Specs: Part Three: Breaking the Story

This is the third post in a series. For Part Two, go here. Part One is here.

A few weeks ago I went up to shoot the shit with a film school class here in Toronto. I do that sometimes, as well as periodically teaching a writing course here and there at a local University.

But by the end of the session a few weeks back, I was surprised to learn that most of the people in the class had never really been told a formal method for breaking a story.

Story breaking is, to borrow a phrase from the worst U.S. president in modern memory -- "hard work." It's why, when you're on a writing staff, generally the stories are broken as part of a group.

So there you go...as a spec writer, you're already at a disadvantage. You've got to be brilliant all on your own, and wrestle a notion into a fully-fleshed out outline from which you can write your script. Yup. That's hard. And it's also the price of admission, so quit whining about it. Sorry about that. A little harsh. One of those Judge shows was on in the background. You know what unforgivable hardasses those judges on those judge shows are -- it seeps through. Anyway...

I put all this forth with a caveat... you can use these methods to break both half-hour and hour shows. They're not revolutionary. They're not particularly original. But they work.

But...

What I'm talking about here applies to the standard North American style of network television. Network TV hours will run about 42 minutes or so with commercials, and will be made up of four, five, or six acts. There may be a teaser. There may or may not be a tag. Half -hours will have two or three acts. Again, maybe a Teaser. Maybe a Tag. About 22 mins of screentime. By now you'll know what show you're going to spec, and you will have determined what the structure of your show is by logging and analyzing, right? So you know what you're up against.

In the UK, or on Cable, an hour show isn't 42 minutes. Shows for the BBC where there are no commercial breaks in the body of the show might run 59 minutes -- which is about 1/3 longer than American shows. Cable shows like The Sopranos are the same way - except there may or may not be more variation in length. By not being beholden to commercial breaks, the internal structure may or may not easy to discern. Again, researching and deconstructing multiple episodes is the only way to figure this out. But it's a harder task: you don't have a commercial to tell you where the act break is.

I've never written a Sopranos, and I've never written a British TV spec, so you're on your own for that. I've recently been watching back the 3rd Season DVD's for Spooks/MI-5 -- and there's an extra there where they profile the writers and they speak to the difference between writing in the UK and writing for American shows.

Okay. As one of my first bosses would say, "let's get back to talking about what we were talking about."

Step One: Blue Sky's smilin at me, nothing but blue sky do I see...

Blue-skying is the natural first step of breaking story. In the room, you'll toss out ideas, no matter how stupid, put em on cards, and put em up on the board.

You need to not self-edit in this phase. Say an idea, slap it down, keep going.

After you do that for a while, hopefully a few ideas that you like will start to coalesce.

Maybe there's a bit of an A-Plot there. Maybe there's a runner or two. Whatever you've got, before you go on to the next step, take a stroll to the dark side.

Step Two: The Death of Hope

I'm pretty hard on fanfic writers. One, because a lot of them (tho' not all) are such bad, bad writers. Two, because they never, ever fail to go for the most obvious or strange obsession. Or they go in the other direction, and just go to places that...uh...nobody should go.

The point is, before you go too far down the road -- you should seek out some show fanfic -- if it exists. You are absolutely, positively, completely looking for what not to do.

Inevitably, fanfic writers will want to do the thing, or 'fix' the thing that needs fixing. I'm sure out there there are lots of Grey's Anatomy fanfics where Meredith finally wises up, dumps McDreamy and realizes her true destiny by sleeping with George. (And yes, I know...I know...I'll get to that.)

Back in the days of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I heard that they had a board where they put the most common pitches...of which there were several. The one that I heard they got pitched most often was a sequel to "Yesterday's Enterprise," the one where Tasha Yar comes back from the dead in an alternate reality because of the Enterprise-C. Anyway, they got a lot of pitches for sequels to that show.

In E.R., maybe it's the episode where Laura Innes' character gets together with the hot straight girl that's on E.R. now. (Whoever that is...I don't watch E.R. anymore. Is Dr. Kerry Weaver still on it? She didn't get over being a lesbian, did she? That would suck.)

In the new Battlestar Galactica, it's the episode where they find Earth. Or where Starbuck wakes up and has been turned into a man again. Or...um...where Adama is revealed to be a Cylon.

In Cheers, it's the episode where you meet Norm's wife Vera. In Frasier, it's the episode where you meet Niles' first wife, Maris. In Seinfeld, it's the episode where you learn Kramer's first name.

Do you see what I'm getting at, here?

Don't fuck with the show. Leave that to the fanfic.

The thing that a producer is looking for with a spec script is someone with a voice and a good sense of story. That means someone who comes up with interesting and fresh takes on the characters -- not an episode that either violates one of the major tenets of the show (ie: you never see Maris or Vera) or blows something so big, or changes the game so much, that even if you were on staff, the chance that you would get to write that major episode is nil. (Ie: the episode of Grey's where George and Meredith knock boots.) They have a whole staff for those episodes. And just as Star Trek:TNG eventually did a sequel of sorts to Yesterday's Enterprise, so too will the show you're looking to spec get around eventually to introducing the brother or the parents, or whatever. If the story seems obvious to you, it will have been obvious to them too. And if they haven't done it yet, there's a reason for that.

In fact, let's get as many of these out of the way right now as possible, m'kay?

• Characters who have never slept together sleep together
• Characters who have been on the show die
• Characters who were on the show but died or left suddenly come back - either for real, or in a dream sequence.
  
• We meet the parents, brother, sister, ex-wife, or ex-husband of a Character where we have not previously met the parents, brother, sister, ex-wife, or ex-husband.

You just crossed out nine of your ideas, didn't you? That's okay. That's how it goes. Now in there, is there any story, any little fragment that seems like the show, but isn't so obvious? Two characters who just haven't been together in a plotline, but would be great together in a plotline? An idea just a bit off kilter, but that doesn't violate the template or the spirit of the show?

That one. That's your idea.

Step Three: Two Pages

This is the part that I learned from two great Showrunners: Bill Laurin and Glenn Davis (Missing) When I went to the Canadian Film Centre five years ago, they, and another great writer named Larry Lalonde, were my mentors there. I went in thinking that I already knew how to break story -- but they added this step, and I think it really helps.

On the LEFT page, write down all the things that have to happen in order for your protagonist to achieve their goal for the episode.

On the RIGHT page, write down all the things that would be really cool/funny/interesting to see. Things that excite you about the possibilities raised by your stories. If your characters make a road trip to Vegas, what would be fun to see? If they're at an amusement park, knowing what you do about your characters, what would it be fun to see them do?

This is a physical representation of the whole left brain, right brain thing. The left represents process -- how you're going to go from A to B to C. Looking at it, you may be able to discern where you can come in late for your plot. Do you really need all those steps? Can some be truncated? Collapsed together? Eliminated entirely?

The right page is key though. Because the right page is where you're going to have fun. As you figure out beats for the story, the key is to figure out how to seed in some of that fun stuff from the right hand page while serving the story needs of the left hand page.

Step Four: The End

Where do you want your story to end up? That's the thing you figure out first. That way you know what you're writing to. I don't know a single successful writer who does not work this way -- especially in TV. Starting to write a story before you know where it's going to end up -- well, if you'll forgive my French -- that's just retarded. And I don't mean in the fun, Black Eyed Peas kind of way.

