A Bunch of Little Old Ladies In Pasadena -- And How David Milch Broke Them

With the semi-annual Television Critics Tour underway again in Pasadena, it's a good time to check in with some of the best writers writing for dead tree media, as opposed to i kiss you media (Ie: the innertubes, of which Dead Things Labs is a rustly bustly part. Got it?)

I especially like the writers who blog their daily schedules. The faux process of the whole thing is at least as interesting and full of silliness as anything that comes out of the pre-packaged sessions themselves. Probably more so.

I'm disappointed that the Globe and Mail didn't send John Doyle this time. I always find his writing about the TV Hacks on Tour funnier than the other guy, Ryan.

But there is a Ryan I will go out of my way to read: Maureen Ryan, whose The Watcher blog at the Chicago Tribune is always good for a laugh and some great info. For instance, here she runs down David Milch's description of his new HBO show, John From Cincinatti:

“I guess that's what I was trying to say in this answer [in a previous interview] that to my mind reality is a shifting and elusive condition. It redefines itself constantly. …

“And which is to say that, when I was saying that this is a story that takes place on the margins of things, the attempt to identify the coordinates of reality is itself a kind of problematic and conditional effort. It's changing all the time.

"What constitutes -- where are we when we sleep? What is our sense of reality at that moment? It's, you know, science now suggests to us that what has been perceived as matter for a long time is, in fact, energy. That what looks solid, in fact, is constituted in waves, that Einstein's beautiful mathematical equations which depict the nature of reality don't apply at certain levels. And I think that's true as well about what constitutes the natural and the supernatural. You know, it depends on what foxhole you're in.”

Then there's Alan Sepinwall, who writes for The New Jersey Star-Ledger (which, if you're interested in such little things, has extra coolness because it's the paper that Tony Soprano walks down and gets at the end of his driveway in all those Sopranos episodes.)

Take Sepinwall's take on the David Milch session for John From Cincinatti:

Perhaps sensing he was losing his audience, Milch retreated to that familiar standby: jokes about his legendary history of drug use. (He's now in recovery from multiple addictions.) Quoth in its entirety:

"I was talking about this research project in pharmacology into which I was dragooned. The freon aspect began when I was eight, and then I was transferred over to the alcohol project, and then subsequently to narcotics. And in all of that research, to the extent that there was a coherent intention, it was to ride a wave, which one could generate on one's own terms, that the self was suppressed and the sense of -- I used to -- nitrous oxide. I was involved in the subsidiary project involving nitrous oxide. And the great thing with nitrous oxide, I was getting teeth filled before I even had teeth."

Near the end of the session, stars Bruce Greenwood and Rebecca De Mornay, who had been silent the entire time, were asked how working with Milch was different from other showbiz bosses.

"Well, I think you probably witnessed the difference in the last 20 minutes," said Greenwood, whose tone hovered somewhere between amused and annoyed.

Awesome. Seriously, I think David Milch should now be considered the standard bearer for TV writer crazy. No...not good enough...he shoud be like the measurement of writer crazy. Like when describing people we work with, we should talk in units of Milch. "How's so and so?" "Oh, they're about .5 Milch on talent." "Really, that's pretty good." "Yeah, but they're 3 Milch's of crazy." "Oh, fuck it, then."

Finally, I don't think she's on the tour. And I don't always agree with her, but I love, love, love Virginia Heffernan's TV blog in the NYTimes. (And not just because apparently she's related to a fictional character on the King of Queens.)

Do you know any other dead tree writers blogging about the TV tour? Anyone you like to read? Let me know.

Now, I think it's time to go and crack one of those...book...things that I've heard so much about. I wonder if I can find a place to have coffee in Vancouver.

Hmmmm.

The Five Stages of Television Writing

My friend Vanessa helpfully pointed out to me last week at The Paddock (sigh. The Paddock.) that I had Photobooth hiding in my Applications folder. So, you know, whee.

We're all familiar with the Kubler-Ross Five Stages. What you might not be aware of, is that writing also encompasses five distinct stages. Anyone considering doing it for a living must be aware of this, as it will form an important part of the rhythm of your day to day life.





Stage One: Cogitation








Stage Two: Desperation









Stage Three: Flagellation





Stage Four: Inspiration





Stage Five: Satisfatction*
*Not pictured. Ever. Stage Four is also sometimes called, "Consumption."

A Few More Motor City Pics

These ones feature the "bad guy," Frank Calasso, played by Toronto actor Matthew Deslippe. Courtesy of his MySpace page.

Frank is kind of the nemesis of the piece in the period (1960's) story. Matt did a wonderful job in the scenes I saw, which is good because Frank (and especially Frank's home life) were some of the favorite scenes I wrote. I also had an interesting time talking to Matthew about Windsor, since that's where the show is set, and he's the only member of our cast to actually come from there.

Matt, when I come back to Toronto, I want into that poker game.

And if anybody else -- cast or crew, has got photos from the shoot, pass'em along, willya? Thanks.

30 Rock

...has started doing "Family Guy" style punch ins. But short, sharp, and funny ones. There was one in last night's episode about two writers and cocaine that made my pancreas hurt I laughed so hard.

Seriously. Tina. Call me.

Two People In The Dead Tree Business Write Honestly About Canadian Media. Here's the Latest From One of Them.

Over at the Toronto Star today, Antonia Zerbisias reacts to the Canwest/AA deal with a take on what it means for foreign ownership. Then further down she addresses the latest move by the CAB:

Yesterday, almost under the radar, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, the lobby group representing the private industry, put out a release saying it is seeking to recoup over $790 million in so-called Part II licence fees.
Long story short: last month, the CAB won a federal court ruling that declared those licence fees a tax that the CRTC had no right to impose in 1997.

The money, which went into public coffers, was ostensibly to cover the broadcasters' use of public airwaves.

Now the broadcasters want the money back.

Specifically, they want their licences to print money for nothing.

Think they'll invest the three-quarter-billion-plus in Canadian programming?

Snort.

Which is pretty much what I was saying here last month.

This needs to get out from under the radar. The WGC, The DGC, ACTRA (whose members aren't exactly busy right now, remember) and other groups have to rally a big dollop of embarrassment. This ties into the Jim Shaw craziness too. The airwaves, under Canadian law, belong to we citizens. The CAB's members get to use them not as a right -- as a privilege. That 790 million dollars should be going not to the government's general revenue, but into the broadcast system to benefit Canadians and Canadian programming. And if they won't do it, then we need to go on talk shows, write MPs, scream bloody murder and talk about a fair market spectrum auction. There is no fucking carrot with these guys anymore. Time to sharpen the stick.

