New Series Alert (For Canadian Viewers)

(UPDATED BELOW.)


I missed this until right now: CTV's long-in production WHISTLER premieres tomorrow night on CTV 10pm ET/PT.

It's a frothy soap set in and among the hoi polloi of B.C.'s fabled ski town -- and host to the 2010 Olympic Winter games, don'tcha know.

I hear there's a murder.

You've been warned!

UPDATE: After reading the Globe & Mail Weekend Review today, there's an article about how WHISTLER is using music licensing to try and leverage popularity. This is a great, welcome development -- and it scoops one of the recommendations I was goingt to make about how we can be savvier.

Interesting article.

UPDATE II: Here's a link to CTV's site and an article on Whistler. Bill M.P.B Cunningham, in his inimitable fashion, comments below:

I'm sorry, but aren't there unit publicity folks on staff with this show? Is that not a component of a Canadian TV show's budget?

It seems absolutely inconceivable to me that the network wouldn't spring for a decent publicist.

If that's the case they deserve everything they get (or don't as the case may be).

CTV has actually been reasonably O.K. with publicizing its original shows -- but anecdotally to me, at least, Whistler has flown under the radar. Now - again, my well-established summer pattern (Because I watch so much TV during the winter) is not to turn on the TV too much right now, so I haven't seen the coverage that Whistler may or may not have received on the entertainment magazines. There were articles in all the tv guides this weekend, and I think I saw a newspaper ad, but since I don't watch much TV, I don't see many promos, so I don't know if they've been running.

That being said, there is the problem of the proximity to the U.S. market. There is a problem that we will never be able to afford the level of promo that U.S. series receive: the question is, is that truth being used to conceal a "give up" mentality?

You tell me. Whistler comes to the N in the USA on June 30. Seen any promos?

I'm still getting massive hits off searches for Falcon Beach on ABC Family...

As for the hiring a publicist thing...well...we're getting ahead of ourselves...

TV Mandarins, Meet The Viewer (Part Two)

This is the second part of my interview with Diane Kristine--let's call her the uberviewer -- from Unified Theory of Nothing Much. For Part One, click here.

DTOS: How much do the following ways of finding out about a show influence your decision to sample a show? You can give a 1 to 10 answer, one being not very
much, 10 being absolutely important -- and if you want to make a comment about how you use these different methods, go ahead.

-On-air promos on the station.

3 - The problem is if I'm not watching shows on that channel in the first place (hello CBC), I can't catch the promos for others. And I don't tend to watch commercial breaks.

-Internet-based articles.

10 - I do most of my news gathering on the Internet, both for newsy news and entertainment news, so this is how I find out about most television shows. For American TV, I get most of my news from tvtattle.com, which gathers stories published elsewhere, and The Futon Critic, which gathers information from the networks. As far as I know, there's nothing like those sites for Canadian TV, so coming across information about a Canadian show is pretty hit and miss.

-Reviews by television critics.

9 - Which isn't to say that a critic has to rave about something for me to tune in. A proper review will give me a hint of whether I might find the show appealing, whether or not the critic does. The reviews I read of Love Monkey, for example, were mixed, but it sounded like something I'd like (and the on air promos looked good, and I like Tom Cavanagh,and I liked the book it was based on).

-National Magazine/Newspaper Articles.

2 - Mostly only if I can find them online. There's the laziness again, but if they want to reach me where I am, that's online.

-Outdoor/Advertising in other media

1 - I've never seen a static ad for a show that's intrigued me enough to decide to watch.

-Word of Mouth/The Water Cooler

3 - Not too important, just because many of the main water cooler shows are ones that tend not to interest me. At work, there's lots of conversation about reality shows, sometimes the heavily serialized ones that keep people guessing. But if I haven't been on board from the beginning, I'm not going to jump in and start watching 24 midway through the season. I did start watching the X-Files after a couple of seasons because so many people I knew raved about it, but that's probably my most recent example of word of mouth that prompted me to watch something. Well, I finally caved and rented Lost, so we'll see how that goes, but that was a combination of several of these factors.

-DVD

5 - I love the opportunity to catch up on shows I missed, though I have to be pretty motivated to want to watch a show in that concentrated way. That's how I watched Six Feet Under and Sex and the City, because at the time I didn’t have access to the channels they aired on.

-Star power

6 - Using a loose interpretation of the word "star" though. I originally tuned in to House because I tend to like medical shows, but also because I was a fan of Hugh Laurie and intrigued at seeing him as an American in a drama. I watched the Grey's Anatomy pilot for the medical show reason and the strong female focus, but also because I liked Sandra Oh. I don't have to recognize the cast to tune in to a show, but I am more likely to check something out because it has an actor I like in it, as long as there are other factors to interest me.

Canadian TV probably suffers from the opposite effect. It sometimes seems like there's three working actors in Canada, and they carry the baggage of any past bad shows they've been in. If I've seen the actor in several cheesy shows, I'm probably less likely to tune in. There's only a few Canadian "stars" I can think of off the top of my head who might make me check out what they're up to – Don McKellar, Rick Mercer, Sarah Polley.

DTOS: What kinds of things attract you to a show? Is there a common thread in the shows you like?

I think so, though it sounds pretty vague when I try to describe it: strong characters, intelligence, sarcastic/witty sense of humour (god, that sounds like I'm describing what I find attractive in the opposite sex). Characters are probably more important than plot to me. I love dramas that are funny, like Picket Fences and Ally McBeal (I had a thing for David E. Kelley shows until I turned on him), or comedies that have strong dramatic elements, like Sports Night or The Office.

Medical shows have a strangely big appeal, considering how squeamish I am. M*A*S*H, St. Elsewhere, early ER, Chicago Hope, Scrubs, House, Grey's Anatomy are/were some favourites. Maybe that's the key to Canadian shows not reaching me – not enough medical shows. But really, I have little interest in American politics and yet The West Wing is probably my favourite show of all time. For me, the best shows transcend their setting to be character studies, and often talk about issues that interest me.

DTOS: How important is it for a show to "make you feel something?" in deciding
whether you'll keep watching it?

Fairly important, though it depends on the type of show. I'm not saying everything has to be deep or touching. I loved Moonlighting for its frothiness. Arrested Development made me laugh and admire its cleverness – I didn't feel anything profound.

DTOS: Do you need to like the characters in the show you watch? Admire them? Or
simply find them compelling?

I don't have to like or admire them completely or even mostly, but I have to find them compelling. I think ER did a good job early on of having characters I disliked, like Weaver and Benton and Romano, but giving them enough shades to their characters that they were intriguing, not just black-hatted villains. Conversely, I wouldn't like House as much if I always agreed with his actions and didn't think he's an outright bastard sometimes. That's what makes him interesting.

And I don't have to relate to the characters. In shows I like, sometimes I do see something of myself in the characters, sometimes it's sort of an anthropological fascination (Sex and the City, for example, or Arrested Development).