Step Five: The Start

How does your script begin? What's the kickoff? Big scene, draw people in fast. Make it funny or shocking or surprising. Set the table for conflict right off the bat.

Step Six: The bottom-of-the-clock break

The most important act break in the show is the one that happens at the half-hour mark in a broadcast hour. That may be the Act Two out, or it may be the Act Three out, depending on the structure of the show you're breaking. This is the "holy shit" moment. All act breaks have to be major-out scenes, but this bottom-of-the-clock break is the one that spins your story off in a new direction. The problem we thought we were facing isn't really the problem...the solution we were pursuing earlier was the wrong solution and won't work and now everything's way worse and more hopeless-seeming...you know...like that.

This is literally the most important moment in your script. Not because it's the thing that keeps the audience from switching to another channel. (Remember, as a spec writer, you're creating a reading document...this isn't going to be produced.) It's the most important moment because it's here, if you've kept the reader reading up to this point, where the reader is going to start to decide whether you're any good or not.

A predictable act out here, one that you see coming, will blow you out of the water. A surprise, a moment where the reader says, "Oh man, I can't believe he/she did that/went there" will probably guarantee that they'll read your script right to the end.

Traditionally, you don't go out on an Act without one of two things: Jeopardy (emotional or physical) or New Information (that changes the way that we think about what we've seen before.)

Like I said...this one's a doozy.

(In a half hour, it's a bit different. If it's a two-act-plus structure, your Act One out is the big one. If it's Three Acts, it's probably your Act Two out.)

Step 7: Fill in the Other Act Breaks

Once you've done this, you have what we call the "tentpoles" for your story. You should be able to put these on cards and put them on a cork board and see your story take shape.

Step 8: The Weave

Go back and do steps 1 to 7 for all your other plots -- B, C, D, etc. They may not be the act out, but each plot has X number of turning points, and you need to figure out how those plots will progress, too. Think of them separately, as if they were A plots, all.

Now...you're going to weave everything together.

Start slapping up those B/C/D plot beats. Are they all their own scenes? Can some of them happen at the top or the tail of A plot scenes. When you need to jump forward in time, you can use a cutaway to another plot to ease that time passage, or manage audience suspense.

But there's more to the weave than just marrying the plots together. Remember those two pages? Well, the Left page should be up there now, all the tissue that forms the story. Now it's time to weave in all that cool stuff that you wanted to see -- the character, the funny, the heartwarming, the cool -- whatever it is. Make that right page serve the left and your script won't be boring, and it won't be predictable.

Now step back and look at your story. Does it seem well paced? Does it seem rushed in places? Does one act seem too packed while one of the early acts seems sparse? Is it too dense in places. Go back and adjust.

Once you've got it to a place where you feel right, you're looking at a beat sheet. Congratulations. You've just broken a story.

Now. Go write it.

NB: There's another method, conceptually, that I've heard some people use when breaking a story. I generally don't use it unless I'm having trouble with the story. But it's an interesting approach.

It involves expressing each plot as a function of the character conflicts within it. Ie: the A Plot is Meredith Vs. George, the B Plot is Izzie vs. Alex, etc... Then figure out the beats from there. (Hint: the last beat is always the resolution.) The trick to this method is that it's grounded in character, so you can chart how the plot goes forward by who has the upper hand, action, followed by reaction, followed by consequences...etc. If you find yourself getting criticized for being "plotty" -- this may be a way to get away from that and ground your writing more in character.

Part Four will be "Reading Your Spec Back." But it might be a while in coming. I want to tackle my other favorite subject, the Objective Correlative, first.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey

Well, I'm pretty hemmed in this weekend working on an animation script, but I wanted to put a plug out for a film that I did some work on last year that opened commercially this weekend in Canada.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a personal odyssey through the culture of Heavy Metal. It's the kind of joyous doc that's interesting if you're a metalhead, but even more interesting if you're not. Seriously.

I blogged about the doc when it had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The nice thing about Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is that you learn something about culture, and people, and it's a damned entertaining film to boot. It's been getting great reviews, and if it's playing in your city, I would heartily recommend you go give it a looksee.

Go to their site for reviews, and cities where you can see it.

Paris is Burning

Once upon a time there was a woman who was famous for nothing, though she was rich.

Then came this.

Which begs the question: if you make your living by looking like a woman who's famous for having no discernable skills -- let's face it, she doesn't even seem to be that adept at the very act that kickstarted her fame -- well...what are you, exactly? I think we really might have reached fame's bottom on this one. What say y'all?

In the movies, the last time I remember them doing this well was DAVE. And that guy was pretending to be the President. Now we have a real President who says nothing about pretend things and a pretend person pretending to be a celebrity who's a pretender herself.

The snake's been eating his tail for a while now, I realize...but...um...what's left?

While I spiral into a black hole of unending creative torment...

Why would you be here, seriously, when there is the beauty of this post from the Kung Fu Monkey?

I particularly-heart-his description of the act breakdown of every sci-fi genre story.

Whoopsy-Daisy

Well, all of a sudden there's meetings to be had. And I'm behind on one script, and dangerously close to being behind on another. And just three days ago, I was filled with righteous vigor, and felt on top of things. Eep.

Anyway, what that means is that I'm going to have to delay the third part of the Spec Script post for a few days.

In the meantime, I've noticed that the site counter and stats have now ticked up to a respectable level...but so very many of you are like Charlie -- just laying in wait out in the jungle. Apparently Duvall got it wrong. Charlie do Surf...he just don't comment.

I've got anonymous commenting turned off because it attracts too many trolls and too much spam -- but though Blogger says when you register that you have to register a blog -- you really don't. Sign up, sign in, and let me know some stuff:

• Who are ya?
• What's yer business here? (Aspiring screenwriter, working writer, just interested in TV, Secretly Canadian, ex-girlfriend stalking you (enjoy the bunny))
• What kind of posts have you enjoyed the most?
• Have any of my ramblings sparked questions?
• Paper or Plastic?
• What bugs you most about TV?
• Is Michael Bay the Devil?

Now that it seems I have a healthy readership -- who the hell are you people?

And can I crash on your couch for a few days?

Seriously. Why Even Bother?

I defy anyone to read this article and not do one of two things:

1. Laugh.
2. Cry.

Maybe what's needed is fire.

Fire good.

Actually, Antonia's blog at The Toronto Star makes the inanity even clearer.

Spec: Part Two: Research

This is Part Two. Click here for Part One.

Okay, so now you’ve got the show.

Now what?

Stupid is the writer who starts writing a screenplay without an outline. But the TV writer who attempts a spec without a Beat Sheet is a total maroon. But here's the rub, chickens -- we're nowhere near the beat sheet. Not yet. Before you start to prepare a beat sheet, you have to do your Research.

In this case, research involves immersing yourself in everything you can find about the show. This is a lot easier today than it was a few years ago. Many writers blog, or there are online sites, official or fan-driven, where you can read all the interviews, online chats, blogs, and press materials in one place. Your first journey should be to try and get in the headspace of people who already write for the show. What do they think it’s about? What motifs or themes do they return to, again and again? Is it possible to explain the show in a couple of sentences? Early pre-press, and the first interviews given about the show are often invaluable for this – because it gives you the first blurt – often the simplest distillation of what the show’s about, and what makes it different.