It'll be hard with the corporate media stranglehold -- but let's start with the CBC Radio types and take it from there. This is no time to be Canadian about this.

Rights, Responsibilities, and Jim Shaw's Checkbook Tantrum

This started as a comment response, then metastisized. I'm rewriting an outline right now so it's not going to be particularly edited. Forgive me for that.

Oh, one more thing. Watching Vancouverites drive in snow is like watching a line of fat kids in a swimming pool try to do the butterfly. I say both these things from painful personal experience.

In response to my pass along about the WGC's response to the AA/Canwest deal, Diane brought up this article, which flipped across the transom today:

OTTAWA - Calgary-based cable-TV executive Jim Shaw says he will no longer send his firm's contribution of about $56 million to Ottawa this year to support the Canadian Television Fund.
Shaw, CEOof Shaw Communications, says until the fund is restructured, he will withhold the five per cent of his company's revenues that legislation stipulates be used to support the production of Canadian TVshows...

``Over the past 10 years,''his letter states, ``Shaw has contributed over $350 million in direct subsidies to the Canadian production industry.''

Shaw goes on to argue that the ``CTF has become nothing more than a means of subsidizing broadcasters, pay and specialty services and independent producers to produce Canadian television programming that few watch and has no commercial or exportable value.''

The CTF was created in 1996 with a mandate to produce ``high-quality culturally significant Canadian television programs in both official languages.'' It also has an annual budget of $250 million a year _ $100 million of which is provided by the federal government.
That leads directly to another of Shaw's beefs.

He is particularly rankled that 37 per cent of the CTF's revenues are set aside annually for the CBC _ something he declares ``should be ended immediately'' in light of the fact that ``CBC already receives over $1.2 billion from Canadian taxpayers in the form of grants and mandatory subscriber fees.'

When I was a little kid, the thing that my Dad drove into my head over and over (and over, and over) was the balance everyone had to face between their rights and their responsibilities. He always made sure to let you know that he saw these two things as linked, and that you didn't get to have one without the other. You can't talk about your rights, if you aren't willing to fulfill your responsbilities.

Among the many dishonesties of the Bush adventure in Iraq was the fact that it became a deliberate strategy to sell the war to Americans based on fear, but to make sure that you didn't ask too much of them. So the tax cuts could stay in place, of course...and there didn't need to be a draft, to spread around the burden. Americans really weren't asked to sacrifice anything specific. That's why it took 3 years for them to turn against Bush an the war.

Well, the rights and responsibilities thing has also seriously gotten out of whack in the Canadian broadcast sector.

Jim Shaw's obviously a curmudgeon with a beef, but my feeling is that he's using the cudgel that he has to try and force a discussion. I could be wrong, but I'm going to hope that he actually wouldn't throw current programs out of whack to make his point. But you have to admit, it's a great stunt to get people listening.

So what's he doing?

Well, for one thing, I happen to not think he's wrong about the CBC and the CTF. I think that the entire issue of what we want the CBC to be, what its purpose is, and how it will accomplish that, needs to be discussed openly, and some binding recommendations need to be made to refocus and reframe the corporation. The CBC has a lot of competing demands put on it. Its mission is diffuse and unfocused. Even the greatest cheerleaders admit that it's asked to do way too much, without a clear plan or stable funding. But I think his point - that a corporation that gets lotsa dough from one place shouldn't get it from another -- well, there's nothing inherently ridiculous about that. He's got a point.

But-- and this is a big but --if it doesn't get CTF money, then where does it get the money from? For years, they've cut CBC's grant without spelling out what's expected of it, and accountability is lacking because it's run as a bureaucracy and not a business. Fiefdoms rule and plans -- expensive ones -- are made and then abandoned without benchmarks or a plan of victory. (You thought the Bush comparison off the top was superfluous, didn't you? Take that, bitches!)

Three years ago the CBC wanted to have a daily serial. So they commissioned a couple. By the time they were done, they were dumped on the air with no promo and left to wither on the vine. Why? New chiefs. New fiefdoms. More money down the drain.

Should the CBC have commercials? Should they do sports? Should they do lots more drama? Should they do cultural programming? Should they try to get ratings, or should they be an antidote to the American offerings of the Canadian private broadcasters?

I have views on all these things. I'm sure Jim Shaw does too. I have a stupid blog. He has that $56 million check he writes once a year. Who's got trump?

Money talks -- everywhere. If Jim wants to stamp his feet, good on him. Because shit needs to be said. And you know what? Maybe Jim's dead wrong and the CBC should get CTF money. But let's talk about it. Because - and here's the real point - the system aint working well right now. If we actually talked about it, well, maybe it would turn out that Jim's dead wrong. Then, suck it up buttercup and write your check. But the reason why he's stamping his feet is because our entire industry is based on looking the other way. Now Jim's gonna take his checkbook and go home. Awk-ward.

The rest of it, I think, is open to discussion too. The private broadcasters in this country do pay too little even when they do make shows. The license fees are too low. In a real sense, the CTF has become yet another source of welfare for businesses that are very profitable -- profitable enough to spend 2.3 billion dollars on mergers. (By the way, that's about THREE HUNDRED 6 part TV series like Across the River to Motor City.) In other words, say it with me now-- they're very quick to claim their rights, and have been extremely effective in denying their responsibilties.

They're so confident of this, that the head of their lobby group can deride having to spend money on Canadian TV altogether, even though they get breaks on things like cable substitution and a protected market. They can even have the stones to get up there before the CRTC, cry poor, and demand cable fees for broadcasting U.S. shows to you that you get anyway on the U.S. channels.

You don't think that has something to do with Jim Shaw's tantrum? You bet your sweet bippy it does.

Remember -- the discussion is never going to take place if we leave it to pols. Because there are no votes in Canadian TV. (Beyond we who make it, I mean.) It's not an issue that's on the radar, for all the reasons that we've talked about on this blog, and Tv, Eh? and in John Doyle's column in the Globe a million times.

Canadians are wonderfully patriotic. They don't want to be like Americans. They just want to watch every piece of shit on American TV, for free, like they're Americans. Is that inconsistent? Hell yeah it is. Let's talk about that, too.

Jim Shaw may regret opening the whole can of worms by putting down his pen, but fuck it. It's past time. This shit's broken hard. Let's talk. But let's talk about all of it. And this time, maybe the papers won't punk out like they did at the CRTC hearings.

UPDATE: one of the things about writing something fast is sometimes you reread it later and realize, mmm...I left something out. And it's this: I've met exactly two people in my life who worked at the CTF. And they both worked very, very, very hard, and believed in Canadian TV powerful much. And if Jim Shaw actually does follow this thing all the way through, and doesn't cough up the money, then -- and this is the point that maybe didn't come through -- he's a dink. Fullstop.