But I don't think I could like a show if I disliked all the characters, either. I wouldn't have watched ER if it was all about those three characters.

DTOS: Is your relationship to other art in your city the same as your relationship to homegrown TV, or different? How aware are you of homegrown music, art, theatre, authors, etc.?

I'd never thought about it, but I'm far more clueless about TV than anything else (I mean, culturally speaking). I haven't felt the need to pay close attention to other forms of Canadian culture. They're just there. I've worked and volunteered with arts groups, studied Canadian literature in school. If I want to see theatre, I'm not going to hop a plane to New York for the latest Broadway production. If I want to see an art exhibit, I'm not going to MoMA. If I want to watch TV, I have many, many channels I can watch, mostly American – and most of the Canadian channels show mostly American shows - so Canadian TV is more overshadowed by its competition.

Also, papers like the Georgia Straight cover the local music and arts scene, including movies, so I have an awareness of what's out there, but I haven't noticed television coverage.

Plus there's no culture of appreciation for Canadian TV in non-industry circles. There's a grassroots organization promoting Canadian movies (the First Weekend Club), but as far as I know, no one is championing Canadian television to the public.

That would be a fine line, though, because desperation doesn't sell. If someone tells me I have a duty to watch Canadian television, I'm perverse enough that I'll not want to watch it because of that. It shouldn't be cod liver oil or charity. But I'd like to at least be able to easily find out what's out there and what's interesting about it, so I can decide for myself if I want to watch. Not because it's Canadian, but because it's good.

I think the real key is that, except philosophically, I don't care if something's Canadian or not. And I don't choose my leisure activities based on philosophical principles.

I don't read Ann-Marie MacDonald or Yann Martel or Rohinton Mistry because they're Canadian – I read them because they write books I like. They get prominence in book stores and in arts journalism, so there's no extra effort to dig them up. And they're not fighting any stigma like, oh, the binding is just not as slick as an American book, and we just can't afford the good typefaces like American books can.

Philosophically, I do think it's important to have Canadian talent and stories valued, in every form. But I don't know what makes a story Canadian other than the fact that a Canadian talent writes it. I don't really care where something's set. Toronto's nearly as foreign to me as Tisdale, and I know Seattle better than either of them. You're not going to hook me with overt Canadiana, unless it's something like The Mercer Report. You might hook me with an attitude or character that strikes a chord with whatever it means to be Canadian to me, but that's not likely to be a Mountie and his quirky townspeople.


Thanks, Diane, for taking the time to give us the viewer perspective.

I remember years ago going to the Genie Awards (Canada's Oscars, only, so not...) This is when they were being run on CBC to tragically low ratings, just before they turned to what they are now: a show in French. Anyway, person after person tramped up to the stage and got their awards and berated an audience (who wasn't watching) that "we keep making these great films, but you won't go see them..."

And as I sat down there in the audience, all I could think is, "what enterprise has ever succeeded by blaming their customers for not buying their produt?"

Of course, this is exactly what the music industry is doing right now, too, so maybe we went through the looking glass when I wasn't looking.

In any case, I'm dead sure that -- if the success of Corner Gas, Degrassi, and even Trailer Park Boys says anything, it's that Canadians WILL watch homegrown shows. Let's merely move off that debate point forever, because it's silly and untrue.

But I think Diane's answers (and I know they're simply anecdotal, not a meticulously researched representative sample) can point the way to things we need to do better as an industry in this country.

And that's what I'll talk about next time.

RealitARRGGh! on CBC

I was all set to let the Diane post be my only post today, but once again, the Canadian Media Intelligentsia make this impossible.

The short version is this:

• The CBC has bought the Canadian format rights to the Idol-like show "The One."
• Part of the deal involves broadcasting the American version this summer.
• That means simulcasting it, because that's what we do in this country because otherwise people just watch the US network. This way they get to get all the ad revenue, because they substitute the Canadian signal over the U.S. one on cable.
• The U.S. version will air Tuesdays at 10pm.
• 10pm is when the CBC usually airs "The National," their flagship newscast.
• So for nine Tuesdays, they're going to have to move the news an hour earlier.
• Everybody's freaking out.

Why?

Well, that part isn't so simple. The bleating involves, "moving the news for a REALITY SHOW!" The Usual Subjects are Saying all the Usual Things.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting -- you are officially part of the PROBLEM.

Apparently the Globe & Mail -- the elite newspaper -- has received 50 letters of complaint! Zounds! Zounds! The CBC is back to quaking.

What is the big deal here?

Canada's media cabal are utterly out of touch with the Canadian Public, and always have been.

They get to turn their chardonnay-swilling noses up at reality, cluck their narrative about the CBC "dumbing down" (ie: appealing to the Canada that exists north of Steeles Avenue, West of Forest Hill, East of The DVP and below the 72nd floor of the Ivory Tower.)

But let's look at the reality, again, in short, sharp, easy to understand bullet points:

• 10 p.m. is Prime Time
• The CBC is in trouble because NO ONE IS WATCHING.
• CTV's 11 o'clock news trounces the CBC's 10 p.m. news EVERY NIGHT. (suggesting that maybe 10 p.m. ISN'T actually the best time for news on the main network.)
  
• The News is pre-empted for Hockey anyway, and has been for years (though the Ivory tower hates that too. Guess what, guys -- Don Cherry is a bigger CBC star than Anchor Peter Mansbridge will EVER BE.)
• Performance based reality shows like Idol are the only shows that now draw a broad audience -- because they are pretty much the one kind of show that Parents and Kids watch together.
• By choosing a show that has a little buzz, you may just be building warm fuzzy feelings for CBC Television from multiple generations. For a network with a median age that's grey haired, this is a good thing.
  
• In Canada, the most Heavily-Cabled nation on the planet, if you want to watch the newscast at 10pm for one of those Tuesdays, all you have to do is tune to the CBC's News Channel, CBC Newsworld.
• Let me make that point again...for 90% of Canadians, if you want to watch the news on CBC at 10 -- all you have to do is tune to the news channel.
  

I have never watched more than ten seconds of American or Canadian Idol. I just don't care. But I understand why people watch them, and it is entirely appropriate for a network that is trying to become more important to Canadians to mount a show like this.

There are many things to criticize the CBC for. This is not one of those things.

Stop being such insufferable elitist bastards!

But you know what the worst thing about this story is? It means I agree with The Toronto Sun's Bill Brioux.

I need mouthwash.

TV Mandarins, Meet The Viewer (Part One)

Readers of this blog probably already know that I'm a pretty big fan of Vancouver's Diane Kristine. Diane is a writer for BlogCritics, and often publishes insightful and interesting interviews with writers and showrunners on her blog, Unified Theory of Nothing Much. And during the season, her weekly recaps and analyses of House is a TV writer's reason to keep going: thoughtful, interesting, willing to hash issues of character, and unabashedly written from the perspective of the ultimate TV fan.