It’s great if you can get screenwriting articles from the WGA or Creative Screenwriting or Script – and if you can find a script online, that’s gold. If not, reading some transcripts can help – just remember that you’re reading fan transcripts, not shooting scripts, so don't follow them for style -- just dialogue. Once you’ve waded through all that, here’s your next step:

Set it aside.

In the end, the only way to get a feel for the show that you’re about to spec is to screen multiple episodes, and deconstruct them. This is very much active, not passive viewing – so it’s best if you’ve seen the shows before. Watch them once for entertainment value, then return to them with fresh eyes; professional eyes.

Actually, if you’ll let me backtrack a bit, sometimes the best approach is not to use eyes at all – not at first.

Once upon a time, what set TV and the movies apart was the fact that movies were visual, and TV was radio with pictures.

If you think about the visual grammar of TV – it’s traditionally largely been composed of medium shots and close ups. The visual fooferal you’ll see in auteur-movies is largely absent.

In TV, stories have been conveyed primarily through dialogue. If you think back to childhood, I’m sure you’ve got memories of doing your homework in front of the tv. You still followed the show, right?

People watch TV and talk on the phone. People fold laundry, do their taxes, cook dinner, make love, in short, they often don’t devote 100% attention to the tv.

This has changed a bit over the years. DVD rewatching of TV means that more info can be layered in visually. HD and 16:9 mean the same thing. The complexity of TV storytelling is exponentially greater than it was a generation ago. But TV still has those Radio with Picture roots. So a first step in discerning how your show works may be to listen to the show. Go in the other room, play the recording back, and see how much you can follow the action. When you watch it later, ask yourself, “how much did I miss?” And what kinds of things did you miss? Were they major turning points? Most of the time, you’ll find that you may miss atmospheric details, but the essential turns in plot will either be revealed, or underlined in dialogue. By listening to the show first, you can “tune” just how visual or action-driven your show is, compared to how dialogue-driven it is. That’s an important thing to know going in to the rest of the research process.

The aim at this point is to break the show down into its component parts. Your object is to crack the DNA code of this show.

So how do you watch that way?

Sit on the couch with a stopwatch. Watch the teaser start to finish. Now watch it again. How long was it? How many scenes? Was it a cold open or a true teaser? Which plots were introduced? Which characters were featured? When did the A Plot get introduced?

Go through the whole show that way. You’re looking to construct a log of the show – how many scenes are there in total? How much time is given to the A? The B? Are there other plots or runners? How much screen time do they get? If it’s a show that has arcs, how much screen time is given over to plot threads that begin and end in the show, and how much to the overall arc?

How many acts, and how long are each? Some shows will have long teasers, almost an act unto themselves. Some shows will have the major turning point at the end of Act Two, some at the end of Act Three. Are any of the acts longer, or are they of more or less uniform length? Some shows tend to have longer scenes at the beginning, and then have the scenes get shorter and shorter as the show progresses – the better to suggest momentum. In some series, the penultimate scene is the longest scene in the show. In others, it’s the last scene. Does the A and B plot resolve in the last scene, or does the B resolve earlier? What else did you notice?

All of this is math.

You are doing a mathematical deconstruction of how the show fits together. You're looking for patterns. This is why…and get ready to groan… you have to do this at least three times, with three different episodes.

I know people who do it with two. But the problem is that even a great show can have an atypical episode. If you pick at random, an atypical ep, you may skew the pattern. Better to log three…chart em….put em up on the wall. And look at the map you’ve created.

Whatever episode you write is going to have to replicate this math.

Now, cast the math aside, and go back through the shows again.

This time you’re mapping character interactions, and story points. Is the show an ensemble or a main star? How does the story revolve around the core cast? (One of the biggest rookie mistakes is writing an episode with a great guest star and having the story revolve around the guest star. Even if the guest star is compellingly written as all get out, in series television, the show revolves around your core cast…everything needs to be their point of view and reveal their characters.)

Are there characters who always find themselves paired? That might be important later – because you either have to nail the essence of that relationship, or if you’re going to play against type, put two characters together who don’t normally interact and go from there.

What role do the various characters play in the show? Who drives the plot? Who discovers things? Who is the conscience? Who sends our characters off in another direction? Which characters are instigators and which are followers? What is the map of how these characters interrelate? Do all interactions go back through the star/central character (ie: Raymond on Raymond) or are they allowed to go off on their own tangents (Jack and Karen on Will & Grace.) Now look at the plots the same way – Are the A & B separate? Are they linked thematically? Do they stay separate, join in the end, kiss somewhere in the middle, and then spin off to separate conclusions, or do they conclude together? Does the solution for the B point the way to the solution for the A? Most of the time, you’re going to see some kind of overall theme emerge. Usually the plots won’t say the same thing about the theme – they may act as point or counterpoint. Or the connection between them might be slight at best. What’s the norm for your show?

Finally, apply the old rule of “what is this scene doing?” Traditionally a scene can fulfill three functions: it can move the plot along, it can reveal character, or it can reveal theme. Good scenes do one of these things. Better scenes do two. The best scenes do all three. What happens in your show?

Meredith and Cristina walking along the corridor with the bomb in the guy’s chest moves the plot along, but it also gives them a chance to talk through Cristina’s relationship troubles, which reveals both what they think is important in life, and their deepest fears. This is another way of approaching the hoary and difficult subject of laying in subtext in the scene. Breaking it down into its three components is often easier than thinking of a big scary word like subtext. When you look at the scenes this way, it also helps you to understand how the show handles the difficult problem of laying pipe and hiding pipe. (doling out plot info, and doing it in such a way that it’s not overly exposition-y.)

Once you’ve done your due diligence, and performed this task for three episodes, you should start to grok the DNA of how the show works.

Now it’s time to come up with your plot.

That’s for next time.

Specs: Part One

So you want to write a spec script.

Great. Good for you. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you know if you’re targeting the half-hour or the hour arena. In places like Canada, you do flip back and forth between hour and half-hour, simply because there’s not enough work to specialize too much. There’s also some odd ducks here too, like the occasional half-hour drama.

In the U.S. this isn't usually the case. You pretty much have to declare yourself an hour writer or a half-hour (comedy) writer. There’s not a lot of flipping between the two camps. Switching between one and the other is not impossible, but it’s extraordinarily unlikely. Few seem to even try. In Canada, it’s not at all uncommon to have a half-hour sample, and an hour sample in your library. I think that’s probably of much more limited value if you’re going to take a run at L.A.

So if you’re looking about, how do you pick the right show?

Well, to decide that you need to know a bit more about you-- what kind of person you are, where your interests and skills ultimately lie; also what’s going on in the industry at large.

I’ve always thought a good time to spec a show is at the end of its first solid season, or sometime in its second. Every show takes several episodes to find itself. If you compare, for instance, early episodes of My Name is Earl or Commander in Chief to the ones that are on the air now, you’re going to see some subtle but very important differences. (In the case of the latter, you'll also have the benefit of seeing how a show that seemed like a sure-fire hit can go south; CiC took exactly the opposite trajectory as last year's House.)

The show you pick should have a degree of familiarity and currency. You don’t want to pick a show that’s going to be canceled. You want one that’s going to be around for a while, but that’s had the time to find itself.

It should also be something you’re naturally interested in. If you’ve had a background in science, maybe a medical drama or a police procedural would work for you. For my part, you’d never catch me specing a House or a CSI in a million years. All the science leaves me cold, and the one true thing about a spec script is this: you cannot fake it. If yours is a show that requires research, you need to do the research. (And yes, I know, on House they have people that do that. But you're not on House yet, are you? Suck it up, buttercup.)

