A Reader Writes:

When I think of my future career in writing...it's strange...I see no prospect of writing for canadian programming- movies or television.

I love my county. I love my hockey. I tell anyone I'm Canadian- with pride. (Hell, I'm actually an eskimo- no kidding)...but I don't see a light here in this tunnel of Canadian market. I have to look South for any interest at all...

Telefilm- is one big reason for this. When I go in with a producer (of 25 plus year of US tv under his belt) and we're told that we don't have the 'right' track record with them...well...add it up. Where are we going to go?

I know it can be frustrating. And the reality of the situation is this: if you're good, I mean, really, really good. Not I won a short story contest good. But if you have chops, and you're young -- say under 25. And you don't have a relationship or kids or anything really tethering you here...my advice would be go. If you're going to be unknown and struggling, you may as well be unknown and struggling where the jobs are. But you better be serious about working, and not just replicating that "what the hell am I doing drinking in L.A. at 26" song. What happened to those guys? I loved that song. Life won't be easy. You're going to need to find a car. You're not going to have health insurance, so you better not get sick. And if you're there illegally, you're going to have to get some sketchy jobs. But you'll be there. And maybe, just maybe -- you'll get a shot.

But arguing for the loyal opposition who stays...why not try to get yourself established here not with your own stuff, but write for hire? There is plenty of writing going on in Toronto this summer. Especially if you don't look down your nose on writing kids animation. (And if you do, shame on you.)

Complaining about Telefilm is all well and good, and yeah, the bureaucrazy of it can frost my cornflakes too. But what about good old fashioned ingenuity? What about doing something like FUBAR? What about picking up those Robert Rodriguez books and doing a credit card opus to get your first film done? Why do we never hear any of these stories from young Canadians willing to take a risk and their indie spirit forward? I mean, when you're young there's nothing to lose. So if you do a bad digital short, okay, who cares. But what if that bad digital short cracks YouTube and you wind up the next Andy Samberg? How do you think these things happen?

Canadians automatically look for handouts and I think that saps the will of anybody. Give a guy a grant and he'll write paper for a month. But let him go dive through dumpsters with a HD palmcorder and ...well, he'll get stinky. But in this failed metaphor, stinky is good.

I think-
1) telefilm needs to be severly beaten down and shaken-
2) that the only way canadian companies will compete and sustain is by finding product that won't only sell in Canada...but everywhere. US. Europe...everywhere...and if that means hiring US actors...then so be it.

Until they take risks, outside their defined box...it won't happen. They won't succeed. And companies like AA will continue to take the gimmes and let loose.

Sad...i wish the place I have so much pride in, could be the place to foster my hope for a career...

It doesn't. Suck it up. It's got to come from you. Don't worry about what AA is doing. Or Telefilm. What are YOU doing? As for the whole "finding product that won't only sell in Canada, but everywhere..." thing, well, that's a little naive...since that's what producers have been trying to do for about 20 years here.

I have a slightly different take. I think we're poisoned by the noise of the US and trying to make US like product here. I think we should just make some stuff sometimes that is very Canadian. And don't explain it. And try to sell it in a foreign film way. Maybe it won't sell in the USA, but I'm reasonably sure that other territories that just appreciate good storytelling would like a well crafted story that's unique and daring -- even if it's also...gasp...really Canadian.

Stop being the photocopy; start painting something new. That's the thing that will sell. It's a big world.

Thanks for writing.

Desperate Canadian Networks and the "permanent downturn"

UPDATED: 4:00 p.m. Clarified some language and fixed some typos.

Last Thursday, CBC had its mea culpa invitation to producers event in Studio 41 of the Downtown Broadcast Centre (the building John Doyle so lovingly calls, "Fort Dork.")

Now, aside from the irony that the "please help us" meeting was being had in a studio that they soon won't be able to do anything in (cause they're laying off the crews and support staff that work there) the crowd was a grumbly bunch of Independent Producers there to be skeptical.

I happened to be carrying the copy of Desperate Networks I'd just purchased. Which optically probably didn't look too good, but what are you going to do?

I felt a little sorry for the team of CBC programmers as they stood up and gave their speeches about how CBC was now "open for business" (one wag in the crowd said the whole thing should have been called, "help us not suck.") but to my ears it did seem an earnest and heartfelt attempt to clear the decks and try to chart a new relationship. Everyone on the stage was in a new job. They promised things like "we'll get back to you quickly from now on." And "we'll have contracts to you in two weeks..." (a promise that even the woman who'll be in charge of administering it seemed to be nervous about.)

Then, before they opened the bar and brought out the dead things on sticks, (peanut beef..mmm.) they went to questions from the audience.

And that's where I started to tune out. Because the questions were largely disappointing. They were CBC insider questions about CBC insider topics. The first one was about the CBC "dumbing down" -- a stupid spin that VP Stursberg probably made worse with comments he made a few weeks ago. The room was heavily stacked with documentarians, surprising, I thought, considering that most of the production companies were in Toronto. Or at least I thought they were. There was a lot of defending-my-turf stuff...a bit about diversity this or that, some whingeing about the Documentary channel takeover (seriously, doc people, are you always this whingey?) and then... ummmm... that was it.

Anyway, it was only later, having read Desperate Networks, that I realized just how much is stacked against the programmers not just at CBC, but anywhere in Canada.

Because in the US, everybody knows they need the next hit, and everyone's afraid to take a risk. But that's in a country that celebrates, venerates, and promotes great risk takers who succeed.

Canada is not that country. Canada is one of the most risk averse nations on the planet. Canadians like to debate, and debate, and be cautious, and even more cautious...it's part of the natural national character, partly due to 150 years of watching the lunatics to the south go off half cocked every few years into some Civil War or brouhaha or what have you.

The lesson of Carter's book is that the middle executive who speaks up for a project, and really pushes it, believes in it, tends to ride their way to the top. Is there anyone at CBC or CTV or Global or other Canadian networks willing to be that person? Or is that even relevant here? I mean, before the current shakeup, the people making the calls about what went on the schedule at CBC had been in their jobs for twenty years. People can fail here, and not get fired. People who'd be tossed out on their asses in the US at the slightest complication Jeff Zucker their way through for years.

So I'm not sure that middle exec here can stick their neck out, because I'm not sure there's anywhere to go. Or that it will even be read as a positive thing. (Remember: risk averse.) The problem is, I don't see any better alternative. So the question remains: Is anyone going to stop being quite so Canadian for a second and do what needs to be done to generate a creative hit and make some money?

Anyone?

Bueller?

The Canadian story is actually far more commonly this -- the passage in the book that will doubtless be of most interest to Canadians, who've been hearing a bunch of vague stories for years.

Ladies and gentlemen, how Alliance Atlantis scored CSI:

Everyone involved with CSI had reason to be elated, but the tale took a new twist only two months later. CBS got word that its 50/50 business partner on CSI wanted to pull its investment out of the show. The partner was the Touchstone studio, owned by the Walt Disney Company, which also owned ABC. Moonves immediately smelled a rat....Moonves wasted no time driving home the point, telling the Wall Street Journal, "Any network that expects to get a show from that company is out of their minds."...Disney pulled its money out of the series....That left CBS Productions holding the bag for all the show's cost...Moonves realized he had to look beyond Hollywood -- way beyond, as it happened. He decided to call Peter Sussman, the chief executive at a Canadian production company called Alliance Atlantis. The company had coproduced a sucessful miniseries version of Joan of Arc with CBS the previous year. Moonves pitched Sussman on the value of becoming a partner in a weekly series. His timing, as it often was, was perfect. Sussman had been pondering how to get his company into the series business....Moonves's call offering a half stake in CSI turned out to be the most financially significant conversation Peter Sussman would ever have in his life.