She recently returned from covering the annual Banff Television Festival for BlogCritics, which was her first up-close crash course in watching the Canadian TV Firmament mix and match.

I decided to do a little interview with Diane for a few reasons:

• She's an engaged viewer with a solid grounding in the internet. In other words, she's the kind of viewer we're going to be seeing for years to come.
• She's obviously passionate about things she likes. TV is not wallpaper to her. She's loyal to shows she finds interesting -- again, obviously the viewer we say we all want to reach.
• She's admitted that she knows next to nothing about homegrown TV. It's not really on her radar too much.
  

Now, the last part doesn't surprise me. Not at all. And I don't blame her for having that attitutde -- she has the attitude of a majority of people in English Canada.

But while people at Banff buzz around talking about mobisodes and different content platforms, and just before the Canadian industry gets into another orgy of structural talk (A Senate report on the future of the CBC is going to be released on Monday, a CRTC review of the Canadian TV industry is about to start, and TVO (Ontario's PBS) is about to hear the results of yet another "strategic review" of their mandate. I'm reminded of the cartoon about what separates Canadians from other people -- imagine a picture of people walking among clouds with little wings on their backs, and they reach a fork and a sign pointing left says, "HEAVEN" and the sign on the right says "PARLIAMENTARY SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE POSSIBILITY OF THERE BEING A HEAVEN," and, of course, the Canadians are the ones who go right) I wanted to inject a little real into the discussion.

Because it's always felt to me that the one thing that gets left out of the discussion whenever the usual suspects start clucking about TV in this country is the viewer.

Unless the viewer is under fourteen. I've sat in any number of meetings about tween shows and animation, and heard focus group results that break down pretty cleanly what the audience wants and needs, and what they like and don't like. It's impressive to listen to. And in the end when you go out and write the tween and animated shows for kids (one sector of Canadian TV that actually seems to be successful) the first charge is one that I can get behind: entertain them.

I've been working with another writer for one of my shows over the last two weeks, and it's really a treat to have her aboard, because I get to hear questions from her like, "what does the audience know at this point, and why are they going to keep watching?" I love it, because that's how I try to look at TV too -- and because it's so specific. The audience in TV in Canada often seems to be an amorphous, faraway thing. And it shouldn't be.

So I figured: let's go to the source.

Throughout this interview, I'll make comments on Diane's answers (because that's the kind of big mouth bastard I truly am) and also I'm going to emphasize things she said that I find particularly apt.

DTOS: You recently got a look at the belly of the beast, ie: the Canadian television industry up close, at one of the biggest gatherings of the tribe: the Banff International Television Festival. As a neophyte, and a person who identifies most as a viewer, what was your impression of what you saw outside of the "official" sessions?

DK: Someone called it "Banff Camp" ("one time, at Banff camp…") and I thought that was funny and apt. It seemed like a small, chummy club. Some people were part of the club, and some people were trying to get into the club. And then there was me, trying to figure out what this club is all about.

DTOS: Did anything about what you saw or heard from the Canadians puzzle you?

The more I see and hear, the more puzzled (but fascinated) I am. A couple of things:

I think it's great that it's an international festival and doesn't try to downplay the importance of American TV on the world stage. And I’m a big fan of Paul Haggis and David Shore's work and have no problem with people moving to where the opportunities are (though I wish there were more opportunities here). But I thought there was an odd insistence on recognizing their contributions to Canadian television. Television, sure, but Canadian TV? Both of their careers are overwhelmingly American. Nothing wrong with taking pride in the local boys making good, but they are not shining examples of what can be done in the Canadian television industry, unless the message is you should all move south.

Wayne Clarkson from Telefilm Canada made comments about fighting for Canadian content on the international market, while saying he thought Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys might not translate well outside of the country. What's the message there? That we should be aggressively promoting Canadian products … but let's try not to make it too Canadian? That we should care about international markets more than domestic markets? I'd like to think the industry was more worried about making a show I want to see, and finding ways to let me know I want to see it, before they're thinking of how to sell that show to Brazil.

(DMc say: They talk about presales sometimes in TV. This sounds a bit like pre-defeatism. We've tried for years to make ersatz American shows on shoestring budgets, and we're just not good at it -- it's like watching people with no knowledge of English try to act Shakespeare phonetically. There were a lot of old Canadian shows on the air in South Africa while I was there, because, I guess, they were cheap. And the locals mostly didn't know what to make of them. They said they were like American shows, but...off.)

DTOS: You've proven that you are an enthusiastic viewer, and quite appreciative of the time, effort, and craft that goes into making good TV. Yet though you live in Vancouver, you're fairly clueless about what's happening in Canadian TV. Why do you think that is?

Aww, thanks, a compliment before you call me clueless.

I blame it mostly on poor marketing, combined with my own laziness. There's a marketing rule of thumb that someone has to see a message several times in order for it to register. I'm lucky if I hear one mention of a Canadian show – maybe a polite review on CBC or the Vancouver Sun, maybe you mention it on your blog, maybe a promo that's playing while I'm off grabbing a snack. Mostly, nothing.

And while there are reasons for the lack of promotion (like money, and media who know their audience cares more about House than Slings & Arrows), it doesn't matter in the slightest how good those reasons are. Another marketing 101 lesson – you can have the best show in the world, but if I don't know about it, I can't watch it.

I'm inundated with information on American shows whether I want to be or not. I have to work to hear about Canadian shows. I've only recently realized that it hasn't been a conscious decision to spurn Canadian shows because they don't appeal to me. Sometimes that's true - I've seen lots of ads for Godiva's and Falcon Beach and haven't been inspired to watch. But more often, I've never heard of the shows, or if I have, vaguely, I don't know when they're on. I ended up loving the second episode of The Jane Show, and will keep watching, but I've still only seen mention of it on your blog. Thank god for PVRs now - at least I don't have to worry about keeping track of a show once I've decided to watch it.

(DMc say: In fact, let's steal a bit from Diane's own blog to show how big the problem really is.)

I've seen two episodes of The Jane Show now, and while I was lukewarm on the first, I loved the second (in a noirish spoof, Jane gets addicted to television - I can relate. Though maybe not to the noir part of it. My life is more ... blanc). But good grief Global! You don't make it easy to promote. It apparently airs Thursdays at 8:30 in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; 9:30 in BC, Ontario, and Quebec; and 10:30 in Alberta and Atlantic Canada. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue like, say, Tuesdays at 9/8 Central. Plus, the show's website doesn't seem to have been touched since the show premiered. It has a banner saying "Catch the series premiere on Global Thursday night," a blog with two entries, the latest from June 1, and an episode guide that has only the June 1 episode listed.

(DMc say: How can we fix the marketing problem? It's not enough to spend, obviously -- we're not going to be able to overcome the American advantage in that. But marketing is clearly being ignored. Even when a show is heavily promoted, like Falcon Beach, the money is mostly front loaded for that first tune...then the ads drop off the cliff. Promoting Canadian TV doesn't really seem to be much more sophisticated than when my friends promote their FRINGE theatre shows: most time, it's an email, "Please watch my show!!!" Ugh.)