I spec’ed a West Wing at the end of Season One. I’ve read a lot of bad West Wings over the years, but it was a natural for me because I have a very deep grounding and interest in U.S. Politics. I also took a bit of insider knowledge and worked that into my spec – years ago as a journalist, I’d done a story on the Library of Congress…I interviewed the Librarian, Dr. James Billington. So I worked that kind of insight about the institution, its history, what it meant, and hung that on a couple of my characters. And the result was something that still gets me work six years later.

Is there some kind of personal experience you’ve had that you can imbue into the script? We’ve all gone to high school, certainly, but is there something that happened to you in High School that might inform or put a new spin on Summer or Seth on The O.C.?
Trying to match your sensibility to the show you choose to spec is a very important step. The one thing I’ve seen fail, time and again, is when someone decides to spec a certain show because it will be “easy,” or because “How hard can it be?”

It’s hard, Cochise.

It’s hard because of one very, very salient fact:

You are not trying to write an average episode of that show. Average episodes are not going to impress anybody. If your spec’s going to pop, it needs to be a superior episode of that show. An episode that displays that you can write the structure of the show, and embody the singular voices of the characters, but a story that also engages or twists, or turns, or shines brighter than all but the very best that show is about. There’s going to be a median level of knowledge that readers bring to this show you’re doing. Some who read your script will know the show quite well, and some will know the show only in passing. Most will fall somewhere in between. Your dialogue, action, story, and description needs to crackle with the very essence, the lifeblood of the show. It has to nail the template, and offer the reader an experience that stands out not only against all the other specs of that show they’re ever going to have to read – but also against the show itself.

Tall order.

So starting with a show that connects with you emotionally is a good start. At the same time, it probably shouldn’t be your favorite show. We all tend to get a little fanboy about our favorites. You’re not writing...shudder... fanfic. You’re trying to show your professionalism and your talent.

Once you’ve come up with candidates of shows you think are in your wheelhouse emotionally or experientially, then there are a few strategic questions to ask:

Is this going to be the thing everyone is writing?

The more spec scripts of a certain show that go out, the more tired people get of reading them, and the higher the bar gets – in order to impress, you have to rise above the rest, and also impress enough to overcome all the half-hearted, desultory attempts at the same material the person has to wade through.

What market are you trying to target? Can your show do double duty?

There are some shows that really have very limited appeal, and others that can work for wider, or multiple markets.

For instance, the new Battlestar Galactica might be on everyone’s best of lists – but it’s still sci-fi. That will probably help you with Sci-fi work – but even though it should, it probably won’t help you with Adult dramas. People are funny that way.

On the other hand, Smallville works for Sci-fi, and it would probably also work as an action adventure sample, and a youth sample. You could send that out for multiple assignments. The O.C. has both Adults and Teens in it – if you write ‘em both well, you could show breadth that way.

Grey’s Anatomy shows you can write relationships and adult drama. CSI or Law & Order can show that you write procedural, but if you’re trying to also demonstrate mastery of character, CSI probably would have the edge. Scrubs shows that you can write comedy, absurdity and character, but because it also has serious scenes it can show a certain depth that say, a Two and A Half Men can’t touch. (Also, 4 camera and single camera half-hours: very different. But you know that already, right?)

A teen sample might work for animation aimed at teens as well, or vice versa. Children’s or Sci-fi shows probably don’t work beyond those genres.

Recently, some people have tackled vintage specs, either as parody or straight-up. I think they’re risky. Jane Espenson wrote on this subject a while back. I certainly can’t add anything better than she’d say. But I know if I was looking at scripts, and I got a well-written Cheers, that might be something that could stand out, and provide an edge.

All these come with the same caveat: they have to be extra-special good.

So now you’ve found your show. Good for you. Now what?

Next time, we’ll talk about prepping and analysis, doing the ‘ear’ test, and spec math for math idiots.

Hola, amigos.

Query-Feary

A reader emails, basically, the following:

You write a lot about a lot of stuff. And you don't mind saying what you think. But you don't talk about what you're doing. Why not?

That's a good question. In some cases, it's to be circumspect. I'm not sure, exactly, what my obligations are when it comes to development deals I have, and what I can and can't talk about. So I mostly err on the side of "say little." Also, I'm of Irish background, and fatalistic in the way of all the Irish in the sense that it's not nice to talk about something until it's actually something. Development deals are like bums. Everyone has one. They all work the same. Nothing to get excited about.

That being said, I guess a more general rundown of exactly what I'm working on right now wouldn't be too out of order. So, in my best vague terms, here we go:

1. A half-hour comedy -- currently on a desk somewhere in Toronto waiting to be read -- takes place in the dorm of a mid-sized University somewhere in Canada. It's like Degrassi meets Dawson's in a Dorm. Status: Work completed, in with the Network.
   
2. An hour-long mystery series about a father and a daughter, set in two eras. Status: Two of three scripts co-written, and in with a Network. Revising 1 & 2, writing 3, and revising bible.
   
3. A half-hour comedy set in and around a neighborhood, about small neighborhood issues, and the whole NIMBY movement. Status: Pilot and Script, In Consideration for the Canadian Film Centre Pilot program. Currently being pitched.
4. An hour-long series that's part soap, part office drama, and a spin on the "case walks in the door each week" engine that fuels most cop, lawyer, and medical shows, but in an arena that isn't cops, doctors, or lawyers. Status: Bible + Pilot, 2nd Episode currently at Outline. With a Network.

Right now I'm also in various stages on a couple of other projects where I'm a hired gun, among the ones worth talking about:

1. Writing an episode of an animated series.
2. Story Editing a half hour comedy series.
3. Writing & Story room work for a friend's half hour series.
   

Those at the moment are my open projects. It sounds like a lot more than it is, because there's usually one or more lying fallow while you wait for notes and feedback. Still, in an average week, I'm usually writing two different projects. Sometimes three. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's not. It is definitely easier than working for a living.

This is the main reason why I want to be out of the development game for a while. At this point, being able to focus on one project through production would be a godsend. Some of my projects seem tantalizingly close. But close, we all know, is only good for horseshoes, hand grenades, and shooting close personal friends of the Vice President.

So that's what I'm up to.

What Happens When You're Bold?

It's a cold and beautiful sunny day here in Toronto. I'm enjoying coffee and an omelette at the place on the corner. It's the kind of day where you almost don't mind working through the weekend.

Well, except for the fact that I'm not working. I'm writing this. But anyway.

The week ahead has a few meetings, and a few "definitely have to do that's" attached, along with the usual passel of "hmm, that might need to get done too's" -- but I'm definitely thinking in the Spec Script frame of mind. So I'm probably going to do a series of posts on how to approach that, since the Agent's put me on notice that it's time (past time) for me to wade in with some new samples myself.

In the meantime, I'd like to address a slightly different, slightly smaller audience. And I'd like to do it by saying, "lookee at this picture."

I'm assuming you know who the guy on the right is. The guy on the left is the President of the Sundance Channel, Larry Aidem. In the middle is Sundance Channel Executive Vice President Laura Michalchyshyn.

Ms Michalchyshyn is the reason why Americans are seeing the great Canadian series Slings & Arrows, which starts its second season on the Sundance Channel today.

