Throw the Devil Horns, Biatch.

I'm so disappointed in myself.

Last night I broke a three or four year old trend that had served me well.

I saw a film at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I know, I know. I feel dirty.

Now in my defence, it was a Midnight Madness screening. And I was right around the corner, since I'd just taught my class at Ryerson University. And I had worked on the film, so I kind of had to.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a little documentary with a great conceit. The central character, Sam Dunn, is an anthropologist. Professionally, he's spent time investigating differing cultures. But he's also a die hard headbanger, so now he's going to set off and explore a culture that he's a part of, and one that evokes a lot of strong reactions from a lot of people.

I was brought in about a year and a half ago now to punch up or rework some of the application documents they were doing for their funding submissions.

Then I went to South Africa and did Charlie Jade.

When I got back, they got in touch with me again and had me in a few times to help them shape their narration and storytelling. I did not write it; they did. But I made suggestions about phrases to use that could pump up the drama, and how script could support and smooth the flow of their narrative. It was a great fit for me, since it was more or less a combination of what I used to do, and what I do now.

Well, the film turned out great. They did a really good job. It's funny, it's wise, it's provocative in parts; it doesn't shy away from what's controversial in Metal, but it also does a touching job of showing what the culture means to the tribe, and why they're drawn to it. I'm not qualified to say if it amounts to good anthropology, but it's great filmmaking and worthy pop culture exploration. They've been rewarded for their efforts: the film will be released theatrically both here in Canada, in the USA, and the UK.

But sitting there, last night, in the audience, there was a lot going through my head. Maybe it's because I've seen the film so many times at this point, but here's what I found myself thinking about:

The Need to Commit

As I said, I managed to go 8000 miles away and work on another show for five months in between my consulting gigs on this show. But the three producers, Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy Wise slogged through for over a year to get this made. Sometimes when I talk to new writers; sometimes when I think about my own career, even, it's easy to forget that the process of getting something you're proud of made can be all-consuming. It has to be all consuming, and it cannot happen quick. Show me a guy who says he can write a bulletproof spec in two weeks and I'll show you a liar. Perseverance really does take a long time and there are no shortcuts.

Get Outside Your Wheelhouse

I am NOT a metalhead. I came of age in the era of Pop and Glam Metal, and I thought everything south of Van Halen was just patently ridiculous. So going into this project, I wondered "how the hell?" and "why the hell?" am I going to do this?

Well that's exactly the impulse that should always get you to sign on for a project. Shake your junk up. The fact is, I can now have a passable, cursory discussion about the Norwegian Black Metal scene. How %@#%^ cool is that? Storytelling is storytelling, and even though I was advising in an area where I didn't really know the facts, I did know about storytelling. And that made the difference. But more importantly, in an era when you only ever have to read the news that agrees with you, consume the music you like, TIVO shows you find interesting and absorb nothing else: well, that's great for the great mass of consum...sorry...society. But it's not good for us. Shake your junk up.

TIFF Still Sucks

It was bittersweet seeing the film in the Ryerson Theatre. Onceuponatime, the hoity-toity Toronto International Film Festival was the far less pretentious Festival of Festivals. When I was a University student, they'd have galas at the Ryerson Theatre, and if you volunteered for a few hours you got a pass. Tuesdays I had a class at 8 am and a class at 6. Oh, and I lived in the burbs so I wasn't going home.

That added up to a lot of passes. I got to see Roger & Me and a bunch of other films and it was perfect and magic.

Now, not so much.

Ah well. Tonight's the Metal Party. There will be Jager. I intend to...Give'r.



Random celebrity factoid: Sharon Osbourne was a total knob to the filmmakers, blocking them at every turn. They properly snickered her name last night. If you see her out there in the world, give her the special one-fingered devil horn for me.

Haikus to the Gods of First Draft TV Pilot Scripts

Oh mighty Teaser
Kickoff to the whole story
Happy you are done

First Act yer a bitch
You bully with your many
needs and shortcomings

Dreaming of Act Two
Will I ever get to you
Never at this rate

What's on Jon Stewart
No no I must not succumb
Time for Cereal.

Even More Disturbing.

I know, I know, if you read this at all, you're already reading Josh Friedman. But just in case, for whatever insane reason, you're reading me before him today. Stop. Go to his site. Read today's entry, "The Joy of Specs." I am doing the toe-curl happy dance in front of my computer now.

BTW, if you come back after reading it and have any suggestions as to how working writers can cure themselves of the whole doomed trying-to-date-an ACTRESS thing, I really, really, really could use it. Seriously. Voodoo, Santeria, anything short of 'Ludes. I'll listen.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Gonna, Walk Around Tuesdays On FOX

I've always liked David Boreanaz. I'm glad he has another series that can shoot exteriors in the day. That must be a nice change for him. Unless they shot Day for Night a lot on Angel. But that's neither here nor there.

So, onto BONES, Fox's attempt to cross pollinate some character development into the CSI genre. I found the pilot solid and workmanlike, if not really too inspired. Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel do well in their roles. There's very snappy dialogue.

But on the whole I thought the first act was great, and then it settled down into a plot that was way more conventional than I would have liked.

You can see why they paired this with HOUSE. Same irascible kind of lead character. The problem with that is whenever they have an irascible female lead character, she's always, I don't know, leaving out saucers of milk for kittens by episode four.

I mean, Samantha from Sex & The City was a right bitch when that show started. It was bracing. By the end she was about as threatening as that cougar you met down at 2.99 shooters night at Stuckey's on the interstate. And don't even get me started on what they did to Murphy Brown.

In the end, I will give this the rule of three... I try to give any new show I watch at least three eps to find its feet - which is a lot more than some networks do. But BONES has got a lot to overcome to make a permanent dent in my viewing schedule. Now I know nobody asked, nor should they, but having already worked one show where the brief was to come on in and do triage on a sickly show, I kind of like to think that way to keep the engines humming. So my prescription for BONES would be:

Let people in.

I hate being outside that CSI stuff. HOUSE does a very good job of keeping you up to date with what's going on. BONES keeps you at a distance.

Prune the ensemble

Leads are good, but there's like one-too-many Scooby gang characters around Deschanel. The assistant is forgettable, the female researcher is fabulous (though, to be fair, they did introduce her with her flashing an inattentive airline dude: great intro) and both Boreanaz and Deschanel have forgettable boss characters.

(It's also telling that I'm calling the characters by the actors' names. When you can't remember the characters names, that should tell you something.)

Get Weird

It's FOX. I want less JAG, Navy NCIS more Jump Street or X-Files.

I do, however, want this show to succeed brilliantly and run five years since the creator is a very nice formerly Canadian fellow named Hart Hanson, who once toiled on a show up here called Traders, and who years ago saw the genius of the Piven in a short series called Cupid.

As for HOUSE, pretty good premiere, but someone needs to declare a moratorium of end-of-episode montages set to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah. I mean, The OC did it twice, for Godsake. And I think I've seen it in at least four other series. One of them might have been the Rufus version they used in Shrek. Whatever. It's done. Find another weeper. I suggest David Gray or James Blunt.

Thanks, Mr. K.

Okay: so here it is. A thousand years ago, when I was still a journalist, I was interviewing an author. Doesn't matter who, but this was a writer I admired greatly. While the tape was changing, I peppered him with questions for my own interests' sake: "how did you make the leap to professional writer?" and things like that.

He smiled for a bit and nailed me with a glance. He saw what I was asking without me even asking it. He laughed and said,

"getting sick of the treadmill?"

And I smiled, too. He caught me out. This was certainly the first time any of my interview subjects had showed the slightest interest in the guy asking the questions. He paused for a second, like he was weighing saying something, and then he said,

"You'll get there. If you really, really want to write, you'll find a way to do it, and you'll find a way to make money doing it."

"Okay, I've got speed."

That's the cameraman telling me that he's ready to keep going; to resume the interview. So the last part of what the author said was the first thing I saw when I screened the tape back to cut my story together.

His face changed for a second there. Just a wisp of darkness crossed, and then was gone, as he settled back into interview mode. And before I got off my next question, he said,

"Just don't expect it to solve all your problems. At a certain point, you're still in the corner at the party, staring out at people; bewildered, munching dead things on sticks."

So. Now you know.

Four years later

Really? It's really only been four years?
I remember talking to my Dad and having to break it to him that the first tower had fallen. He'd watched CNN for awhile, but stopped "because they kept saying the same things, and no one knew anything." He hadn't made the connection that we had relatives in there. (They got out.)

Four years?
Really?

How can so much have happened since then?
How can we possibly have this guy as President for another three years?

Where's a good TIME CUT TO: when you need it?

The Joys of Overwork

The difference between professional writers and dabblers is actually pretty simple. And it's usually revealed in a variation on one particular conversation:

"How'd you do writing today?"
"Oh I didn't do much."
"Why not?"
"I just wasn't feeling it"
-or-
"Inspiration wasn't cutting it"

I think I've probably said this before but: inspiration never strikes. When you've got a job to do you have to sit your ass down in the chair and just start. Some days it starts to flow, and some days it doesn't. Nevertheless, you still have to put in the time. This is called "fighting the good fight." It has everything to do with craft and discipline, and very little to do with artistic inspiration.