DTOS: What do you think the main barrier is to you watching Canadian shows?

I watch shows that are already on my radar, so the challenge is to get Canadian shows on my radar. For all my devotion to some of the shows I do watch, at this point I don't watch a ton of television and I'm not a channel surfer. Everything's pretty much appointment TV unless I'm watching with friends.

Unlike the US model, shows don't regularly start in September and run until May, so there's not some big media frenzy at the beginning of the season to gain my attention. It seems Canadian shows are on for a few weeks at some random time, then I never hear about them again.

Even now that I've decided I want to actively pay attention to what's going on, I don't know where to turn for one-stop shopping about what's coming up, and I'm not likely to put a lot of sustained effort into it for the long term. Lazy, remember.

DTOS: Do you ever recall watching any Canadian scripted programs? What is your impression of what you watched?

Yes, it's not like I've never seen a Canadian show! And there's been enough good to make me want to seek out more. But enough bad that I'm more skeptical than I'd like to be.

I enjoyed Twitch City, Made in Canada, The Newsroom, which were all sort of odd and vicious with interestingly self-absorbed characters. I'm not sure what that says about me. And I liked Naked Josh and Slings & Arrows, but I've only sporadically had the channel they were/are on - but they have that blend of drama and comedy I'm attracted to.

I've seen bits of things like DaVinci's Inquest and This is Wonderland, but they didn't grab me – I wasn't hooked by the characters, and a lot of our dramas seem so earnest.

I did absolutely love Anne of Green Gables, and watched and liked some of Road to Avonlea out of nostalgia. While I was a complete Anneaholic as a kid, they were also well-crafted shows – the production values seemed better than average for the time, with good acting. Degrassi felt more real than most of the other kids shows on at the time.

Mostly, though, I have memories of cheesiness that have given Canadian shows a bit of taint. I hate to admit it, especially to a Canadian TV writer (except I think you know), but there's a Canadian content stigma lingering in much of the public's perception. There have been shows that might as well have had a disclaimer that they were put on the air to fulfill CanCon regulations, with acting and writing that was pretty terrible. And it's hard to get over that stigma when it's so difficult to find the quality shows.

There have been shows that seemed like cheap knockoffs of American shows – Street Legal wasn't horrible, though I wasn't a fan, but it felt like a watered down version of LA Law. There are the co-productions I don't even know if I should count as Canadian TV – The Lost World, Relic Hunter - that seem like they're trying to appeal to a mass audience by being bland, generic copies of popular concepts.

Then with shows like North of 60, Beachcombers, Trailer Park Boys, Corner Gas, I get the impression us Canadians are all supposed to be quaint, rustic people. I recognize myself and my attitudes in American shows far more often than Canadian ones.

(DMc say: Once again, I'm prompted to remind any Telefilm'ers who may be reading this: the majority of Canada's population lives in an Urban area within 100 KM of the U.S. border.)

Where does Diane get information on TV? What attracts her to a show? How likable do characters have to be?

More tomorrow.

Hey, England, are you really going to stand for this?

I know, I know. I just haven't had anything big to say.

But seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is dumb?

BBC Drops 'Top of the Pops'

Forty-two years after the Rolling Stones sang "I Wanna Be Your Man" on the first broadcast, "Top of the Pops" is being canceled by the BBC. "The time has come to bring the show to its natural conclusion," said Jana Bennett, the BBC's director of television. A BBC statement said that the weekly program, which features a countdown through the pop chart to the No. 1 single of the week, could no longer compete with 24-hour music channels. In its heyday in the 1970's, the show attracted audiences of 15 million, but by 2002 the number had dropped to 2 million. When "Top of the Pops" first went on the air it was scheduled for six episodes, but soon proved so popular that it was given a weekly slot. The final broadcast is scheduled for July 30.

I'm Accepting Apologies Through Sunday.

Well. Well. Well.

According to a new Reader's Digest study, New Yorkers now rank as the most courteous citizens in world, followed closely by the residents of Zurich, and then by Torontonians, who came in third.

Just one point of clarification, though -- most of the time, when Torontonians say "Sorry," they really do mean, "Fuck You."

It's the way it's said, see?

Full article is here.

Did You Work Today?

Seriously. Did you get anything done? Did you write?

I finished an outline and read and did notes on another outline and made notes to revise three drafts. How bout you?

If you did work, then you may bask in the glory of this...

It makes my soul happy.

If you didn't work though...boo...shame...don't click the link.

Sometimes the simplest, most childlike things bring the biggest smiles.

His Ursine Shaft of Doom

How To Write Screenplays. Badly. just gave me one-hour's worth of procrastination joy goodness in two minutes.

I don't have the money or the project to hire Jeremy Slater, but I'm torn between wanting someone to snap him up, and wanting him to continue on like this, growing progressively more bitter, and way, way, way more funny.

Rapebear. Jesus Galoot.

Cheer Up, Angry Writer-san!

Are you feeling a little put upon? Some kind of pressure? Like no one's listening? Maybe you feel that you're being unfairly blamed for things that have nothing to do with you? Or maybe that deadline of yours was unreasonable in the first place?

Well, whatever you do, don't tense up your wrists. That could lead to carpal tunnel syndrome or some other sort of repetitive stress injury. That's deadly for a writer.

You know what you should do? Relax a little bit, and learn from one of the world's oldest cultures.

I heart YouTube. I really, really do.

Getting Lucky?

I've been working flat out (doing different things for the same project) for fourteen days now. I'm knackered, and the last couple days I've felt like I've been starting with the pitcher less than full. So I'm downshifting a bit just for today, Father's Day, happy to all of you out there with rugrats and all.

In the meantime I want to throw open a question to any readers of the blog who've watched Lucky Louie on TMN or HBO. Opinions?

Three camera with laughtrack, swearing and sex. Yea or nay? I admit I laughed out loud a couple times. Thoughts?

Robson Arms Blogs!

Robson Arms is a mostly-worthy half-hour comedy-drama set in and around an apartment building in Vancouver. I found it to be a little odd, because the tone radically shifted in some episodes -- but it was very well written and acted, by talented and familiar Canadian faces.

They're shooting Season Two now, and there's a blog that's chronicling the process. Good for them -- getting it out there without futzing with the gatekeeper!

More on Rumours the CBC series...

I would link to the article in the Toronto Star that mentions it, but The Star has done some weird thing now that linking to their stuff is hard -- so screw em.

The new info contained in the article was basically this:

• Mary Walsh's Hatching, Matching and Dispatching is getting a new season, but Colin Mochrie's Getting Along Famously has been cancelled.
• Rumours, the show that's set in a Toronto Life - like magazine for women, is going to be Executive Produced by my old boss, Moses Znaimer. That should be interesting, at least. The show stars David Haydn-Jones as a sports journalist who needs a job, Amy Price-Francis as the editor and Jennifer Dale as the publisher.