(this post was also edited to correct a math mistake above)

The Writers Guild of Canada Asks The Big Question

The WGC just sent out a press release about the AA/Global merger news that says it all. Great stuff.

Why is CanWest buying Alliance Atlantis if broadcasters are so poor?

January 11, 2007 – At the recent CRTC hearings into the future of Canadian television, private, conventional broadcasters like CTV and CanWest Global said the rise of Internet programming and other technologies have eroded their revenues and they are too poor to spend money on Canadian drama.

If broadcasting is such a losing proposition, why would CanWest want to buy Alliance Atlantis’ 13 specialty channels, let alone pay $2.3 billion for it?

“We keep on hearing the same story from the broadcasters – they are losing money due to market fragmentation and have no money for Canadian drama,” says Maureen Parker, Executive Director of the Writers Guild of Canada. “Well, this CanWest/Alliance Atlantis deal blows that argument out of the water. It’s obvious that broadcasting continues to be a lucrative business.”

Last November, Glenn O’Farrell, head of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, said it was a losing battle for broadcasters to try to compete for audiences when Internet sites such as YouTube and MySpace show amateur videos for free. But in its December 2006 report on the affect of technology on the broadcasting system, the CRTC concluded that new media technologies are not yet having a significant impact on traditional radio and television broadcasting audiences.

So although technology is offering new ways for Canadians to find entertainment and information, broadcasting remains the foundation for the entertainment industry in our country. And that’s why broadcasters such as CanWest are willing to pay big bucks to buy more television channels.

“At the television policy review in December we asked the CRTC to require private, English-language broadcasters to spend a minimum of 7% of their advertising revenues on the production of Canadian drama,” says Parker. “It’s a fair and manageable requirement, and the broadcasters can obviously afford it.

“The CRTC needs to come to the realization that broadcasting is a lucrative business and the broadcasters have the resources to produce and air more homegrown Canadian drama on their channels.”

The Winter of Our Discontent

If you happen to be currently dating a writer, this article has a nice little overview, in one life, of the kind of people we are.


The writer Jack Winter, at left.

Don't say you weren't warned.

5 Answers

To the "Five Things You Don't Know About Me" Post.

• Of all the things I've written, I'm probably proudest of the 11'o'clock number I wrote for a spoof musical.

Sadly, this is true. The song is "That Goose Is Cooked," from "Top Gun! The Musical." TG!TM was set backstage at a rehearsal for a megamusical based on...you guessed it, that movie...It was a play I started out writing for the Toronto Fringe based on an anecdote from someone else's dinner party. Someone was challenged to name the worst possible movie that you could make into a Broadway Musical. Top Gun won. (though in the show, we referenced what I'm sure would be a close second if anyone ever wrote it, "Apocalypse---WOW!" )

I wrote the book and the lyrics of Top Gun! really quickly (half the songs were backstage, Chorus Line-like numbers, and the other half were supposed to be songs from the musical itself.) A very gifted and wonderfully connected Canadian Musical Theatre musician, composer, and musical director, Scott White, wrote the music.

In our version, we made Maverick's partner Goose a woman (of course) and That Goose Is Cooked was the song Maverick sang when she died. Very Les Miz. Very Silly.

The actor who played Maverick, Dmitry Chepovetsky, sold the song unbelievably. (Which is why he got a Dora Award (Toronto Theater Award) nomination for his performance. Dmitry can now be seen playing Bob on Re:Genesis) The songs from within the musical were the most fun to write, (how could they not be, with titles like "We've Got A Plane To Catch," "You Can Ride My Tail," and "I'll Never Be Alone (Up There.)" but to this day nothing's tickled me quite as much as That Goose Is Cooked, which was written in about fifteen minutes at my dining room table. Part of it goes like this:

...But You/You were so funny, so wise,
So full of surprises/ You helped me to see,
Now you're debris/And it should have been me,
And now, Finally I feel the cost,
I've crashed down to Earth,
And I know what I lost.
What I lost...

Now...
That Goose is Cooked/That Fish is Fried/That Puppy's Roadkill/That Hamster Died!

(pause)

That pig is bacon/The Earth is Shaking/And Why?
Just Look in my eyes now/Cause these tears are Dry.

Brought the house down every night. There's a production going up in Dallas in March 2007, I think.

• I was a Florida voter in the 2000 U.S. Presidential ElectionTrue.

Also true. Under U.S. law you vote from the place you were last a resident. And for me that's Florida. I had already given notice that I was quitting my job to go back to school when the election happened. To this day I don't know if my absentee ballot was ever counted. Oh, but the nice TV company did basically pay me to watch CNN for 37 days. Whoops.

As for the others...I did indeed spit on Stephen Fry (on the set of Gormenghast; accident,) knocked over Charlton Heston (while carrying a stack of tapes; accident,) peed beside Joey Ramone (down the hall from Muchmusic; accident) and signed an autograph, "Kevin Smith" (at the Film Festival Party; totally on purpose -- but in my defense, she was ridiculously hot.) And I did sit through an unsettling job interview with the dear Marcia Martin, sister of Andrea, who laughs like Edith Prickley and was one of my favorite bosses ever.

My sister and I also share a birthday. But... we've celebrated it exactly once, when she turned thirty, and I was four years older, mourning the fact that I was passing out of my demographically desirable years. So there it is. The petit lie.

So there you go.

Motor City Pictures

So, doing a surfing thing today and came across the website of a really great guy I worked with on Across The River To Motor City. Patrick Antosh was the Costume Designer and to say that he did a great job would be to understate it by a factor of, oh, call it eleventy-billion.

One of the problems of not having a populated story department is that there's very little play you get in the back and forth of talking out the logic points in the script. Of all the Department Heads, Patrick was the one who really went out of his way to come to me to discuss this point or that point, and ask "what did you mean?" and "Am I reading this right?" He really enjoyed the scripts, really got them, and he always had such a great attitude that whenever I talked to him he had the virtue of making a tough day (as many of them were) seem warmer. When things became tough sloughing, Patrick was a guy who always had a smile.

He also gave me one of those, "huh, never thought of that" gems, when he pointed out that one of the big problems with making his costume budget was the fact that we had a tall cast. Apparently, part of the reason why all those actors are short is that it really saves money on the costumes.

Who knew?

Anyway, I cadged these great photos from Patrick's website. In the photo at right, we see Jessie Preacher (RAVEN DAUDA) in the office at Ambassador Investigations, circa early 1960's. Jessie's kind of the conscience of the show. It's sad that when we had to make script cuts, a juicy subplot of Jessie's had to go. Perils of budget, don'tcha know. Raven really shone in all the stuff I've seen so far.