However, at times when things are going poorly, sometimes it helps to have an embarrassment of projects.

Right now I'm working on two things. One is an incredibly hard, challenging, genre-busting pilot. The other is a rewrite of a series that's fun, and easier to define.

In those times when the brain starts to bleed from all the thinkin' on one, it's nice to be able to switch to the other.

It would be nicer to sit on a patio and sip a Corona with Lemon, but you know, freelancers can't be choosers.

Reunion

Another new show, on Fox. It's on probation with me.
I love mystery kind of shows and I love narratives that trace people over longer periods of time. But it looks to me like we're not going to get a lot of what's fun about that sort of stuff -- jumping back and forth from future to past; using the juxtapositions of how people change as dramatic fodder to push the story along.

A lot of actors I like doing uninspired work. I think it's very lucky it follows The O.C. I might keep watching for the next couple of episodes, but something about this show just left me very uninspired.

How 24 Changed Everything

No...it's not the "dink. dink. dink. dink." digital clock that almost single-handedly makes digital displays cool again.

And it's not the whole "real time" fooferal, either. That's a gimmick, like David Caruso's naked butt launching NYPD Blue or The Harlem Globetrotters visiting Gilligan's Island. (Ah, Gilligan. Sigh.)

What 24 did is popularize a brand-new, ultimately excellent way to get writers off the hook.

OnceUponATime, TV writers suffered from what I like to call "Star Trek Syndrome." They would end their seasons with cliffhangers.

Ending your series on a cliffhanger just seems like such a good idea. Get people coming back for more...leave them with maximum excitement built up...(that is, unless your show isn't coming back. Then cliffhangers suck.)

The problem with a cliffhanger is that when you're working, working, working along in a season, you build everything to that cliffhanger. You're exhausted when you finally put that cliffhanger to bed. Stick a fork in me I'm done exhausted.

So you go away on hiatus. And then you come back, two months later or however long it is, and you have to pick up the threads and deal with that cliffhanger. And that sucks. Because the cliffhanger belongs to last year's show. Having to deal with last year's show is like being expected to take your little brother's girlfriend to the dance. It may be the best dance ever, but you're never, ever gonna get any.

Maybe the writing staff's different. Maybe the chemistry's changed. Maybe you went base jumping in Santiago in the hiatus and your whole universe has changed, and now you have to deal with this damn thing that came from last year before you get to go on and do all the cool stuff.

So, try as you might, and as much as everybody thought, "hey, coming up with the ending of this will be NO problem" last season when they pitched it, you get into the groove of doing that "resolve the cliffhanger" episode and...

...um...

...ah...

Oh SHIT. What the #@$% do we do?

See, because you didn't think that far ahead, Mr. Smartypants. You just got your characters into a scrape, or an impossible, show-killing situation. (Or in the worst, darkest, nastiest version of the story, a writer who subsequently left the show and chose not to return this season (read: money) got your characters into it, and left no damn roadmap on how to get out. Now you've got to clean up all his McD's wrappers and stray gum and hair and condoms and trash bags and barettes and lipsticks and parking meter slips and get them all out of the front seat before you can take the shiny new car for a drive.

So the conclusion of the cliffhanger inevitably sucks.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Star Trek Syndrome.

Star Trek: The Next Generation NOTORIOUSLY had these season enders that were AWESOME (see: Borg, or the one with Data's head buried in the past) and then they came back, and zip, boom, zippity doo dah, wrap it up in the suckiest way possible.

Lest you think I'm geeking out totally here, The West Wing did the same thing when Aaron Sorkin (praise be his name) took the last chopper out in Season 4, leaving John Goodman as the President, and the Bartlets crying in the chapel.

But 24 made all that go away.

At that end of the first season, when they killed Teri Bauer, (spoiler monkeys: save the angry email...it's been five years. Catch. Up.) everyone went, "ooh...that's gonna make for a weird season opener."

And then they jumped ahead in time. And everyone bought it. And the Hallelujah chorus started.

If you can jump ahead in time, you can shuffle the deck anyway you want. Was your hero addicted to heroin? Not any more. Were they married? Not necessarily.

And imagine this:

Never again will we have to see a show where the youngest kid ages from 2 to 9 over the summer.

The notion that you can pick up the story 18 months, two years, three years later is a terribly exciting idea. No more three month hiatuses where you have to create the moment afterward, or even the idea that you can only start the story like the summer just passed. (Which is as far as people generally went before.)

Alias jumped on the idea when things got silly. The Sopranos, and Six Feet both used it, to tremendous, story-improving advantage. I think it's one of the most exciting tools that series' writers have.

The whole time working on Charlie Jade, we had lots of discussions of how much time had elapsed in "story time" over the season. We went back and forth about it.

Any series, over the course of the run, is going to pick up baggage -- subplots that don't work out, actors you would love to get rid of, situations that seem wobbly, the sheer fatigue of trying to come up with one more story in the same configuration.

24 gave us a gift. How much time do you need? Take it.

When the Sopranos starts its new season next year, two years will have elapsed in both the real world and in Tony's world. I can't wait to see the changes that brings.

Thank you, 24. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Difference

"The Canadian Television Industry," I have often opined to my much-beleaguered friends, "is not really an industry so much as a toy."

It's tough living next door to the cultural equivalent of Wal Mart. Then you have those gallic cutups next door in Quebec, with their comfy language barrier, making all manner of hoo-hah and fun with their own healthy star system and hit shows.

Americans, you owe yourself a trip to Montreal, just to see a star system and celeb machine right there, right under your nose, that you've never, ever heard of. It's like the days before soundscan when the music industry hadn't yet realized that hip hop was the biggest musical form in the USA, and people were still paying attention, oh, I don't know...to Tim McGraw's hat or something.

Anyway, in Toronto, in what we on the hustings call "English Canada," the path to television and to creativity is at best, fraught, and at worst, suicide-inducing.

The number of hour long dramas on Canadian TV has precipitously declined in the last few years, and it's been the subject of much hand-wringing among Can Culture types. When Alliance Atlantis, who were the biggest production company around, got completely out of production a few years back (deciding to make bones running specialty channels and cashing CSI checks) their CEO left this rose in the middle of the room:

"I think," he said, "That Canadian production has suffered a permanent downturn."

Wow. Thanks for playing, we thought. Enjoy all that Canadian taxpayer money you scooped up over the years. That reminded me (as most things do) of a trenchant Simpsons moment, where Marge asked Homer, "Did you have to salt the earth behind you?" Homer laughed and said, "Yes."

Bottom line: It's been pretty depressing up here for the last few years. Canadian Networks exist on a sliding scale as to how much they really are committed to developing Canadian drama and comedy. All, save the CBC, really make their money by snapping up rights to U.S. programming. (Though the CBC isn't making much money doing anything right about now.) But lo, there have been signs of life, as of late. First came Trailer Park Boys. It shows on BBC America down in the USA, and it's so Canadian, it's almost...freaky. It's full of swearin' and dope smoking and stupidity. I saw the first episode and hated it. Two years later I watched three in a row and became completely obsessed with the show. I'm not the only one. Ivan Reitman signed on to Exec Produce a movie. Give'r. That show is made by Showcase, which is a Canadian specialty channel who does commission and develop interesting original stuff. (Showcase is owned by the aforementioned Alliance Atlantis: see how complicated it gets?) Anyway, after Showcase there came a little show called Corner Gas on the CTV Network. That show regularly pulls in 1.5 million viewers a week -- that's in a country of 30 million - so basically, if it was a U.S. sitcom, it'd be the equivalent of pulling in 30 million viewers. I think a U.S. Network would pretty much worship Baal to pull in 30 million for a sitcom right about now. Anyway, once Corner Gas took off, one of the biggest excuses that the networks had: "Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows," kind of went away. And that broke the ice a bit.

All that is preamble to this. The difference between a meeting in L.A. and a meeting in T.O. is the attitude. In L.A., there's relentless positivity. After all, you might be the next hot thing! You may make someone a ton of money! What if it's not me?! Who do I have to kill to make sure it's me! You leave a meeting thinking that your penis is bigger, you weigh about 30 lbs less and you have the rugged good looks of the early Paul Newman.

In Toronto, often, the meeting is an excrutiatingly long dissertation of why you could never, ever do that. And what a problem it might be. And....BLAM!

I'm sorry, that was the sound of the flap of skin at the back of my head flying off with the force of the bullet.

That's why I'm pleased as plucky punch to say, that I have had meetings lately with people on a couple of projects that were just...great. Positive. People who are enthusiastic about material. Who want things to be good! Who want to make television that's full of quality just like me! Yayyy! Yayyyyy! In Canada! Could it be that this toy has some new, shiny batteries? My fingers are crossed.

And I never cross my fingers.

In The Tall Weeds Today...