Moses, ever the raconteur, is quoted as saying the show is going to be the anti-Corner Gas. Let's hope he doesn't mean in quality.

Moses, baby, you should really give me a call.

Heh heh.

I'm The Guy In Corner Quietly Judging You

Todd wrote something on South Dakota Dark that's kind of messing me up.

The Wizard Was Right

In response to my comments about CBC moving The Hour to their main network, writer PEI writes:

I love strombo.
He's everything you said he is.
fuck the writers, I wouldn't mind him just shooting the shit on tv for awhile just talking about whatever he wants to talk about cause he's that informed and intelligent to do it.
Just like Jon stuart [sic] or Colbert, I mean sure having 20 writers help but i don't believe it's truely necessary

I graduated PEI's comment to a post here for a very good reason, which I'll get to in a moment. First let's deal with the factual landscape he's talking about.

If everything is humming smoothly, it should look like that: like George is just being George. Like Jon Stewart is just being Jon. That's the magic of TV. You should believe that everything is just coming off the top of his head, and that the person looks good because they are just that naturally erudite and informed.

The reality, of course, is very different. No matter how informed or funny someone is, to get to a certain level and produce a good product takes an enormous amount of work. A standup comic hones and hones the same twenty minutes of material over and over and over, to a pinpoint delivery so that when they appear in front of an audience, there's the illusion that everything they're saying has just occurred to them, and you're the first crowd ever to hear it. In reality, if you watch films like Comedian, the Documentary Seinfeld did about his return to live performing, you can see that it's a painful, painful, long and labored process for a comic to build five minutes, then ten minutes, then fifteen, and so on.

In a large city like Toronto or L.A. or New York, one of the perks is that occasionally you can see professional comics working out new material on stage at new material nights. Some jokes bomb, some fly, and you can see them struggling to figure out if something didn't work because of construction or because it's just not as funny as they thought it was. This is a rare chance to see all the gears working -- and it can be both very instructive, and seriously humbling.

Now, add TV and five nights a week, and I don't care HOW talented the person is. If they're going to seem like they're on top of it all, they're going to need more brains. More brains to research. More brains to write jokes. More brains to keep the whole ball of wax moving. Take away the brains, and the wheels come off the train.

PEI, you may not be old enough to remember, but there was a time several years ago when any audience member could see for themselves how wrong you are about how great it was to see a guy like George " just shooting the shit on tv for awhile just talking about whatever he wants to talk about cause he's that informed and intelligent to do it."

During the last Writers' Guild strike, production shut down on films and TV series, but also on shows like Letterman, and I believe (as he was still hosting then) Johnny Carson. After a few weeks or a month or so off the air, Letterman returned to the air. Carson did too, but I wasn't watching him as much, so my memories of that aren't as clear.

Because Letterman didn't have his writers, and he couldn't replace them (that would be scabbing, and he, like every big network show, was a Guild signatory) the only way he could return to the air was to write everything himself, or he just had to wing it, as you suggest George is talented enough to do.

Though it was sometimes thrilling to watch, and it was sort of interesting in an intellectual way because you knew he really was making it up as he went along (kind of like the feeling you get when you watch Improv comedy, an art form to be appreciated rather than really loved) the fact remained that it wasn't really the Letterman show. It was a pale imitation. Less funny, less full of the stuff that made Letterman great in his heyday. Paradoxically, with the loss of the constructed reality of writers who made Dave seem effortless and off the cuff each night - the show seemed somehow less real.

"Late Night With David Letterman" was pierced by a labor dispute, and suddenly anyone could see that the show that looked so natural, so off the cuff, was anything but.

Similarly, I know that one of the great appeals of Reality Shows is that it looks like all this crazy stuff is just happening out of the blue!

But the reality of reality is that a lot of producers and yes-- writers -- are working hard behind the scenes to manipulate events, shape the material, and engineer situations and conflicts. It takes a lot of work to make everything look so spontaneous. One of the biggest looming fights in Hollywood is the fight to try and organize to get reality tv covered under the auspices of the Writers Guild of America.

So okay, PEI's wrong. So what? Did you really just reproduce his comment to take a couple of blog-swings at the poor guy?

No. Exactly the opposite.

I reproduced this because I think it should be instructive to writers. Remember when the Wizard called out, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?" Well, you're seeing that in the comment above. And it's fine. Wait, no. It's more than fine. It's exactly what we should be working for.

See, if you're going into screenwriting because you want the world to know your brilliance, give it up. It's not going to happen. So much of what we do succeeds only if we make it seem effortless. We are never going to get the general public to understand what we do. We are never going to change the perception that everyone could write if they had the time or that everyone has a great idea for a movie or a TV series.

In almost every case I can think of, writing for the screen that calls attention to itself is self-indulgent, and actually hurts the cause of quality. Aaron Sorkin's one of my favorite writers, but even he occasionally gets caught doing that extra-smarty-pants victory lap. And that -- just like a bad prop or a bad accent or terrible acting or a stupid camera move, can pop you right out of the action.

When we're really cooking, really, really cooking, the audience should not perceive that we're there. That we were ever there. Especially in things like variety, or talk shows, it's in our best interest to make sure that guys like Letterman or Conan or Strombo are just that funny off the top of their heads. Mike Bullard (a once-nightly talk show host in Canada) is a funny guy. But his show failed. Why? Because they did it on the cheap. Not enough talent -- not enough resources. Not enough writers or producers. Not enough material. The seams showed every night.

It's our job to make it seem like Clint Eastwood or Jay Leno or Craig Ferguson would be brilliant and funny and informed even if there weren't writers or researchers behind them.

So that means there's a lot of silly fights that we shouldn't waste our energies on. In Canada, there's a group that keeps saying we need to get the public onside in the fight for increasing Canadian content.

Never gonna happen. Why should it? They don't care. Nor should they. They're the audience. Don't blame them -- they just want to be entertained. Trying to make them more aware of what you do is quixotic at best, toxic at worst. They will never care about the plight of the artist as much as property taxes or schools or making sure that the city isn't going to dump garbage in their backyard. It's a waste of energy. This is not a path that should be pursued.

Similarly, all the stick that Ted and Craig take over at Artful Writer about "raising writer's profiles." Hooey. You know what? I'm never going to get a million hits a day on this blog and I wouldn't want to, either. If I wanted to, I could always put up fake nudes of Jessica Alba. It's not the goal toward which any of us should strive.

That being said...

The point I made in that column below is still valid. Just because the public doesn't know what goes into making Strombo look brilliant (and don't get me wrong, he is brilliant. A natural interviewer, very sharp, very informed, and quick as hell -- he just isn't brilliant enough to carry it on his shoulders because NO ONE IS THAT BRILLIANT) doesn't mean we should let the people who should know better off the hook.

