Why Vera Farmiga Makes Me Uneasy

In today's New York Times Magazine, Lynn Hirschberg uses the case of Vera Farmiga to explore the dearth of female-driven lead roles. Farmiga certainly sounds like a special talent. I'd never heard of her before, but I'll certainly look out for her now.

But the case Hirschberg makes is the uneasy thing. Because if her thesis is to believed, the movie business' new focus on action and comedy and marginalization of female-driven lead roles to romantic comedies means that an actress like Farmiga doesn't have the chance to develop a career like, say, Meryl Streep.

As recently as the 80’s, women were often the sole stars of mainstream studio movies like “Terms of Endearment,” “Moonstruck” and “Out of Africa.” For years before, from Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind” to Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn in countless roles to Jane Fonda in “Klute” or Diane Keaton in “Annie Hall,” actresses carried films to box-office success. But today, women in mainstream films more often populate the margins as girlfriends, mothers and wives, often with stereotypical personalities. Meryl Streep’s challenging role as a Polish holocaust survivor in “Sophie’s Choice” in 1982, to pick perhaps the most famous example, is an increasingly distant memory.

For the most part at the studios, there are now two genres available to women in leading roles: romantic comedies (which made Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon into huge box-office stars) and women-in-peril films (think of Jodie Foster in the mega-hits “Flightplan” and “Panic Room”). Occasionally, women can be cast in starring roles as action heroes, as with Angelina Jolie in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” And it’s true that Oscars can be won by playing dramatic real-life characters: Witherspoon won the Academy Award for Best Actress this year for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line,” and Nicole Kidman won in 2003 for her incarnation of Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.” But it says something about the changes in the industry that when Sissy Spacek won the Best Actress Oscar in 1981 for portraying the musician Loretta Lynn in “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” she was the lead in the film, while Witherspoon was playing a secondary character in “Walk the Line.”

Streep is invoked several times in the article, and for any fan of dramatic films, the cant is increasingly depressing. Whatever else anyone says about Streep, she's certainly carved her own way through the business with a consistently interesting energy and edge. If all we're to get from now on is Lindsay Lohan and Scarlett Johannsson, the form may indeed be in trouble.

Articles like these, of course, tend to reinforce my own bias -- a bias that's dealt with late in the article, when it's discussed how the roles for female actors are far more complex on television, where women drive viewership, something that apparently they don't do anymore at the multiplex.

But Hirschberg's Vera thesis, to me, raises other questions that roil beyond the scope of the article. And they're kind of connected to the whole TV vs. Movies debate.

See, Hirschberg views things only within the lens of the female role, but part of what disturbs me is the fact that a lack of complexity in female parts mirrors a lack of nuance and complexity overall, for one specific reason: men are at their most complex when they're dealing with women.

So if the wife or the girlfriend role is one-dimensional, then the meat of everything takes a hit. That's not just in films, it's in TV too.

Let's take a look at some of those better roles for women. I'm hooked on Brotherhood right now simply because I'm desperate to see where the relationship betwee Michael Caffey and his mother, and Tommy and his wife, end up. Both these actresses approach the role with a certain ferociousness and ambiguity that ripple off questions not just about how they will react, but how the men in thrall to them will react as well.

For all the noise made about Tony Soprano this past season, almost every interesting moment on the Sopranos this year, for me, was about Carmela.

And lets face it, Chloe O'Brien is more interesting than Jack Bauer, any day of the week. Kate is more interesting than Sawyer and Jack put together. And I would go so far as to say though Cuddy could sure use a kick in the kiester, Dr. Cameron, without the showy theatrics, is still what I'm watching in just about every scene she shares with House.

The difference is, at least when we talk about television, that most people I know that the skinny wife with the fat guy or the woman in peril is an easy trope that doesn't have anything to do with reality. But because the stereotype that men don't discuss anything emotional about their lives (bullshit in every guy I know, but whatever) is so pervasive, and because the audience for TV is so heavily female, just about the only way to get at male complexity these days is by exploring it through female characterizations, and how the men respond to them. When we lose that device, we lose an important way in to the inner life of all our characters.

But part of the reaction against the female role problem in films, and the retrenchment in TV, is that often there's a contentment with turning things around. We can let Jack be one-dimensional. We can feed into the stereotypes of how men are, either by falling back on shopworn complaints women have about men's "inability to confront their feelings" or whatever, or by creating attractive fantasies for women (the utterly feminized men of Grey's Anatomy, for example.)

This is not to say that every female role should be viewed through how it affects male characters. That's silly. But human interaction is complex. To reduce one side of it is to reduce all of it. And to react to that reduction by retreating into equally biased and false fantasies is to short-circuit the possibility of truth onscreen, in any way.

I don't know if that makes sense. But there it is. The lack of complex female roles isn't just hurting actresses chances for careers: it's hurting storytelling.

Keith Olberman, Patriot

This is a remarkable commentary.

How ultimately disheartening is it that it had to be made at all?

Good Night and Good Luck, indeed.

November.

How To Open

It's on my mind lately, of course, since I'm poring over how to introduce characters to an audience in my own show. But it does bear mentioning that I plugged in my (purchased, Diane, some of us pay our way) copy of House, Season 2, and watched the Q&A with the cast, and was reminded of one of the first things House ever said onscreen:

I'm paraphrasing here: but it's something like this:

Brain tumor, she’s gonna die, boring.

There you go. House in a sentence.

How your character enters the script IS that character.

No Fool You

So I just got through watching the Season 3, and Series Finale, of Slings & Arrows.

Sublime.

When I grow up, I want to do TV like that.

Just Cause It Buzzes, Doesn't Mean You Get To Milk The Bee

That didn't take long.

A couple of comments and four more emails besides, in various levels of pique, taking me to task on why I would write about a show that had great buzz and not name the show.

Well, chickens, that's buzz. That's how it starts.

Seriously, this blog isn't Aint It Cool News. I'm not into revealing early drafts of scripts or spoiler stuff or subverting the marketing machine for a show. Even in a country where marketing is a problem.

The reality is that the screening I went to last night was not a public event. It was a cast and crew screening. I believe that distinction is important. I am not charged with, nor is it my place to kick off the publicity for this show or any other. If it was a public screening, maybe. But it wasn't.

In a few weeks, publicity for the show in question will start to appear. And then I will gladly jump on the bandwagon and, like press reviewers, weigh in on the show and how it plays and all that good stuff. Until then, you're all free to guess -- and maybe -- quelle horreur -- prick up your ears a bit and try to keep those eyes and ears peeled for debuting Canadian series.

But til then, sorry, I'm not Harry Knowles. Not even for you, my dear Sticksvillians.

Buzz.

It's an interesting phenomenon.

Especially in Canada.

See, here buzz is often hijacked or proscribed by the hows and whys of how the industry works. First, the Canadian domestic industry is incredibly small. Everyone's married to everyone else, or they dated once or at least had a drunken grope session three Banffs or Vancouver Film Festivals ago. So you don't get a lot of honest opinion-sharing. You can't. The chances of running into anyone connected with anything is just too high.

I know that there are people out there who will say that L.A. or the U.K. is the same way -- but really...we're talking two degrees of separation, most, between everybody in the industry here.

The second thing holding back or twisting true buzz is the way series are produced in Canada. Things are fussed over and fussed over at the script stage, and then thirteen or four or eight episodes are ordered and produced. No pilots -- they're too expensive. So when a show debuts, it's in the can. For better or worse, on a sliding scale of enthusiasm, the network is committed. And unlike in the USA, where you might cancel a show after 3 episodes leaving five in the can that are never seen again -- at least until the DVD -- even that option isn't open to us here in the Great White North.

