All in All, You Could Call Me Appalled

O CANADA...I was all set to do the following as a little sketch written in dialogue between Dr. House and his medical team; I decided it wasn't funny enough for me to be funny about it.

Look to this article that went out on the wire yesterday:

Is 'House' the new 'West Wing'? Writers work in references to creator Shore's hometown

TORONTO (CP) - Is "House" becoming the new "West Wing"?

The late, lamented political drama capturing the day-to-day workings of the White House was rife with references to Canada. "O Canada" was even played - twice - at a White House function in one episode.

The abundance of Canadian references on the former NBC hit only served to highlight the fact that many American shows - even those shot in Canada or with Canadian actors in their casts - rarely acknowledge the existence of America's neighbour to the north.

But the medical hit "House" may be picking up where "The West Wing" left off.

Or maybe the writers of this week's episode, "Fetal Position," were just poking fun at the show's creator and executive producer, David Shore, when lead character Dr. Gregory House barks at an airline booking agent while trying to book a flight to Cambodia.

If you didn't see that one, maybe you saw the version that appeared in the Sun papers:

It took more than three decades and a little doctoring of the script by a hometown hero — but London’s time is prime again.

In this week’s episode of the hit Fox TV medical drama House, the lead character made a rapid-fire reference to London, Ont.

This is the same gee-whiz, slightly cringey thing that happens any time Canada is mentioned in any piece of U.S. entertainment. It actually makes news here. Now, I'm not talking the local angle, like, "Did you know that last weekend's number one box office movie features a native of our own Podunk, Alta?" I'm talking just like above -- a reference, a line, any little bone rates an actual, honest-to-God news story in the papers.

It's always struck me as a bit amateur hour, kind of like a provincial affectation. I mean, this isn't a small town, it's a modern country of 30 million people, heavily industrialized, with a high standard of living and a big high tech industry. (Now I sound like that old Onion article "Adorable Canada has own currency, laws...")

One quip on a prime time U.S. show, and the country's press acts like a bunch of bobbysoxers chasing around The Beatles.

I saw that episode in question, and chuckled slightly at the David Shore in-joke. You know, the way you're supposed to do. Not turn it into a news story.

What's even more puzzling is that this kind of thing exists side-by-side with another odd Canadian trait:

Smugness -- especially when it comes to the United States.

See, on the one hand there's the quivering any time South Park or Sorkin or now House name checks Canada, and on the other, there's a desire to view everything -- whether it's positive or neutral or both -- through a lens of "that's what makes us better."

It surfaces on things like Talking to Americans, where comedian Rick Mercer stuck a mike in front of Americans who knew nothing about Canada and had them say stupid things or show their ignorance (never mind the fact that you probably could have gotten equally softheaded responses to those questions in Regina or Medicine Hat.) It's also front in centre in this discussion thread over at the Inside the CBC blog.

It all started with an article John Doyle wrote upon his return to the Globe & Mail this week. An excerpt:

What she said was, "I love the way Canadians love Canada. It's not like Americans love America, it's not that insular, knee-jerk patriotism. Canadians are in love with Canada. It's like a love affair." Now there's a thought.

And I think it's true, in some ways. Because Canadians are in love with an idea of Canada -- the landscape, the multiculturalism, the tradition of tolerance, the health-care system that makes us proud -- they tend to be naive about this country, in the way that people in love can be terribly gullible, soft-hearted and easily fooled.

Emblematic of this mindset, I think, is the state of our alleged satire on TV. We're proud of it, and think it's special to have a small army of jokers on TV making fun of politicians, their employers the CBC, and all things quintessentially Canadian.

The Rick Mercer Report (CBC, 8 p.m.) and This Hour Has 22 Minutes (CBC, 8:30 p.m.) are at the core of our TV satire. Both shows can be amusing and Mercer is undoubtedly clever, but both shows are essentially soft. When they mock our politicians and other leaders and celebrities, they do it with love. They don't mock in rage, they don't attack and put forward skepticism about the powerful on our behalf. They cozy up, crack a few jokes and make sure that nobody actually gets hurt. There's too much love and not enough loathing...

There is nothing iconoclastic about Canadian TV comedy. Received ideas and common perceptions are not eviscerated. The powerful are not cut down to size. Unpopular but necessary and contrary opinions are generated...

So much of what we think of as satire on TV is actually sedate, with a lot of safe jokes about hockey, Tim Hortons, other Canadian TV shows and politicians who are being embraced, not mocked.