Michalchyshyn used to be an executive at Alliance Atlantis here in Toronto, where she oversaw a number of specialty channels. She developed a reputation for being very encouraging of talent, and shepherding a number of high-quality projects to the screen. She was bold, and worked hard, and had vision, and was very good at what she does.

Now she's in New York, working for Robert Redford, and bringing some of those great series she helped get going reach a wider audience.

This is an interesting time for the Canadian TV biz. There's lots of competing visions about how things are going to go. CBC...Global...CTV...CHUM...CORUS...all have some serious decisions to make about how they're going to go forward. Now the future can belong to the shoppers, who go to the U.S. screenings, and cherry pick and come back and simulcast and tell themselves that they're really very, very important and effective broadcast executives...

...or the future can belong to the bold.

Just saying.

Enjoy Slings & Arrows, guys. Second season's awesome.

I, Your humble Heywriterboy, Have Changed The Face of Canadian Television Forever.

Today, speaking to the Canadian Film and Television Production Association's annual meeting in exciting and exotic Ottawa, CBC VP Richard Stursberg announced that CBC is going to change the way they do things when it comes to drama.

For the humor impaired, I'm kidding. I don't for a millisecond believe that I had anything to do with this. Even if that Dithering and CBC article I wrote did get Antonia at Canada's largest Newspaper to go, "Oh, Snap!"

The reality is that the whole thing's been so broken for so long that even a monkey could realize that clearing the decks was a good way to go.

Except...

In the aftermath of the cancellation of This is Wonderland, The Tournament, and DaVinci's City Hall, ACTRA, the Canadian Actors' Union, has come out with their usual hysterical condemnation that doesn't really help things.

I love the Actors' Union. Seriously, I do. But it's funny how, just like the Directors' Guild of Canada, and IATSE, the whole banging the drum on indigenous Canadian production chorus has gotten a whole lot stronger in the last few years, since all those juicy U.S. service productions that employed all their members dried up.

All of a sudden now -- well Gosh Golly -- the Actors and the Directors and the Crews have started getting behind what the Canadian Writers have been saying for years, "um, guys...maybe we should, you know...have a domestic industry too."

Don't get me wrong. It's great to have them onside. But like Actors always do, if we start to make inroads now, I'm sure they'll take a lot of credit for winning the battle...even though they came pretty late to the party, once all the Relic Hunters dried up, and that dollar of ours started flirting with parity, and the pressures against "runaway production" made the whole counting-on-the-U.S. thing seem a little dicey.

So hell, if that's the way it's going to go, might as well get in front of the curve:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

(Toronto, February 18) Richard Stursberg, VP of CBC, is implementing a whole new way of doing drama at the CBC because of what I, Denis McGrath, wrote on my blog. I am clearly awesome.

Take that ACTRA, and Friends of Canadian Broadcasting!

Anyway, once you look at the Broadcaster report on what Stursberg said today, it's less champagne-cork popping and more sad-little-noisemaker-going-pffft.

A few key sentences from the article I linked to above:

Today, CBC Television unveiled its new program and development commissioning process at the annual meeting of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association. With appropriate funding, the new process would help CBC Television to vastly increase the amount of original prime-time drama and entertainment programming it broadcasts.

Emphasis above is mine. *Sigh.* See? On some level, all this could be cynically read as more window-dressing for a cash grab. From a Conservative Government. Okay everybody, pinky to the lips and do your best Dr.Evil/Lorne Michaels:

"Riggggghhhht."


The CBC's answer to everything is "we need more money." Oh...uh....and "we need to lock our employees out." And...um..."wanna rent our building?" Is this change-of-heart for real or more dog-and-pony? Remains to be seen.

The new process will improve turn-around times for new program pitches; improve the ratio of programs developed to programs produced; and bring increased rigor to the development process.

Well, the turn-around time was pretty much what I wrote about. The ratio of development is good, too. But the "increased rigor to the development process" thing just makes my blood run cold.

Canada is a billingual country, so let's see if I can reach for my French here. Okay. Here goes.

What. The Fuck. Does that mean?

"Increased rigor" is something that just sounds like...well...I don't know what it sounds like. But it's a perfectly formed bureaucratic phrase that really means not a lot of anything. The problem with CBC is that everything is developed by committee. There are no uniform standards...money doesn't drive it - except when it does...ratings don't drive it - except when it does...and quality certainly doesn't drive it. Sadly, a lot of the time -- geography drives it. Welcome to the Pleasuredome. "Increased Rigor" isn't the problem, guys..."Decisiveness" and "Having a Clue" is the problem.

But I'm sure it's a lot less fun to say in a speech. And, you know, you might get called on that. Rather than "increased rigor," which means, um, you know, whatever you want it to mean.

Over the next four years, CBC Television would increase to 250 hours the amount of original Canadian drama and entertainment programming it brings to air.

"Achieving this goal," said Stursberg, "would solidify CBC Television's position as the cornerstone of Canadian dramatic programming, just like the public broadcasters in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia and New Zealand."

Unless you don't give us the more money, in which case, my fingers are crossed.

The words are okay. The words are good.

The words have been said before.

Now let's see what the follow-through is. I'm rooting for them. Lord knows I am.
After all -- I'm the guy responsible for all of this...right? Right?

I'm going to go have a lie down.

In The Jungle, The Mighty Jungle, The Lion Sleeps Tonight (or at least his heirs do.)

Well it appears to be South African day here at Dead Things on Sticks Labs.

When I was working in S.A. in 2004, I was pretty entranced by the story of Solomon Linda. You've never heard of him, I'm sure. Why would you?

Except that he wrote one of the most famous songs in the world.

From the 1939 Mbube -- definitely the most famous song to ever come out of South Africa, came the Weavers and the Tokens "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Disney made a bit of money on that tune courtesy of "The Lion King."

Linda, as these stories always seem to go, died mostly penniless in 1962. But thanks to the kind of Copyright Laws at work in the British Commonwealth at the time, the rights to Mbube and that famous "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight," and that memorable chorus, should have reverted to the family 25 years after Linda's death. (There's a lesson in there somewhere for the real pirates at the RIAA trying to ram-through copyright provisions that enrich corporations, not people.)

Anyway, while I was in S.A. the story took a funny turn. S.A. courts decreed that while the case proceeded, the Disney trademarks in S.A. might attach to ... the Linda family. Ho ho.

There was much bluster from the mighty corporation at that point.

Lo and behold...two years later, they've finally settled with Linda's heirs.

Now, some of Mbube's (Zulu for Lion) money might finally start going where it belongs.

UPDATE-Y DO: Alex is clearly better at Googling than I am. Way to work it, Epstein. This is an article that the South African Journalist Rian Malan (My Traitor's Heart) wrote for Rolling Stone about the Linda story.

Helluva Towne

Checked out Robert Towne's talk last night at the Art Gallery of Ontario's Jackman Hall, as presented by the Toronto International Film Festival Group and Cinematheque Ontario.

Host Geoff Pevere reined in his more annoying side, and proved to be a very able moderator. He actually did an excellent job - I've been left twitching in the past at those kinds of things by the double whammy of bad moderator/bad questions from the audience. But mercifully, not this time.

The stories from Towne were definitely worth the journey on a very wet and rainy Vancouver winter night (made marginally more disturbing by the fact that, um, I live in Toronto, so heavy rain in February is...um...out of place.)

They showed a bunch of clips and one of the highlights, of course, was that scene from The Godfather between Michael and Vito in the garden, where Vito expresses regret that he never wanted this life for Michael.