I'll say.

If you have any knowledge of the Canadian TV industry, the above passage is just going to set you howling. Howling because, of course, Alliance Atlantis was very much, very famously IN the series business. Between the merged company and the two separate corporate entities they were before merging (Alliance and Atlantis) these two companies were the biggest producers of series TV in Canada, with credits for all networks, and shows including Cold Squad, Traders, The Associates, Due South, Tekwar, Earth: Final Conflict, The Outer Limits, The Eleventh Hour, Degrassi: The Next Generation and on and on and on.

(I don't know whether to fault Carter for his research here or not. The problem, of course, is when you talk to people at the CEO and Exec level -- you get the CEO or Exec spin. There were huge, huge structural problems in the way Canadian series were financed in the 1990's, and rather than working to fix them, well....keep reading.)

Then, sometime after CSI took off, came this:

What happened, basically, is that Alliance Atlantis took the gift horse they'd been given, the winfall they had not worked for at all, and used it to gut the Canadian industry which had built them up. Yes, it's a business. It's a business that took years and years of Canadian Tax breaks and incentives to produce, build up their company, merge and grow -- and then when they got the easy score, they didn't reinvest. They cashed out.

Worse, they actually salted the earth behind them. In getting out of the series production business, Alliance said that Canadian TV series had entered a "Permanent downturn."

Read that again. Permanent. Downturn. No ideas how to fix it. No desire to try. Risk averse, meet defeatism. But boy, those three CSI shows sure do help the bottom line...

See, the problem here is not that the networks -- and the prodcos -- are Desperate. It's that they're not Desperate enough. Grown fat on subsidy and retransmission of American hits, they do little or nothing to engender the creativity or business that has risk, yes, but could pay off down the road -- if only you find the right formula, the right product, the right show.

Ironically, Alliance Atlantis now makes most of their money by distributing Miramax and New Line stuff here in Canada, and on their stable of specialty channels, for which they receive a steady revenue stream from cable subscriptions, and the benefits of CRTC oversight.

If they ever let in more U.S. channels, or if the flow of subscription fees is threatened by, say, letting consumers choose which channels they want and which they don't want, well, I expect we'll hear from AA about the "permanent downturn in the cable specialty channel business."

The American Network Programmers, for all their skittishness, shortsightedness, and uncertainty, know what business they're in.

And in Canada, they're waiting for the next call from sugar daddy Les.

"No one dies on my watch." Bill Carter's Desperate Networks

Desperate Networks is a gripping inside look at how the other half frets.

Good lead, huh?

Now, a review of any "inside baseball" book like this has to come with several caveats. First of all, a lot of the (middling) reviews I've read seem to be disappointed that there aren't any juicy revelations on the level of Jay Leno hiding to overhear a conference call (a la Bill Carter's earlier, admittedly superior The Late Shift.)

So no, there's no smoking gun. And the speed at which television changes means that even though the book references events that happened in January 2006, it's already a little out of date.

But as we do here in the R&D department at Sticks Labs, we review these things not as a consumer or a general interest reader, but as a writer toiling in the TV trenches. And as a way to know thy ene--uh--collaborator...it's a very valuable book.

The centrepieces of the book are the outsized portraits of characters like NBC's Jeff Zucker, ABC's Steve McPherson, and the deposed Lloyd Braun, CBS's Les "Hot Wife" Moonves, Mike Darnell, whose FOX reality ideas so freaked out then-prez Gail Berman, she had to make clear, "no one dies on my watch, let me be really clear about that, Mike."

You see how the personal quirks and obessions of these powerful men (and the somewhat less powerful women who usually fill the executive rank just below) shape what we watch and what we, as writers, sell.

If you're a genuine white-wine swilling Hollywood Insider, maybe none of these stories will be news to you. But if you swim on the periphery, like, say, Marc Cherry pre-Desperate Housewives, this is the kind of book that will make you feel better and worse. (More on Cherry later.)

Among the insights, you hear a lot about the legendary micromanaging tendencies of Disney, Zucker's distaste and bias against half-hour filmed comedies, and why and how Fox always seems to go back to the reality well.

But more than this, you see an absolutely crystal-clear illustration of the vintage dictum that William Goldman uncorked for all of us:

Nobody knows Anything.

In fact, in television terms, it's worse. Not only does nobody know anything, but they do everything they can not to express their opinions, unless they're at the tippy-tippy-top.

And that's death. Because the other thing that emerges as you read this book is that it's never the guy at the top who has the big idea. It's usually some middle-executive, forced to stick their neck out and offer their opinion. That's how revolutionary, or quality shows get on the air.

(The only counter to this offered is LOST, which Lloyd Braun generated, supported, and boosted literally at the cost of his job.)

In the clearest example, A passel of female ABC executives lament that since Sex & The City and Ally McBeal went off the air, there's "no show for women to watch and talk about later." Eventually, that complaint reverberates around enough brains that it spawns Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.

Ghen Maynard, the low level (at the time) CBS executive who fought and fought for Survivor, has what is maybe the best insight into network decisionmaking in the book:

Adapting his social psychology training, Maynard had been observing the mechanics of decision making in television, where eight or ten executives would often gather in a room with no one willing to step up and take a risk. He associated the process with something he had studied called the "unresponsive bystanders theory," which posits that if you're lying in the street half dead, you're more likely to be helped if just a few people are in the vicinity than if you are surrounded by a crowd.

Which, by the way, is how we writers up dead and bleeding on the ground. Metaphorically, of course.

That leads us to the other big piece of news in the book: (well, news-ish...) the confirmation of what everyone's always suspected: every show that you know of as a hit was turned down. A lot. And the whys and hows of how these things get turned down is a catalogue of capricious decisionmaking and short sightedness.

• Friends would have been a FOX show, except for a sticking point of $150 000.
• ABC had CSI locked up, and lost it because of a laughably small amount of money.
  
• Every U.S. network turned down American Idol -- and the show only made it onto FOX because Rupert Murdoch's daughter leaned on Dad.
• Desperate Housewives could have been on the year two years earlier.
• Survivor was turned down by everybody -- including CBS. It took extraordinary lengths to push Moonves into supporting it.

Moonves definitely emerges as the book's star -- but with a puzzling myopia at the centre. This is a guy who, while at Warner Brothers, shepherded Friends and E.R. But once at CBS, it seems like anything really different -- he has to be really sold on. It's like the position of power dulls the desire to take the bold creative risks that actually pay off.

And Moonves is the guy who did good.

If you're a writer looking for solace, a break from writing that pilot or spec script, or banging your head against your script development deal, inspiration comes in the form of Marc Cherry. Here's a guy who was washed up. A has-been. Marc Cherry is so broke before Housewives that he's living with his mother. Wait. It gets worse. His agent embezzles almost $80 000 from him. He writes this script -- everybody who reads it, loves it, and it doesn't go anywhere. Not for a long time...

Finally, it sells. And a Director is assigned to the pilot, Australian Director P.J. Hogan, best known for My Best Friend's Wedding -- coming straight off the flop of the live action Peter Pan. And what happens next nearly derails Cherry's comeback before it gets started:

They ended up at Hogan's house, to go over his analysis. Hogan began giving notes to Cherry: what image he wanted to open with, what sort of interiors he expected.