We don't have a Bill Maher or a Jon Stewart. We have soft, pseudo-satirists who are in love with Canada and all things Canadian, including the powerful. Under the surface-level jokes, it's about being misty-eyed and lovey-dovey about a country that is in dire need of robustly iconoclast humour. With an election on the near-horizon, will anyone be stepping forward to do the necessary? I don't think so. There's too much love and gullibility.

Now that's a pretty cutting comment. In the thread over at Inside The CBC, I wandered in with my own brand of softheaded hardheadedness -- and immediately started deconstructing not the point Doyle was making, but the comments made about it, which touched off a lot of Canadian tropes.

I'll circle back to that in a moment, but first let me say what I think about the point Doyle's making. I think he's mostly right. That being said, there are many, many sketches on 22 that I enjoy, and predictably, they're the ones that are harder edged. (In fact, the ones I like best are probably the ones on their website that CBC wouldn't let them run.) I firmly believe that the 22 crew would probably be a little sharper if they could. But I don't think CBC wants sharp.

I also don't think that there's anything necessarily wrong with softer -- but in this case, CBC has three of these shows. And that's overkill. I tend to prefer 22 over Mercer -- the variety and the comic breadth is greater... there's no doubt that Mercer's funny and smart, but I have gotten a little cringey at his politico-coziness - the favorite part of that show for me is still the Rant. (Surprise, Surprise, I know.)

But to me the really interesting thing wasn't the article Doyle wrote. It's the reactions it immediately engendered on Inside the CBC. Let's quote a few:

It’s true that Air Farce and Mercer don’t have the bite of, say, Jon Stewart.
Could it be that there’s just more to loathe about American politics?

This is Canadian humour with Canadian sensibilities, and it’s what Canadians want to watch, and it’s what we are watching in record numbers, so why is Doyle pining for American style humour? At a time when Canadian humour and Canadian comedies are enjoying unprecedented success, and when a discernible Canadian sensibility is emerging, imo, all this guy can write about is to complain that our humour isn’t American enough!? This kind of wannabe Americanism is a very strong part of the Toronto subculture where NYC is held up by many as their cultural Mecca, but it does exist to some degree everywhere in Canada.

In that last one we actually get a twofer -- not just a celebration of Canadian sensibility -- but a this is all Toronto's fault -- another fave Canadian trope.

Thank Goodness elsewhere in the thread you find a couple people saying, "Canadian comedy needs more courage.." so the whole thing doesn't turn into a lovefest.

What gets me about this kind of reflexiveness is that it's become a go-to for a lot of Canadians, and it's used to not examine our own attitudes, at all. Canadians will be the first to point out how Americans are ignorant about the world, but a major columnist can't even make a point like, "Canadian comedy is soft" without it being turned around and used as subtle proof about how great Canada is?

Canada is great. But it's not great for either of the contradictory impulses in this post: the too-vibrant fascination with being noticed by the U.S. (and don't say it's the press, not the people; they wouldn't write these articles if they didn't get read and evince interest) and the quick jump to "any way that we are is because we're better" -- which means you never, ever, ever have to take a hard look at yourself.

I've spent six years here taking stick for the actions of an American government I voted against twice. (Along with 51 million other people in 2004 - roughly twice the population of Canada.) Yet the moment you raise any point that suggests that things in Canada aren't the jim-dandiest in the world, you get the easy bromides and self-congratulatory backslaps that say, "that's just our way..."

And then we tune in Colbert and Stewart and pray to God that they mention Canada.

It's a bizarre, strange, fucked-up mindset. And it's the kind of thing that lets people manipulate the TV industry without the slightest peep from people who are being messed over by the changes.

Really, what's the difference between smugness and American style jingoism, anyway? They're both rooted in a certain head-in-the-sand, we must be right philosophy that doesn't bear scrutiny, and doesn't reflect well on either country.

I have conversations about "what's wrong with America" all the time with Americans. But any mild criticism you make of Canada -- even to intelligent, urbane, sophisticated Canadians -- tends to get you a cold stare, or a return back to the sins of the Pax Americana.

Maybe it's the screenwriter in me. I just can't abide the passive hero.

As for the hating Toronto thing? Well, yeah. Great. Toronto's infrastructure is crumbling because every taxpayer there sends their taxes out of the city to everywhere else in Canada, and gets way less back in services from the government. It's a great big enormous money transfer, and the reward is a giant "fuck you" sundae. Because screwing Toronto gets votes. So, you know, if you're gonna complain so much, can you at least send some of that money back so that when I go home, I'm not waiting an hour for the goddamn streetcar?