Towne said that he got a call from his friend Francis Ford Coppola to come to New York. They were about to lose Brando from the picture, and they realized that Puzo hadn't written any scenes between father and son. Puzo was in no condition to do it - he had other troubles.

Towne was ushered into a screening room in the Gulf & Western building on Columbus Circle and shown 45 minutes of Godfather footage.

Here's the most interesting part of the story for me: at this point, Coppola was a beaten dog. The studio and everyone was saying that the Godfather was a disaster. When Towne saw it he told Coppola it was "the best daily footage he'd ever seen." And Coppola shook his head. He didn't believe it at this point.

Just goes to show. Those brilliant executives being so supportive of their talent.

Oh, I hope there's a special slab in hell for those types of executives.

Anyway, Coppola said he wanted some sort of scene where the father told the son that he loved him. And Towne immediately said, "I can't do that." And Coppola agreed. Towne took the part that said "at that meeting you will be assasinated" and split the speech, shoehorning all the gold in between about "I never meant this life for you" and all, and then ended with the "whoever comes to you will be the assassin" line from the original script.

When they went out to shoot, Brando made Towne read the scene to him twice. He then went through every line with him and asked what it meant. Then he did the scene.

What a fucking scene.

There were other entertaining blind alleys and half-steps -- Towne got involved with the film version of The Firm, for instance, when his next door neighbor Sydney Pollack asked him for help one day. They were both outside, and Pollack was taking out the garbage -- Towne thought he needed help with the cans. I liked hearing about The Firm because years later just about the only thing I can remember about that film was the jazz score and the fact that Towne's ending in the screenplay was so much better than Grisham's ending in the book. Every time the bookists break out the "how the book is always better" canard, I'm right there with, "Oh yeah? What about The Firm?"

Someone in the audience asked Towne if when he was doing the work on Godfather, Shampoo, Chinatown, etc, if he wanted to direct even then, or if he was happy screenwriting. He replied instantly, "No, I was happy screenwriting. Very happy." That made me feel kind of good. Occasionally I've had friends ask why I don't seem particularly interested in directing right now. I've always had this vague sense that maybe I'd want to direct -- someday -- but I guess it took hearing Towne to realize that my reluctance has nothing to do with fear -- it has to do with marshalling energy. I need to focus my energy and work on making my scripts great first, before I go off on a tangent and start trying to direct. The word at this point in my career is more important to me. That's not fear. That's focus.

After the session, they showed Towne's latest film, which he wrote and directed, called Ask The Dust. That was a bit of a treat because the film isn't supposed to open til March, and they had only said they'd be showing 15 minutes. Also, there was a weird sense of things coming full circle screening that film, since it was shot in South Africa while I was there shooting Charlie Jade.

To my everlasting dismay, I never did see Selma Hayek, but the Cape Times was full of Colin Farrel sightings, and I even saw the guy once as he sidled up beside me to wait for his Sushi order at my beloved Beluga Restaurant, whose bar and fine wine cellar I still miss.

Ask the Dust is an interesting, strange, weird, messy film. It really is all over the place, strangely paced -- but with something compelling at the core. It makes me want to read the book, which Towne apparently has been trying to film for 30 years, and which was one of the inspirations for the L.A. he painted in Chinatown. If you're a Towne buff, I think it's something you have to see -- but it's a strange film. Stranger still seeing a bunch of places that four years ago would have been exotic to me, but now are as familiar to me as my own street.

Traffic Spike, Ho!

Hi to anyone surfing in for the first time from Antonia Zerbisias' Toronto Star Media Blog which linked to my Dithering & CBC piece.

Here at Dead Things On Sticks Labs, we endeavor to provide the finest chatter about TV writing, Canadiana & General foolishness, with occasional sidetrips into Politics and other weirdness. Please stay awhile, look around, kick the tires, and jiggle the handle on the toilet after flushing.

For the record, I actually kind of like the CBC. I do not want to see it privatized. I just want them to make fewer stupid decisions.

'Och Aye Buh-bye

Wow, some days the news just wants you to procrastinate.

One of the odd quirks of Canadian life is this strange little undercurrent of Scottishism.

I think it may go back to Mike Myers' So I Married An Axe Murderer, where he played a character who was Scottish, based on his Dad. (This is years before he pulled the same trick as Fat Bastard in one of the Austin Powers movies, but a few years after he kicked off the trend with the "If it's not Scottish, it's crap" sketches on SNL.)

For my money, neither was as funny as the incarnation of the angry wacky Scot he did when he was trying to kill time between sketches at Second City in Toronto back in the 80's. Then, he'd get up there and say, "Okay, here's my impression of Sean Connery starring in Anne of Green Gables." He'd then take a pigtailed wig, put it on, and say in a pretty passable Connery: "I'm Anne of Green Gables, ya bashtard..."

I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, point is, however it started, for years now, Canadian airwaves have been filled with Ads featuring "angry/wacky Scots."

It completely replaced the other trend in Canadian advertising from a few years ago, which was the "voiceover-actor-with-a-British-accent-for-no-discernable-reason."

The "Angry/Wacky Scot" shows up all over the place. Mostly in bad radio ads. It's an easy Go-To (a term I really should post about) because in craven copywriters' minds, just the sound of the Scottish accent is funny -- which means you don't actually have to write anything with wit or humor. The funny voice will carry it. Ugh.

Probably the worst example of the trend right now is a gum ad where an animated piece of gum runs after a woman running a marathon. For some reason, the whole time, this piece of gum talks in a Scottish accent. It's not funny. It's not motivated. It's just weird.

It probably made the client swoon.

On the other hand, the most ubiquitous "angry/wacky Scot" in Canadian television for the last few years has been the shill for Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale. (right) He's a full-on Scot in sporin and everything, berating people in bars for not treating their beer with the proper respeck. The ads are really annoying, and a little bit funnier than...mm...cancer.

Anyway... my friend Rob and I now humbly predict the end of the Wacky/Angry Scot in Canadian TV. From Today's Toronto Star:

A 40-year-old Toronto comic better known as the obnoxious Scot who berates bartenders and pub patrons in television commercials for Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale has been charged with possessing child pornography and making it available over the Internet.

Whoops. This actor also stars in lots of other Canadian ads. (Casting directors up here, for some reason, always cast the same twelve people. Hmm...in light of this story, maybe that trend can go away now, too. After all, you never know what those crazy actors will do when they're away from set...better to spread the work around...)

You can read the full story in the Toronto Star. Warning: High Ick Factor.

Rabbittown Goes Down

Hey, remember that CBC Pilot I praised when they ran the three pilots in January? It was the only one of the three that wasn't brain dead or stillborn. It was actually quite charming. It was called Rabbittown, and I wrote about it here. Some excerpts:

The template is simple: two girls, best friends, who probably shouldn't be friends, because they're destined to bring the worst out in each other. Their competitiveness means poison for the relationship...I've seen articles written about toxic female friendships. I've seen them in action among some female friends. But I've never seen a TV show about it, with the exception of AbFab. It's a rich, comic area...Rabbittown weaves through logical, rich, consistent character development...every scene in the half hour promises more... If this sucker doesn't get at least six episodes, then there's no hope.

Well, Alex, let's go for item (b.) I've just heard through an impeccable source that CBC passed.

CBC President Robert Rabinovich has bloviated that he wants to be "audacious."