Cherry, thinking this was the typical television collaboration, responded with some suggestions of his own. Hogan reacted cooly every time Cherry spoke up. Cherry began to suspect that Hogan expected the kind of writer-director relationship he had experienced in features, which often amounted to lackey and master....Cherry did not challenge Hogan and agreed with many of his notes. Two he did think were "so fucking stupid they would make my head explode." But he did not voice his objections to Hogan yet.

The next day, Cherry learned that Hogan had up and quit, declaring that Marc Cherry was impossible to work with. One of the Touchstone people confronted Cherry...even his own agents asked him how he had managed to offend this guy so thoroughly in one day...

The episode totally pissed Cherry off. He was just getting his career back on track, and this conflict, which he felt he had no way instigated, had make him look like an asshole in the eyes of his studio and his network -- and apparently even his agents.

Then there's Mr. Evil, Simon Cowell. I remember a conversation I had with someone about Idol not so long ago where they couldn't seem to understand why no one had believed in it before it came over. "I mean," they said, "it was a HUGE hit in England. Huge. All they had to do was watch the show!"

I never questioned the Pop Idol/American Idol translation problem, because I'd seen it up close. I'd done a story ten years before on Endemol, the huge Euro gameshow reality producer, and in the process of putting together the story, I'd talked to several U.S. TV types at a convention in Las Vegas. To a one, they all agreed, it would never work here. The reason? Well, there were lots of reasons spoken, but they all boiled down to one, best expressed by a frustrated middle exec from NBC I spoke to, who, frustrated at my question, blurted, "Look. Europeans are just weird."

Ah, America.

I would hate to think that writers would read this book and use it to self-justify their failure with poorly executed or conceived ideas. But reading it, you do think that you've got to take a more zen approach to whether you succeed or not. You have to be zen about the failure, but at the same time, you have also got to amp up your sales and your pitch. Your show is never going to go anywhere unless you break through the bystander syndrome, and get someone, anyone at your network or prodco to stand up and say, "this one. this one, I believe in."

If you think you're going to get to where you need to be without doing that, you're just kidding yourself.




Next time: Desperate Networks and the Canadian TV industry.

Oh Baby, Don't Be That Way, You Know I Still Love You...

Hey ho. Well. I'm a writer who's just spent the bulk of the last couple days not writing, which always makes me cranky. But you know, good stuff can come out of meetings, too. Great stuff. But I'm chomping to get back to the MOUNTAIN of writing and rewriting that I have to do.

Plus, up here North of the 49th Parallel, the weekend coming up is a long weekend. Victoria Day, actually. The Birthday Celebration of that dowager princess Queen Vic. Of Queen Vic and Prince Albert fame. There. You're thinking about a pierced penis right now, aren't you? Don't even try to deny it. There's a good friend of mine who thinks it's funny that if you write my name real fast it looks like penis. Twenty years and she hasn't tired of that joke. And she's a mother.

Anyway, there's plenty of stuff for everyone to chew over with the upfronts and the fallout from the upfronts and the meetings that CBC is doing to explain their new strateregy here in Canada. And then there's that long weekend, which we here call the May 2-4 even though this year it's nowhere near May 24. (2-4 is also Canadian slang for a case of la biere. I know. More than you needed to know.)

All that's a long way of saying that blogging will be light til next week here. I've got limited procrastination time, don'tcha know, and I'm probably going to be cheating on you blog readers with a book in my off seconds.

I've just gotten ahold of the latest from one of my favorite TV writers, Bill Carter (The Late Shift.) If I'm not writing like I should be, or daydreaming like I sometimes do, or wiggling my toes in the grass like I should do more often on a long weekend, chances are I'll be reading this book. I'll let you know what I thought next week.

In the meantime, please, don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Is it just me, or...

Was Grey's Anatomy a bit of a hammock last night?

Great beginning. Great ending. Sagged in the middle. The interview the interns bit was flaccid, and the prom-planning stuff was just...dumb. Bailey's sass about the silver and white was the only inspired portion of that plot.

I know every woman in America is hungup on the Mer/Der thing, but for me the only real relationship convo--again-- was the one with Sara Ramirez and T.R. Knight. George and Cristina remain the main reason to watch this show.

I'm glad for its massive success, but I'm not sure I'll follow it next year. Especially if its moved to another night.

Hey, You Writer Action BBS types...

I see you surfin in on my sitemeter.

I hope whatever article you're linkin to is givin you a chuckle or something. See I can't tell, because I'm not WGA. I'm WGC. So I can't join your little BBS club.

Second class citizen and all.

Have fun pokin around. Solidarity forever.

Or as my English friend Mike would say:

"Oi, Wanker. Shove off right?"

Upfront Week

Lots of people blog about this, so I'm not gonna. But as networks announce their schedules, you can find good coverage here and here and here and here.

In Which Our Hero Is Reduced To a Blubbering Mess of Goo By a Napkin

I've had a little time to think about it now and I've decided maybe not to be so glib.

It's funny how a TV show can change your life.

I've had a lifelong fascination with the idea of service, and with American politics. As a child, my twin, Sarah Vowell-like obsessions were Lincoln and JFK. For about five seconds, as a good Catholic boy, I entertained thoughts about maybe entering the priesthood. (Then I discovered girls. More specifically, that girls, unlike boys, usually smell really good.)

In 1999, I was not particularly happy. I'd been in a new job for about two years. I was a television producer, making good money. I'd helped start up a station. I liked the people I worked with (most of 'em, anyway.) I got to write a little in my job -- mostly sketches and things like that. But there was kind of a maw there, just waiting to claim me. I'd just turned thirty the year before, and when the question, "Is this how you pictured your life?" came up, when I was honest, I had to admit not just "no," but "hell no."

Then I saw the premiere episode of The West Wing. From the moment the show premiered, from the moment Jed Bartlet walked into the room quoting the First Commandment, I knew two things absolutely: 1) that I had a new favorite show, and 2) that I had to get the hell out of my job.

It wasn't just the quality of the writing or the acting or the direction, though they were all fine. I'd been more or less devoted to Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin's first television series...I'd been lucky enough to see A Few Good Men on Broadway, and had tracked Sorkin's writing ever since.

What The West Wing did for me, though, was to rekindle those thoughts of service. Thoughts that had been rattling around for years, that made me think, "what is it that you should be doing? What is the best use of what you have?" I knew it wasn't necessarily politics. First of all, living in Canada was a bit of an impediment to that, and Canadian politics just didn't inspire me like American politics. I'd been teaching University part-time for a number of years, and though that did feel like I was doing something --(it certainly wasn't the money, which was pathetic) it didn't leave me feeling that I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

Jed Bartlet wasn't just a character; he was an ideal. I didn't see a lot of him where I worked. I didn't really respect my current boss too much. In meeting after meeting, I had come to realize that they didn't really respect me. I could say things like, "well, here's what the students I teach say," when trying to chase that elusive youth audience, but it didn't connect. I could say things like, "the ACTRA (actor's union) contract says this..." but none of that mattered if you weren't listened to. I had a meeting with an old boss inside the same organization and she said the very wise words that galvanized me: "maybe it's time for you to go."

I wanted to be a counsellor to the President, serve at the pleasure of the President -- or at least have a life where I was doing something that I believed in.