And at top you see Raven with our hero, the young Ben Ford (SASHA ROIZ) c. 1963. Sasha was a real pro, and a nicer actor I don't think I've ever met.

So thanks to everybody, and thanks to Patrick. If you're looking for a costume designer, people -- he's the bee's knees. And if he's not the bee's knees, then he probably can make them for you. Even if you're six-four.

And The Consolidation Dance Continues

It just got announced that Canwest Global is buying Alliance Atlantis. This means that the specialty channels in the AA stable, including History Television and Showcase, will now be owned by Global.

This means that in the last year, pending CRTC approval, Canadian Creatives have lost two independent places to pitch their series: CHUM and Alliance Atlantis/Showcase.

They will probably have to create a "benefits" fund for the sale, but it's hard to see how this is good for anyone who works in content creation.

It's great for Canwest Shareholders, though, as the press release points out.

Wonderful. So happy I can't even link to it because to do so would require me to put down the kitchen knife.

The Numbers are In, and...

...Little Mosque did over 2 million viewers last night.

Now, that is great news for CBC and for Canadian TV generally...

...unless the dropoff next week is horriffic. The numbers will drop. But how much? We'll see.

In any case, I hope everybody basks. The show is not without its problems, but they're fixable. I'm glad they did well.

Save Me, Al Gore

I can't believe that I had to come to Vancouver to get snow. Seriously. On the Rick Mercer Report last night they had the sharpest political joke I've seen in months -- a new recycling box, the grey bin, for dead polar bears who'll soon turn up on our doorsteps as they move south.

It's funnier when he does it.

And yeah, I'm a hypocrite about Global Warming and environmental issues as much as much as anyone in North America because, you know, damn son, I want one of them Iphones powerful much.

Oh well, at least I get to meet in Vancouver today and not have to drive to Maple Ridge. Time is short for me, I know that I haven't answered the five things you don't know about me yet, and depending on how else my day plays out I may have time for a longer post on that -- and maybe something else, too -- later tonight.

Little Mosque: A Slam Dunk, Sez Doyle

Well. You don't get reviews much better than this:

Today, we celebrate a triumph. What arrives tonight on CBC is the smartest thing the broadcaster has done in years.

Little Mosque on the Prairie (CBC, 8:30 p.m.) is no masterpiece of comedy or social observation. It's hokey as hell. But it's terrifically good-natured, has a few terrific jokes and its mere existence is a grand-slam assertion that Canadian TV is different and that the best of Canadian TV amounts to a rejection of the hegemony of U.S. network TV.

He goes on:

It's notable that Little Mosque on the Prairie, while it's a sitcom, isn't derived from the U.S., network model. It has a British feel to it. The gentle mocking of a small community and celebration of the eccentrics within it has been a Britcom staple for years -- shows such as Ballykissangel, Hamish Macbeth and Doc Martin have mined the genre with glorious results.

And the important thing is this -- popular, consequential Canadian TV is a vigorous demonstration of our difference from the United States in our attitudes and national character. Trailer Park Boys celebrates lowlifes, dope-smoking and all manner of vulgarity. Da Vinci's Inquest and Intelligence deal with the reality of a dope economy and the thin line between cops and criminals. Corner Gas asserts that there's wonderful entertainment in the most gentle, never-nasty humour.

The topics and the substance of these shows stand as rejections of the U.S. network style and preoccupations. Little Mosque on the Prairie is nobly in that Canadian tradition. The U.S. media can huff and puff in wonder, but this is who we are, and we're fine with it, thanks. And thanks to CBC for doing its job.

So. There it is.

Little Mosque In The Prairie premieres on CBC Tuesday night, and Repeats Wednesday

Who Comes To Speak For the Skin And The Bone?

I got lost four times this morning, went over a bridge I didn't want to go over, almost saw Surrey by mistake, and now I sit pounding outline in a tiny little office with bile-yellow walls. Don't tell me showbiz isn't glamourous.

On that note, I don't have time to get into it very deeply, (or at all) but I want to direct you all to the fine post by Alex this morning about the ACTRA strike. ACTRA, the Canadian Union that represents writers, went on strike this morning. Talks, I believe, are ongoing.

It may seem frivolous in a world where Reagan fired the air traffic controllers and Thatcher crushed the miners, to speak about privileged, pampered actors and their labor concerns. Okay...it is a little silly. But if you care about good TV and Movies, it's also important. Go let Alex tell you why.

To my brother and sister performers walking picket lines today, I say, good luck. (NOT break a leg.)

Of course, I know that's easy for me to say -- since I'm in B.C. and I won't be affected by this strike, unless it goes on for months (in which case we're all in trouble.) May this end quickly and the spirit of compromise prevail so we can all get back to fixing the 1001 other things that threaten to send our industry the way of the mastodon.

Fog On The Mountains

Pretty.

Going to a Blow, Go.

Well, great. That's it for me. Apparently I have to leave Toronto which is nice and unseasonably warm and fly to Vancouver where the winds just blew over a damn stadium or something.

Sucks! Those mountains are pretty, sure, but fuck, dood!

Just kidding Vancouver. I love you. Where am I from? Uh....New York, why?

Blogging will be light for the next several days as I settle into my new digs and jump head first into work work work.

Be back when I can.

Dragon Boys

One more for CBC. I probably won't be able to catch it as I fly tomorrow, but CBC's new show about Asian Gang Life in Vancouver, Dragon Boys, is getting fabulous reviews. A critical winner. So please give it some eyeballs.

Party Allah Time!

Which, by the way, is another way better ad line.

Little Mosque on The Prairie is starting to get reviews and not just hype. John Doyle gave it a happy little blurb in next Tuesday's TV picks. (not online) And Toronto's NOW Magazine weighed in with a mostly positive review, for what it's worth.

But more importantly, a friend and fellow soldier in the trenches of the industry ripped me a new one yesterday about this post for Little Mosque. She makes a lot of good points, so I'll reproduce what she wrote below:

I'm just really happy and honestly excited
for the world that every Muslim i'm aware of who's seen the show has really
loved it (including several who work at the post-production place where
they're cutting it; and the 3 intelligent men on the panel on CNN). That's
rather significant. I also feel it's funnier than Corner Gas ,
and more entertaining because it explores new, topically-hot
territory (a tonic to my chronic sitcom fatigue syndrome.)