On three different things, so not much to write about -- later on this week I hope to cover how 24 changed the hour long series forever...(and it's not the way you think.)

Also, the Toronto International Film Festival starts tomorrow.

Here's my prediction: for the fifth straight year, I will see zero films.
In fact, if I remember right, the last film I saw at TIFF, which used to be puckishly called the "Festival of Festivals" was SHINE. Yes. I will see no films.

But Lawdy Miss Clawdy, there will be Vodka and Dead Things On Sticks.

L8er,

On Dreck, On Spec...

Yay!

I got my first piece of hate mail of the "How dare you tell people not to write Entourage" variety. I'm so psyched by this because my days at the network tell me that for every negative letter you get, that's at least ten (or was it a hundred? Um..thousand?) people who want to boil the skin off your body, stitch you up into some grotesque fleshy covering and wear you as a man-suit.

That being said. I think it's perfectly legitimate to write an episode of any series you want. What's not acceptable - at ALL - is to not know your shit cold.

Let me present my bonafides to you first, because this might seem a little nasty without saying this upfront. I've taught a screenwriting course (Yes, it is true, we actually do grow on trees.) at a University in Toronto for about ten years. A little longer now, actually. This means two things:

-I am getting to be a very old bastard. (Approaching 40, don'tcha know)
-I have read, oh, say, about 900 spec scripts.

Now, most of these were in the "baby writer's first spec script" category. And most of them kind of sucked. There are no more great, undiscovered writers out there than there are great basketball players or great pro-golfers. The likely analogy is that there are a lot of girls and boys out there like Chris "Moneymaker" -- the guy who played poker online and played and won the World Series of Poker a few years ago. Or maybe that doesn't apply at all. Maybe, just for a moment, I wanted to write about poker. I am weak. So sue me.

Every year, though, I get one or two excellent first scripts from people who could really make a go of it as tv writers. Many of them have. Before you ask, yes, there are several of them who are waaaaaaayyyyy more successful than me. And they are younger. And for this they must die.

No. Focus. Right. More often than not, what sets the good apart from the bad? Besides the obvious, like, uh, the writing?

How cold they have the material.

This is important. Pro writers, before they start a show, do their research. A lot of people writing a spec script, because you're not getting paid, want to jump right into the writing part. It's a perfectly understandable impulse.

But it, like the liberal and regular use of crack cocaine, heroin, or crystal meth, can get you killed.

If you write a CSI, you cannot fake the forensics.
If you write a WEST WING, you must know how American government works. (Or more likely, the fantasy, "we're through the looking glass" version of how it should work.)
If you write ENTOURAGE, you have got to know Hollywood.
If you write HOUSE, your medical mysteries have to be true medical mysteries. You can't get back at the ex-wife by calling some deadly malady "Trudy's Syndrome."


So when you choose what to write, you can save yourself some time if you already have some knowledge there. That's why teen soaps are golden. Because unless you're one of the spore people, (And by the way, you #@%@#$% untrustworthy spore people, your tribute is late) everyone has been a teenager.

If I'm Mr. Hollywood guy and a read an item about something going on in L.A. and the barest detail is wrong, I'm gonna sniff and move on to the next script unless your material is just handed down from freaking Jehovah.

But you know, if Marisa is drinking a quart of tequila and macking on Summer, maybe not.

Ironic aside: Do NOT do an O.C. where Marisa macks on Summer. Please leave something to the sad, sad fanfic writers.

When I was writing specs, I chose WEST WING. This was at the end of WEST WING's first season. I did this for a very good reason: I am a freak for U.S. Politics. I also set my episode around the Library of Congress. Because I had been there, on a story, and had once interviewed the Librarian of Congress. See? Inside knowledge.

Once upon a time, I read a pretty good Sex In The City spec from a woman in my screenwriting class. She had the characters mostly right, and the story was inventive enough. The problem was, it hinged on a certain candy bar name that shared a name with one of the iconic characters on the show.

All the Americans are scratching their heads right now. Mr. Big.

Do you see the problem?

Mr. Big (the candy bar version) is not found in the USA. And is CERTAINLY not found anywhere within the five boroughs, never mind Manhattan.

Know it, or research it. There is no other option. Half baking your script is like half baking a pie. And who wants some bastard half-pie? It'll probably just curdle the ice cream and make a big goopy mess.

You want some Hollywood playa reading a big goopy mess?

I think not.

Entourage as a spec

It's inevitable, really. The show's got a certain cachet this season. It has definitely gotten better with the injection of a lot of top-tier writers into the room.

I think all the "It's the male Sex In The City" comparisons are still a little premature, and they have got to find something to do to un-one-note Drama, but the inevitable ascendancy of Turtle cannot be stopped and cannot be denied.

But that doesn't make it a good spec, far as I'm concerned, for a couple of big reasons:

-It's an HBO show

That makes the act outs a little softer or looser than when you actually have to go sell soap for two minutes.

-It's a show that's still trying to find itself

Most of the spec monkeys who are trying to write the perfect Entourage script will probably pore over the DVD's of the first season. They will do this at their peril. The show becomes more disciplined, and really a different show in the second season.

-It's an insider's world

If you are the assistant to some big powerful Hollywood type, then maybe you can come up with a window into the world that's fresh and new. But you'd have to have a pretty transcendent insight into the nature of male friendship working its mojo in your spec to overcome the third-hand "I read Variety" kind of spin you'd bring to the script -- even if you do live and work in L.A. (and if you don't, for the Love of God -- push away from the keyboard now -- unless you've spent lots of time in L.A. there's no way you can fake it. Ah, you know...without surgery.)

Aside number one: In the previous life as a journo-monkey, I was once on a film junket in L.A. and read the L.A. weekly, and counted five ads for doctors doing cosmetic vaginaplasty. This was the first time I ever knew such a thing existed. I was 28 years old. My chilhood ended that day.

-Entourage meanders.

And that might be its shaggy style (although what was with the "let's hug" Ari/Eric moment in the finale?) but people watching for writers who can craft a good story and write a good script are liable to be harder on you even for something that works in the show.

-L.A. Obsession: Enough Already.

I want you to think about this long and hard. I want you to imagine your Entourage spec. Visualize it. Can you see it? Good. I want you to imagine a pile now. Do you see the pile? Yes. Good. Your script is at the top of the pile. Excellent. Unfortunately, it's a pile of other Entourage scripts. So now some bastard who spends every waking moment immersed in minutae about the TV and Film industry has to read fifteen or thirty more scripts about people immersed in the minutae of the film industry. Oh Lord Love Nellie, yours had better not just be good. It better be Murder in the Frickin Cathedral good.

Just my gut, and your mileage may vary. But before you type TURTLE and go to town, think about your other options. I know, in half hour right now there aren't many. But I'm just not sure Entourage is the way to go. Remember, funny dialogue is only one part of it. And I'm not even convinced that when you're looking for new writers, that it's the most important part.

Podcasty TV Talky Goodness on KCRW

Okay. Let's get back to the dancing monkeys and the hey hey hey.

If you're looking for an insanely great resource for info on TV, click here.

The Treatment is an excellent show prouced by the great L.A. NPR station, KCRW. Hosted by Elvis Mitchell, it's podcast and downloadable. This week, the show interviews Jenji Kohan, Creator of WEEDS, which I've blogged about below.

Next week is the almost-preternaturally talented Hugh Laurie of HOUSE.

Click and listen.

What Writers can Learn from George W. Bush

These are the times that try men's souls

Thomas Paine wrote that in Common Sense about 230 years ago. I was reading that little pamphlet again not so long ago. Boy, it holds up. Paine is the shit.

Day 6's headlines frame the larger story. And this story is ugly for the country I still miss and still dream about every day. Katrina may get Americans talking about race in a way since nothing like O.J. and Rodney King. Then again, how far did the conversation get us then?

Ray Nagin is a supernatural being. Kanye West, you magnificent, mixed up rapper, you are the shizzle. Mike Myers, why won't you admit that the whole time Kanye was going off, your nipples were rock hard. Admit it!

I woke from a restful, poker-induced sleep this morning with as clear a vision can be on why this happened, and what it means.

All the stuff that Georgie did - play guitar, go back to Washington late, give an underwhelming press conference, vastly underestimate the situation unfolding -- all of this we have seen before. It is the story of the U.S. campaign in Iraq to the letter.

The people in Washington say "we're turning a corner. The insurgency's in its last throes." The Generals in Baghdad say, "we're drowning in sand here. We have no armor. These guys is crazy and we're losing." And when they say that, they get shitcanned.

Why has GW had such a slow, anemic response? Because the people around him didn't let him know what was really going on. They completely misread the situation, same as they did before, in Iraq.

How does this happen?

The President has a habit of surrounding himself with people who agree with him. He does not solicit outside advice, and does not consider or even tolerate views that differ from his own. The advice loop failed George W. in Baghdad, and it's failed him again in the USA.