So add this fact to Canadians' reputation for (surface) politeness, and you have the perfect storm of buzzkill.

Which is why it's so remarkable when something breaks through. The difference between "guarded buzz" discussions where people dart left and right with their eyes, saying tepidly encouraging things lest they be the first one to come out with a hearty, "that sucked!" and a genuine, ear to ear grin of someone saying, "wow, that was really great!" is the difference between waking from a nightmare and dreaming gingerbread dreams all night long.

Every year, CHUM and Citytv throw one of the first parties of the Toronto International Film Festival. The Friday Night Shmooze can be hit and miss from year to year, but about five years ago I remember being at the party on a night when Cameron Diaz dropped by for a nanosecond, and I think Kevin Spacey was there too. But that wasn't the remarkable thing. The remarkable thing was all the Canadians flocking for autographs to a trio of guys standing in a football huddle in the main tent in the parking lot.

The Trailer Park Boys.

That was buzz, my friends. Genuine, unrestrained joy in encountering something. When TPB did a screening at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto, it was the same thing. Pandemonium.

Well, I'm giddy to be able to say that last night I sat in the audience at a Cast & Crew screening in Toronto for a new series that's going to be premiering on Canadian TV in a few weeks. Cast & Crew screenings are famous for "supportive" laughs. You know, not real laughs.

Well, there were real laughs.

And wide-eyed smiles. And a surprised, giddy, happy, shellshocked realization: "Holy Shit, this thing could actually be a hit!"

Stay tuned.

And The Statuette Kind of Looks Like A Face Transplant, Too.

Well, the Emmy Awards have come and gone, which means it must be time for the nominations for the Gemini Awards. Those are kind of like the Canadian Emmys, except, you know...not.

The major nominees were announced today. A few highlights, with comments:

Best Drama series:

Moccasin Flats, ReGenesis, Slings & Arrows, Terminal City, This Is Wonderland

To me this category should be, by rights, a mortal lock for Slings & Arrows. An incredibly strong second series, and a confident execution where everything worked: direction, acting, writing, and pacing. It's great TV, not great Canadian TV.

Best Comedy series:

Corner Gas, History Bites: Mother Britain, Jeff Ltd., Kenny vs. Spenny, Naked Josh, The Rick Mercer Report

This is where the inevitable weird Gemini rules get me. I don't think that Kenny vs. Spenny (which I love) and Mercer (ditto) should be in the same category as scripted comedy series. It's like putting The Daily Show and Seinfeld in the same category. You could do it, but why? Corner Gas is, of course, the 900 lb. Gorilla here, but I would not be displeased to see Naked Josh take this: a very underrated series that had some great episodes in their second season.

Best Animated series:

Bromwell High, Atomic Betty, Jane and the Dragon, Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends, Naughty Naughty Pets

Americans may scratch their heads, but Animation is so important in Canada that I would argue this is the third most important category for scripted series. Bromwell High is insane. Although I've never seen Naughty Naughty Pets, I support its title 100%. That title just makes me laugh.

Best Documentary series:

China Rises, The Nature of Things, The Passionate Eye, Turning Points of History, The View From Here

Canada has a strong documentary tradition going back to the NFB. All of these nominated shows are equally worthy, in my view.

Writing nominations:

Best Writing in a Drama series:

Ken Finleman, Morwyn Brebner, Ellen Vanstone At The Hotel The Perfect Couple

Susan Coyne, Bob Martin, Mark McKinney Slings and Arrows Steeped in Blood

Angus Fraser Terminal City Episode 6

George F. Walker, Dani Roman This is Wonderland Episode 313

Again, I have to go with Slings. At The Hotel had interesting moments but it was a mess. Strong category, though.

Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Program or Series:

Dan Redican, Burnt Toast

Mark Farrell, Brent Butt, Paul Mather, Kevin White Corner Gas

Steve Smith, Rick Green, David T. Smith The Red Green Show Do As I Do

Kevin White, Irwin Barker, Gavin Crawford, Mark Critch, Barry Julien, Bob Kerr, Gary Pearson, Carolyn Taylor, Jennifer Whalen This Hour Has 22 Minutes Episode 7

Ian MacDonald, Jennifer Kennedy The Wilkinsons Ulterior Designers

Again, a bit of a bizarre mismatch. How does anyone other than Corner Gas walk away with this?

Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series:

Gordon Pinsent Heyday!

Ian Adams, Riley Adams, Michelle Lovretta Hunt for Justice: The Louise Arbour Story

Chris Haddock Intelligence

Suzette Couture The Man Who Lost Himself

Andrew Wreggitt, Hugh Graham One Dead Indian

Bruce M. Smith Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story

This is another incredibly strong category. I think they should give it to Bruce Smith just because of how the CBC sold him out so disgustingly on the Tommy Douglas movie -- but I thought both One Dead Indian and Intelligence were also pretty gripping.

Finally, congrats to Michael Filipowich and Patricia McKenzie, both nominated for fine acting work for Charlie Jade, which also picked up a total of 5 nominations. (Visual Effects, Sound, Picture Editing.)

The full list of Gemini nominees, confusing categories and all, can be found here.

Rescue Me (I want my TV)

...for we poor snowmice here in Canada, the third season of Rescue Me starts its run on Showcase tonight.

Don't be so smug, though, Yankees...I think the last season of Sopranos is about to start its run on over-the-air broadcaster CTV. Uncut. See, here in the land of gay marriage and spliff, boobs and the f-bomb don't bother us. If we feel uncomfortable, we just go to the doctor (covered under universal healthcare) and get our little happy pill. (Not usually covered, but hey, it's a frigging happy pill.)

Meanwhile, I have three episodes of Brotherhood, the last Vanished and Prison Break, and the season finales of Deadwood and Entourage to catch up on. And I even have spanky new furniture to watch them on. After moaning and moaning about having to work from home, I now pine for a nice quiet nice in. It's always something, isn't it?

And Don't You Forget It

Searches on some combination of "Falcon Beach," "Jennifer Kydd", and "topless" continue to drive a majority of hits to this blog. This leads me to conclude several things:

• The Family in ABCFamily does not necessarily include the "safe content" filter.
• Global is dead right in pursuing their, "we want dramas, but we also want to make sure they have a U.S. sale first" strategy.
• Apparently, lots of people think Jennifer Kydd is hot.
• None of the Falcon Beach searchers are getting to my blog because they searched "wakeboarding." Sick, Dude!

Falcon Beach is currently shooting its second season near Winnipeg.

Oooh. Kelly MacDonald.

Yes. She won. I don't care if you saw "The Girl in the Cafe" -- I did. It was crazy good. And she...well...she was....you know she was the girl in Trainspotting right? I have to stop. Really.


I did not watch the Emmys. I was playing poker. Are there outrages? Tell me. I'm pleased about The Office. I cannot say I'm displeased by 24 winning best drama. I like House, Diane, really I do. I do. I hope this isn't a problem......

As for, um, you know....um........Grey's........um..........ah....well, you got to do that prom episode, right?

That was great...right?

And the writing awards...they all felt right...............right?

Or what am I missing?

Collabroworld

A couple of articles in the paper today got me thinking about collaboration. In the first, there's a somewhat sad little piece about Fred Kander in the NYTimes. Kander, of course, is one half of the venerable songwriting team Kander and Ebb. Ebb, his writing partner, died in 1994, and Kander is now working to bring their last collaborations to a finished place.

The grieving process of spouses is now a familiar subject. Less is said, though, about what it means to survive a professional partner. For 42 years Mr. Kander and Mr. Ebb spent part of most of their days together in a small room — often around the kitchen table or by the spinet in the study at Mr. Ebb’s Central Park West apartment — conceiving, giving birth to and guiding their works to maturity. That they went their separate ways when work was done each day did not make it easier for Mr. Kander to do so when their work was done for good.