Stop chasing the approval of the public. You don't want them paying attention to the man behind the curtain.

Focus your energies on the people pulling the strings.

CBC Announces Its Fall Lineup

The first from the new regime. It's not anything particularly bold, but neither is it exactly more of the same.

The full announcement is here.

Some highlights:

The Hour, hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos, has been added to the main network at 11 p.m. and will be developed into more of a late-night talk show with a studio audience. It remains on Newsworld at 8 p.m.

I always thought The Hour was not as good a show as George Stroumboulopoulos was a host. Strombo is a good, solid, smart interviewer when he wants to be. He's dynamic and informed, and passionate. So far so good.

But here's the thing. Now we're talking a nightly show that's on every single night, over the air, after the news. So what does "developed into more of a late-night talk show" mean?

If anyone -- anyone at all -- was paying attention, I would ask them to watch Letterman, Leno, Kimmel, Conan, Ferguson, Stewart, or Colbert tonight. Check those end credits. Read the names. Read the number of writers...producers...researchers.

Canada always tries to do this kind of thing on the cheap, not just with less resources and less people -- that's a given -- but with so many less people that it's just stupid. You can't port a show from Newsworld to the main network unless you're actually going to pump something into it. Half assed won't do.

I'm not holding my breath -- 20 writers on the Daily Show...you could hire five or six at least on CBC and maybe, maybe get somewhere. But I bet if they have two they'll be lucky.

What about drama? What's new?

The new series are Intelligence, about present-day Canadian criminal and intelligence cases, and Rumours, a comedy about modern life inside a Toronto women's magazine.

Chris Haddock, the creator of Da Vinci's Inquest, is the writer behind Intelligence and Da Vinci star Ian Tracey plays a gangster who agrees to turn informant.

If they were smart, they'd sell Intelligence like MI-5. I shudder a bit about Rumours, but I guess we have to see how they execute it.

Jozi-H, the long-delayed Canada-South Africa copro set in a hospital in Joburg, South Africa, will also air this fall. I've got high hopes for this one.

There's also a docudrama series about the October Crisis, which will probably be shown once then pulled for offending separatists in Quebec, and a bunch of reality shows that we who support the CBC wish them well on -- but that I don't really care about very much.

All in all, baby steps. Baby steps. They want to bring people back to CBC. Will this work? Dunno. But I've got my fingers crossed. Leaving broadcasting entirely to the shopping budgets of the private nets doesn't serve Canadian viewers very well, either.

I Had a Message Once, But I Erased It

The Mad Pulp Bastard Philosopher, Bill Cunningham, has got himself a manifesto of sorts.

Now Bill, though he works in a different area of the business than I do, has got his head screwed on straight in a way that a lot of writers I meet, don't.

Tremble at his manifesto, a little taste of which I reproduce below:

There are so many "filmmakers" out there who are trying to put out an important message that they lose sight of why they are making a film in the first place. That's not to say that you can't have a message in your movie, it's just that's not the primary reason to make a movie.

The primary reason to make a movie is to entertain people by telling a story using the medium of film.

Amen, brother. It's the same with TV, of course. The problem is that in Canada, there's a whole level of mandarin and jury and culturecrats who practically pee themselves over the message.

Bill, it may surprise you to know that I have sat in front of people with (such as it is) power in the Canadian film/tv biz and heard the following things that go counter to your rules:

In a meeting where I was close, so close to getting a film made of my screenplay, then they got cold feet, and the stated excuse was: "we don't know what genre it is."

"It's a comedy."

"Yes, but what else?"

"You mean, what is it trying to say?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. Exploitation is bad? I was kind of just focused on making it funny."

"Yes, well, it is very funny. It's great. But we're a little concerned that once the audience laughs at the jokes, there really isn't much there."

(Stunned silence)

"Uh. Once they finish laughing at the jokes, aren't they supposed to be in their cars driving home?"

(sound of meeting going downhill.)

I have no problem with someone passing on something because it doesn't work, or because they don't like it, or because it doesn't meet their needs. I am not one of those writers who will polish a turd, and try to sell substandard work.

But if you tell me that my comedy is funny but you're passing because you don't feel it has enough of a message, then my head explodes. Splat.

Anecdote 2:

I was in a meeting, and amidst the handwaving said, "Well I think we can all agree that the most important thing is not to be boring."

The answer?

"Well, wait a second...not necessarily."

(Sound of meeting going downhill)

If you write for the screen at all, go read Bill. Pulp, TV, Film -- it's all the same. ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE NOT SELF-FINANCING. (Hey Canadians: that includes taxpayer money too.) Yes, yes, Your message may impress execs or Telefilm bureaucrats or Film Majors or even D-Girls with beautiful skin, but do not be one of those writers.

We need our own hippocratic oath, we screenwriters.

"First, we entertain."

Live From Train 78 to Toronto, It's the Banff Guest Blogger wrap-up!

(10:37 p.m. This post was edited for clarity)

I'm really tired, and the beverage cart does not nearly have enough vodka. There comes a point in the scouting process where it just feels like wandering around. You know, like a college Saturday night when you've just had a great big hoolie.

Saw some interesting things, and talked to some interesting people in Detroit and Windsor. They've helped me to see my project in a new way, which is always a plus. There have been some shifts and some course corrects, and a bit o' inspiration just from walking the streets and seeing what's what.

The other great thing about getting out of the writing room and out from behind the computer, of course, is the fact that you get to interact and hear some really interesting things from people like Production Designers and A.D.'s. In production, I find it helps to be "idea neutral." A good idea is a good idea -- no matter who comes up with it. I'm continually surprised when I find people who don't work that way, but they are legion.

But boy, am I tired.

Anyway, enough about me.

My anonymous Banff blogger sends this final dispatch...and just to be contrarian, I'll pop in with little comments o'my own.

David Shore was asked about network censorship, and said there has been very little from Fox on House. But he recounted a story about working on Traders, where there was a line in the pilot (written by Hart Hanson of Bones, which Shore had rewritten – he thinks the line was Hanson's): "We should nail his balls to the wall, you should pardon the expression" or something like that. A producer asked Shore if the network had had any concerns with that line, but they hadn't objected to it. Producer person told Shore to call them up to ask them about it, to make sure, and while Shore figured that was a sure way to make them object, he reluctantly did. He said after waiting on hold for 5 minutes while a room full of execs discussed it, his contact came back and said they thought "you should pardon the expression" sounded too Jewish. Shore said he didn't fight that battle and changed that part of the line.

I love that anecdote like a cold beer on a hot day.

Terry David Mullgan was the interviewer for Shore's Master Class, and read out Shore's quote from the Maclean's interview about American TV being higher quality because writers are in control, versus films and Canadian TV, where they're not. He agreed with himself, saying while there are bad writers, and talented directors and producers, the best chance of having a cohesive vision of the story is by having a writer in charge. At the end, an audience member said Canadian TV has changed since Shore left, and that writers are more in control, and pointed to the success of shows like ReGenesis and ... other shows I haven't seen. He apologized if his comments were out of date (though reading this Dead Things blog, I'm not so sure ...).