A certain amount of arrogance in our elected leaders is to be expected. I remember a great Bill Maher line talking about Clinton, "You're telling me a man with the arrogance to think he can be the leader of the world isn't going to think he deserves to get a little stray strange now and then?" (I'm paraphrasing that, but still.) But Clinton was famous for soliciting advice from outside the box. As was Kennedy. As was Truman. As was FDR. And lest you think I'm showing my lefty Democrat bonafides too much, remember that it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who warned of the "military-industrial complex." He was a General. THAT is thinking outside the box.

So now we have the wrong man dealing with N.O. and Iraq. It's terrible, and it's sad, and we probably can't do anything to fix it.

So, anyway, back to the useless world of screenwriting, and how you can apply the bad lessons of George W. Bush.

Do not surround yourself with fans.

Your mother will always love your writing. Find people you trust who don't let you get away with anything. They can be writers or mechanics, or your spouse if they're inclined that way. But make sure that you find a coterie of people who read your stuff not to tell you how wonderful you are. You want people who will say the hardest, most important thing any writer has to hear: "I didn't get it." Or..."I'm not sure about..."

People who criticize one conversation or one piece of dialogue aren't what you're looking for. You need people to tell you when a character's behavior seems inconsistent or confuses them. You need someone who'll tell you when a story turn seems preposterous or coincidental or contrived.

You need someone who'll tell you that Iraq is a cesspool. Oh...and so's New Orleans, by the way. Sorry.

If you find that person, cleave unto them and make them your first reader. There was a great early episode of Rescue Me where the Lieutenant finally gets the courage to show his post-9/11 poetry to his wife. He's vulnerable and hopeful and she stops and says, "oh honey. It's awful."

That's a keeper, folks. Someone like that in your corner and you'll improve fast.

Probably a whole lot faster than the Gulf Coast or Iraq, anyway.

Snake: Now More Than Ever

So finished today's work a little early. Weaned myself off CNN for five minutes. The footage though, has me thinking: really, what the hell is happening to the United States? We've had two election cycles where international observers were turned away or reported serious voting fraud. Now we have American refugees wandering around, where the government seems indifferent and incapable of helping them in a timely way, while in the capital, the guys in charge still talk about dividing spoils and sending tax breaks to their friends.

WHEN DID THE UNITED STATES BECOME A @^%#%&@ THIRD WORLD COUNTRY?

I spent four months in South Africa last year; a disorienting enough experience because you go from the first to the third world there in the space of a block. But it's not as disorienting as this.

What's next? Is Bush going to start dressing himself in military fatigues and start calling himself Mister Generalissimo?

Oh Snap! Oh Shit! It's happening!

You know what this means, don't you? We have to turn to one man.

Snake Plissken, Get in there. Good Luck, son. Good Luck.

ABC's Invasion! gets wet

In this time of strife and tragedy, let us all bow our heads and pray for some of the unsung victims of Katrina: ABC and Shaun Cassidy.

Seems the alphabet net has got a bit of a problem on its hands. One of the big-themed shows for the fall, Invasion, is getting caught in the floodwaters of Katrina.

Invasion concerns a creepy Aliens among us plot in the aftermath of...wait for it...a hurricane. ABC's pulled all the promos and now doesn't know what to do about the scheduled Sept 21 prmemiere.

This article has it all.

(If you click the link, my favorite thing about the article is that the article "ABC Delays Invasion Promos" is under the banner "Katrina's Rising Toll" Heh heh. I LOVE L.A.)

Still, I hope the show goes eventually since it features the talents of extraordinarily talented and very blonde Canadian thesp Kari Matchett - yet another Canadian actor they didn't find a good series role for here before she decamped for the USA. (Unless you count my friends' Power Play. But c'mon, that was a few years ago.)

New Orleans is Sinking, And I Don't Wanna Swim

I think the superior Canadian Band Tragically Hip should re-release this great early song of theirs as a single to benefit disaster relief. May not sell in the USA, but it would sell up here north of the 49.

That song also raises some interesting philosophical points. The story is really morphing at this point to a horror at how slow the response has been. I can't help it -- at times like this my former career as a media whore just flips the switch inside where you start monitoring how the story plays out. Call it my inner Noam Chomsky.

Anyway, there have been government officials who have tried to suggest that "there was no way to see this coming," though FEMA itself had a document in 2001 predicting this was coming, and a Canadian Rock Band used the idea of New Orleans Sinking in a song that they wrote almost twenty years ago.

The Congressional Black Caucus just went on CNN and was hella-pissed. The Senator from Michigan said that Kwame Kilpatrick, the improbably named (I mean, would you put that name in a script? I wouldn't, and I just finished writing for a show with a black character named Lubinsky) has arranged for housing for five hundred families in Detroit, right now. The Congressional Black Caucus (who CNN kept cutting away from, I might add) also said stop calling these people refugees. They are, after all, American citizens.

It's times like these that I just feel useless about what I do. I mean, really, worrying about the beats and the Act Four resolution seem pretty petty at a time like this.

In Toronto this weekend there's always an Air Show as part of the Canadian National Exposition. I live in a condo with a view of the lake, and for the last hour or so I have heard the jets roaring as they practice runs and marshall themselves at the island airport.

Today, those jet sounds make me uneasy. I wonder, are they hearing jets fly over the eerie, depopulated shell that New Orleans has become? Do they react to those sounds with fear? With hope? Why is every News Chopper from Dubuque to Windsor not now on their way to New Orleans? Really, I mean, I could do without the eye in the sky traffic reports for a couple of days. Couldn't you?

Yet there are things that surprise me. I gave it to Anderson Cooper a little bit back on Day 1. Oh Anderson, you gray-haired shaman, all is forgiven. Last night he just gave it to Mary Landrieu. In Salon today they've got the account:

CNN's Anderson Cooper laid into Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu when she used time on his show to start thanking government officials for their relief efforts. "Senator, I'm sorry," Cooper said. "For the last four days, I have been seeing dead bodies here in the streets of Mississippi, and to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other -- I have to tell you, there are people here who are very upset and angry, and when they hear politicians thanking one another, it just, you know, it cuts them the wrong way right now, because there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman has been laying in the street for 48 hours, and there [are] not enough facilities to get her up. Do you understand that anger?"

Landrieu said that she was angry about the storm but that she wasn't angry at anyone. Cooper didn't let up. "Well, I mean, there are a lot of people here who are kind of ashamed of what is happening in this country right now, what is -- ashamed of what is happening in your state. And that's not to blame the people that are there, it is a terrible situation, but you know, who -- no one seems to be taking responsibility. I know you say there's a time and a place for kind of, you know, looking back, but this seems to be the time and the place. There are people that want answers, and people want someone to stand up and say: We should have done more."

The talking heads are actually asking the tough questions. You know the situation must be dire.

Of course, since I am a useless screenwriter type, the distancing monkey within me is already trying to figure out who's the protagonist in the disaster movie about this. So far, my early feeling is to go with h Ray Nagin. Mr. Mayor, as someone who's had the pleasure of visiting your beautiful and troubled city, I pray that you retain the strength to keep speaking out and calling these bastards out.

Well, back to my useless career. At least they found this guy.

Mary Louise Parker can tame George W, if only he'd give her the chance.

Um. Okay. Uh...oh. Keep it together.
Talk about tv writing. Don't...don't...don't talk
about things that you want to say like... this
NO NO NO NO NO get it back cowboy, that's fine.

Okay. Breathe. Quick Brown Fox, lazy dog. Sibilance. Sibilance.

Right then. What about WEEDS?

The Mary Louise Parker show? It's a half hour. I just know the creator's a woman and nothing else. Apparently that she smokes pot.

Not airing in Canada. I've seen three episodes. Great cast: Mary Louise Parker, Elizabeth Perkins, Kevin Nealon...v. funny. Who's watching, though? And can something about a hot button issue like drugs in the USA - even...giggle, marijuana - remember, I live in Canada... can this really succeed as a half hour comedy with a sympathetic protagonist in the current climate?

I love Jenji Kohan...I think that's her name. But does anyone else? Does America?

Those Wacky Terrorists!

This article in the New York Times today has me filled with awful jealousy.

An excerpt:

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31 - Here are a few highlights from the hottest Hollywood script you will most likely never see produced on a television or movie screen:

• Abu, Ahmed, Musab and Salar, a cell of Islamic terrorists sent to Chicago by a nefarious network resembling Al Qaeda, are getting chewed out by their murderous boss, just in from Afghanistan. (They have been spending the organization's money like crazy but haven't blown anything up.) Just then, two deliverymen knock on the apartment door, bearing a huge flat-screen TV.

• Ahmed, whose cover is a job as a bike messenger, falls in love with a neighborhood florist - who turns out to be Jewish - but can't get up the nerve to ask her out. "You're bright, you're funny, you're talented," Musab says, urging his comrade on. "Who made the best nail bomb in training camp? You did!"

• Abu blends in by joining a bowling team, and becomes a fanatic: "We will dance in the blood of the losers from Hal's Body and Paint Shop!" he vows. But he is a hapless terrorist. A fertilizer bomb in his trunk accidentally goes off outside when he is bowling for the league championship - toppling his last two pins and clinching victory.