If anything, the differences in their personalities, the contrasting traits that proved so useful to their songwriting, made the unwinding more complicated. Once Mr. Ebb’s apartment was sold, where would Mr. Kander work? And with whom?

Several unhitched lyricists, like suitors bearing casseroles, made it clear that they were available; Mr. Kander thanked them but said he was, for the moment, “otherwise engaged.”

Maybe it's the stories of the Lennon/McCartney partnership we've all downloaded over the last few decades, but I find that people are able to grasp songwriting partnerships far better than other kinds of writing partnerships. I've said before that the idea of "The Room" - is something that is probably best not even discussed ex famille, since it involves a level of intimacy, give and take, and freeness that doesn't translate across most other workplaces. Most people outside the business tend to have a distorted view of the creative process anyway, but there's something particular about the idea of a bunch of people working in a room to craft a story that rubs people the wrong way. I think it's because the only analogue they can come up with is a project designed by committee -- where compromises reduce any vision to pablum. You can try to explain that The Room is far more Darwinian than that - not a compromise, but a survival of the fittest hothouse where the best idea wins - but again, you're probably not going to get it if you're not involved. (Or unless you have ambitions to BE involved. It's the old saw about sausages and lawmaking -- if you enjoy the end product it's probably best not to see it made.)

That's why the article in the Times on Kander struck me as so interesting. It's very much in line with a lot of my views on collaboration, too. Two people so professionally in tune that everyone assumes that there's a deeper thing going on. And there is, but not in the way you think.

We get into trouble, I feel, when we expect collaborative relationships to be like friendships, or sibling relationships, or anything else where boundaries are more permeable. The myth of how we understand these things, imperfectly, demand that there be some sort of filial or friendship bond there. We want Kander and Ebb or Lennon and McCartney to have been the best of friends -- but really, at the end of the day, it's not relevant. Not at all.

(This is not to say that you don't see spouses or brothers or friends who collaborate, of course. But as someone who has collaborated and doesn't find it to be that natural an experience, I think the difference has to be that professional collaborations are defined not by the commonality of experience, but by the differences. It's easier to maintain that separation if you, well, maintain that separation. And if you do have a personal relationship with your collaborator, your professional collaborative relationship, if it's going to be stable, has to be established with different rules and boundaries. In other words, one doesn't grow out of the other, it's more like they develop on parallel tracks.)

I've only had a couple of experiences collaborating in a musical way. I wrote the book and lyrics for a spoof musical based on Top Gun that had some minor success here in Toronto and in a couple of other productions. My collaborator/composer in that show is a guy named Scott White. Scott and I get along well -- very well. Our skills complement each other. And I deeply enjoyed the collaboration. But what made the collaboration effective, and possible, is how different we were. Scott and I see each other from time to time, and we're warm, collegial acquaintances, but we're not best friends. We don't go out for beers. But when it came time to work, we were always there, ready -- and our differing approaches clicked and meshed. Which, I think, is how it should be.

I say all this because I think, when you're starting out trying to find your way and your voice, the natural first thing you do is start collaborating with a friend. And in many ways, it's the worst way to start. If you have a previous relationship, that previous relationship will always be in the room with you, and it has the definite chilling effect of making it way harder to be professionally honest. In any collaboration situation, I have to be able to say when I think X is a "%@#$ stupid idea." And anyone I collaborate has to be able to say the same thing. If you know that later you have to go meet the in-laws, or pick up the kids, or go to Jenny's housewarming -- I imagine all of that becomes infinitely harder.

Which brings me to the other article on collaboration in the paper today. Eric Bogosian is doing a new production of SubUrbia, and it's being directed by his wife, Jo Bonney, who's also worked with Neil LaBute. How they negotiate the professional/personal relationship, to me, is an utter mystery.

“What’s interesting to me working on ‘SubUrbia,’ ” he said, “is that the guy I was 12 years ago was fascinated with the whole topic of fame and fortune — I was just coming off a period of pretty strong stuff like that — but that’s not the leading plane of it for me anymore. Not to sound pretentious, but I’ve been reading ‘The Three Sisters’ again lately, and looking at the way Chekhov paid such close attention to character. Which is what Jo is also so good at, the earned small beats, the little nuances. And no director I’ve ever worked with is as precise about the writing. She won’t let you cover up the flaws.”

He is not alone in this opinion.

“Jo is quick to dismiss and exile anything in the writing that isn’t top-notch,” Mr. LaBute said.

What about you, collaborators? Tell me about the intimacies in your working relationship. Is distance important? How about differences of background, temperament, approach? Do your significant others understand? Do they get jealous?

I've heard some heartbreaking breakup stories in my time. The worst ones are always couples who have kids who can't put the kids first. But just below that -- ugly and gnarly and awful -- and way, way, way worse than the breakup of just about any personal relationship I've ever witnessed -- is what happens when professional creative partnerships implode. Oi. That's some bad mojo.

Anyway, all in all, not a bad muse for a Sunday.

Well I'M Not Going To Be The One To Tell Him, I'm Telling You THAT Right Now.

A Requiem for Bellick

Oh Bellick. We hardly knew ye, didn't we?

Your endless cruelty. Your sadistic overlord tendencies. Your shameful desire to enjoy the power you had over everyone around you. The rage and shame that fired you once somebody had the power to take that power away.

You were a great character to watch on Prison Break, you really were. Not because you were deadly original, like nothing I'd ever seen on TV before...because I'd seen your type of character many times before.

But I liked you better. You stood out from the sadistic guard pack.

But all that, necessarily, is over now, isn't it? I mean, the cats are out of the bag, right?

Then there's this guy-------------------------->

FBI Agent Mahone, eh? Look at you, all shifty. Popping pills and stuff. Seeing the things that no one else sees. You're kind of creepy, too. Didn't you used to be sheriff or something? Seriously, you were acting all weird and stuff. Something about the water?

What's great about Prison Break right now is that the whole show is changing. And while it's changing, you can learn a lot about genre and the role of character in your show.

Every year what we do as television and film writers get harder, because hundreds of hours of new movies and television shows get added to the pile. This has been happening in film for well on 80 years now, and in Television for 50. At a certain time, a "totally original character" becomes simply impossible to invent. This is why when young baby writers don't know the history of the medium, it drives me crazy. Because the true secret of writing interesting television characters is this: the audience doesn't need you to do that. That's hard work. It means they have to work harder. In many cases too hard. And they don't want that. For godsakes, they're just trying to be entertained.

So while it's nice to run into an Al Swearengen or a Gregory House every once in a while, there are vast swaths of us out here who really love, and live for, a good Bellick. Or even an FBI Agent Mahone.

Genres demand certain characters, and whether implicitly or explicitly, audiences demand you populate the drama with those characters. They demand that the lead investigating cop be driven or curious. I happen to think it would be awesome and funny to have an investigator character who desperately doesn't want to solve cases, but always winds up solving them anyway. But that would probably run two episodes.

See, in the case of Bellick, part of what the audience is attracted to is what I call the Continuity of the Character. We've seen mean old sadistic prison guards before. We liked them in the shows we saw them in. We see Bellick, and very quickly we know what his deal is.

Then it's up to you to make us imprint on Bellick, and forget all the other characters who came before him. See? That's the trick. The familiarity gets you in, and then your skill in flipping or spinning that character keeps 'em there, stuck. Or keeps 'em coming back.

I'm sure that once cons start getting caught, Bellick on Prison Break will have more of a role, and not be ignonimously shoved to the side as he was in so much of the second season premiere...but let's go on to Fichter's character, hmm?

