, like a bolt out of the blue, he realized that he and his wife fought every time there was a problem with the car. Sometimes it was when she had the car -- and he probably blamed her. Sometimes it was when he was driving it, and it made him irritable. It went on and on, and they fought and made up. Then he got a new car. For two months, they didn't fight. But one night, when they did -- they nearly broke up. Their marriage was at the brink, and it caused them to finally face some of the big, structural, ugly things at the core of their marriage. His wife said a lot of the same stuff she'd said before...but finally, finally, he got it. (They're still together, by the way.)

Now...did that have anything to do with the car? Did the car being there offer a valve, a distraction, a symbol that kept them from getting to the core of things? Did removing it remove that valve and force a confrontation? I don't know. What do you think?

I'll tell you what, though, it's a damn sight more interesting than any of the other stories I've heard from half a dozen guys about how they fight with their wives (or ex-wives, as the case may be.)

Writing drama is about coming up with an effective shorthand for life, and putting it down on the page.

Seems to me that old T.S. Eliot gave us a great gift. I knew he did a lot more than come up with those damn singing cats.

I was going to come up with a few more examples from movies and TV -- but maybe that could be the audience participation portion of the post. So come on: what are your favorite filmic examples of the O.C. at work?

Now, I have to go and write a one-pager that basically demonstrates how the O.C. works in my choice of venue for a series pitch I did recently. They bumped on the setting in the meeting, but thanks to a conversation I had last night, I think there may be a way to better explain what I mean. The O.C. is everywhere.

Remember the Cup, Luke.