"The Cell," as this exercise in envelope-pushing is titled, has been making its way through Hollywood for more than a year, cracking up development executives and their assistants, being passed from friend to friend like an underground newspaper behind the Iron Curtain, and winning its creators, Mark Jordan Legan and Mark F. Wilding, scores of meetings and three other writing assignments.

It's brilliant. Brilliant. I have no doubt whatsoever that these guys do not think in a million years that this will get produced. But as a calling card or a writing sample, well, it's probably the best thing since Trey Parker and Matt Stone sent around a video called "The Spirit of Christmas" starring a few foul-mouthed 3rd graders as some L.A. playa's Christmas Card.

Yes, I know it's disrespectful. Yes, they are horrible people. But they are working. And remember...they're in L.A. All you redstaters think they're heathens anyway, right?

See, the point is: you can be outrageous and think outside the box. But you also have to be good. This kind of stunt only works if it's really, really funny.

If anyone has this script, and can send me a copy, let me know, please. I won't pay money, but I'll be your boyfriend. For real.

Building a Mystery

Further down in the comments on one post, Jutra writes:

My question is, how do you pitch a show like LOST, where the primary appeal is in the journey to the end of the mystery?

That's a good question. But sadly, the answer is part of TV serendipity. LOST is a special case because it had network mojo. LOST was not pitched by Lindehof and Abrahms. Lost was pitched by the ABC network president (who's since left, I think.) When it's the person in charge pitching the show, it getting to air is a lot less begging and a whole lot more pre-ordained. I also think LOST got to air as quirky as it was because there was very little time between that pitch, them shooting the pilot, and the premiere. Boom - everyone went with it, no one had time to think or second guess (I mean, come on...a polar bear?) And the happy ending was huge ratings.

I imagine pitching an ongoing mystery series on American tv is very difficult. Long, 22 episode, open ended seasons are not the greatest form for it. You either get to a point where your mystery is so convoluted and full of missteps (Um...so Fox Mulder's sister is just...dead?) or people figure out that you never really had any idea where it was going in the first place. (Yes, Twin Peaks, I'm talking to you.)

It will be interesting to see how LOST does this season. They're at the point where it's time to fess up some answers, but not give away the game. The "others" will probably be a good addition -- at least for a while.

The other show I'm looking for this year is Veronica Mars. They did a bang up job last season of having their cake and eating it too with a compelling, season long mystery. I liked some of the stand alone plots, not so much some others, but the "who murdered Lily Kane?" subplot kept me coming back. I don't know if they're planning to do another season-long plot among the stand-alones for year two. I hope they figure out a way to do that, without it, Veronica Mars will lose a lot of its charm for me. I guess we'll see.

I think LOST is the best example of the happy accident in TV. I can't for the life of me imagine that show getting to air the way it did based on an outside pitch. You needed an inside man to get that one to air. Whatever. So long as it gets people excited about TV drama again, I couldn't care less how it became the sweet, sweet hit it is. Except that it proves, to me, anyway, that you really do need one tenacious network person who loves your material in your corner if you're going to get anywhere.

Procrastination? Get LOST.

And just like that, a couple of more ass-hours and I'm through the rewrite of Act 1. I am bulletproof.

Then check the old email, and this tidbit from those lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky writer whores from LOST. Snippet of dialogue from the premiere, which just happens to air on my birthday, September 21st:

LOCKE
You're lighter. I can belay you down and bring you back up just as easy. Shaft may be narrower down there, too.


KATE
You left out the part where you just wanna see if I'm gonna be eaten by something.

All together now....
ooooooohhhhh!

Some days...

It's fifteen pages without a sweat, and you leave the chair early.

Other days, you spend four hours thinking, "Freedman" or "Friedmann?" and not even Nic Harcourt and KCRW can help.

And you think of newbies complaining of their terrible writer's block, and how the inspiration isn't striking.

Inspiration is for pussies.

Ass in chair time just headed into overtime. I'm not calling the game yet.

Framing the Story

Your media at work, folks.

This requires absolutely no further comment from me.

I heart Flickr.

Bad Mojo down Gulf coast Way

So it's hard to watch the pictures of the unfolding disaster happening down on the Gulf Coast. Harder still to not be able to turn off the internal "story tracker" in my head.
Day 1 of the aftermath played out exactly the way that Day 1 always plays out in the U.S. Media: lots of plucky stories and footage of people being hoisted from roofs by helicopters.

Now the ugly reality is settling in: after predicting apocalpyse, and then doing the media's favorite contraction dance - oh it wasn't that bad after all! Yay! - we're seeing that the Ponchartrain levee was seriously breached, waters in New Orleans are rising, (cue Tragically Hip song here) and the search for "heroes and easy answers" gets harder. Oh. And the dead start to pile up. Day 2 of a disaster is where I usually switch to print coverage. I don't need my human tragedy sensationalized at that point. My favorite quote of the Front Page story in Today's Globe & Mail:

In a sign of the deepening crisis, U.S. President George W. Bush cut short his Texas vacation to return to Washington in order to oversee the federal response to the disaster, the most costly hurricane ever to hit the United States.

Yes, folks, the crisis is certainly deepening if Dubya's back in D.C.

Gee, George, maybe you should tell them governors to mobilize all their National Gua...oh...right.

And before the idiot dittohead brigade gets going, Let me just state for the record that I'm not pro-hurricane.

Sad.

Profit

I'm developing a series right now with one of the Canadian networks, and in an interesting bit of serendipity, one of the show's inspirations is newly released to DVD.

Profit had a short run (only 4 episodes) on FOX back in 1996. It was critically raved over, but this is the part of the story where writers have to admit that sometimes evil things like testing does indicate something: no one watched. Looking back now it's hard to figure out why, until you realize that this series, with its unabashed sociopath anti-hero lead, predates The Sopranos, Six Feet, The Shield, and leagues of fare more sophisticated to come. In fact, it's going to seem a little tame when you watch it now.

But get past that. The pedigree of the show is impressive. John McNamara and David Greenwalt, the co-creators, would go on to do great things, like Angel and the late, lamented (at least by me) Tim Daly show Eyes. Stephen J. Canell, the legendary Exec Producer, read the pilot script in his office and when he came out he handed it back to them and said, "I feel like there's been a cobra on my desk."

This pilot is a master class in writing. The first act-out will have you shouting. In the commentary, Greenwalt and McNamara say they got to the end of the first act in their pitch to CBS and the executive kicked them out of the office.

As good as that is, the ending is better. Profit is weird and wonderful and is defintely a good DVD purchase or worth a rental at your DVD googleplex box store.

If nothing else, it's worth watching the nine episodes just to see Adrian Pasdar and Keith Szarabajka engage in the James Earl Jones Olympic Deep-Voice Off. Yummy TV.

Continuity Shmontinuity

Well lookee-loo...we got our first user-generated topic...yesiree, this internets thing is awesome, even without the porn.

Below in the comments section of the post about Prison Break, we got into a bit of a discussion about arc-continuity type shows vs. stand-alone dramas. In response to that, KJC writes:

I've been experiencing some frustration lately with pitching my series to Canadian prodcos. They get really nervous when I tell them that the show will have (if I have anything to say about it) the same kind of balance between stand alones and serial/mini-arc eps as V Mars. They tell me that the international audience they'll be selling the show to will get confused and frustrated if I have continuing storylines. They want all (or at least 95%) stand alones, just like the slick and impersonal plots found on Law & Order. Personally, I think those kinds of fears don't apply in the day and age of VCRs, Tivos and DVD boxed sets. Charlie Jade did an excellent job of creating multi-layered storylines that stretched across an antire 20 ep season, and the Internet helped fill in the blanks for those who got a little lost. Today's audience is more sophisticated and tolerant of change. I just wish prodco and studio heads would wise up -- and catch up -- with the rest of us.

There's a few things going on here. The first, sadly, requires that I engage some HTML code that's liable to baffle any American readers. It'll be quick, I promise...
[Canadian reality] Let's assume that all things are equal, and your series is the bee's knees and like the CBC turning down Corner Gas or the Canadian Network Person I know who turned down... no kidding ... The Sopranos-- after he had seen the pilot, the problems you have selling it right now is destined to go down in history as shortsightedness of almost Biblical proportions. There's still a reason that Canadian networks don't like continuity that has nothing to do with audiences not being able to follow stuff.

When a Canadian Net buys a show from the U.S., whenever possible, they try to play it at the same time as the U.S. channel. This is because of a ruling by the CRTC (Canada's version of the FCC: but more concerned with Canadian Identity, and less with nipples and the f-bomb) that allows for "simultaneous substitution." If a Canadian Network shows a show at the same time as the U.S. Network, the Canadian channel gets to substitute its signal over the American one for the duration of the program. (In Canada, most of the U.S. Nets are available via basic cable.) Now this makes Canadian networks a ton of extra dosh, but also puts them at a pretty basic disadvantage, in that they don't really control their schedules. If American Idol wants to do a special episode, then CTV cuts whatever they were going to show and substitutes it, the better to suck up the ad dollars with, my dear... Inevitably, lesser shows get bounced around. And those "lesser shows" are usually the Canadian shows. So it's no wonder they don't want continuity. That show's going to work its way through seven timeslots and be pre-empted six times over its thirteen episode life. [/Canadian Reality]

I also remember hearing from someone-in-a-position-to-know the figure that even people who consider themselves "regular viewers" of a show only see half of the episodes. Half. That's a "regular viewer." That's brutal.