My friend's in a unique position to judge some of these things since, for a while, she (or is it HE?) was one of them...A network person. Here's what they say about that:

Soon after 9/11 happened, i proclaimed to my colleague at [other Canadian network that is not the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] we needed a Muslim comedy - we needed
to see Muslims with a sense of humour. i maintain(ed) that this could have
an enormous impact on Muslim/non-Muslim relations. (my colleague basically
dismissed me like i was a joke, myself...) so imagine how heartened I was
last night - just imagine, Denis! me, heartened! - when, after seeing a
series of truly funny clips from the show, the 3 intelligent Muslim men on
CNN said (laughing/smiling) that this kind of show "will have a much greater
positive effect than any think tank or interfaith counsel could ever
have..." - or words to that effect.

i live by the credo that humour can help us overcome almost anything.
so i hope this show succeeds because it would be a kind of victory for Humour.

and yes, let's hope people find it funny. trust me, if Corner Gas is funny,
Little Mosque is funny.

And then s(he) said, "Tell them, Make Jokes, Not War"

Allrighty then. Thanks for sharing.

The only worry I have, of course, is that it's nice that Muslims who see it seem to like it. But for CBC to hit with this show, it can't just appeal to that group. And if they're the only ones watching, it won't exactly strike a blow for understanding, either.

When the reviews roll in, I hope it will be given a fair shot and judged for what it is: this is not supposed to be hip stuff. It's supposed to be family comedy. Or so I gather. The messages get mixed when you mix in words like "edgy" with "family comedy."

I want to say something else here, because sometimes I get worried that I'll write something here that can be co-opted by people whom I have no truck with whatsoever: the CBC bashers. I think CBC, and CBC Management, sometimes don't make the best decisions. I sometimes question their expertise. Lord knows they do give everyone cause to do so.

I don't question, ever, the need for a CBC. Canada, a country that is, and will forever be, dominated culturally by the largest producer of cultural product the world has ever known. The nation has a fragile sense of itself at the best of times. A sparsely populated, huge land like Canada, even in the age of satellite and microwave and download and broadband, needs a strong national broadcaster to knit it together.

And since the private broadcasters in this country don't always stress their hometown bonafides as much as they should, that makes CBC even more important. It should not be a PBS North. It should not be the kind of station that shows only unpopular things that the privates can't make money on. It should be concerned, to some extent, about ratings. And it should try to get them. Just, you know...be smart about it.

I take pride in the fact that every time - how do I say this without attracting the hit aggregators that turn every web discussion that mentions this into a wasteland -- okay, how about this - every time the subject of that one country over there comes up and there's that other people living in the same kind of land that are sort of unhappy with that country and want their own stuff -- you follow my drift here, right? Anyway -- I think it's good that every time CBC News covers that, both sides complain about CBC's biased the other way. I like the fact that when I watch CBC News, it's like watching BBC News, and so much better than CNN News.

And here's my main point: I like the fact that the reason CBC is getting all this pre-press for Mosque in the first place is that it's the only network, certainly in North America, that WOULD have the guts to take a chance on this show.

That's the thing to remember. Whether the execution works, or doesn't. Whether people watch, or don't. I hope it works wonders for CBC. But if it doesn't, I hope they'll get right up on the horse and greenlight another show that's daring. And figure out if they can help execute it better.

Anyway, that's the last thing you'll hear from me about Little Mosque - -unfortunately the timing is really bad for me. I'm going to try to see the show Tuesday when it premieres, but I'm going to be neck deep in work. Please feel free to leave comments and tell me what you thought of it.

Inspiring

From the AP:

NYC Subway Savior: Someone Had to Help

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By DEEPTI HAJELA Associated Press Writer

January 04,2007 | NEW YORK -- Wesley Autrey said he made a quick decision to jump into a subway track to rescue a stranger from an ongoing train, an act he hopes other New Yorkers would follow.


"I did it out of a split-second reaction. And if I had to do it again, I probably would," he said on CBS' "The Early Show' Thursday. "I was like, 'Wow, I got to go get this guy ... somebody's gotta save this guy but I was the closest one.

"I'm still saying I'm not a hero ... 'cause I believe all New Yorkers should get into that type of mode," the 50-year-old construction worker said. "You should do the right thing."

Autrey's phone has been ringing off the hook since he helped the man on Tuesday by pushing him into a gap between the rails. Some callers were complete strangers so inspired by his bravery that they offered rewards.

Besides appearing on several morning television shows Thursday, he was set to tape an appearance on David Letterman's CBS "Late Show" and visit City Hall to be honored by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In hindsight, even Autrey was somewhat startled by his dramatic decision. But knowing he narrowly escaped injury or possibly death, he didn't regret his choice.

"I did something to save someone's life," he said Wednesday.


On Tuesday, while waiting for a downtown Manhattan train, Autrey saw Cameron Hollopeter, a 19-year-old film student, suffering from some kind of medical episode. After stumbling down the platform, Hollopeter, of Littleton, Mass., fell onto the tracks with a train on its way into the station.

Autrey, traveling with his two young daughters, knew he had to do something.

"If I let him stay there by himself, he's going to be dismembered," the Navy veteran remembered thinking.

He jumped down to the tracks, a few feet below platform level, and rolled with the young man into a drainage trough -- cold, wet and more than a little unpleasant smelling -- between the rails as the southbound No. 1 train came into the 137th Street/City College station.

The train's operator saw someone on the tracks and put the emergency brakes on. Some train cars passed over Autrey and Hollopeter with only a couple of inches to spare, but neither man suffered any harm from the incident.

Hollopeter was taken to a nearby hospital; Autrey refused medical attention -- and then went to work.

Autrey went by the hospital Wednesday afternoon for a visit with Hollopeter and his family. Afterward, he and Hollopeter's father addressed reporters.

"Mr. Autrey's instinctive and unselfish act saved our son's life," Larry Hollopeter, his voice choking up, said Wednesday.

My Online Infamy

John Doyle from The Globe and Mail wrote a column today that mentioned this blog in extremely complimentary terms. For those of you surfing into Dead Things On Sticks on the back of that mention, I do write a lot about the Canadian TV industry here. The columns that seem to have stirred the most hornets recently are:


Ten Things That Would Make Canadian TV Better. With a Response from the Audience.

I'm a little bit scared about how CBC is selling Little Mosque On The Prairie. And I'm not sure their current obsession with numbers and metrics is going to get them any more hit shows.

Thoughts on an upcoming ACTRA strike.

If you're a certain type of Canadian TV person, you may find Corner Gas gives you agita.

Doyle also wrote about how a lot of students interview him about the Canadian industry. I get a bit of that, too.

I'm a mid-level writer based in Toronto. Later this week, I'm going to be leaving for Vancouver for three months to work on a show that's shooting there called Blood Ties. Blood Ties is a show based on books by Tanya Huff. It's a neat little vampire love triangle story with monsters of the week and a truly asskicking female heroine. I think it's going to be a whole heap o'fun. I'm coming in at the end of production to replace another writer, so I've got to pull up my bootstraps and just dive in.