Then there was the show itself. Holy God, the writing -- long, breathless strings of dialogue that was funny and angry and smart and about something. I didn't know TV could be like that. If TV could be like that, then what the hell was I doing interviewing people who wrote books, or promoting bad movies with more kitch than cultural value?

So a few months later I started writing a spec script. And then I wrote another. And then I took one of my plays and turned it into a screenplay. And that got optioned and for a while it looked like maybe it would get made. Then it didn't.

I applied to two programs. One was the Disney/ABC Writers Fellowship. The other was The Canadian Film centre. Heads, I go to L.A. Tails I stay here. If I didn't get into either program, well, I was just going to quit. Quit and figure out something else to do...or more accurately, some other way to do what I wanted to do, the only thing I could think of doing now, which was to try and write something 1/10th as good as The West Wing.

I entered that West Wing spec script in one of those script competitions. It won. It got me into the CFC, if not Disney/ABC.

Then the American political process went all pear-shaped in the 2000 election and I was kind of glad not to be down there. I tried not to think about it. I thought about Jed Bartlet, and the people who worked in a place doing jobs they believed in.

And I quit my job.

And I went back to school.

And I have never regretted it for a single second.

And six years later, I haven't written that show 1/10th as good as the West Wing yet, but I'm getting closer. And when I sit in meetings, talking about story, people listen. In about forty-five minutes, I'll sit in on the first production meeting of a series that I'm partially responsible for creating. And you know what? It's for the same place where I was unhappy as a TV producer. It was the right call for both me, and the company. I didn't stay and become bitter, which is probably why I'm able to work with them now -- and hopefully help them to create something that will accrue more value to the company than I ever could have accrued as an employee. That's the value of following your heart. It's not saving a bunch of Cubans on rafts, floating into the Port of Miami -- but it'll do.

And yeah, Aaron Sorkin's Bartlet, who could quote philosophers I didn't know or hadn't read, would never have made the mistake of missing that the Founding Fathers set a March, not a January inauguration, but the fact that the show was able to bounce back to a level of quality at all without Sorkin (which it did) is inspiring, in a way, too. The idea is not to become irreplaceable. The idea is to create something so indelible that it changes the way other people write.

So Keb'Mo singing America The Beautiful while people box up the Oval Office -- some people might not like that on the message boards, but of course that is the beauty and the power of the American system. That is what's beautiful in it. The Orderly Transition of Power, the Government of Laws Not Men. It's this that makes me choke up when I think of America, when I think of how easily it can be threatened, and hopeful when I think that though the cost might be high, ultimately the system will right itself. Because there have to be people out there with that idea of service. Maybe my calling was to write TV, but I have no doubt that there are Josh Lymans and Sam Seaborns and Toby Zieglers and C.J. Craigs there, for real.

I have no doubt that forgetful chief executives can one day take that last walk and remember everyone's names (Something I never managed to do in all those years teaching.) I have no doubt that the principle, not the men, ultimately survive. It's that idea that The West Wing celebrated, right til the very end.

And that's how a TV show can change your life.

Well, At Least Sorkin Doesn't Have to Compete With HImself

Well, Guess I need a new Spec for sure, now.

My West Wing spec, Written May 2000, has gotten me a lot of work over the years. But that's not what I'll miss most.

I just don't know what I'm going to do without Alison Janney on my TV every week.

"When You Find Yourself On a Run About Socialism, You Know That Pretty Quick You've Got To Light Homer's Pants On Fire"

That's just one of the delicious insights in today's Times Arts & Leisure section.

I talk a lot about the audience here -- mainly because I feel a lot of Canadian writers don't; that, if anything, is the main creative malaise stalking the industry here. (Leaving aside all the much more pressing and depressing structrual problems.)

In today's NYTimes, Christopher Noxon has a fascinating article that runs down the careful balancing act at play in the search for the (rapidly disappearing) crossover audience.

AS he puts the finishing touches on "Superman Returns," the director Bryan Singer is thinking about bathrooms.

During a screening of one of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, Mr. Singer noticed how many kids in the audience made a mad dash for the bathrooms during bits of dialogue-heavy exposition. "It was like a stampede," he said in recent phone interview. A little while later, during one of the movie's prolonged battle sequences, he noticed adults making a similar exodus. Mr. Singer predicts a similar shuffling when his "Superman" lands in theaters June 30.

"I'd like to think this movie is entirely universal," he said. "But I know there will be bathroom moments for the kids and bathroom moments for adults."

Again, this is another reason why I toil in TV not film. In TV we're starting to learn that going for niche is the only way to score - by trying to reach everyone you reach no one. But it's still an eye-opening and interesting search.

Good questions raised by this article. I might have more to say on it later: but right now I have to go watch another episode of Footballers Wive$. Have at it in the comments section.

Bring Me The Renegade Glaciers!

Funny, and yet not. President Al Gore's address on SNL.



Go watch it before NBC makes YouTube Take it down.

And Yet According To Jim Still Lives...

Sons & Daughters follows Love Monkey and Arrested into that good night.

You think it's frustrating as a viewer?

Try being a guy trying to write good TV, seeing the TV you love just...not...connect.

I don't blame American Idol -- after all, American Idol made HOUSE a hit.

Still. It's hard not to...you know...reach for the scotch.

Fred Goss' announcement is here.

The Office: Jim Grows A Pair

(spoilers for the Season Finale of The Office below.)

Well.

That didn't take long.

A friend once revealed to me that, back in high school, this girl I dated complained to him that I was the most frustrating person in the world to argue with -- because every time she thought she'd score a point, I'd nod and say, "Okay. You're right about that. I concede the point."

Then, I'd reframe the argument or move on to something else. Apparently it was very frustrating. In my book it's called listening, and it's also the way you argue -- present political climate to the contrary.

That's a long-winded Saturday way of saying that I take back the statement I made below:

Has there ever been a "super sized" episode that was better than a normal episode of the same series, rather than just bloated and unnecessary?

Yup. Thursday's season finale of The Office.

The charm of the American version has always been (even more than its British parent) the wonky rhythms of its storytelling.

We talk about surprising people with our Act Outs, and of never letting the audience guess where the story is going. But a lot of the time those "surprises" are just cheap suspense, or a logical function of the story. What The Office has managed to convey is a genuine off-kilter appeal where you just don't know what is going to happen next. You know Michael is a train wreck and clueless, and you dread him in the room with Jan and her boss -- and he comes through by being decent, taking heat, and protecting her with a decency even she didn't think was there. You track Dwight trying to catch Oscar takig a fake sick day, and then out of nowhere comes the punch: Oscar's gay, living a perfectly happy secret life which none of his Office-mates know about. (And honestly, would you tell these guys?)

And then there's Jim and Pam.

When you think about it, The Office has already done more episodes than the brilliant Gervais original. Which means that Jim and Pam have been sniffing around each other longer than Tim and Dawn ever did.

I've written before about the subtle deviations from the British source material that make the American Office work: chief among them the fact that Jim doesn't hate his job quite as much as Tim did. But the progression of the Jim/Pam relationship has also brought some intriguing differences that speaks to national character.

I always got the sense watching the UK Office that the main obstacle keeping Tim and Dawn apart was good old fashioned repression. Dawn knew how Tim felt (he told her: twice!) and she just couldn't bring herself to change her situation. She soldiered on. (In Office-time, after all, it took her leaving for more than a year to finally bring them together.)