So you can imagine the Networks and Proddies getting skittish.

Thing is: so what? The way they've been doing it, for this we've seen so many hits? I say, "nay."

The fact is that, though people in my end of the biz are loathe to admit it, there have been some things learned from the Reality TV boom. If the narrative is compelling, it will become appointment viewing. And if it doesn't, you do a recap episode. Desperate Housewives and Lost learned that lesson. And Charlie Jade did too -- it's why we produced a recap episode eight months after we wrapped principal photography.

Law & Order was once one of my favorite shows. But I'm done. I can't possibly watch that formula again without retching. It gives me nothing new.

The funny thing is, between internet recaps, grey Bit Torrent files, and DVD sales, continuity driven shows are no longer the bogeyman they once were, or at least they shouldn't be. If you look at the U.S. schedule this fall, you'll see plenty of serial dramas. Yes, you risk not hooking the audience. But if you do hook them, the reward is greater. You might make them loyal viewers.

Like everything else, Canada will discover this. Probably a year or two from now. It just requires a few good network people with icewater in their veins and passion in their hearts. I know they're out there, rustling in the hills.

But then again, I worked for [Canadian Name Drop] Moses Znaimer [/Canadian Name Drop] so I've seen up close what vision can do.

Even the craaaayyyzeee-vision.

Here's Why I Hate That...

Welcome to anybody surfing in courtesy of A.Epstein's Complications Ensue. I'm new at this. Be gentle.

I am a man of strong opinions. One of my dear colleauges from my sojourn in South Africa, a writer of sitcoms (they have plenty down there) named Dennis Venter, busted me in the room for what became my catch phrase. Apparently I'd sit back and chew on an idea, and in a not-unkind way, say, "Here's why I hate that."

Oprah I am not.

Alex thinks I should have called this "Here's Why I Hate That," but I don't think that reflects how I feel generally about TV or what I do or the people I get thrown together to do it with. But it does sort of nose around the question, "why do this?" I mean....no one needs another screenwriter blog. Especially from a guy whose (hopefully) best credits lie in front of him.

Okay. So: in no particular order:

I currently have no ambitions whatsoever to write screenplays.
I do not have a screenplay spec.
I think the form is hostile to the point of homicide to writers.
There is nothing I would like better than to work on a series of good series, where you can follow a group of interesting characters. There is simply no way to have a character in a film that's as nuanced, shaded and interesting as the characters in the best long-running series. That's the form I love. I'm committed to it completely.

Now there's just one problem:
I live in Canada.
Are you laughing yet?

No? Then how 'bout this:
I live in Canada and I have a US Passport.
Okay, someone just did a spit take. Awesome.

The conversation I've had 4329 times in the last couple of years:

"You're AMERICAN?"
"Yup. Well, dual, actually."
"Where you from?"
"The Bronx."
"No shit."
"Serious, dude. You should hear my parents."
"And you work in TV?"
"Uh huh"
long, uncomfortable pause.
"Why don't you go to L.A., man?"

What's the answer to that? I'm never entirely sure. There are a bunch of mini-answers.

Mini answer number one: George W. Bush.

I know. It's cheap. But I was wavering with the moving down thing in 2003. In 2005, not so much.

I have no L.A. contacts. None. My career has so far been here. I have, in that wonderful parlance, "mystery credits." Hart Hanson toiled on Traders for years here before he went down. In my head I always thought if I were to make the trek, it would be as a middle-guy here trying to get table scraps there. I've been working fairly steadily, so I didn't worry about it.

The problem, though, is that writing drama or comedy in Canada can be a frustrating, and weird experience. L.A. gets to read about Runaway Productions. Canadians get to watch as buyers from the Canadian networks go down to the L.A. screenings and come back with armfuls of new goodies that they then schedule at the same time as they run in the US, and scoop up the ad dollars, and pat themselves on the back and say, "aren't we clever broadcast executives?"

Because they're good shoppers.

Now, not all executives are like this here. There are those who want to get good work done. But the hurdles, and the peculiar pessimism in the Canadian character make it a fraught and often demoralizing experience.

So why do I do it?

I love tv.

And because there's so little work, really, you don't get pegged as much as you do in the Land of the (Formerly) Free and the Home of the (Well, not if you agree with Bill Maher) Brave: I write animation, and half-hour comedy, and sci-fi, and hourlong drama, and documentaries. For God Sakes, I've even written this.

That's what this blog is about. Oh, and the neurotic reality of being a writer. And Dead Things On Sticks. Which I haven't explained, I know. But I'm getting to it.

Anyway, welcome. Feel free to kick the tires a bit.

Slings & Arrows

And how great is it that this fine Canuck series is getting some love from the USA?

Sundance Channel, baby.

Laura Michalchyshyn is a fine Canadian executive who's sorely missed now that she's decamped for greener US cable pastures.

Prison Break to Rome

I always find people's reaction to FOX funny.

I do a lot of Sci Fi genre work and see, obviously, a lot of opinions from genre fans. And I guess because of the sheer number of short-run series Fox has offered up over the last few years, the...engaged fans have a big hate on for Fox.

So, yes. They did cancel Firefly. And...uh Strange Luck and Harsh Realm, and whatever. Other ones I'm forgetting.

But honestly, is there anyone more audacious in their development? I mean, yes, Fox did give us Stacked. But also 24, Simpsons, Family Guy, Arrested Development, House and X-Files. And though they aired on other networks, Fox production also gave us Buffy and Angel. And, sad to say, my guiltiest pleasure of the last couple years: first season O.C.

The Fox current department and the network may drop the ball sometimes, but My God they develop some interesting stuff.

I was thinking this again tonight while watching the premiere of Prison Break. This show grabs you by the throat straight in, and never lets go. The speed with which the plot advances in the first hour is breathtaking. Questions piled upon questions, very few answers. Very little spoon feeding, dynamic three or four scenes to get you into the show, and a few sketches to fill in the characters. But at the end of the first two hours, you still know very, very little.

It almost makes me think that the only way you can develop anything in Canada is to say, "Um, it's a mystery show." Because if you're not developing a mystery show, they want everything explained in, like, the first ten minutes. At least if some of the meetings I've been taking lately are any indication. Perhaps that's unfair. We'll see.

Contrast that with Rome, the new HBO series (which runs in Eastern Canada on TMN the Movie Network.) I was prepped to be disappointed by this show, and the first ep doesn't give you that frisson that your first glimpse of Deadwood, Sopranos, Six Feet did -- but it's got a lot going for it, especially its veddy British pedigree. I still think anyone has stones for trying to go up against I Claudius, but hey, it could be worse. Could be...Empire. (Sorry, Colm Feore. You still rule.)

I will definitely be watching Rome to see how they handle the history and characterization, but it's probably going to be on my viewing palate the same way Huff was: slow simmer, but never a boil. I can't imagine sweating missing an episode of Rome.

But Prison Break? No way. Fox has got my Monday night locked up, again. Even if it's just for those breathtaking first few minutes.

So I guess the TV season's underway. Everyone man your boats.

Cry, Anderson Cooper! Cry!

There are dark things that we all must admit about ourselves. Things that no one wants to fess up to. One of the reasons why I loved the movie Adaptation so much was because it showed, in all its excrutiating detail, just how sad writers are. Granted, the multiple scenes of masturbation were a bit much, but, you know, other than that: awesome.

If anything, for all that actors blather on about their method, and playing a "true" moment, the thing that I think distinguishes writers from civilians is that we will gleefully, even stubbornly, tell stories that make us look horrible, so long as the story is good. The story is more important than how we come off in the telling. If I get to the end of a story about what happened to me and someone says, "oh my God, you're a sick bastard. Please get away from me," that DOES NOT BOTHER ME AT ALL. What bothers me is if they YAWN while I'm telling the story.

In the spirit of this, and with the proviso that, yes, I know people in the area, and I know people who know people, and I hope everyone's okay -- I have to come clean and admit something right now.

I love Weather Porn.

You know what I'm talking about. The old Doppler Storm Track Nuclear Death Van Weather Plex 3000. The screaming local news promos that profess that their weather experts use not only the finest National Weather Service data, but Santeria and Baal Worship to bring you the latest developments in Mother Nature's Hella-Pissed campaign to eradicate each and every one of us from the surface of the planet we've so horribly despoiled. Maybe it's because one of my fondest memories of childhood is the two years I spent in Florida, where every night of the summer is Tornado night!