Sometimes in Canadian Television it helps to read between the lines. Writer-Showrunners in Canada are still seriously, seriously, seriously in the minority. That's as much to do with the fact that writers aren't trained up with the skillsets they need to run a show, as it is with the particular faults of anyone who is running any individual show. (I call this the no-fault defense.)

When you have enough shows that people can rise through the ranks, taking on greater responsibilities as they go, and eventually graduate to showrunner, then that's one thing.

As I've said before here, lots of times people get shows here who really don't have the experience to run them. And sometimes they're listened to too much. And sometimes they're listened to not at all. The fact that there are Producers who don't know writing really well running things can sometimes just be a function of experience. You won't get really well written shows if the show isn't run by a writer, but if the writer isn't someone who understands production, your show will never get finished. So what do you do then?

Of course, the thing that makes it worse is this old chestnut: everyone thinks their ideas are great and beautiful snowflakes; everyone thinks they can write. And everyone's willing to entertain auteur Directors in Canada, but beyond Haddock and Finkleman, there really are no auteur writers.

There may be five really great writing showrunners in Canada, but I'm pretty sure there aren't ten.

Shore's point is true, but it presupposes that there's a way to rise through the ranks. If you don't have that, then what's the solution, really?

Is the situation getting better? Yes.

Fast enough? Mmmm. Mmmm.

Sorry, they just brought Pringles.

Ali LeRoi, co-creator and showrunner of Everybody Hates Chris, reiterated what many other people said: "You can't write a hit show, but you can write a good show." He said a convergence of events have to take place to make it a hit, and for EHC, part of that was the dearth of good comedies, especially on UPN – in fact, he cited the dearth of anything good on UPN, so the publicity that came from appearing in an unlikely place: "It's a good show on a network that usually puts out piles of shit – that gains attention." He compared it to a nice girl coming out of a whorehouse.

About getting notes from the network, he said you "can't dismiss people who are giving you money to fulfil your dreams. It's rude." But he talked about the frustration of having execs try to make a script funnier, saying he knows how to make people laugh, and it's a skill like being a pilot. So when a plane's going down, you don't get a focus group together to see what to do about it.

He says a good sitcom has to have a central premise about conflict. With EHC, it's that Chris never gets what he wants. With Cheers, it was Sam Malone wanting Diane Chambers (and then Rebecca) but still wanting his former glory of being a famous baseball player/womanizer. He says Joey failed because there was no conflict.

Ouch. He's right. And no wonder he's running a show about the alter ego of Chris Rock. I an see why the two would get along.

***

Howard Davine of Touchstone Pictures (ABC) talked about costs per episode: $2.5 million per episode for a new network show, $1.8 million or less for a cable show. He said Bill Carter's book Desperate Networks was pretty accurate when it came to the story of Lost. That pilot costs something like $15 million to make, but they figured it was a worthwhile risk. He said if they had hard and fast policies or caps, Lost and Desperate Housewives wouldn't have happened. Warner Brothers giving away Desperate Housewives might have been a huge mistake in hindsight, but Davine said ABC's rejection of CSI was probably a worse decision.

He is annoyed at the sense that the three camera sitcom is dead, and single camera sitcoms are preferred, because he says the audience doesn't really know the difference – they just want to see something funny, and single camera comedies are more expensive. He said producers and writers are pitching what they think the networks want, and they think they want single camera now.

He gave stats like of more than 100 scripts in development, only 25 pilots were made.

But by far, my favorite anecdote from my guest blogger was this one:

I went to a product placement session that had what seemed to me a contentious premise, but there wasn't a lot of time for audience questions – some seemed very on board with it, but I heard rumblings that suggested some comments grated. One woman who represented an agency that puts together product integration deals for her advertising clients said that if writers complain about having to write specific products into scripts, and want to get more money for doing it since it's entering copywriting territory, they're going to be talking themselves out of a job. The moderator, who seems to work with a similar company, said he's doing writers a favour by bringing them ideas to integrate into their scripts.

I spent four years doing stories on advertising for a show called Media Television. I spent many, many hours talking to lots and lots of people involved in advertising and marketing. Some of them, of course, are nice people with mortgages and wives and husbands and adorable kids.

And some of them are Advertising Types.

And here's the thing: Advertising types really, really, really do think like this. Have you seen Thank You For Smoking yet? It's like that. Seriously. That movie was a documentary. If you take away the piles of money they make, it is this kind of attitude, I believe, that is the only thing that keeps true Advertising Types from fulfilling their destiny. When they go home each night and stare at their evil hack faces in the mirror, it's this attitude alone that keeps them from blinking through their tears and actually finding the courage to use that gun that they've got stuffed in their mouth. The one they take out of the drawer every night as they taunt themselves in their hacky, hacky bathroom mirror.

Go on, coward. Do it. Do it.

Paul Scheuring of Prison Break said he worked in features for 10 years prior to going to TV with PB, and he and his writing partner were paid to write 15 screenplays, of which one got made – A Man Apart. He called it a dreadful movie, and the worst of the 15.

Typical. Oh so typical. Everyone has a credit they hate. The day when it drops off your resume is the happiest day of your life.

Thanks again, guest blogger!

I Hear A Symphony

I've always known that Hitsville U.S.A was a house.

To be more accurate, several houses. Berry Gordy Jr. bought eight of them on West Grand Blvd in Detroit, Michigan, throughout the 1960's. He and his family lived in an apartment above Studio A. Studio A is a room in a house. Yes, there's the drumkit that Stevie Wonder played. There's the Steinway you hear on all the recordings. There's a fifty pound gown that Diana Ross wore, and the Temptations Jackets. You can stand under the great hole in the ceiling and hear the echo -- the echo that provided the "Motown sound" back in the era before studio trickery could make Britney Spears sound like Caruso.

Actually, Britney Spears actually sounds disturbingly like Caruso now that I think about it. Oh God. Best to file that.

To be there on that simple street, to look at those houses, to hear the story about Diana Ross answering the phones, and Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson helping to stuff 45's into sleeves; to stand over the pianos marked with the letters of the notes, so that if you picked out a tune and couldn't write music, you could at least write it down so that the Funk Brothers could replicate it...well, all that is pretty damn inspiring.

But not so much as something someone says in the video you watch as you sit just outside that studio at the Motown Historical Museum.

This is a paraphrase:

Gordy decided that Motown music was about telling stories -- simple stories that regular people could relate to.

I'd never thought of it quite that way before...but if you go back to those golden age Motown hits, from 1961 through to 1972, they are all story songs. The narratives are about dancing in the Street, or stopping before you break my heart, or begging the postman to bring a letter, or lamenting where love went, or even a mother warning her son that he better shop around.