Jim and Pam, on the other hand, have followed a similar but very different trajectory. Pam is utterly clueless about Jim's feelings -- but more importantly, her own. As the season wore on, and Pam planned her wedding, the comic straight-to-camera interviews became more and more bittersweet, as you realized just how much Pam was deluding herself.

And Jim, decent guy that he is, kept coming up to the line of telling her, and backing away. There they were, trapped in the no-man's land of being "best friends" who really weren't best friends at all.

I love Tim, I do. Don't get me wrong. But I get Jim. I've been Jim - more than once in my life.

So for the endgame, the 'very special-ness' of the season ender to just come out of nowhere like that -- it was almost over before you knew what was happening -- well, that was a great use of 40 minutes.

From Salon's treatment of the wrap-up:

At the Casino Night (held in the company warehouse), Pam flirts through a few hands of poker with Jim before cleaning him out. Jim seems ready to give up on the night when a conversation with Jan about his plans to transfer out of the company's Scranton office, a move obviously connected to Pam's upcoming nuptials, catalyzes something within him. Finding himself alone with Pam, he decides to show her his hand, dropping his defenses so suddenly it comes as quite a shock -- both to her and us:

"I'm in love with you."

"What!?"

"I'm really sorry if that's weird for you to hear, but I need you to hear it."

Watching Jim's face through the scene, you can't help feeling sorry for the guy, and Pam almost makes you hate her when she says Jim just "misinterpreted things." But then, just when you're about ready to write her off, Pam is back in the office, talking to her mom on the phone about what has just happened. Suddenly, Jim saunters in -- you have to admire his persistence here -- and plants a big one on her. She tenses up at first, but then returns the kiss with a passion that says this is the moment she's been waiting for, too. The show ends with the two of them looking at each other with a mixture of elation and confusion: Now what?

If this is where comedy on TV is going, can we all just agree to climb on board now?

Schedule a-go-go!

On this blog, I've given stick in the past to Canadian programmers who congratulate themselves for their brilliance, when really all they're doing is simulcasting U.S. shows, trading on the creativity (and creative risk) of other broadcasters.

Well for that class of programmer, there is no phrase more headache-inducing than this: Super Sized Comedies.

The perennially lame NBC sweeps trick (Has there ever been a "super sized" episode that was better than a normal episode of the same series, rather than just bloated and unnecessary?) wreaks havoc for Canadian networks locked into simulcasting shows from multiple U.S. Networks. Check out this train-wreck of a breakdown from Bill Brioux in today's Toronto Sun.

Now for the tricky part: If you are planning to watch this show on a Canadian station, better sit down. NBC's scheduling scheme is a super-sized headache for Global, which normally simulcasts the NBC comedies.

Write this down: NBC will air the 40-minute Earl finale from 8:40 to 9:20, between super-sized episodes of Will & Grace (8 p.m. to 8:40) and The Office (9:20 to 9:59).

Global, which is locked in with Survivor Panama from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., will air the super-sized Earl from 9 p.m. to 9:40, followed by an Earl encore ("Monkeys In Space") that they will cram, commercial free, into the 9:40 to 10 p.m. slot before leading into Without A Trace at 10 p.m.

Could that be more confusing? Yes, actually. Global has no plans to air tonight's second-last episode of Will & Grace, "Whatever Happened To Baby Gin?" Bernadette Peters guests as Karen's long-lost sister who was injured as a child in a game of Twister. Sounds like Will & Grace is ending just in the nick of time.

NBC has it at 8. Global, which fobbed this over to CH years ago, has it on the shelf. CH is clogged up tonight with two hours of American Inventors (8-10 p.m.). Maybe an inventor will some day figure out some way Canadian networks can cram even more American shows onto their schedules.

Next week, Global will air the one-hour Will & Grace series finale, plus the one hour retrospective special (from 8-10 p.m.). Not CH, Global. Does your head hurt? My head hurts.

It gets worse. The Office has a 40-minute season finale tonight (9:20 - 9:59), written by series star Steve Carell. Something about a casino night in the warehouse. Huge laffs.

Global can't show it tonight and might show it later. Or not.

Whew.

Now, I don't have any objection to channels making money. Hell, my livelihood depends on it. But seriously -- on some level, when you read the above -- wouldn't it help to have a few hit shows that you actually had control over?

You know what makes this worse, too? Once upon a time, if you were a Canadian network and you couldn't show the show at the same time as the U.S. net, you sometimes got the opportunity to pre-release it. So the show would air a night earlier in Canada. That largely seems to have disappeared, especially for the big shows. Canadian networks sometimes show a show, say, an hour earlier than in the U.S., but I'm willing to bet that in the downloading world, distribs are a whole lot tighter about letting the show air in Canada too much ahead of the U.S. broadcast.

Almost makes you think it would be easier to, you know, make your own shows.

Nah.

Final Draft Catches Up

Final Draft released an update -- 7.2 -- this week. I've had my frustrations with FD in the past. I shudder to think of the glitch that prevented me from running my newly-updated-to-7 program on my 17 hour flight to South Africa two years ago. Trying to call customer service in L.A. -- nine hours and 10 000 miles away wasn't very fun either. In fact, I think through the entire time I was working on Charlie Jade I wound up going back to FD6 just cause 7 was so stupidly buggy. Like, Microsoft buggy.

The ongoing Screenwriter or Final Draft debate is the most boring argument in Scriptendom. It's so boring it makes the Mac vs. PC imbroglio look like a full-contact deathmatch performance of The Mikado by naked Playboy Playmates.

I'll give you a minute with that. Yes. Picture it. Good.

Moving on...

My thing (as someone who's used both) is that I prefer FD simply because I'm a Mac user, and that's the platform it started on. Screenwriter feels and looks like a PC product ported to Mac. (Which it is.) But FD is also a colossal pain in the ass.

But I was eager to update, because this new version (7.1.2, build 34, to be precise) is the first that's native to my brand new Intel-chip based Macbook Pro. (Yes, Yes, I know. No, I can't afford it. Ah Credit, is there any trouble you can't get me into?)

Cruising the program, I'm pleased to see that it seems to have fixed some lingering issues.
And more importantly, they've finally caught up with what has always been one of FD's strengths: TV templates.

The TV templates included with Final Draft have always been a good idea with a bad execution. Simply put: they don't update them enough.

So I was pleased in the new update to find templates ready made for The Office, My Name is Earl, Commander in Chief (okay, maybe not that one, sigh) Bones, The L Word, Prison Break, Numb3rs, House, Grey's Anatomy, Entourage, and How I Met Your Mother.

Sure, you still have to wade through some of the less-than-desirable templates. (Seriously, is anyone out there writing an According to Jim?) But it's still a step in the right direction.

I assume these templates are created by someone who's actually looked at an actual script from the show, and reflect each show's particular quirks. (I mean, I hope so, if not: lame.)

I'm pleased with their effort to stay more current with the templates. I hope it continues.

Now, if they could just come up with one for The Unit...

I Am Utterly Fascinated by This Story.

Yet I'm not sure why.

From today's NY Times.

Have You Any Dreams You'd Like to Sell?

Last night, I had the one where I was supposed to perform (in this case, a song) but I didn't know the lyrics. So I had to go find them before the performance. But I was moving too slowly, so I just started flying.

That's right. The Performance Dream + The Flying Dream.