Next Week: Hurley on LOST says, "Back Bacon," "Whistler," and "curling," (coming soon in a 300 word article in your local paper.)

GREAT News for Comedy Fans

NBC renewed 30 Rock today.. Yesssss. All Hail the Baldwin and the Fey!


The manatee has become the mento.

CBC Announces Its New Schedule

FULL DETAILS at Inside the CBC.

Supposedly though Intelligence isn't mentioned, it's still in the mix.

The New Drama/Comedy offerings:

• Drawn from today’s headlines, The Border is a fast-paced, hard-driving series set in Toronto in a paranoid post-Sept. 11 world concerned with security crises, terrorist infiltrations, cross-border police actions and trafficking in everything from enriched uranium to abducted children

• Heartland is a multi-generational family series set in the foothills of Alberta. The series follows the excitement, humour and drama of the Fleming family as members struggle to run a horse ranch — one that teeters on the edge of failure — that has been in the family for years

• Sophie follows the adventures and misadventures of a young, vibrant single mother who inherits a talent agency from her father and then loses her best client–followed soon after by her boyfriend

• No Opportunity Wasted will offer Canadians the chance to seize a life-changing opportunity. Based on the N.O.W. philosophy of Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan, NOW will encourage all of us to live each day as if we’ll never have another chance like it

That last one sounds like a reality show, but I dunno.

Canceled shows include: Rumours (reruns will be strip syndicated 5 nights a week this summer, but no new episodes will be produced,) Venture, 72 Hours, and Jozi H)

I would just like to say for the record that I miss Northern Town. I thought that had potential.

They also picked up The Tudors. Sakes alive, when is someone in Canada gonna start running The Riches?

I've Seen The Future, Boy, And It Is Murder

ONCEUPONATIME it was my job to help predict the future.

Okay, not really. But it often seemed like it. I remember sitting in the loft of an Internet startup in Toronto as someone showed me my first Web page scrolling, line by line, over a 14.4 modem. It was wicked cool. It was 1993. Not that long ago, really. But it seems like a lifetime away now.

The show I worked on was called mediatelevision. It was an occasionally prescient, frequently softheaded look at the frontlines of the emerging digital culture. We had an email address before anybody. We had lots of big thinkers on, making their big predictions: plenty of half baked schemes by young turks who burned through venture cap money like they were snorting cocaine on a Russian stripper's ass. Which they may very well have been, now that I think about it.

There were some things we got right. We saw the search engine wars, and that someone would win (this is back in the age when the 'best search tool' changed monthly: Yahoo, Infoseek, Hotbot, Altavista...remember? Before the Google?) I gave an interview to eye weekly where I kinda sorta predicted Ipods, and even the music industry's reaction to piracy.

Wait. Um. Ah, the Google -- let's see if we can find that:

(elapsed time, .2 seconds.) Here we go...this is me talking to KK. Campbell in 1994 about the online distribution of digital music:

McGrath thinks the music industry might engage in backroom
jockeying to kill the medium, like it did digital audio tape (DAT).
Right now, there are a lot of steps in using the net.

Mass popularity requires a handy, inexpensive device that does it all
automatically for the consumer, McGrath says then writes the
digital file to a playback medium, like CD. "The music industry might
very well be in a position to stall or even stop the production of just
this device -- like DAT."

McGrath says music companies have another motive to kill pure
digital distribution, … la the net. "Without physical distribution of
CDs, consumers will ask: how come producing a CD costs $2 yet sells
for $16? It's common knowledge a CD is now cheaper to make than
vinyl was. Right there, alone, record companies are in real trouble."

Okay, so I didn't see that you wouldn't need a CD. Or that music companies would sue their customers. I mean, how stupid was that idea? Especially after you spent years devaluing your own product by prematurely eliminating vinyl and the single, then getting everyone to re-buy on CD, and then push the idea that tracks mattered not albums by flooding the market with compilations?

My point is this: it was all bullshit. No one saw YouTube. No one saw the really important stuff. Most of the stuff people yakked about on mediatelevision never made it out of the dot.com crash. Twelve years on, and they're still trying to tell you that what you want to do is buy stuff off your TV or watch Spider Man on your phone. I mean, who gives a shit?

Meanwhile, you've got a generation of Ipod-lovin, bittorrenting kids who won't pay 99 cents for a song but will gladly fork over four bucks for a thirty second ringtone of that same song. And they'll pay to text somebody but they won't pay for WiFi out in public. The rules? Still making them up as we go along.

Predicting the future of media is a mug's game. So why do we do it? Because the dude who gets it right gets to live like, well, those dudes who came up with The Google.