They told stories. And maybe -- just maybe -- that's why those Motown songs were the first thing I remember hearing as a child that totally fascinated and enthralled me. The same way country music did when I was a kid in Florida.

(Go on, snicker. But I'm betting 95% of you know every Effing word of Coal Miner's Daughter or The Gambler.)

Motown songs are all character driven stories. The singers' personalities are the character -- but those lyrics -- they all go somewhere. It's why they endure. It's why we venerate those songs still. It's why those songs are hard to overplay, harder than a lot of other songs that radio has systematically ruined through the years.

Simple stories that regular people could relate to.

Soon as I get back home, I've gotta go find my old 45's.

Paul Haggis at Banff

I've got a dispatch from a special anonymous guest blogger who took in Paul Haggis' talk at Banff yesterday. Here's what they said:


Paul Haggis was funnier than I expected, for the guy who wrote a couple of
the most depressing films ... not to mention Facts of Life. Very
self-deprecating sense of humour, used kind of as a way of pointing out that
he's not exactly the poster boy for how to succeed in Hollywood (except
maybe the talent thing). He makes it sound like he succeeded in spite of
himself – he's terrible at pitching, gave away his services for free at the
beginning of his career, tells producers he's probably not the right person
for the job, and talked about Crash being all Act 2, no Act 1 or 3.

He started on sitcoms, though that wasn't where his interests lay, after
offering to cowrite for free a script for One Day at a Time, for a writer
whose regular partner wasn't available and the script was due in a few days.
He didn't get money or credit, but the writer offered to give him something,
so he picked a ratty chair, which he still has in his bedroom and will never
get rid of it. He suggested (joking? Not joking?) that giving away your
writing is a good entrance into the biz ("my edge was that if I wasn't good,
I'd be free"). But that writer told the producers he'd cowritten the script
and it led to his work on Diff'rent Strokes (somewhere in there was a story
of him trying to persuade producers that he wasn't a sitcom writer, that all
his specs were psychological thrillers, but if they wanted to hire him
anyway, OK). He talked disparagingly of the work he did on sitcoms, but with
affection at the actual time of getting paid to do what he loved and getting
into the business. He moved to thirtysomething after asking the creators why
they wanted to hire him, since all his experience was in sitcoms ("I think
you're making a mistake, but if you want to hire me, OK.")

He said he pitched EZ Streets as "It's about moral ambiguity," then when the
studio wasn't convinced, said he was going to go write it and show them what
he meant. They tried to dissuade him but he did it and they bought it. He
wrote what's now going to be The Black Donnellys soon after that failed, but
it took 10 years (and I'm guessing, two Oscars) for NBC to get interested.
He said he's great at critically acclaimed disasters, and said The Black
Donnellys will likely "fail brilliantly."

At his In Conversation With session, he said a nightmare about seeing his
tombstone engraved with "Paul Haggis: creator of Walker, Texas Ranger"
inspired him to go into independent film to wipe away that credit with
something more substantial. With Crash, he knew he wanted to direct it
because he felt it had the potential to go very wrong. Studios rejected the
script anyway, and he went through several independent producers before he
found anyone willing to let him direct.

He said he wrote the script very quickly, just taking character moments and
building on them until they bumped into other characters, and not worrying
about plot. Though he wrote it quickly, he did a year of research as he and
Bobby Moresco revised the script. He conceived of it as a TV show at first,
it was rejected by CBS and HBO, and he decided to do it as a movie, but
didn't know how to plot it as a movie. The scene between Matt Dillon and
Loretta Devine as the HMO worker, where he tells her about his father, who
was a great man who lost his job and family when he lost a contract due to
affirmative action policies, came from hate mail Haggis got while working on
Family Law. ("I always respond to hate mail. I don't respond to anything
else. Canadian, you know. 'I'm really sorry, it will be better next
week...'")

He mentioned his unusual experience with Million Dollar Baby, his first film
with Clint Eastwood, which was filmed with no revisions to the first draft.
Haggis said about Eastwood's decision to do that: "I lost respect for him
immediately." He pointed out that it's possible Eastwood is just lazy. But
more seriously, he said that on Unforgiven, Eastwood had worked with writer
David Peoples on draft after draft, decided they were making it worse, and
went back to the original draft – which Peoples didn't know until he saw it.

He said people forget that it was kind of a sweet, funny story until the
twist that hit audiences upside the head: "I just like fucking with
audiences." He said that applied to EZ Streets and now The Black Donnellys
too – just when the audience loves a character, he gives them a reason to
hate them, and vice versa.

He recently finished Flags of our Fathers for Eastwood and Spielberg, after
telling them in the initial meeting that he thought he had about a 10%
chance of making a script out of the original book. (Apparently Spielberg
wasn't quite as sanguine about Haggis's neuroses as Eastwood, but Eastwood
convinced him Haggis was their man.)

He also did the rewrite on the upcoming James Bond film, which he says might
ruin the franchise for everyone for all time. When they called him to do it,
he says he wanted to ask if they had the right person, and what the fuck
were they thinking (I think we can guess his favourite swear word, if he
ever makes it on James Lipton). He said he wanted to explore how Bond became
an assassin and a misogynist, and took on the project because "I like to do
things that scare me."

His writing process: go to office, answer emails, make phone calls, see if
there are any more emails, around 1 p.m. he starts to feel guilty so starts
to write, but has to check to see if he's got any new emails. It's all about
planned procrastination: "guilt is what drives me." He said Bobby Moresco is
an ideal writing partner, he loves writing with him, because he's "one of
the most annoying human beings on the face of the earth" – he says you need
the sand in your shoe to make you better.

At the awards lunch earlier in the day, Haggis had mentioned that EZ Streets
is the show he's most proud of, and it set a record for brevity, premiering
on a Sunday and being cancelled on Thursday. He worked for 8 days rewriting
the pilot for Walker, Texas Ranger, which gave him a co-creator credit, and
the show ran for 10 years. "The gods of television are cruel motherfuckers,"
he said.

Hmm. I think it's time to change the headline quote on this blog.

Thanks, Guest Blogger! Enjoy the mountain air!

Getting Banffed and Taking in the Motor City.

Will Dixon is blogging about the Banff TV festival, as is Alex. Interesting bits from Will, especially, about Day One.

As for me, I'm sitting outside right now at a very nice restaurant in Detroit. I've split off from the rest of the people doing the scout for Across The River... I'll spend some time at the Detroit Historical Museum and Hitsville USA this afternoon -- (call it research...no..really.) Then I'll be doing something I never thought I'd do -- I'm going to take a taxi across an international border. Crazy!

This morning I got to stand on the pitcher's mound at poor, stately, sad, derelict Tiger Stadium. I could tell you why -- but that would spoil the surprise. (Actually, I'm not even sure I know 100% why yet. But it sure was cool being there.)

So to all you people trolling the flop sweated environs of the smoking patio at the Banff Springs, especially you gentle little lamb CFC types --

--this TV gig, if you persevere?

Cool beans.