I'm now having hybrid dreams.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Procrastinatey

I worked straight through the weekend and turned in a draft yesterday. So I had no weekend, right? So I should be taking today off and contemplating the next step and the meeting I have Friday, right?

Wrong.

Sigh. Instead I'm taking an animation pitch to outline. Glamorous! Awesome! Feh!

But because I'm burned out, I'm also surfing and doing the wasting-time dance.

I'm really digging this woman's blog right now. Curious about staffing season and what it does to people? Go give it a read.

She seems to be handling it rather well.

I'm also channeling my inner Jane Espenson right now -- I just realized that I've been obsessing over the thought of a Ham and Swiss Sandwich on Wheat Bread from wagamama, the cafe across the street from me.

Damnit, I gotta go buy that sandwich. And if they have the Potato Leek Soup too, well, I'm going to freak out.

And that answers that, too...

I thought it was a John Spencer-related thing.

Depressing that it, once again, it all comes down to the filthy lucre.

If only it had won the Emmy, you know, Five times...

Be Careful What You Wish For.

My friend Alex of Complications Ensue and I have a little ongoing thing that started when we were in South Africa. Actually, come to think of it, he may not even be aware of this thing we have. This thing is basically this:

He watches Gilmore Girls.

I laugh at him because he watches Gilmore Girls.

I've never liked Gilmore Girls. I think I'd rather...well...I'd almost rather watch 7th Heaven than Gilmore Girls. At least 7th Heaven had that hottie on it. Or did she leave? Anyway, that show's gone too -- so nevermind.

Now. Before you diary writing, Lorelai-lovin Stars Hollowin freaks have at me, remember: taste is taste. I watch Grey's Anatomy, which is, if anything, even girlier than Gilmore Girls. (And they're also getting way out of hand on their music cues.) Anyway, he doesn't like Battlestar Galactica, and I think he's nuts for that. So there it is.

All that as preamble to this:

Here's a very, very interesting article about the nitty-gritty of why Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino aren't returning to Gilmore Girls next year.

The short version is that they wanted a two year deal, and some other stuff, and the PTB said, "nope." But it's the long version that should frost your cornflakes if you actually entertain fantasies of one day rising in the TV writing ranks to showrunner:

Dan: For the six years, we've been working seven days a week, 'cause we knew every aspect of the show. We'd break every story, we'd edit, this last year we directed seven between ourselves, we have written 90-something scripts.
Amy: We also take a pass at all scripts that go out and by the time our season ends, by the time I'm done editing and by the time I'm done with sound mixes and everything like that, it's mid-May. We start back June 1. We work through every holiday... Christmas, Thanksgiving. It's been quite a load.
Dan: So, having done that for six years, we really wanted to expand our personnel base. We wanted more writers, more bodies in that writers' room, we wanted a director on staff, which I think every other hourlong show has, except ours. Not having that director on staff means Amy and I have to be down on stage supervising other directors, which leads to the seven-days-a-week thing. So we were needing more personnel. And we never got around to convincing people that that was absolutely necessary.
Amy: And part of the reason we went to the studio so early in the game is because we wanted to be able to go out and find writers then. And find a director-producer then. So that everything would be in place the following year. Because at this point in time, shows are being picked up, people are putting their schedules together, the marketplace is thin. Great people are being snapped up. And we went to the studio and said, "Look, give us a chance to get everything in place now. Let's have everyone sign up for next year. Let's start working on next year this year." I think it's a couple of things. Businesswise, we spoiled them, because why spend money on other writers when you don't have to? [Laughs] There's a little bit of that. And I also think that everybody thinks that everybody's playing poker, and who's going to blink first? And we were like, very honestly, like, in an Andy Hardy movie going, "No, seriously, we really want to put on a show in the barn if you just listen to us, mister!" And it just never got to that point. And it wasn't until things really came to a head that suddenly people realized, "The insane people are actually serious about this."

Ulp.

Cleanin' up Tony? @%$#!

Today's NY Times has an interesting article about A&E's ongoing project to "clean up" episodes of The Sopranos for their basic cable premiere next year. Now, before you scoff (oh go ahead, scoff, I can see you want to) remember that there are 60 million Americans, roughly, who never saw The Sopranos on HBO. They don't have HBO, and apparently neither rent DVD's or engage in "antisocial" downloading behavior.

Here in Canada, of course, Canadian network CTV made a big splash by rerunning Sopranos afer its premiere on our own Pay Networks, TMN out east and Movie Central out west.

The most interesting part of the article, though, is the part where they walk the spin. Predictably (and you should maybe take this with a large grain of salt) they don't have to change too much. In Sopranos? You fuckin' kiddin me? Well. Apparently not. Here's why:

As A&E works its way through the project — it is currently deep into screening episodes from the first two seasons — Mr. DeBitetto says that he has already been surprised by one dynamic: that the network has actually had to designate very little to cut. On average, it has trimmed less than 30 seconds from each episode, which can run from 45 minutes to nearly an hour. One reason, Mr. DeBitetto said, is that so much of the tension in "The Sopranos" hinges on the unseen anticipation of violence. And when someone does die in a "rubout" or "whack," Mr. DeBitetto said, those scenes are often no more gruesome than those one might see on a drama like "24" on broadcast television.

In such instances, loyal viewers may be hard-pressed to determine what exactly A&E has retouched. For example, in one scene from the first season, two of Tony's lieutenants, Silvio (played by Steven Van Zandt) and Christopher (Michael Imperioli), put a bullet through the head of a quivering turncoat who has been found to be wearing a wire. In the edited scene, as in the original, blood splatters on a nearby wall. All that is missing in the edited version of the shot is perhaps two seconds of film in which what appeared to be a chunk of brain matter began to slither down an air-conditioning unit.

This is worth keeping in mind. Hollywood movies used to know how to do this, too. I still cringe in fear at Hitchcock films, because he knew so well how to build the tension. I mean, really, look at Rear Window or The Birds. There's nothing there that you couldn't show an eight year old, except for the fact that if they watched closely, you might, you know, scar them for life. Rosemary's Baby is laughably tame by modern standards. So why does the movie scare the shit out of me?

Much is made of the freedom of cable. But we tend to forget that sometimes, as writers, it's the limitations of the frame we have to work within that can be our salvation. Whether it's having to constrain your story to four or five acts, or dealing with the implications and anticipation of violence, rather than let it all hang out, SAW or HOSTEL style -- there's something to be said for limitation; simply in the way that it forces you to dramatize rather than shock, and tease rather than bludgeon.

I'm not that surprised that so much of The Sopranos can actually be preserved -- but I am a little skeptical, or at least interested, to see if it does as well for A&E as they need it to.

I wrote some time ago -- in one of the spec script posts, I think -- that most television can be listened to, rather than watched. It's very dialogue-driven -- perhaps a throwback to the days when everyone was doing four things in front of the TV, like homework and making out and the ironing.

But Sopranos is a big exception to that rule. The series is very visual, and if you're not watching, and watching closely, you can miss important moments.

I wonder if your average inattentive American viewer -- the great untapped market that has never seen The Sopranos -- will respond to it the way A&E wants it to. After all, this is the big roll-the-dice replacement for Law & Order. And if there was ever a TV-that's-really-radio show on TV, it's Law & Order.

Dyslexic Scrubs Nerds Untie!

Sorry. That's just low blood sugar talking. One of my favorite shows meets one of my favorite stupid jokes.