Some of my fondest memories involve contemplating death at the hands of the great crazy storm from the sky, or doing Tornado and Hurricane drills at recess. Last Christmas, I visited the Mater and Pater at their Florida retiro-digs and Dad and I waited for two hours to get on the Twister ride at Universal studios. When the cow went through the air, I nearly wept. I am a straight man in my thirties. I. Nearly. Wept. Oh Weather Porn, you complete me.

For a Weather Porn freak, there is no day quite like Hurricane Day. It's like Guy Fawkes Day and your birthday and the really good Christmasses when you were a kid all rolled into one.

I got up this morning -- early -- and over my coffee, I swooned as Anderson Cooper looked like he was going to burst into tears on CNN. He was all alone out there on a big bridge, and he was pointing out this crane that had just come loose on this barge, and "hey, gee, that's a crane swinging in hundred mile an hour winds, and um, should I really be standing here with that CRANE SWINGING AROUND LIKE THAT?" And his grey-hair's a flapping, and then they go to Mr. Unflappable, "I could have gone to Space if I wanted to" Miles O'Brien, and he chuckles just like Doc Hibberd on The Simpsons and points out that storms are funny things, "I'm only about three miles from Anderson right now," he says, looking around at the light winds mussing his hair ever-so-slightly and the rain just dusting the surface of his windbreaker. Meanwhile, they keep cutting back to Anderson who's freaking out on the Bridge because he can see this OTHER bridge, and there are TRACTOR TRAILERS just trying to cross it, and he's trying to find the words to say, "What kind of %$%#$@ moron are you, trying to cross a bridge in this weather?" And the whole time his feral little grey eyes are darting, darting, unconsciously toward the freely-swinging head of that %$@^$# CRANE THAT'S NOW TOTALLY LOOSE!

I thought I was gonna die.

I am a bad person. I know. It is a terrible tragedy. I will not take the opportunity to score cheap and sleazy points about how this has horrible connections to Peak Oil, and Global Warming, and all the other things that the Bush Administration doesn't believe exist. Like, um...Doppler Radar? Seriously, I think somewhere out there there's a Bushie just waiting til the dust settles to introduce the bold new discipline of "Intelligent Weathervanes." That's right. Do not trust the science people. Believe in the rooster on the roof.

The only thing I want to know, the only thing that would perhaps make me feel more comfortable in my sociopathy, is the knowledge that there are others out there who got up this morning, heard that the storm had moved east of the Crescent City and had been downgraded to Category 4 from 5, and were, just for a second -- a little disappointed.

No. Nobody?

Okay, maybe it's just me, then.

Symbolism, Shimbolism, Embolism

So for the last little while, I've been posting here and there on the subject of Charlie Jade at the Space boards. Space is the Canadian broadcaster for Charlie Jade, and the first station in the world to show the show.

What was great was watching as the series slowly did build a dedicated fanbase. Since I've only ever really been a freelancer on shows, I always felt disconnected from the process a bit. But this was a show that I helped shape, and now I was putting my head in the lion's jaws by interacting directly with the people who were watching it.

It's been a draw, mostly. It's a funny thing, because a lot of the time people ask for clarification. And Charlie Jade is a show that needs some serious clarification every once in a while. But what I found myself struggling with as I trundled along: at what point does clarifying a line of dialogue or "letting people know how things work or how things came to be" step over into denying the purity of the viewing experience?

I used to find it mystifying that people like Spielberg didn't want to do commentaries. But now I get it. Or at least I'm starting to.

The best example of this as far as I'm concerned is how it relates to the world of symbolism.

There's this story that I love: once upon a time some journo-wag asked Hemingway about symbolism in his novels, and apparently old Papa, that magnificent bastard, just sighed and fixed a dagger-like stare and said, "well I suppose there must be symbols inmy books, because people keep finding them."

I remember all those crusty English classes in High School, where ossified teachers would drone on about the symbols in Hamlet, or T.S. Eliot or whatever, and I think maybe that's where symbolism acquired this nasty taste for me. It wasn't the symbolism itself, per se. I love decoding in my art, meanings or signifiers that make the experience richer for me. The problem is having some old coot stand up there and tell me that this means this, and that means that, and that's canon and now regurgitate it all in your essay books while I go to the staff room to have a smoke.

Simply put, the truly magic thing about symbolism for me is the fact that it's the place where the artist and the art meet the audience. Everyone is different, and art is supposed to be dynamic. Just as a joke or a line of dialogue or a scene resonates with one person and leaves another flat, so too is the very tricky world of decoding symbolism.

A show like Charlie Jade is rife with symbolism, to be sure. A lot of it is seeded in there by us writers. Some by the directors, some in post.

But the best symbols, for me, are the ones that the audience comes up with.

I love the fact that Charlie Jade, like the Prisoner, is one of those shows where, "could mean this, could mean that, could mean nothing."

That's why when I'm navigating those boards and someone gets a symbol that we threw in there, I might tip the hat and say, "you found it." And some people might come up with something that is entirely part of their thing, and not intended, and sometimes they ask, "was that intentional?"

And I say nothing. Because so what if it wasn't? Does that make it less valuable? The problem is that if you respond to the symbols you did put in, and are silent on the ones that you didn't, people are going to start thinking the ones you do respond to are the only valid symbols.

So maybe it's better not to talk about it at all.

In Lost in Translation, when Bill Murray whispers in Scarlett's ear, I've read all over the internet postings from people PROVING they know it was this, or that. When really, the truth is it doesn't matter. What did it say to YOU?

New writers, I find, are always very concerned that their EXACT meaning get across to the audience. They want every symbol, every nuance, to be what they intended. Not only is this foolish. (You're never going to get people to agree on what things meant,) but it loses the wonderful, beautiful possibility of the audience bringing meaning to something that goes far beyond whatever it was you intended.

So I think I have to shutup about the symbolism. Ah well.

Contract vs. Staff

Another night, and more conversations with people who have no understanding of what's really at issue in the current CBC Lockout. To my poor tired-footers, again, your union people are failing you. You need a coherent message and if you have one it's not getting out.

Television is a business that's not like other businesses. First, it deals largely with creative people. Creative people just have different personalities. Managing creative people can be a particular challenge, made all the more difficult by the fact that often the people who are managers in this business were people who wanted to be creative, and failed, or who were creative, and burned out.

When I started my career I worked at one Television station: a public one, for about five years. I was entirely on contract the whole time. And the nature of being on contract meant that as I came up to the end of my contract, I worried less about the work and more about whether my contract was renewed. Having large numbers of creative people on contract definitely dulls both the creativity, and introduces inefficiency. It also allows for more of a high school decisionmaking process from management. I worked very hard, because I was young and trying to prove myself. But there were elements in management of the building who liked to play favorites. I didn't get my contract renewed one time because of one of these situations with a manager. My immediate boss was desperate to hire me back, but the person above him wouldn't sign off on the contract. I was devastated. (for a while, then I picked up another contract in another section: eventually someone recognizes talent.) A large number of contract employees leads to an unstable work environment where management is allowed to make capricious decisions without showing cause, and the people who are supposed to be working spend a few months every year looking for work. It's crazy inefficient.

When I was twenty-five, I got my first ever staff position, at a private TV station. I was hired to be on a show, and I was so happy to be on staff, with benefits and everything, that I worked my ass off for about four years. Then I switched jobs and helped start a specialty channel within the same company. If anything, I worked harder at that job. There were layoffs during that time, but I felt relatively secure. What's more, I knew that the company had actually made an investment in me. I didn't spend a few months each year looking for other jobs. I was creative, and did good work, and was praised for that work. I worked for a few different managers during that time. Some were great, and one in particular was absolutely horrible. But the contrast with the other station, where everyone creative wasn't on contract (and everyone who was support staff, like payroll and stuff, was staff) was vast. By investing in people up front, the private station actually paid people a little less and got them to work overtime for free. People were willing to do this.

Now I'm totally freelance. I have no health care. I have no security of any kind. I'm making it work. And yes, whenever I'm working on a job, unless it pays really well, there's part of me that's desperately worrying about the next job and where it comes from. But that's my choice, and having built up fifteen years of contacts and experience, I'm a whole lot more comfortable with that uncertainty than I was at the age of twenty.

The point is: you're going to have good workers and bad workers whether you're mostly contract or mostly staff. But the CBC has been a poisonous atmosphere to work for years. I have heard all manner of demoralizing stories from really fun, really creative people who work there, who find themselves performing tasks based on the whim and caprice of managers who know very little about managing, and nothing about managing creative people.

Any CBC negotiation, whatever the issue, is about "what will the work environment be like after this is over." If management wins this one, the product that you see will suffer. That might matter more to CBC radio lovers than TV; but it will still be felt. Going to an all contract system is a sure-fire way to give all manner of leeway to the people who stalk the halls of the broadcast Centrex out of touch, not plugged in, and out to lunch. How many managers know what a Podcast is? How many Producers do? I know which number is higher.