Now in the case of William Fichter's FBI Agent Mahone, there's a Continuity of the Character Cocktail being mixed up. First, it's a show about cons on the run now, so you absolutely need that tracker character in there. See? The genre demands a certain character. But then they go and cast William Fichter. Has Fichter ever, ever played a character who wasn't bent in some way? Nope. No how. So when he pops those pills at the graveyard, it's meant to make you wonder, "who he?"

Agent Mahone has a much harder road to hoe in terms of making you love him and forget all those who came before. Because one of those who came before was Tommy Lee Jones' U.S. Marhshall in the remake of The Fugitive. Man, that was a great character. I think that no matter how hard he tries, Fichter is never going to make us forget that guy. Which is why I think they cast him. Because they're going to go another way.

When you spend so much time sweating over your original characters, what you're really doing is being egotistical. You're writing something for an audience. They are in on the enjoyment and they will be the ones, ultimately, who decide if they like your characters and want to keep watching, or if they don't. When you tease them a little by showing them something they find familiar and then giving the character that new, corkscrew twist, you're engaging their intellect and having them do some of your work for you.

Yes, it's bad to put in the hooker with the heart of gold, or the supportive girlfriend, or the magic black person. But only if that's all they are. Sometimes, it's not your job to sit there and try to invent the wheel. Sometimes it's your job to take the wheel and figure out how to trick it out with a DVD player and some diamond-studded rims.

Oh, and (spoiler coming up).....













....that's why Robin Tunney's character had to be toasted. The show demands certain type of characters. When they were all trapped inside, you needed a character who could represent the outside world. The minute the cons got out, you don't need her anymore. Her story is over. I think it's interesting that they made her a prisoner, then killed her. Subliminally, she manages to invest the audience, in her exit, with the most important thing about Prison Break: it's not just that these cons are on the run. It's that the system that's chasing them is completely corrupt.

Ill Met By Moonlight

Never in the history of insomnia, short of the guy who got a spike through the head and didn't sleep for fifteen years, has there ever been anyone more awake than I am right now.

Dagnabbit.

Random things that you remember you read that suddenly come to you when you're wide awake at 5 in the morning, wondering if you should pack it in and get up or vainly struggle to get two more fitful hours of sleep in:

• The guy who plays Ellsworth on Deadwood, Jim Beaver, is apparently such an expert on George Reeves and his mysterious death that he's a technical advisor on the upcoming Hollywoodland, and is publishing a book on it. Weird. What would Al Swearegen think?
  
  
• Jaime Weinman reminds us that Hugh Carlson's classic WKRP episode "Fish Story" (the one where Johnny gets better at the breathalyzer the more he drinks) was written out of contempt for what was felt to be asinine network notes. Just goes to show that sometimes writers' prickly contempt (and even cruel or silly network notes) can lead to greatness. That's one for the humble bag.
  
  
• After writing this series for so long now, I want to write half hour comedy almost as much as I want a big juicy steak or a nice piece of fish. With all that's bullshit about Canada, unlike in Hollywood, here you really can do both if you want -- and if you have the talent -- and well -- sometimes, sometimes it almost makes up for the--
  
  --oh who am I kidding? I'd trade it all for a little more sleep right now.
  
  
• Then there's this picture, courtesy of L.A. film blogger Peggy Archer, of a piece of Grafitti on Paramount's Stage 24:

Why yes. Yes it does.

Fucker.

Tomorrow, we're on to Production Pinks.

Uh...I mean, today.

Wheeeeee!

Oh Snap! It's the 50 Million Dollar Man!

In a writing career that any scribbler should envy (even with the Zelda) F. Scott Fitzgerald seriously stumbled only once, when he wrote "There are no second acts in American lives."

Which brings us to Dave Chappelle.

Saw him last night at Toronto's Massey Hall. Read the reviews, and as far as they go, they're fine. You get the idea here. The short list? Is he still funny? Yes. Does he talk about why he walked away from his show? Yes. Is he crazy? Nope. And that's what scares me.

For a storyteller of any stripe, seeing Chappelle stalk the stage was an exhilarating and simultaneously unsettling experience. Exhilarating because his control and pitch are so exact. He's got a sense of timing and pacing that's unparalleled. He fills the stage -- one guy with a mike, smoking a cigarette every few minutes. His segues are seamless, his material never less than sharp. He can go from a serious political run to scatological lowest-common denominator material and back, and never seem like he's pandering. It's all fiercely smart. But more than that, it's confident, in a way I've rarely seen. I remember seeing Robin Williams years ago, post-Mork, pre-Good Morning Vietnam -- and though he was hilarious, it was such a self-conscious, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks train smash, that there was something about it that seemed unseemly.

Chappelle, on the other hand, stands up there and really seems like he doesn't give a fuck. Now, I know some of that is comic pose. But not all of it -- and that's what brings me to the unsettling part.

Because Dave Chappelle is undoubtedly a changed man. If you go back and see his standup specials from around the time Chappelle's Show debuted, or just before, and compare that to the guy on stage now -- it's clearly not the same guy. He's seen some dark shit, and it's changed him. There's something sad in his delivery that wasn't there before. You don't need to go too far to see an angry black comic. But Dave Chappelle will chill you, son. Because he's not just raging against the machine. You don't doubt for a second that he's seen it up close, felt the breath on his neck. For anybody who makes their living off creative labors... it's just... uncomfortable.

All black comics variously trade in some version of jokes about The Man...but when Chappelle stands up there and looks out at a largely white audience and says, "I don't mean you...you're not the real white people. I've met the real white people..." it's not paranoia talking -- it sounds -- it feels utterly reasonable. One of the lines I loved last night was when he talked about some of the truly rich people he's met, and asking one how he got so rich. After the traditional old-money disdain for the question, comes the punchline: "if you must know...my family holds the patent on fire."

When he compares the United States to M.C. Hammer, and asks, "what if the truth is that the United States is living a lifestyle it cannot afford?" He may be asking something that any number of left wing critics or academics have been asking for years. But the difference is: he had a seat at the table and walked away.

See, to see Dave Chappelle is to drink in the dissonance of the stories that we've all been reading about him for the last year. Because he does point out to you that there were six media companies that all spread the story about how crazy he was for walking away. You've heard so much about how crazy he is, that to see the fiercely smart, lucid, insightful guy stalking the stage is to make you wonder, just for a second, if the fix really is in, and why?

The thought of walking away from fifty million holds the same sick fascination for me as it does, probably, for most of you. How does a guy do that? What Chappelle does on this current tour is stand up there and tell you why. And damnit if you don't start to believe him.

You can climb the ladder of success in a creative operation, a creative career. You can make good money. You can buy houses, or afford a car, but you always have to keep in mind that you're not the person with the real money. And that every choice you make, every compromise, pulls you a little tighter.

So how do you walk away? Chappelle started with a metaphor, pointing at the stool on the stage, and saying, "that's fifty million dollars." And then the moment you reach for it...thunk...he drops the mike down on the stool. There it is, a big dick on top of the pile. He shakes his head. "I just couldn't figure out how to get that dick off the money."

My favorite part of the show wasn't the funniest, by any means. In a ten minute monologue at show's end, Chappelle tells a story of legendary Pimp Iceberg Slim. It's a story of how he got one of his 'ho's to keep working long after she should.

Chappelle has the story honed to a laser -- it's his best illustration, his main metaphor, for letting you in on The Game -- and by the time he comes to the punchline, well, if you're smart, you can see why he walked away. And you respect him for it.

Because if you're like me, deep down, you fear that you couldn't have had the strength to make the same choice. And much as I'd love to have a successful creative career - I hope I never have to find out.