Diane Kristine over at Unified Theory of Nothing Much continues her peerless reportage of all things TV with this Q&A with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence.

My favorite part, of course, because I'm a sad, sad narcissist, is where she picks up on an earlier post of mine. Lawrence's answer to that question is particularly interesting:

BL: Here's the deal. Hollywood, especially networks and studios, they love to see what the trends are. Most recently, one of the things people have been saying is the sitcom's dead, three-camera sitcoms are dead. Before that, it was dramas are dead. And before that, it was sitcoms are dead. Now it's going to be reality is dead. It's a never-ending cycle.

It's all just hogwash, first of all. The only thing that's really changed in television is that people have so many options. My dad, who's 60, has 150 channels and will tell me about shows he likes that I've never heard of before. The one thing you have to realize is that sitcoms aren't dead. It's just that crappy television is dead. I think it's so competitive out there right now that a middle-of-the-road show that's just OK, nothing special, isn't going to survive the way it used to.

Because of that, I think you have one of two options. If you're super, super lucky, you have one of those giant hits that just grabs the public zeitgeist, whether it's Grey's Anatomy or American Idol or one of those shows that seems like a giant steamroller that everybody in the world watches. In which case, you get to sit back and celebrate. If you aren't that, I feel the only way to survive is to become a cult show, in the sense that your core audience is so loyal that they will follow you and stick with you and truly keep your show alive and successful for the network.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great example of this. It was never a huge hit, but had such a loyal cult following that it basically drove that show into long-term success. The Family Guy, their cult following put that show back on the air. For us, for Scrubs, that's what we're so grateful for. Because we weren't a huge financial asset for NBC, the show's had I think seven or eight timeslots in five years. Luckily our fans are so loyal, that same core group has followed us from timeslot to timeslot and from evening to evening and really helped to keep the show going.

Long before I got into television, I remember the last time the "sitcom was dead."

There were all these articles talking about how the sitcom was over. Then, that fall -- The Cosby Show premiered. The last time the drama was dead, I believe, E.R. premiered that fall.

Let pundits and TV writers make the prognostications. If you're an artist and a writer, I think at the end of the day, your only choice is to play the long game.

Acing the Meetup & Social Trickery 101

Last week I met a fellow writer for a drink. (Okay, full disclosure: I had four. But she had 'a drink.' )

It was a referral from a colleague, just a normal sort of meet and greet to try and suss out and connect to future talent. You still can't shake the feeling that it's kind of like a job interview.

So I fired questions out -- what are your favorite TV shows; what do you like to read; what do you do when you're not writing; how did you come to writing; what's your experience; who've you worked with; what are you passionate about; where have you been; what's important to you?

I know these questions can be daunting, especially fired all in a row like that. I have a friendly demeanor, so that cuts it a bit. But if you notice anything in the pattern of the questions above, let it be this: I'm trying to find out as much about the person as the experience or taste they bring to writing. Because that's an important part of the collaborative process. I don't know who said it originally, but I know that Ken Levine has opined recently that you have to find a person that you could stand to drive cross-country with. Collaboration in TV means lots of long hours, weird times, strange intimacies (get your mind out of the guttter, I don't mean that way) and a whole lot of time spent with someone. So you kind of need to know who they are.

And no, you'll never get that out of one meeting. But that first meeting is important.

Getting to it is even more so.

The first thing that impressed me about the writer I met last week was her persistence. She emailed me several times -- never pushy, always leaving a respectful distance between queries, until we nailed down the meeting time. A lot of people screw that up right off the bat -- either by not following up (I have one focus when I'm writing, and that's the script I'm working on; I can be bad about getting back to people. Yup, it's a flaw, but it's also the flaw that makes it bearable to ride it out when people aren't getting back to me) or by being too forceful (cue the thoughts of the boiling bunny scene from Fatal Attraction.)

As in all conversations, things naturally progressed to the finding of common ground. We found out that we're kind of a similar type. I don't remember if I've said this before, so forgive me if I have, but I think personality-wise, most television writers are a mix of extrovert and introvert.

The true extroverts can never hack it, because there's so much time spent alone that it drives you crazy after awhile. And I think that true introverts, unless their pages are truly, truly stellar, are never going to make it, because so much of this job is constantly pitching, and re-pitching your ideas -- whether in a meeting or in the room, or to a producer, or to a network, or even -- if you magically make it to production -- a real live actor or director. If you're a real wallflower, you're not going to have much of a chance to show your bloom. You gotta be witty and odd and sharp and compelling.

When you're an extrovert-introvert, you sometimes need a way in. I know I'm bad in a social situation where I know NO ONE. That, I find daunting. Give me a few friendly faces, and I'll make my way just fine. But the funny thing is that because people who know me know me to be very gregarious and passionate, they assume I don't need the help -- even if I'm standing at the edge of the room, swimming in my own self-doubt and recrimination.

A lot of extrovert-introverts blanch at the thought of schmoozing. Schmoozing, of course, is smalltalk with intent. I've been schmoozed expertly and haplessly, and I've done both of those things myself. But it's just something you need to learn. It's not like having a 'no schmooze' rule will get you anywhere. There's a lot of starving and unemployed people with integrity.

So last week, I told this writer an anecdote that actually came from the wife of a friend of mine (and a friend of the blog, too, coinkidinkally.)

This person figures every time she goes to a party or social situation, you turn it into a game, and the game is this:

No matter what kind of person they are, no matter what they do, no matter how boring to you they seem, every person has at least one thing about them that's interesting.

Your job is to find that one thing out -- about everybody in the room.

I love this idea, because it kind of applies the craft of writing to a social situation. You have a task, (the project) there are lots of ways to achieve that task, (the craft) and it's a task you have to complete. (You have a deadline.)

And as a net bonus, you get to appear as a true extrovert and an active listener. Brilliant.

HOUSE's David Shore nails Canadian Drama

The Globe & Mail's John Doyle had an interesting interview with HOUSE creator/executive producer (and showrunner, and Canadian) David Shore this weekend.

Highlights below. (Emphasis added is mine)

The odd time that I get a chance to catch a movie, I frequently walk out realizing that I could have stayed home and seen a better story, better told by just turning on the TV. Movies have too often become about the event while television is almost always about the story.

Q. Canadian TV, especially drama, seems to be in a permanent state of crisis. You were associated with two successful Canadian dramas, Due South and Traders. Do you have a prescription for reviving Canadian TV drama, or do you have a Dr. House-like skepticism about the problem?

A. I am skeptical. There is obviously a smaller market, and therefore less money and greater limitations, but I think the problems are deeper than that. I left Canada because I knew I had a lot to learn as a writer and I saw very few opportunities to do that without moving. In my opinion, Canadian television so often fails for the same reason American movies so often fail: They're not controlled by writers. Now I'm biased on this one and there are obviously great, smart directors out there and great, smart producers but no one knows the story like the writer. American movies are controlled by directors; Canadian television is controlled by producers; American television is controlled by writers.

How many times does it have to be said before Canadian TV types start to believe it? Mr. Stursberg? Mr. Clarkson? Hellll-ooo?

Interesting other observation to come out of the article...this makes two U.S. based showrunners who cut their teeth on TRADERS, Global's mid-1990's series set in the financial world of Bay Street. (Toronto's Wall Street, or The City)

Hart Hanson (Bones) developed TRADERS, and had a Canadian career. After that show he made the painful jump to the U.S., eventually moving up to showrun Judging Amy.