This is exactly the kind of show that a lot of culture vultures and snobs sniff at. I can't wait. Because whatever else I do, I'm in the business of trying to make TV that people want to watch, not TV that feeds my (admittedly healthy) ego.

Oh, I also co-created a show that's going to be on CHUM stations in 2007 called Across The River To Motor City. Watch for that, would you? It would make my Mom happy.

In all seriousness, there are times when I have thought, and have heard, that blogging honestly about an industry that's broken like Canadian TV is not the way to go. I can't tell you how many of my friends and colleagues have said to me, "right on! I agree with you 100%...(beat...beat)....Please never mention my name or say that I agree with you 100%."

If you can't talk honestly, the industry can never change. I made a mild criticism of one show (actually on the way to a totally different point) and heard that one of the guys who did the show was slamming me, like, six months later. About the same paragraph. Apoplectic, off the charts pique over some really, really, really mild criticism, made from a place of wanting a show to succeed. What can you do?

Well. Now that it seems like there are people really reading this, maybe I can be a little more kind and understanding. But when the message comes from entitlement and self-importance, I can't do it. Because that kind of attitude is just killing our industry. Catch 22.

I never want to have to stand in the middle of the room at a big splashy premiere of a Canadian show again, and watch as everyone praises it, then goes out for a smoke and runs it down without mercy for being a flaming tax-dollar wasting turd.

We all deserve better, don't we?

5 Things You Don't Know About Me

Sigh. Straight from head cold to insomnia. Life, she is futzing with me.

John Rogers gave a nice shout out to me yesterday. He also did a charming little challenge (not a meme, okay...) for the blogosphere at large. Anyway. I thought I'd take the bait. One of these things is not true. Guess below, and I'll fill you in in a couple days.

1. Of all the things I've written, I'm probably proudest of the 11'o'clock number I wrote for a spoof musical.
2. I was a Florida voter in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election
3. My sister and I share a birthday, yet as adults we've never celebrated together.
   
4. I have peed beside Joey Ramone, knocked over Charlton Heston, spat on Stephen Fry, and signed an autograph "Kevin Smith."
5. I had to sit through an hour long job interview with a woman who looked just like Edith Prickley, without laughing.

Now, no cheating by guessing if you know me in RL. Otherwise, go to it.

Meantime, you should also check out Doris Egan's incredible essay on difficult characters and the importance of ambiguity in motivation. Not so long ago, I had a head-bangingly awful, drag out fight with a collaborator about this very thing.

There are still chunks out of my prodigious ass over this one. It's the hardest thing to get through to network types, and sometimes, producers. And I wish it wasn't. Because it's so often the Rubicon between creating something Good and something Great. If you won't cross this river and risk it all, then you aint doing the TV I want to watch.

Two New Sitcoms

Knights of Prosperity finally drops on ABC tonight at 9pm, followed by In Case of Emergency

I don't know if I'll see either, but if you do, have at it in the comments below.

I will admit to a slight man-crush on Donal Logue. Be excellent and be gone.

Well That Was Fun

...But I've still got a helluva cold.

Radio Interview went well. Started out with "some people in Toronto don't like Corner Gas" and I was all...uh oh...but the host was super-gracious, good questions, genuinely interesting...and you know what? It was neat talking to people who were obviously proud of a show shot and set in Saskatchewan. Well they should be. Corner Gas Rocks.

And here's that post that started it all, again. I keep hearing this is bouncing around Telefilm or the CTF or something. Wonderful. Boy o Boy I hope everybody's reading for context.

ACTRA: No Actors' Strike Yet

ACTRA returned to the bargaining table. Two more days of talks, but if there's no deal Wednesday, they'll call a strike for Monday at Midnight.

By which point I'll be in B.C. where there's another contract that doesn't lapse til the end of March.

Funny old world.

That's gonna be one good looking picket line.

CBC story is here.

Revenge of the Housebound

So one of the things about we who work from home is that we're at the mercy of other people in our concrete and glass boxes. There's a guy who lives upstairs from me who I like to call The Phantom Hammerer. He hammers sometimes, mid morning to late afternoon. It's not a steady hammering noise. Intermittent. Seemingly pointless. As annoying as possible. It's that Tom Waits song, "What's He Building in There?" writ large upon my life.

Sometimes he's joined by someone above me in another locale -- you can hear TPH most clearly in my bedroom; his accomplice (for everyone who annoys me is linked in the karma of the universe,) Johnny Drillsalot, comes through in my solarium and office. Both places I like to work.

Well, in an amazing stroke of serendipity, today both Johnny Drillsalot and The Phantom Hammerer decided to get a New Year's head start on their renos, or dismemberment projects, or homemade dental surgeries or whatever, at the same time.

But I don't care.

Because this morning, the nice man from UPS delivered my brand new Noise Cancelling Headphones, which I bought online thanks to the Christmas largesse of my sister, Trish.

So hammer and drill away, bitches. I'm golden. Thanks, sis.

Hellloooo, Saskatoooon...

Tea. It's what keeps us alive.

Fielded a call from a very nice Senior Anchor and News Producer from AM 650 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He wants to talk a bit about my post How Corner Gas Ruined Everything.

So if you're in the greater Saskatoon metropolitan area and near a radio, tomorrow morning, say 7:15 a.m. Give me a tune, will you? Should be a quick convo. Hopefully I'll be coherent.

That should be good for, like 100 hits. This blogging for free thing sure is awesome!

EDIT: Of course, thanks to all of us being Time's Person of the Year, and the massive power of the great series of tubes that is the innernets, you can actually apparently listen online. So that's tomorrow, January 3, 7:15 in Sask, 8:15 am ET, 5:15 Pacific, Next Thursday in NFLD.

Mosques on my Mac

Say what you want about CBC when they're doing stuff wrong -- but they are definitely doing their best to promo their new show, Little Mosque on the Prairie. There are banner ads for the show on every Canadian website I visit.

Yes, the campaign is nonsensical. (Halalarious? Are you kidding me? Why not Infidel-icious?) But they're trying. I just hope they're not getting too excited before their viewers weigh in. This is still pre-press. Remember, Studio 60 was the can't miss show of the season. Heroes, who?

Still packing, sneezing, and writing. Go about your business.

Year End List: Fuel for Inspiration, 2006

When I sat down last year at this time, I didn't have a bad head cold. And I seem to remember being not quite as tired. I hadn't just spent a few weeks dealing with a family member's illness. And, of course, like everyone else, I'd yet to see Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears' vee jay jay.