Hobson was a fictional character. But a Chappelle's Choice? Well...that one's the thing, isn't it?

Real Live Drips and Bleeding Fingers

Well, I cut my finger.

I mean, I did a lot more this week. But this fucker's bleeding a lot, so it's pretty much the first and foremost thing on my mind. I don't know exactly when I did it, but it was in the course of cleaning out the messy storage closet in my condo. See, that's where the air conditioner is. And um...the air conditioning is dripping. A lot. This is, as they say in the second official language of my adopted country, une grande drag. (I might have the masculine/feminine thing wrong there.)

Every once in a while I have to face up to the shape of how useless I am. I mean, I don't know why an air conditioner starts dripping. I just have to put a pail under it and empty it every nine hours. I look at my bleeding finger and I think, "how would I know if this sucker needed stitches?" And how did I cut it in the first place cleaning a closet?

One of the things that got ruined in the waterlogged closet was the last, pathetic vestiges of a comic book collection I had as a child. They were personal favorites. I was never a plastic bag collector. There were a few Mad Magazines there, too. I'm kind of bummed they're gone. But in that close there's also a couple of huge boxes filled to the brim with cassettes. Cassettes!

I don't even have anything to play them on anymore. I think I had a boom box that played tapes, but the cassette thing's broken. It's all part of my pack rat personality. A good friend of mine looked around my apartment and said, "clearly what you need to do here is throw out every. second. thing." He's right. That's my project for fall.

And maybe after I get up and running and hand off scripts to the people who will make them on Across the River, I'll get right into that -- and also decide what things I don't know I'll learn for fall. I doubt Air Conditioning repair or battlefield surgery will make the cut. But you never know.

I'm hoping I'll have more blogging time this week. I'm also trying to work out what to write about in Across the River. I'm not really eager to share any details of plot -- because it's a mystery series and what's the fun in that.

But right now I'm in the phase of trying to reduce the scripts so they become produceable. In all the spec advice out there, I haven't read a lot of stuff about that. So I'm hoping over the next couple weeks I can reflect some of the perspectives of Location Managers and Art Directors. I'll focus on process, since that, more than specifics of the project, is probably the salient thing, right?

This sucker's still bleeding, by the way.

Oh well. After a prodigious amount of sleep yesterday, today it's simply coffee and the New York Times and three other days worth of papers I never read.

And later, maybe, just maybe -- I'll see just how many motherfucking snakes can fit on a motherfucking plane.

DTOS: Issue Zero (With the Shiny Cover)

So, blogaversary celebrations being muted and hurried because of my current clusterfuck situation, I nevertheles thought I should at least repost the Origin Story of Dead Things On Sticks

Originally posted: 9.12.2005

Thanks, Mr. K.

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

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

"getting sick of the treadmill?"

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

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

"Okay, I've got speed."

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

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

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

So. Now you know.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

Well, what do you know? W.C. Dixon points out that somehow in the midst of all my dudgeon, I missed my blogaversary. So there.

What's funny about this is that I still have the brokedy-ass couch...though I'm supposedly getting a new one delivered in a week.

Good times. Good times.

Feel free to surf the archives and find a post you like. I think I made fun of Anderson Cooper a couple of times.

Now I have to go. Daddy needs a beer before bed. Also, I have a wicked hangnail.

My first post:

08-14-05

What Am I Doing?

A writer's day is procrastination. I live alone, I work alone. There are three things I'm supposed to be working on right now. Four or five, if you count the friends' "can you take a look at this-es?"

I don't know how long I'm going to do this for. I don't know why I'm doing this. Like all writers, I'm a little narcissistic, but not quite as narcissistic as any actor you're likely to meet.

What I crave is to be in Production. I'm a great Production writer. I write fast, I have energy, I'd like to think I'm good in the room.

Sitting on my brokedy-ass couch working on development stuff is like a long slow root canal performed by that dentist Steve Martin played in Little Shop of Horrors. Without the singing.

So, procrastination. Wait, there it is. The guilt bell.

Thank you, Catholicism. Guilt calls. Gotta go.

In lieu of gifts, you can always send me an Itunes Music Store (Canada) credit.

Oh, relax. I'm kidding.

I'm serious.

No. Kidding.

Oh Bartender...

This Millstone Round My Neck Is Stylish AND Comfortable!

Nah. Just kidding. Wow. I need to be writing, and I just spent four hours in a meeting. That's what you get when you're your own writing staff. For those of you keeping score at home, I am also my own Grandpa. Thank you.

Since this obviously obviates the need to procrastinate -- I use it to explain my light blogging.

But the world stops for no DMc:

If you're in Canada, and by Canada, I mean what the Quebecers lovingly refer to as ROC, Bon Cop, Bad Cop opens this Friday. Alex over at Complications Ensue had a hand in writing this one. A buddy-cop picture that explores the French-English divide sounds like a fun idea to me.

Besides Alex, I was lucky enough to work with the Director, Erik Canuel, in South Africa. The film is already a huge hit in Quebec. So if you go one film this weekend, I know it will probably be Snakes on a Plane. But in case you're in the mood for more, do check out Bon Cop, Good Cop.

And also...this is kind of interesting...check out the subtle differences in how they sell the movie in the English and the French trailers. They're largely the same, but slightly different -- and those differences say a lot about the English and French in Canada. What do you notice?

See you when I come up for air.

He Won't Be Right Back. But Thanks, Mike.

"It used to be that you couldn't touch some girls with a ten-foot pole. Well, I was the guy with the twelve-foot pole." Mike Douglas

The model Oprah used when starting out in her own talk show. The guy who co-hosted with John and Yoko for one extraordinary week. The program that first introduced the world to a two year old child named Tiger Woods -- who showed Bob Hope his golf swing; The show that aired from Philly for most of its life. The show that brought Malcom X and Jerry Rubin into America's living rooms. The show that featured over 30 000 guests, over 6000 shows, over 21 years.

All the while, Mike Douglas was an affable, genuine host. A decent guy. His niceness, I guess, really did belong to another age. I remember him so clearly as a child. I remember wondering "how is it possible that my Grandmother prefers Merv Griffin?"

Mike Douglas was a class act. May he Rest in Peace.

Three Moons Over Milford and the Flexibility of Ideas

So, call it my erstwhile hangover from years working at Canada's sci-fi channel, Space, but I knew from the moment I read about Three Moons Over Milford, I was going to have to check it out at least once.

Here's the very definition of a high concept, plausible sci-fi idea: As the series starts, people are acting strangely. They coyly reveal the reason why during the course of the teaser. Seems that sometime just before the start of the show, an asteroid slammed into the moon, breaking it into three large pieces. Scientists believe that one of the pieces (at least) is unstable, and will eventually plunge to earth, causing nuclear winter and the end of all life as we know it, above the cockroach level.

Here's the conceit: that could happen in twenty years. Or next Tuesday.

Which sets up the premise: what do you do when you think the end of the world is imminent?

This is such a potent zeitgeist concept for our times, I just have to shake my head and curse the fact that I didn't come up with it first. I imagine a lot of writers are doing that. It's such a good metaphor for the uncertain times we live in, that it's the kind of sturdy concept that could show up just about anywhere.

So what the hell is it doing on ABC Family?

Well, let's break it down. Three Moons Over Milford, as it's currently constituted, revolves mainly around one family. Papa Bear made a lot of money in a company, and responds to the news of possibly-imminent judgement day by abandoning his family and going off to "find himself." He leaves his wife, Laura, and two kids, Alex and Lydia, to go climb mountains.

There's a kindly, decent lawyer in the town of Milford named Mack McIntyre whose mother tries to sell her house to send him on a cruise around the world. He doesn't want to go.