Shore already had a U.S. career, owing to his writing on Due South, which was created by his friend Paul Haggis, who despite our propensity for claiming the Canadian connection -- spent his whole career down in the U.S.

Global got a lot of stick for turning away from Drama after Traders, and the relaxing of Cancon regs in 1999. Yet of most recent Canadian dramas, it had the most solid, go for the commercial appeal construction -- and it's the one that's produced U.S. - style showrunners.

Whatever could it all mean?

The President is Not Amused

"Just a regular guy..."

"Good sport..."

"Good sense of humor..."

"A guy you'd want to have dinner with..."

Sure.

By the way...

Happy Cinco de Mayo!


Eight more pages and I'll enjoy a cerveza myself.

Rogers' Cable PVR is Evil

Here in the Great White North, we suffer, TIVO-less.

Both Bell Expressvu and Rogers (the big satellite and cable choices in my area) have PVR based recorders, menu driven, of course -- but they're just not as smart or crazysexycool as TIVO.

Each has their quirks. The bane of the Rogers model hearkens back to the bad old days of the imprecise VCR clock. It's a slave to the schedule grid, and if the Amnets are doing their usual shuck fly bait and switch, and start a movie or tv series early or end it late, it gets cut off.

There are certain shows and networks which are the worst culprits. ABC is flat out the worst. Usually when I remember, I try to program a few extra minutes on the end of the recording. It's cumbersome and I don't always remember. But even that doesn't always work. When you have a "tape every show" setting, it doesn't remember from week to week that you want to stop taping at 10:02, not 10:00.

Anyway, all that's a long way of getting to this. Now, this might not mean a lot to you if you don't watch LOST, but I'm not into doing spoilers, so you can go find out what I'm talking about somewhere else. If you do watch LOST, you should recognize my problem immediately.

Here's how LOST ended for me this week:

Ana Lucia (Michele Rodriguez, left) says, "I just can't do this anymore," meaning kill Henry, the Other they've got stashed in the hatch. Michael (Harold Perrineau, right) nods and says, "Give me the gun. Let me do it." Ana Lucia hands him the gun. Michael says, "I'm sorry."

End of Recording.

I don't want to talk about it.

Lapdogs: Why the Colbert Context Matters

Every time I (or any other blogging screenwriter) goes off on a jag writing about U.S. politics, we get emails from some people saying, "can you just get back to writing about screenwriting?"

I understand the sentiment -- I've grown pretty weary, Lord knows, of hearing Pam Anderson on Peta or George Clooney on deforestation, or Bono on Africa. (Okay, maybe not Bono on Africa.) Blogging screenwriters don't even have their chiseled good looks to fall back on.

But in the case of the Media today, and reportage of Iraq, and Bush -- I think the reason why so many of us freak out every once in a while has screenwriting roots.

In brief: we spend our days trying to come up with narratives that make sense, that don't defy rules of logic - that take questions and follow them to truthful, emotionally satisfying conclusions.

And then we look at the narrative of what's happened in the last couple of years in America and we just can't believe it. Because it's such a bullshit narrative. Never in a million years could we get away with such a shoddy, misleading, ill-researched, counter-intuitive plot.

Yet here we are.

In Salon today, Eric Boehlert has published an excerpt from his new book, Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over For Bush. It's long, and depressing, and quietly devestating. It's so devestating, in fact, that much as I've always enjoyed Boehlert's writing in Salon, I don't think I can bring myself to read the book. It's just too depressing, and I'm not really going to learn anything I didn't already know.

In recounting how the MSM behaved in the leadup to the Iraq war, Boehlert name checks the usual suspects: and with fact after fact, lays bare how completely the U.S. media have abandoned their responsibilities since 9/11.

In short, it's like this: they're so afraid of being labeled "liberal" that they have grossly overcompensated. During the Clinton administration, this meant going with poorly-sourced and false stories that were unfairly critical of the adminstration. In the War President Fictions of Bush the Second, it means overreporting talking points by the administration, and marginalizing any views that challenge the Bush narrative. All this while the media mouthpiece of the Republican Party, the right wing talk shows and FOX News and their ilk, continue the steady drumbeat of criticism that the media has a "liberal bias."

Boehlert's quiet, steady timeline of story comparisons, timelines and, um, oh yes, facts -- puts the lie to the received wisdom at the centre of the media story in America today. From Judy Miller to the Times to the conduct of supposedly "liberal" outlets like CNN and Nightline -- it's just shameful. And, of course, the only way that it can be refuted by the right is through more of the same dirty, sleazy demagoguery.

Which brings us back to Colbert. Make no mistake, Boehlert's article is the Cliff's Notes for what we saw play out in the media last weekend.

The press ignored Colbert -- as they have about far, far more important stories over the last three years. Then, when prodded, step one was to float the idea that near-total omission of talk about Colbert was due to it just not being "newsworthy."

That spin couldn't hold, of course, because it was ridiculous. Someone does a hyper-critical routine three feet from a President who's well known for not hearing critical voices -- that's news. It certainly was news when Don Imus roasted Clinton at the same event a few years before. So... that spin morphed to the current talking point: "he just wasn't funny."

One problem: millions of people have seen the clip now...millions more than ever would have seen it if it was the one day story it deserved to be -- and they disagree. Plus, the sentiments expressed by Colbert are now the sentiments of a majority of the American population.

The optics are crystal clear: the press is completely out of step on this one, with everyone except the hardcore, shrinking rump of the extreme right wing. They may try to peddle the "Colbert crossed the line" meme -- but considering Colbert's actions run in a straight line back to, oh, say, Thomas Paine -- it's just not a theory that will fly for long.

My parents are fiscal and social conservatives. Through my twenties and into my thirties, as a series of Conservative governments ruled Canada, and my Province of Ontario, I would have huge, pointless political fights with my father. I'm actually pretty centrist, but I used to joke that all it took was a visit with my parents to make me come out sounding like Trotsky.

My Dad and I haven't had a political argument in two years.

What changed? Well, my parents, like a lot of retirees, now spend half the year in Florida. And for the last couple of years, they've become horrified by the one-sided slant they see in the news. "Americans," they say, "simply aren't getting the full story."

The Salon article neatly lays out how that came to be.

Funnily enough, I have never been too comfortable with journalism even when I nominally worked in it. (For a laugh, check this internet wayback cache of an article riffed off by Jon Katz when I interviewed him in my previous life.)

All voices have bias. All stories have a slant.

But there are some pitches that you should just not be able to sell.

Interestingly enough, this week in Toronto, there's the huge HotDocs festival going on. The huge rise in the popularity of the Documentary format -- the thirst people have for non-fiction reading these days...take the blogs out of it -- do you think maybe, just maybe, these trends have something to do with people feeling failed by the storytelling coming from the mainstream media?

Just asking.

I have a new favorite phrase

lèse-majesté

Merci, Merci, Monsieur Colbert.

And honestly, how perfect that it's French? (Although derived from Latin, so I guess you can blame the Catholic Church too, if you want, dittoheads.) Go on. Flail.

Blogger Busman's Holiday.

Only one thing I care about today, and it's this:

The forecast calls for Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour on XM.

I dig it.

Muddy Waters first up. Blow Wind Blow, indeed.


You can have Stern. This is the shit.

Now if XMCanada could only find in their hearts to send me an Inno to replace my poor cracked Pioneer Airware.