ZZZZZt. Failed right out of the gate. What a load of hooey. Plus ca change, plus ca meme CBC.

What Happens When You Don't Have A Story Room.

I've got a big post brewing about spec scripts and how to start one - and also a little about the TV writer/Movie Writer demarcation point. But those posts will be heavy-lifting and heavy committment (which, by the way is the one word, after all these years, that I can never remember how to spell, so if I got it wrong there, then great: the streak is alive.)

So instead today I offer a wafer.

I've written before about development, and how lonely and crazy-making it can be...and how sometimes you really find yourself jonesing for the story room.

What I didn't share was this: a couple years ago, a writer friend and I were bitching over the difficulties of breaking story by yourself. There's no trick to it, there's no back and forth, and you never know if you're really going in the right direction.

So anyway, she confessed at that point that when things got really bad, really lonely, sometimes she'd dig out her childhood teddy bears and arrange them around the table so it seemed like she had company, or people to bounce ideas back and forth with.

Hearing this, I did what any self-respecting man would do in the situation with a girlfriend with whom he was not currently canoodling: I passed about three inches of vodka through my nose and mocked her mercilessly for the rest of the night.

To her credit, not only did she take it, she bought me a new vodka. And then she fixed me with a vengeful gleam in her eye and she said five words that chilled my soul:

"You laugh now. But wait."

Well, now here it is February 2006. I'm trying to break an important story for one of my shows. It's going very slowly. I have the corkboard out. I have the index cards with beats on them. I have the coffee. I have the laptop.

Hell, I even broke out the Magic Guinness Hat.


Sometimes, it helps me to focus. Not today.

Today, nothing seems to be working. So... *sigh*








Opus has an absolutely foolproof bullshit detector, and surprisingly, Marvin the Martian is really good with story. Although he does go for the ray-gun vaporization deus ex machina climax a little too often for my taste.

If this series goes, and these guys sue me for story credit, there's gonna be scissors.

So basically, I guess what I'm saying is...
Dorothy Parker*, you win.

*not her real name

Monkey Spins Plates!

Meetings today. Lots of meetings.

Talk amongst yourselves.

For Toronto-based Cinephiles...

This Thursday, Feb 16, The Toronto International Film Festival Group is presenting a conversation with Robert Towne. Sounds like it could be interesting.

Details here.

Uh oh.

Cheney's victim just had a heart attack.

Paging Aaron Burr...

If You Speak Up, then the Quail Will Win

Well Jon Stewart sure didn't disappoint. But watching the Cheney-shooting-a-guy-in-the-face story play out in the news cycle, it amazes me that right there in there, again, is the root of all the trouble that people seem to have with this administration.

This is a nothing story. It's so obviously a hunting accident, unfortunate, but not anything sinister. (EDIT: Well, except if you have something against shooting canned, pen-raised animals rather than actually, you know, going hunting -- the part of the story that isn't getting much play outside of The Daily Show. Thanks to Alex for that catch.) Point is, It's a one-day story.

Except the conduct of the administration makes it more:

• Wait a day to disclose something that they should have gotten out in front of immediately.
• Spin it so that you blame the victim, which leads to the refutation stories by wildlife officials.
• Keep the VP out of sight and unwilling to comment, insuring that you can't put it behind you
• Change your story a couple of times about how and when the President found out.

The mania this administration has for secrecy knows no bounds. How is it possible that these guys haven't learned in more than thirty years, that it's not the event itself, but the cover-up you have to watch out for?

In other news -- I know it's Valentine's Day, so before I tell you how much I love each and every one of you in my special way in my secret places, let me tell you that I love this post.

It's beautiful to see someone make an argument, and then see a bunch of commenters prove the argument for him.

Burning Grey

The conclusion to Grey's Anatomy's two-part Code Black-bomb episode actually managed to outdraw Desperate Housewives on Sunday. Overnights point to 25.3 million viewers 18-49 -- that's a 25 share, 5 points and 3 million viewers more than Housewives got.

With the first season coming out on DVD tomorrow, and a post-Superbowl audience of 38 million, I'd say a couple of things are clear:

• Start writing that Grey's Anatomy spec. Stat.
• This sucker's the next huge, huge hit.

Now -- to me, that brings a bit of trepidation. I like Grey's well enough. It's a guilty pleasure and the women are hot, but there's no one that I really identify with on the show, with the possible exception of George, and that's only my geek-past coming back to haunt me.

In fact, Grey's is a pretty good example of the weird, feminized man I talked about in an earlier post. Let's look at the male characters:

Dr. McDreamy/Shepherd - the idealized, unavailable sex object. He's sensitive as all get out. He doesn't always know the right thing to say, but he does seem to always be on the verge of tears.
Dr. Burke - constantly trying to push Yang to define their relationship; the first to say "I love you." Capable of expressing his emotions to the more witholding Yang.
Alex Karev - the one reliable 'bad-boy' in the beginning, who's now that kind of cuddly bad-boy lite.
George O'Malley- great actor. Great comic chops. The standard "let's be friends" guy. Practically one of the girls. The one time he gets to have sex on this show where everyone has sex constantly, he gets chlamydia.
Dr. Webber - nominally the 'big guy in charge.' But he's evidently terrified of his wife. And it looks like in his early affair with Meredith's mother, he wasn't exactly in the driver's seat, either.

I've watched this show from the beginning, and it's amazing how much the "strong male" characters (Burke, Webber, Karev) have been slowly feminized as the show progressed. The level of sensitivity among the men in Seattle Grace Hospital now runs the gamut from A all the way to B.

I mean, fair enough -- it's a show aimed mainly at women, and the head writer and creator's a woman. And yup, we've had years of stereotypical females in every show under the sun. But would it have killed them to keep Alex a jerk? Really?

Carla on Cheers took eight years to become a cream puff. Karev didn't last 22 episodes.

Just sayin. 18-49 year old men, meet Halo...Halo, 18-49 year old men...

Further to the below...

Now the reports are that the mock-doc series The Tournament, which followed a small town's kids hockey team, will also be axed.

On the one hand, I never really got into The Tournament. I thought there was a subtle disconnect in tone. Unlike The Office or Trailer Park Boys -- other examples of the faux doc genre -- The Tournament seemed implicitly to judge its characters -- which unbalances the whole thing and steals both the heart and the funny.

But Howard Busgang, one of the creators, is a guy who should have a series on CBC. Oh wait. He did -- it was called An American in Canada, and it was funny. CBC canceled it three years ago. Hmmm.

Drama and Dithering: A CBC prescription

This one's about TV. I promise.

Canada's recently-departed Prime Minister, Paul Martin, was widely referred to in his short tenure as "Mr. Dithers," a rather unflattering (and occasionally unfair) categorization of his propensity for going back and forth over an issue. (What would be known in some circles as "consideration" and in the United States as "flip-flopping."*)

It always struck me as a funny kind of criticism, since Canada is pretty much a nation of ditherers. Always has been. Faced with the catastrophic breakdown of civility and statehood that was the U.S. Civil War, they dithered their way into Confederation. Canadians dithered over creating a Constitution for about a hundred years. Even Quebec doesn't so much really talk about separating, as dither over it. And we dither over keeping them from separating. Dither, Dither, Dither.

About the only time Canadians don't dither is on the ice, or when they commit their armed forces to a war -- where they go in and kick major ass.