My 2006 was very different from my 2005. I worked for multiple vendors this year, doing a bit of animation, a bit of comedy development, and a lot of rewriting. I passed a milestone -- a show I co-created was greenlit and shot, an experience that sometimes felt like passing a kidney stone. But that's the magic of show business.

I continued to learn oodles about my craft, not just from working it in the trenches, but from pros like Artful Writer and Jane Espenson and Ken Levine. 2006 was also the year that the Canadian screenwriting conversation got more interesting. Alex has been plugging along, of course -- he had his great new TV writing book out in 2006 -- it told me some stuff I knew already but forgot and stuff that I'd never even thought to consider-- but this year the Canadian side was joined by Will and Jim and I discovered a bunch of other blogs from CanTV types, like David Moses. And we managed to infect a civilian. And the next generation's going there too. Writers. You can't shut us up.

Sitting down to write a best of list can be considered a cliche right up there with posting the cat. But I soldier on for the same reason I did last year: because inspiration is precious, and it needs to be celebrated for what it it is: fuel. Wait. I said it better last year. (Damn head cold.) Okay, I'm just going to quote myself:

But amidst all that in the year, there's fuel. Fuel exists all around us; it's writing that makes you learn and writing that makes you want to write. For me, I recognize and love writing regardless of media -- it inspires me in the same way, it makes me want to work in the same way. So if I'm going to to a year-end list, by its very definition it needs to be cross-disciplinary. So then, in no particular order, here are ten written works that inspired or fueled me this year

So. Let's get going. This is, of course, in no particular order. An exhibition, not a competition. So Please. No Wagering.

1) Ten Minutes at The White House Correspondents Dinner

Okay, you've seen this picture, I'm sure. And most of you have probably seen the thing on YouTube, so I won't link to it again. I'm simply going to run a few edited excerpts below:

Madame First Lady, Mr. President, my name is Stephen Colbert and tonight it's my privilege to celebrate this president. We're not so different, he and I. We get it. We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book.

Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works. Every night on my show, the Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, OK? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term..

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias...

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will.

And on, and on, and on.

By now the story is well known. The people in the room didn't laugh. Bush looked tight-lipped and peevish. The mainstream media pronounced it a flop, and spilled all sorts of ink over Bush's lame sketch with a Bush impersonator. Then YouTube made the video a sensation.

The writers for Colbert and Daily Show are simply the finest political comedy writers working today. It takes a lot to satirize America. For most of the world, America is already so self-satirizing that it's hard to get a toehold to say anything beyond the obvious. (The French, for instance, seem to do a particularly poor job.) But when you unpack the turns of phrase in the remarks Colbert delivered that day, you see the unsheathed knife. The United States was so far through the looking glass that it took someone wrapped in the flag and form of FOX News to pierce the bubble of truthiness surrounding the woefully out of touch chief executive.

It is always thrilling, and dangerous, and courageous to speak truth to power. But the grenade Colbert threw into that room wasn't just to Bush. I think things changed that day too -- the mainstream media looked bad. They reported as they always do, but this time, the people got to see it for themselves, and they saw the bias caught out and exposed.

The rest of the year, to me, played out in ripples from Colbert's speech. When they went after Clinton on FOX News, people didn't buy it. Even those who reported Clinton as "peevish" had to be quaking, knowing that the people were going to judge it for themselves. In years to come, some measure of shame will be reserved for the media, that they didn't stand up to this President until the poll numbers told them that maybe it was Ok to do so. Colbert's incendiary satire was thrilling to behold. Months later, it still is. For all we know, it's the only time Bush has ever been criticized to his face.

2) Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind. There was something so pleasant about that place. Even your emotions have an echo in so much space.

It's only two minutes and fifty eight seconds long. And it gets the "Hey Ya!" award. Dead people tapped along to this song. And yet at its core it's bruising, tough, and sad. But the beat.

Writers all want to be rock stars. It's just the way it is. When I sweat and toil over thirty or fifty pages, part of me wishes I could come up with just three verses and a chorus like that. The album that followed, the tour which I saw this summer -- all of the kudos they've received are well worth it. But this three minutes? Crazy.

3) Life On Mars

Most of the goodness I have to say about this series from Kudos Entertainment can be read in this post, and maybe this one, too. I have always had a secret yen for time travel stories, mainly because they're so hard to do well. From its inventive cross-pollination of the Twilight Zone and The Sweeney, to transcending the jokes about not having cellphones by Episode Two, Life On Mars was fresh, yet familiar. And sorry guys, but that's the business we're in. Every once in a while you can push the audience toward something they've never seen before. But most of the time, our job is to serve up something that feels like they understand it -- and then blow their minds with the differences. Life On Mars did that for me. And apparently, for David E. Kelley, too. Can his American version ever capture the spirit of this show? I guess that's something we have to wait til 2007 to see.

4) "My Name Is Hiro Nakamura, and I'm from the future."

And I have an enormous fucking sword. Exhibit A.

Yes, it's kind of the same idea as X-Men. No, if you're a comics geek, this is nothing really that new. Yup, the stripper mom plot is easily the least satisfying plot thread. But from the pithiness of "Save the cheerleader, save the world.." to those amazing twist endings (Future Hiro with sword was cool...Claire on the autopsy table was just...just...wow) Heroes is a perfect example of how a TV show becomes a hit when everything clicks: characters are cool, production is slick, marketing was on the ball -- with everything from Hiro's blog, to the comic book, to running those three episodes back-to-back before Ep.4 aired -- NBC knows exactly what it has, here. Note to Canadian networks: this is what popular looks like.

5) Critical Mass

I spent a lot of time on this blog yakkin on Canadian TV. It's a messed up industry to be sure. But one thing that's going to help is good print writers who tell it like it is. Canada sometimes suffers from having a very snobby culture that worries about things like The Giller Awards and The Governor General's awards -- for books that, yes, people will read -- but in fractional numbers compared to those who will watch a show on TV that's a flop. Everyone talks about Intelligence underpeforming. But even if only 250 000 people watch it a week, I'm going to guess that's a whole hell of a lot more than will ever buy Vincent Lam's Giller Winning book. (at least in Canada, and certainly in a week.)

The point is not to pooh-pooh Canada's literary scene. But with TV as the dominant art form that most people consume, you can continue to treat it as wallpaper or filler, or you can get serious about it. U.S. papers have learned this. Canada's been very late to the party.

John Doyle of the Globe and Mail is deadly serious about TV, and that's made a huge difference in the discussion of the medium in this country. His love for TV comes from a pure place -- he even wrote a book about it. His writing is trenchant and thoughtful. He's fast becoming for TV in Canada what Jay Scott was for Film. It's a shame that the Globe keeps him behind the firewall. But sometimes you can..uh...search and get around that. Shh.