The setup in the pilot demonstrates all the different ways people deal with the new reality of possibly impending doom. Dad flakes out. There's an unscrupulous real estate agent that tries to take advantage of people. The police chief is now young and green as hell -- why? Because everyone more experienced quit. Sixteen year old Alex wants to drive right away, and maybe have an affair with an older woman, because why the hell not? Daughter Lydia tries to knit the moon back together with her friends using some Wiccan ceremony, and burns down the school in the process.

By the end of the pilot, we've seen a bit of Milford (good people, quirky town, under stress) and the Davis family. Mom is going to deal with the loss of the family fortune by going to work in Mac's law office. Nice, clean setup.

What struck me about the execution is that it was a lot edgier than I thought it would be. The nasty characters are allowed to be nasty. The mechanics of the plot set up a situation where it's the son's birthday, and the daughter is supposed to address the town meeting to apologize for burning down the school. She says to her mother that she'd rather commit suicide. And mom's response? "Good. More cake for us."

That's pretty funny. Also not what you'd expect for a "family" show.

Yet there is something ineffably family about Three Moons. Obviously, a lot of the stories are going to focus around the two kids. The town is very reminscent of Stars Hollow, which is obviously no accident, since reruns of Gilmore Girls is apparently ABC Family's backbone.

Elizabeth McGovern gets to do her best Lauren Graham . Her character's name is Laura, wink wink, just in case you didn't get it...(although there's been some strange surgery in the years since She's Having a Baby. Brr.)

I enjoyed the pilot. It was well done. And I will probably never watch the show again. Why? Because I don't watch Gilmore Girls, either. The show doesn't really appeal to me. And in the end, really, neither does Three Moons Over Milford.

But that's A-Ok...and I still think they've done a great job, and I'm still envious of the flexibility of their concept, and how much fun they can have with it.

So many starting-out writers I meet -- even writers that are mid-career, like me -- seem to misunderstand terms like "Character Driven Show" "High Concept" or "Procedural" that it's worth noting in the case of this show, just what these things really mean. Three Moons provides a perfect example. (And it's not just writers, either. Lots of Producers and Network People I meet seem equally confabulated.)

Why is Three Moons a high-concept show? Because the concept is the thing that initially sells it. You don't need to know anything else. It could also, with the same concept, be a bunch of very different shows:

-The Sci-Fi Channel Version: a group of international scientists are brought together as the world goes quirky around them to try to solve the problems of the three moons.

-The Lifetime Version: Three women try to keep their different families together while dealing with the men in their lives who've all gone crazy from moon-fear. (In this iteration, the moons stand in for midlife crisis craziness.)

-The Cartoon Network/Comedy Central/FX version -- Ida know. But let's say it's in New York, and everyone decides, "fuck it, there's no rules." And anarchy ensues.

-The CW Version -- Same as above, but starring Felicity. A lot more hugging and crying. And a new Dashboard Confessional song in every episode.

-The FOX Version -- More violence, more fucking (implied), and prettier people.

Note, that in all the versions above, the basic premise stays the same: the threat of imminent (but uncertain) destruction causes people to abandon their usual roles and react differently.

See, it just so happens that they sold the ABC Family version, which dictates the quirky town setting (a la Gilmore Girls) and the focus on two kids. But you could still get several different shows out of it. Is your concept really the precious thing here? If you change the characters, does the show really change? I mean fundamentally. Does it wreck it, or can it really go another way?

See, a lot of people I talk to are so completely attached to the precise execution of their idea that they don't see that changing some details could actually make it better. To tell you the truth, of all my flippant "versions" above, I kind of think that maybe the ABC Family version is probably the best one. They tailored their show to their broadcaster and it paid off with something that's actually kind of different. Awesome. Even if it's not for me.

Now, it also takes you about ten seconds to explain the basic concept of Three Moons. You can fill in the characters and details later. That's high concept.

If you don't know the show without knowing the Characters and why they're doing what they're doing, then you have a character driven show. You actually need to know the character dynamic to understand the show. Think back to that one sheet for the first season of The Sopranos. Tony is in the middle. All the mobsters are standing behind him to his right. Carmela, AJ, Meadow, and Tony's Mom are standing behind him to his left. And the tagline says, "If One Family Doesn't Kill Him, The Other Will."

See, you don't really need to know who the Davis family is to understand or get Three Moons Over Milford. But you have to understand the family dynamic, and the therapy angle, to get what is different about The Sopranos. That's why it's character driven. You change any of those elements too much, and the show doesn't survive.

Is your concept really like that? Great. Now. What makes it different from other shows? What makes YOUR character driven show different from someone else's character driven show?

Or have you come up with the next great procedural? CSI's characters don't matter (not at first -- not when you're making the sale -- it's what they DO that matters -- and the fact that a mystery is set up at the start and solved by the end, an the audience is solving it along with the team.)

Obviously, hybrid-ing these different concepts can come up with fresh pitches and elements, but you do always have to keep a handle on why you're asking people to watch, and what you're promising them. I think that people who watch Three Moons Over Milford on ABC Family are being promised a certain kind of show, and based on the pilot, they're going to get that kind of show.

What are you promising your audience?

You gotta know -- because you have to be able to explain it to your broadcaster, and your producer, and your collaborators...and finally, to your audience.

And here's the funny thing: if you're pitching a broadcaster and you find that, hmm...your show really CAN'T survive the changes, then you really do have to walk away.

Because it's only too common to go into development and then have your vision chipped away at. You have to have clear vision going in, because only then are you going to recognize when your concept is irretrievably broken. Trust me. You'll see it before they do. But if you keep going past that point just to preserve the relationship with the network, well -- the show will inevitably fail and you will be the one that pays the price.

The flipside of that? If you don't know EXACTLY what kind of show you have, and what you're promising off the top, you're going to get lost very quickly.

And then where are you? Can't you smell the sulphur.

Yes, kittens. That's right.

You're in Development Hell.

Try the veal.

Blah blah blah 9/11 Shampoo Bottle Blah

CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - US President George W. Bush seized on a foiled London airline bomb plot to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, Bush and his aides have tried to shift the national political debate from that conflict to the broader and more popular global war on terrorism ahead of November 7 congressional elections.

And I swear, my fellow countrymen, if you let these craven opportunists shift the discussion away from their utter and complete failure to rationalize, plan for, or meet this threat for the third straight election cycle, then the terrorists really will have won.

As a foreign-living expat, I have to sit this November out. But you don't.

You know what? I can't even write about this stuff anymore. I don't know where Rogers gets the patience.

Oh, and just in cased you three or four fat assed Bush autocrats missed it, here's yet another way our government is making things worse.

You really think you're in control?

I was all set to spend some time being collapsed last night, but of course it was not to be. I had tickets to go see Gnarls Barkley at Toronto's Koolhaus club.

For the two-and-a-half people who've somehow managed to miss it, Barkley is the mashup band of Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse. They give a wildly entertaining stage show where they dress up in various costumes. Last night, they came out dressed as fry cooks, with the women dressed as waitresses, and Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse wearing Chef's Hats. They stepped up and did the shtick they do at every show: "Gnarls Barkley can't be here tonight. We're the Sam Cook(e)s."

Then they ripped through their set. (They also opened with, appropriately enough, "Hungry Like the Wolf," which was pretty funny.

The band was so tight, the music so infectious (really, is there a better summer song out now than "Crazy?" I think not) that you couldn't help but be in a good mood. Which is good, because Daddy's pretty stressed right now. So though my feet and my ass are tired from the shaking, the soul is doing okay. Which is good, because there's plenty of grinding ahead.