I think of the friends I have walking the building, the same ones who stay often to 8 o clock at night setting up stories and interviews, and then take work home, and I think of the public giving their collective giant shrug, or worse, thinking that they're spoiled and asking for "jobs for life," and I just want to weep. And I wonder why the CMG has such trouble getting that message out.

Drawing the Line whilst Walking the Line (CBC Lockout)

So I've heard quite a bit from some friends of mine who are locked out at CBC, mostly in Toronto, but a couple in Vancouver and Calgary too. Any of the networks, tv, radio, online -- which I normally love to tune in, are a joke right now, of course.

One of the most interesting aspects of this particular "labour disruption" (Death to Management-weasel words) is the fact that, unlike locked out CAW members who can't exactly go make cars on their own, the journalists, reporters, producers and technicians who normally work for CBC still have all their skills. And some of them are using them. Producing blogs and Podcasts of news to get their side of the story out.

But what, exactly, should their side of the story be?

There's the rub.

I was out with a few acquaintances one of the first nights of the lockout, and I was dismayed to hear the same old crap that always comes out of anyone from CBC the moment something bad goes down. It's the refrain that starts, "this is the death of public broadcasting as we know it in Canada." The problem is that that song's been sung so many times, that it's lost its impact. Everybody knows the tune, but it's like that annoying song from five years ago. Not the one that makes you smile when you hear it -- the one that makes you go diving for the remote.

The problem with that song is that it's not reflective of what the real issue is in this lockout. And it doesn't help the employees' cause.

Canadians are a funny people. I'm hardly the first person ever to point out that as a rule, we like to identify with organizations. We crave order. We go, reflexively, with the group. Maybe it's a knee jerk reaction to the more American cult of the individual, I don't know.

So to my poor aching-footed comrades walking the line around that ugly building on Front Street right now, all I can say is this: remember that people out there have got the wrong idea about you. They think you're rich and spoiled and overpaid. And for people who are supposed to be communicators, you're not getting your message out.


CBC Management wants a contract where from now on, everyone is hired on a casual basis, on contract, with no permanence. What they want isn't in step with what's going on elsewhere in the industry. I know. I worked at a private tv station for years. And they hired people on STAFF. What the CBC is asking for goes WAY beyond the freedom that anyone else in the industry has. Thirty percent of people working at CBC are already Casual. Gutting the workforce (or implementing this, which is the first step to gutting the workforce) will not improve programming for Canadians. It will make it worse. Because less people will be able to stay around and make a life of this work. Who needs that kind of uncertainty?

Your message should also be: what about these management guys? The ones who are now pathetically trying (or not, as the case may be) to get the shows on the air? Who made the decision to move the National to 9pm, forever surrendering its lead to CTV news? Who made the decision to move Rick Mercer's Monday Report to...um...Tuesday? Who made the decision to botch the re-branding of Morningside a couple of years ago? Who put all the eggs in the basket named "Disclosure?"

It wasn't the people walking the line right now.

You know, bad decisions happen in broadcasting. Risks need to be taken, and they don't always pay off. But when things go to hell, it's never the managers who take any kind of fall. Having worked casually at CBC here and there over the years, I can say without a doubt: CBC is the worst managed broadcast organization in the country. And I've worked in places with some pretty bad management. So, when managers greenlight a bad show and it tanks, is the manager who put that show on the air going to lose their job now, too? If not, then what are we talking about? How is that fair or good for the audience?

My Dad is a faithful CBC listener. Yet the other night, he was very negative about the workers' position. Why? When I told him that, in fact, the CBC is not asking for something that's in line with most other broadcasters, but something that in fact would be a really bad precedent for everyone else, he was shocked. Why?

Because that message isn't getting out.

Marching around the building's great. But don't you think that message should get out?

We've just seen a long lockout in Hockey. Canadians overwhelmingly sided against the people who are supposed to be their heroes - the guys who play - and with the guys who screwed up the game by bungling every possible business decision they could have made in the last fifteen years. So is history now going to repeat itself?

For the love of God, address that in your podcasts and blogs, please.

It's not the death of public broadcasting. But it could be the death of people being able to earn a living in public broadcasting. And buy houses and raise families by creating things and informing people.

I've been totally freelance now for five years. It's desperately scary. But for what I do, there is no alternative. People talk of deadwood in the CBC ranks. There is certainly some of that. But the fact is that the most creative people I know are walking around in a square right now because a bunch of bureaucrats want carte blanche to be able to continue to make bad broadcasting decisions, and never pay the price.

The move to contract from staff positions is never good for an industry. But it just so happens this time, the product is supposed to be our cultural identity. I think the people on the ground are closer to that identity than the people making tea in deep in A/C'd bowels of the Toronto Broadcast Centre.

Get that message out.

Conversations With Family

Every writer draws from experience. I had a cartoon once that I clipped from the New Yorker. This serious looking young woman was sitting in a bay window talking on the phone to her parents. "Mom, I just wanted to thank you for my happy childhood," she said. "You've ruined any chance of me ever being a real writer."

My parents have been married for almost 40 years. They fight occasionally, but not too much. My mom has wine with dinner. My dad's a total teetotaler. The stories I have of teenage hardship are unconscionably lame, and in retrospect, they're usually about me being four kinds of asshole. In other words, I did not have an Augusten Burroughs upbringing, and occasionally when I talk to other artist friends of mine, I feel that gulf and I think of that cartoon. Which is not to say that there aren't annoyances. Or hardships. Or conversations like the one below, which I swear to you is an almost exact transcription (names changed to protect the innocent.)


"Hello?"
"Hello, honey."
"Hi Mom, what's up?"
"Well it turns out that you are expected at the wedding."
"Jane's Wedding?"
"Yes"
"In Manhattan?"
"Yes."
"Victoria Day Weekend?"
"Yes."
"Remember when I asked if we were invited in February and you said no?"
"Yes."
"So that no was kind of wrong, then."
"Yes."
"You said you asked and they said no, we weren't going to be invited,
or maybe you'd be invited but I probably wouldn't."
"Well...."
"You didn't ask, did you?"
"Not exactly."
"Why not?"
"That's just not the way we do things in this family, honey."
"Riiiight."
"So anyway... we were wondering..."
"Don't. You're kidding."
"Can you look into hotels on the internet?"
"Mom, you're not going to be able to afford to stay in the city. I
don't know if I'm going to be able to afford to stay in the city."
"Why not?"
"Do you not remember the conversation we had in February?"
"No."
"Sigh. It's a May weekend in New York City. It's less than a month away."
"Well, how much do you think it will be?"
"Three Hundred a night?"
"Oh it won't be that much."
"In New York. On a May weekend. Less than a month from now."
"It won't be that much."
"Okay, whatever."
"Is that U.S.?"
"For a hotel in Manhattan? Yes, Mom, that's in U.S."
"Oh, it won't be that much."
"I'm on Expedia right now. Lowest rate is 286 US a night."
"You're kidding"
"Try the Hampton Inn"
"That is the Hampton Inn"
"I can't believe it's that much."
"Well it is."
"What about our Hilton points? Your father has points."
"The rewards are going to be all booked up, Mom."
"Just try."
"What's the account number?"
[information exchanged]
"It says 'awards not available.'"
"It does?"
"Yup."
"Why."
"Because they're blacked out. Booked up. Whatever."
"Why are they booked up?"
"Because it's a May weekend in New York. They have limited space."
"I can't believe it."
"Well, that's probably because I'm making it up."
"There's no reason to be sarcastic."
"I'm sorry."
"I can't believe we can't use the points."
"I guess that's not the way they do things in the Hilton family."
"What about those hotels you were talking about?"
"The ones in Chelsea?"
"Yeah."
"Mom, they're gone."
"How do you know?"
"Because they charge 150 a night and they're in the middle of the gay
village in May in Spring in New York City."
"Can you just check?"
"No, Mom, it's a waste of time. They're gone."
"It doesn't hurt to check."
"Fine. I'll check."
"Are you checking?"
"Yeah."
"How come I don't hear your fingers typing?"
(Oh FUCK.)
"It's point and click...and...nope. They're gone."
"I guess maybe we can stay with Aunt Jenny."
"Looks that way."
"What are you going to do?"
"Probably pay 286 dollars a night."
"But that's a thousand dollars for the weekend."
"Yup."
"That's outrageous."
"Tell me about it."
"Are you sure you can't use the points?"
"I'm going to hang up now."
"Wait...are you flying down?'
"You guys are driving?"
"Yeah."
"No, I'll probably drive down with you."
"Oh, really, I'm surprised."
"Well, I can't afford a flight."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm paying 286 dollars a night for a hotel room."
"That is a lot."
"Yes, it is."
"I guess we should have booked earlier."
"I'm hanging up now."
"Don't worry, we'll have fun driving down."
"Sure. Think of the great conversations we'll have."

Hangs up.
Looks across the room at Vodka Bottle.

Jesus.

Now imagine explaining to this woman how to set up an airport base station and configure a cable modem connection with WIFI.

Don't tell me I got no troubles.

Six Feet Under Fades to White

Jesus Christ.
Dear Alan Ball,
I wish I was Buddhist, too.