Jaime J. Weinman, on the other hand, is a guy who just writes very thoughtful things about TV in general. He's got a depth of knowledge about old tv, movies, cartoons that's always entertaining and thoughtful, both on his "TV Guidance" blog on Macleans.ca, and on his own blog. It's daily reading for me, and I always learn something.

6) Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Sarah Vowell was the one who first cottoned me onto one of the strange quirks of the American history geek. Everyone goes through an "obsessed with Lincoln" phase. Mine never ended.

Kearns Goodwin published this intriguing biography that I've been reading on and off for months. It's a profile of the contenders for the Republican nomination in the 1860 Presidential election. Sounds like a snore, I know. But it's not. Because, of course, that's probably the most important election in U.S. history. After a period of drift in the Presidency, a do-nothing phase that did nothing to dampen the fires that led to the Civil War, Lincoln inherits a fractious country, after a bruising nomination fight.

He's the man nobody expected, a complete compromise candidate. And all three of his challengers thought they were the better man. Now...here's the lesson for today, kids. Lincoln brought them into his cabinet: New York Senator William H. Seward became Secretary of State, Ohio Senator Salmon P. Chase went to the treasury, and Missouri State House Representative Edward Bates became Attorney General.

What follows is a fascinating portrait of a leader who was always pragmatic, and who slowly and surely won over every one of his rivals. It's a book that can teach you a lot about dealing with conflict, management, and vision. It's the kind of book that shows us just how denuded our stock of great leaders has become.

Then again, it's the kind of book that maybe, just maybe, could convince a few people to demand better. I don't care how challenging the road ahead is. America's own Civil War's got trump.

Oh, the short version: Lincoln listened to people with differing views, and let it inform his position. Imagine that.

The book's out now in paperback.

7) Battlestar Galactica's Podcasts

The show itself is great, of course. Everyone's written that already. But if you're a writer, BSG offers so very much more. Weekly Podcasts from Exec Producer and showrunner Ronald Moore discuss the writing choices regularly, while they're fresh. Often, he's watching the cut of the episode just completed, so unlike the distance that attends most commentaries, he remembers and can discuss specific choices. And he's merciless when he thinks they might have bobbled something. When was the last time you heard that on a commentary?

Then...Then... Moore went and upped the ante, by doing something that I just can't believe he did. Over the summer he posted a long, long series of three podcasts that were actual recordings of the BSG writers room, as they worked out the end of Season 2. You may still be able to get them on the Sci Fi Channel site, but you can definitely get them under Podcasts on Itunes.

The first writing room I was ever in was the first writing room I was ever in. If you're starting out now, you can get a headstart by listening to these podcasts. In fact, if you don't, you're kind of retarded.

Moore is a secret evangelist. He wants TV writing to be better, and he wants it to be more open. The guy's taken it in the neck from some crazy Sci-Fi fans, and I still fear for his wife, who seems to have waded into the online BSG community with gusto. But there's no question that as showrunners go, Ronald D. Moore is the man. He's the guy taking care of all the people coming up who want to learn how to do this. Go. Let him teach you. (This should probably be called the Joss Whedon award.)

8) Spike Lee: When the Levees Broke

I can't even say anything about this documentary. Just...it's on DVD. Go buy it. It makes me want to go back to Documentary writing.

9) Shining City by Conor McPherson

I only got down to Broadway once this year, and saw three shows. The Faith Healer was fine. The production of Sweeney Todd was everything everybody says it was, but it was this lovely, affecting little ghost story about people at a crossroads that really packed the punch. Everybody's putting it on their ten best lists of Broadway. Oliver Platt's accent may have slipped from time to time, but his grief and the long monologue he delivers is a tour-de-force. And Brian O'Byrne, for the second year in a row, delivers a tightly focused and tremendously affecting performance. (The photo at right is by the NYTimes' Sarah Krulwich.)

It's hard to describe a Conor McPherson play if you haven't seen one. Luckily, they read well. They ooze humanity, in the way that live theatre is supposed to. I probably can't say it better than Ben Brantley did in his review in the NYTimes. So I'm going to defer to the cold and just quote him:

The anguish and inadequacy with which these people approach the basic art of conversation give "Shining City" an almost unbearable air not only of poignancy but also of familiarity. At some point watching it brings to mind one of those moments when you realize that the awkward, raw-looking, unhappy person you've just glimpsed in the shop window across the street is nobody but yourself...

Like much of Mr. McPherson's work, "Shining City" is a ghost story, literally as well as otherwise. At its heart is a tale told by a widower, John (Mr. Platt), a middle-aged businessman who turns out to be the first patient of Ian (Mr. O'Byrne), who has recently left the priesthood and set up practice in downtown Dublin. John's most immediate problem — the one he does and does not want to talk about — is that he keeps seeing his wife, Mari, who died not long ago in a car crash. The sight of her has so terrified him that he has abandoned the house they shared and taken up residence in a bed and breakfast.

In these visions, he says, "her mouth is open like she was trying to. ..." The sentence trails off. What was Mari trying to say? Even when she was alive, communication between her and her husband was close to nonexistent, although he now wonders if the mere fact of her living presence wasn't as close to human connection as life allows.

John's meetings with his dead wife aren't all that different from the other encounters described and enacted in "Shining City." In Ian's conversations with the play's two other characters — his girlfriend, Neasa (Ms. Plimpton), and Laurence (Mr. Scanavino), a scruffy young father who is hard up for cash — and in his subsequent sessions with John, patterns of unheard voices, of isolation and displacement, keep repeating themselves.

In terms of construction, "Shining City" is as close to perfection as contemporary playwriting gets. As elliptical as the conversation is, there's not a word or pause that doesn't feed the work's theme or its interconnected, disconnected stories. The same is true of even small physical details, like the malfunctioning downstairs buzzer in Ian's office building, and what turns out to be the most shocking ending on Broadway. And, no, I won't say anything more about it except that Mr. McPherson has found an inspired alternative to those inadequate tools of communication called words.

Those damn words, you see. They haunt us so, because they're all we have. And they're never enough.

10) This American Life's Podcast

Because sometimes other people's words can make you forget how your own are never enough. (Available at Itunes, and at thisamericanlife.org.)

So that's it. Looking back, I'm aghast and ashamed at how little I read in 2006. I love novels, yet there wasn't one this year that knocked my socks off, which now seems like tremendously wasted opportunity. Oh well. Add that to the resolution pile.

A Happy and Safe New Year to You All. I'm going to spend the next couple of days packing, cleaning, writing, and trying to get rid of this delightful lung butter. See you in the future.

For my 2005 list, click here.