Things I have to write about soon, when I get the chance:

-Three Moons Over Milford. Why, all of a sudden, is ABC Family the place for high-concept Sci-Fi? And what, exactly, did Elizabeth McGovern do to herself surgically?

-Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. Oh yeah. I saw it. Oh yeah. I dug it. Oh yeah.

-Why Brotherhood is the next Sopranos, bitches.

Holy Sheep! Three More and We Have a Table Read!

Apple previewed Leopard, their next operating system iteration, this morning. In it there's a new voice, Alex. Click here and scroll down and you can hear how Alex does in natural-sounding speech. (You'll need Quicktime.)

Seriously good, huh? I mean, intonation, breath sounds...great stuff.

I would already gladly use this to hear voiceover read back, and we're almost at the point where that "read back the script" thing might actually be useful.

Way cool.

Reprint: Book Review: A Great Feast of Light

I noticed that John Doyle's book is newly in paperback, so I guess now's as good a time as any to repost my review of it, (originally posted 11/2005)


It could be that I'm just becoming an old fogey. I recognize that. But lately, when I look out at a television landscape of TIVO's and extended cable, of satellites and timeshifting and VOD, 343 channels of Gilligan's Island starting on the hour -- I can't help but think that something's been lost.

It's not just that Bruce Springsteen's once-scorching "57 Channels and Nothing On" seems crazy-quaint. (Dude, it's your own fault! Why didn't you TIVO?) It's that the explosion of choice and program-management techniques (what we used to call "taping,") has fundamentally altered what made television so revolutionary in the first place.

John Doyle's "A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age" is a memoir and a love letter. It's a book that rights the wrongs of a thousand McLuhan descendents who like to natter about how TV ruined everything. It's the story of a young boy growing up in a cloistered, maddening, provincial country, and how a magic window into a wider world changed everything, forever. Doyle manages to be both wistful and clear-eyed, speaking of his childhood in the small Irish town of Nenagh. Television came late to Ireland...RTE went on the air in 1961. In describing the people of his little town, Doyle paints a scene ripe for a shocking, cathode-ray corrective:

"...their stories were always the same, going around and around until everybody knew the punch line. They were always about farmers and shopkeepers and how the world was fixed with everybody in their allotted place. On television, events changed things. The truth came out and justice was done. I knew that teachers and adults weren't as instantly entranced by television as small children were. And I knew why, without anyone explaining it to me. Grown up people were stuck in their ways and their old stories. They knew everybody they were ever going to meet.

But that would change too. Television would break through all the layers of habit and conformity. The smallness of their old world would become clear as day."

The book contains amusing reminiscences of programs as varied as Bat Masterston and Get Smart, The Avengers and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. But the focus is squarely on how these new worlds, new ideas and ways of looking at the world seeped into a society that was still in thrall to the Catholic church; filled with "thick" brothers and cruel nuns, and a generally backward way of thinking.

For the Irish Americans tugging at their collars now, this is no Angela's Ashes, a parade of miseries and petty cruelties moving from horror to horror. The Doyles sound a lot more like my people -- a little more middle class, perhaps. But with a father working for Irish Life and a mother who didn't seem to cotton onto those who promoted small mindedness, Doyle paints a quiet childhood where television did exactly what all its haters feared: gradually seeped in and molded the thinking of a young boy.

The Doyles moved around Ireland quite a bit. I was pleased to read the chapters about tracing a childhood through County Roscommon and Leitrim, since that's where my Mom's people are from. This section also gives rise to the book's most moving passages: contrasting the peace of a country childhood with the horrors that lurked just beyond the mist. As young John Doyle walks the fields of Carrick, we're reminded that this area was once ground zero of the famine that decimated Ireland.

It's a strange turn for a memoir about television, but it does set the stage -- because if you know your Irish history, you know what's coming.

I've often talked to my parents about what it was really like to see Vietnam on the TV every night. I've spent hours in a little cubicle at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, watching back news programs of the time. I've seen the moment where Walter Cronkite turned against the war. As an adult, I, like everyone, sat back and watched in quiet awe as satellites relayed live pictures of bombs raining on Baghdad. Twice.

But I don't think that compares to being a young Irish boy trying to sort through an old war that suddenly re-ignites on your doorstep, brought to you in glorious color on the TV. As Ireland descends into the bitter thrall of sectarian violence, Doyle clings to the images that make sense to him: the anti-authoritarian, anarchic revolution that was Monty Python's Flying Circus, the pull of soccer -- even the much milder social critiques of shows like The Liver Birds and Upstairs, Downstairs.

All in all, the memoir paints a coming-of-age that was reflected, pushed, and prodded by television at every step of the way. It's an engaging portrait of an Ireland that's simply not there anymore, an Ireland consigned to the dustbin, in part, by the tide of change ushered in by the tolling of the Angelus Bells on RTE, that night in 1961.

I'm not sure that people much younger than me (I'm 37) think of television that way anymore, or if they ever did. Television was that thing that was always there. There were always more than four channels. You never had to 'get home in time to watch something.' There are so many different types of entertainment vying for your attention now that the social effect of television is muted; and discussions of the power of the medium are far more likely to be driven by reactionary forces, for whom nothing is scarier than a hint of breast or a bad word.

I don't remember the start of television, of course. But I do remember the time of four or five channels and no VCR. And I remember the winter of 1977.

In January, 1977, we were living in Orlando, Florida. Our TV was a beat up old SONY, black and white, maybe 20 inches.

Six months later, when we moved to Canada, my Dad bought a big cabinet model color TV, and I was shocked and enthralled. Enthralled to watch shows like The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island in color for the first time -- they seemed like new shows! Shocked when I caught a rerun of Gilligan's Island in black & white. I thought the TV was broken. My Dad had to explain to me that the show used to be filmed in black & white, before they switched to color.

I loved living in Orlando. The two years I spent there still seem a little magical to me. We lived in a development called Bay Hill. (now the site of the Bay Hill Classic. If you care about golf, I'm sure that means something. Not to me, alas.) Ours was still a new development, and our street dead-ended in an orange grove. We were also across the lake from Walt Disney World. Every night of the summer, we'd walk down the road to where the orange trees started, pick one off the tree, and watch the fireworks over the Magic Kingdom.

Then there was this one time when, like wildfire, a rumor went through the neighborhood. We rode our bikes up to the Golf Club, and sure enough, dining there, surrounded by kids and other admirers, was Evil Knievel. He signed our autographs and indulged us with stories, and when it was time to leave, he simply got up and walked out, and we all hushed to see if it was true-- did he clank when he walked, from all the metal pins in his many broken bones?

I set that scene to give the proper context to this story:

We had a big backyard. Lots of flowerbeds, lots of plants and trees. My father was the General Manager of the Pepsi bottling plant in Orlando, and through that job, he met Mr. B. Mr. B was a large, kind black man with enormous hands and a booming laugh. Mr. B was the go-to man in the plant. He knew when people needed things. I first met him when he came to pick up the baby stuff -- the cribs that my sisters didn't need anymore. He loaded them into the truck and carted them off to whoever needed them. I was fascinated by this: how did he know? My father was pretty straightforward on the matter. "The people in the plant don't have a lot of money," he'd say. "He takes care of them." "Is that his job?" I wondered. "Nope," my Dad said. "That's just what he does."

I figured Mr. B was a pretty important guy, knowing what everyone needed like that. Mr. B worked the bottling line as a supervisor, and when my dad took me to work, and I saw him, I'd always run up and say hello. He'd smile, and sneak me some Dr. Pepper off the line. It tasted horrible cold -- I never did get the taste for it -- but hot off the line it was delicious.

There was a woman who used to help out my Mom with my little sisters. Mrs. L. She'd babysit sometimes, sew, and mind my sisters so my Mom could run out to the supermarket. Mrs. L was a kind southern woman who loved singing along to the country music on the radio.