But the Dither Disease is well-entrenched. There's an old joke about how you spot a Canadian once they've died. The punchline's something like, on the way to heaven there's a fork in the road and one way says "Heaven" and the other way says "Royal Commission Studying the Possibility of Going to Heaven." The Canadians will opt for the latter way.

Lame, I know. I much prefer my favorite Canadian joke: "How do you get 200 Canadians out of a pool? Say, "okay guys, pool's closed, get out." (Bonus: Count how many times they say 'sorry' as they get out of the water.)

Anyway...If press reports are to be believed, the CBC is taking a step away from dithering today. Later today, the dramas "This is Wonderland," and "DaVinci's City Hall" will be canceled.

This is Wonderland -- an odd little series now in its third season, never really did it for me. It was set in and around the courts in Toronto. And it was supposed to chronicle the futility and capriciousness of the system. But the series was entirely too shrill -- the poor, luminous lead Cara Pifko (right) constantly found herself paired with one shouting lunatic after another. Having to play off that most frequently leaves you just no place to go. Wonderland boasted some great characters and some good acting, but the stories had an odd structure to them and there was entirely too much shouting for it to be really compelling, appointment viewing.

DaVinci's City Hall, on the other hand, continued the downward slide that its parent show, Davinci's Inquest, had fallen into in its last couple of years. It's a dense narrative, and probably wasn't very welcoming to new viewers. There's some talk that it may continue as a series of yearly movies -- a format that would probably fit it better anyway.

The cancellation of DaVinci is probably more political, anyway. The network has done something smart and ordered 13 episodes of Intelligence, the Chris Haddock-written TV movie that premiered last fall, which I picked as one of my ten best things of the year. With the limited series slots available on the CBC, it probably wouldn't look good to give two hours a week to the same guy.

All this, of course, also has something to do with the desire of new CBC executives to put their stamp on the network. VP Richard Stursberg, the beloved doyenne of last year's lockout, hasn't had a kick at the can yet. And after a long search, Kirstine Leyfield was finally named to the Director of English Language Programming position. (Thanks to Matt Watts for the link.)

Now she's got her chance to make some changes to the drama slate, and hopefully draw new audiences back to the national broadcaster. Corner Gas' numbers are embarrassing to CBC - -or at least they should be.

But this is where the dithering comes in.

No one. But no one - dithers more than the CBC.

In the U.S. right now, they're right in the middle of Pilot Season. Scripts are being written, people are being cast, shows are being shot. They'll be whittled down to a few, which will be announced at the upfronts. Then, in the fall, we'll ignore most of them and they'll fade into deserved obscurity.

This process happens every year. Yeah, okay. The CBC does not have that kind of money. They are not going to do tons of pilots and chuck most of them. But the thing about that robust process of development, shoot, cull -- is that occasionally a show gets on the air that actually does manage to speak to the zeitgeist. That's in the right place at the right time.

CBC can't compete on the most important playing field -- being up-to-date, because of dithering. Because by the time the average drama makes it onto the CBC schedule, it's been picked over and 'developed' and dithered -- for years. Two, three years sometimes.

Now. I'm going to state something here that shouldn't be controversial, but probably will be. Television is a responsive medium. There is no such thing as the TV series that is improved by two years of talking about it. Write. Discuss. Rewrite. Cast. Shoot. Air.

LOST went from a vague idea by Lloyd Braun to a show on ABC's schedule in under six months. Frigging LOST! Please don't tell me that in light of that story, you can defend six months where you don't read the script, another six where you wonder what to do, another six to do it, and six more before anyone sees it. Get off your ass. Get out of your office in Fort Dork and get those creative juices pumping. Pretend you're playing hockey. Give'r.

Yes, the stakes are high. Yes, it's hard to commit that amount of money on something that won't necessarily work. But what CBC has been doing up to now obviously isn't working. Audience numbers for drama on CBC continue to go down.

By dithering as a matter of course (as well as doing other dumb things, like consistently ordering hour long pilots for half-hour comedies...which is just plug-stupid, and which CBC did for years) is anathema to getting a show on the air that might -- might just spark something in the people's minds and hearts.

Law & Order's "ripped from the headlines" formula has more than paid off for them.

24 had 5 episodes in the can when 9/11 happened. It didn't start out that way, but because they were on the air at the right time, 24 became the reflection of Americans' post-9/11 unease.

If that show had been Canadian, they would have pulled it. And dithered over what to do. And they would have missed the boat.

CBC may not have the money of a US studio, but it does have resources that the private sector doesn't have. If it wanted to, it could go into rapid-response mode. It could do TV projects that were on the air while Canadians were still thinking about the issues contained within them. . Rather than what happens now -- where dramas have a slightly musty, picked over, and bland cant to them when they premiere. CBC could do Life On Mars. For pity's sake, take a chance and do something original. And if you do do something original, don't be ashamed of it, like you were with Cara Pifko's previous (delightful) series Our Hero.

It would mean an end to the dithering. If Kirstine can resist the dither-impulse, and streamline her commissioning process, maybe CBC dramas could become relevant again.

It's a big if. We'll see.









*only if you're a Democrat, tho.

Brokeback Mountain DOES NOT play in the Red States!

Mickey Kaus has got a teriffic piece in Slate today.

He talks about the "Brokeback Mountain" meme and how it damages progressives by leading them down feel-good roads that lull them into a false sense that their message is getting through. I've often said that my number one problem with a lot of the people I agree with politically is how smug they are. I love Michael Moore. But the guy does not help.

It's funny, but lately I've noticed the same pragmatism and "come on, really?" attitude coming off Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (Two references in one day. I really should send him that Valentine.)

When so many Americans choose to vote against their own interests and buy a line of obsfucation and lies -- at what point do you stop wrapping yourself in comfortable memes like "Bush is stupid," "the people will see the truth," and, yes, "Brokeback Mountain is changing Red State perceptions of Gays and Gay marriage in the Red States," and start actually focusing on a way to get you elected?

If this was a script, I would say the Dems have got the worst second act problems I've ever seen, because they don't even know the story they're telling. They've got a few months left to make it a feel good redemption story. We don't need another black comedy. Enough already.

Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm hunting Wiberals.

Okay. So VP Dick Cheney stops clutching his bum ticker long enough to shoot a guy on Saturday, and the White House doesn't think, um, maybe someone should tell the...you know...um...press?

I think we have to seriously consider the possibility that God has joined the writing staff of The Daily Show.

UPDATE:
Salon and others are reporting how interesting it is that the spin is already out -- and people are going to great lengths to explain how Cheney did nothing wrong. Yup. They're blaming the victim...the guy who got shot.

Now...remember driver's ed? Remember how you heard that if you rear-end somebody, no matter what happens, it's kind of your fault? Remember?

If we can agree on nothing else, can we perhaps agree that if you SHOOT SOMEBODY, IT'S YOUR FAULT?

No?

This opens a real Pandora's box. Seriously. Just wait for the return of the, "I'm sorry I hit you baby, but why you make Daddy so angry?" defence.

Seriously. I'm peeing myself waiting for Jon Stewart on this.

Jane Espenson!

One of my fave TV writers has kind of an interesting blog. She has credits and everything. Y'know like Buffy and Firefly and The O.C. and Angel.

Jane Espenson is the real deal.

She's got a pretty interesting take on the perils or payoffs of doing a novelty Vintage TV Show Spec.

Go. Go on. I'm serious.