One day, when Mrs. L was there, Mr. B and some of his guys were doing some yardwork for us. Mr.B came to the front door looking for water for the crew. Mrs. L said she'd get it, but Mr. B had to come to the back door.

I had NO IDEA what the hell was going on. Why did he have to go to the back door, when he was standing right there at the front door, in the 95 degree heat? It seemed stupid, so I asked my Dad about it later.

I think my Mom had a conversation with Mrs. L the next day. I didn't hear any of it. I was sent to my room to play.

A few months later was January 1977. We didn't know yet that we were going to be moving to Canada. Maybe my parents did, but I didn't. But the really exciting thing is that my parents let me stay up late with them, to watch something on TV. My parents had let me stay up to watch TV late before. One time, a neighbor of ours was on To Tell The Truth. And if there was a baseball game or a space launch from Cape Kennedy, sometimes I'd get to watch that. But this was different. There was a program, airing every night for seven nights... I'd never heard of that happening before.

It was called Roots.

After I watched it, I started to put together a lot of what I'd seen -- with Mr. B, Mrs. L -- even the strange looks I'd get sometimes from some of the white workers in the plant when Dad would take me to work, and I'd run up to say "Hi" to Mr. B.

Everyone watched Roots, it seems. We talked about it in school. And the next time Mr. B and Mrs. L were both working at our house, I noticed that she had trouble looking Mr. B in the eye. Later that month, Mr. B came by with his pickup truck, and picked up a whole bunch of baby clothes and toys Mrs. L had collected. He thanked her for them, and said he knew just who they would go to. And she nodded and turned around very fast and walked back into the house. She didn't know what to do with her hands...that's what I noticed. Her hands kept fluttering by her sides. I knew what was making her feel that way. And I wondered if she ever thought of the day that she asked Mr. B to go to the back door -- that simple, incomprehensible action that I now understood completely, thanks to Roots.

I was glad she didn't know what to do with her hands.

Anyhow. How's that for a digression?

Point is that Doyle's book re-energizes me and reminds me why I loved television in the first place -- why this is the medium where I want to tell stories. Maybe the landscape is different, and maybe television will never affect people quite that way again.

But then again, every time I'm in a new place, I remember to flip on the TV at least once. You learn things that way. Things you'd never learn anywhere else.

Was it Sunnier Before?

I fully accept that this might be a heretical view. And the caveat is that I've only seen two episodes of the new season...but...

...is it just me, or was It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia funnier without Danny Devito?

I think Devito's funny, it's just...I don't think the anarchic spirit where they'd go for any joke last season is quite the same. Now they have to service his character. I find the show a little unbalanced now.

I'm hoping that's transitory, as this show has given me more solid laughs than most shows I've seen in the last year or two.

Omnibus of Exhaustion: On Muppets, the Street, the Book Club and the Medium

I'm plum tuckered. I spent last week cranking out three production drafts for Across the River To Motor City. That's when you take the writer's draft and ready it for production by cutting pages down, cutting all unnecesary locations and characters, and just generally trying to sharpen the document down to its most concise and shootable. I have three more to go, before smaller rewrites to address further production, actor concerns, etc, kick in. So amidst a bunch of other stuff, I've been trying my best to take it easy this August long weekend.

But a bunch of articles I've been reading all seem to lead me in a similar direction. First of all there's one from the New York Times this weekend. The Children's Television Workshop is doing something for the 37th season of Sesame Street that they haven't been able to do -- introduce a lead female muppet who sticks. The new candidate is called Abby Cadabby -- she's meant to be a kind of girly-girl muppet. It is interesting to me that in the entire run of Sesame Street, none of the female muppets ever achieved iconic status. Don't get me started on Elmo, now. I was the first Sesame Street generation, and thoughts of Elmo and of the fact that adults can now see Mr. Snuffleupagus just make me feel dead and cold inside.

LIZ NEALON, executive vice president and creative director of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind “Sesame Street,” wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted in a new Muppet for the show’s 37th season, which starts on Aug. 14. But she did have one major goal: She wanted the creative team, at long last, to come up with a female Muppet star. The show did already have a number of female characters, including Zoe, a rambunctious, orange, furry friend of Elmo’s, and Rosita, an emerald-blue, bilingual Muppet with a sweet, friendly soul.


“We have our wacky, and we have our gentle,” Ms. Nealon said in a recent interview. “But we wanted a lead female character. If you think about ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ some girls relate to Rhoda, who’s our Zoe, and some girls really relate to Mary, who’s a girly girl. And we didn’t have that girl. We made a definite decision to sit down with the writers to figure out what this character might be.”

For anyone who spends time trying to wrestle characters to ground, it's nice to see that the Sesame Street folks have their own meticulous process to go through. Article is here.

That article was still in my head as I went back through the Globe and Mail yesterday and looked over Kate Taylor's piece on the male-female fiction divide.

“Women read more, they read more novels, they read earlier and they read later. Sixty-five to 70 per cent of the [Canadian] book market is women,” observes Brad Martin, president of Random House of Canada, adding that the American and European markets are probably similar. “How many men do you know who are in a book group?”

No surprise, then, that when the federal Department of Canadian Heritage surveyed Canadian reading habits last year, it found a distinct gender gap. Women accounted for 60 per cent of the daily readers and 70 per cent of the heavy readers who had read 50 or more books in the last 12 months. Women also outnumbered men two to one as regular readers of both classic and contemporary novels.

The divide is not new: The department's previous survey, in 1991, had found similar results, while academics can trace the characterization of novel reading as a genteel — or frivolous — female pursuit as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the gender gap is both particularly pronounced and much debated these days, partly because publishers have exploited it so successfully with their marketing strategies, and partly because teachers and parents are so concerned that boys lag behind girls in their literacy skills.

I find this article interesting because of my own experience, and also the implication Taylor comes to later in the piece.

Once upon a time, I had a fairly constant reading regimen: I'd read one work of fiction, followed by a work of non-fiction. I'd sometimes stagger them so I was reading both at once. But the busier my career got, the more fiction became kind of a siren call. If I'm into a novel, it's too easy for me to just disappear and do nothing else. I've had to burn the midnight oil a couple of times for no other reason than I spent seven hours reading when I should have been working. When you don't have someone standing over your shoulder in the office, you can do that kind of thing. So, gradually, I tapered off my fiction reading. I can read non-fiction for a few pages at a time, not voraciously, like fiction. So except for rare treats or special occasions, fiction to me is like videogames; love'em, but seriously, I can't afford to lose that much time to them. Which, I recognize, is somewhat sad.

Where Taylor gets in her article is that because the fiction gap is so pronounced, marketing to it has become pronounced, and that's making the problem worse. Women read fiction, so fiction that's catered to women drives the market. This does change the kind of stuff that gets talked about and written -- because besides habits, reactions are so very much different. I think I wrote before that when the whole James Frey/Oprah thing blew up, it was the women I knew who read the book who felt betrayed. The men shrugged it off.

The same thing that Taylor talks about in fiction is also happening in TV, of course. The female audience is becoming more pronounced as the male audience shrinks. And consequently, except for things like the zombie-driven Fat Guy w. Skinny Wife comedy shows, it's getting harder and harder to actually get male characters who act like male characters on the air.

Having watched it a few times now, I think the best thing that Lucky Louie has going for it is that it actually deals head on with how men and women think differently, and doesn't take a stand on one side being right and the other wrong.

We're both crazy -- Men and Women. That's funny. And hilarious. And true from the moment we hit the playground.

But it strikes me as so weird that they've never been able to sell a female muppet on Sesame Street.