Now lets circle the wagons back to TV. One of the things the internet has done is blown away the nature of the national market. Time was, a show like Blood Ties would air in the USA and not air til months later in other territories and no one would care. Now you've got Canadians screaming because they can't see it at exactly the same time as the Americans. It used to be they wouldn't even know about it till the regional publicity kicked in.

Ditto, when I was in South Africa, that was the summer when blockbusters started coming out day and date all over the world. Piracy forced a massive change -- and massive costs -- no more shipping prints and staggering releases -- it's all frontloaded now.

This is the reality. The dam has burst. Putting your finger in the dyke isn't an option. Which doesn't mean there aren't those who want to try:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has faced seemingly continuous criticism for years, however in May 1999 it released a decision that generated near-universal praise.

The New Media Decision, which adopted a hands-off regulatory approach to new media (the CRTC's press release overstated the ruling by headlining that the "CRTC Won't Regulate the Internet"), was widely regarded as the right decision at the right time.

Since that ruling, a remarkable array of new media services – including podcasting, Internet streaming and online video sites – have emerged outside of the traditional broadcast regulation model. Despite the success, recent submissions to the CRTC suggest that a growing number of stakeholders are increasingly wary of their unregulated counterparts and may be gearing up for a fresh look at Internet regulation.

Michael Geist is seriously awesome. That article he wrote for the Toronto Star (linked above) bears reading because the bottom line is there's discussions going on in Gatineau right now, where broadcasters are trying to screw you, the audience. And sadly, most of the unions and creative guilds in Canada are right on the side of the luddites.

While the CAB is right that the Internet is erasing the distinction between geographic markets and that U.S. broadcasters are likely to stream on a global basis in the near future, the likely impact on Canadian content is precisely opposite of what it suggests.

Rather than reducing the production of Canadian content, Internet streaming and new media create incentives for more Canadian productions since profitability in the emerging environment will depend upon original content that can be distributed across all platforms, old and new.

If Canadian broadcasters are unable to rely on cheap U.S. programming, they will be forced to compete by investing in their own original content. This will dramatically alter Canadian content production from one mandated by government regulation to one mandated by market survival.

It is increasingly clear that the blossoming of new media is a threat to old business models, not to Canadian content. Eight years after the CRTC's new media decision, it still stands as the right decision at the right time.

Our old friends at the CAB, remember, are the people who agitated, and secured, the famous 1999 Canadian CRTC decision which killed Canadian TV drama.

Because of substitution, the Canadian broadcasting market has been a privileged bubble. These guys are up there arguing for an artificial extension to that bubble by restricting your access to the internet. You know, like they do in China.

There is no limit to the shamelessness with which they pursue this tack. And they'll get it, too, unless Canadians balk.

There are broadcasters who do well under the protectionism they receive. I would argue that SPACE is a better sci-fi channel than the Sci-Fi channel. I think that Canada was well served by having Muchmusic rather than MTV (Yes, I did work for the parent company of both these stations, that's true.) Showcase is a more interesting Canadian cable channel than many in the US. They cull the best from some top tier channels, a bit of British stuff, and they invest in interesting Canadian production too. CTV viewers got to see The Sopranos, uncut, on broadcast TV. And, yes..then there's Corner Gas and Degrassi and....

I would never argue for a wide-open signal possibility for Canada. With the US right next door, that's tantamount to ceding all cultural independence. But it's the old rights and responsibilities jag. And I don't think that Broadcasters should be given the right to prop up their dying business models by placing artificial restrictions on the audience.

There are still people out there, predicting the future. If you want to see the latest of how things are twisting and turning, I'd suggest taking in NextMedia -- a conference that's going on in June, just before the 2007 Banff TV Festival gets underway. I'll be watching it closely. It's been a while since I had to predict the future. I'm a little rusty.

Joanna Drake Earl, the President of New Media for Current TV, is going to be giving the opening keynote address. Current Tv is a pretty interesting operation, and not just cause Al Gore's in the mix. Its relationship of viewer to program maker, content provided, versus content pushed -- well, to me it sounds like something on the order of what might actually be exciting about media in the future. Not watching Spider Man 2 on your phone.

I can't say I know what Earl's going to say in Banff, or what the hot topic of NextMedia will be. But I'm willing to guess its not going to be about how Canada's cultural future is helped by instituting China-like internet controls.

I really hope this becomes a bit of a cause celebre at Banff, because I'm starting to think that the only way that the CRTC will come down on the side of the audience is if they're embarrassed into it.

Spin Me Round Like a Record

MAYBE IT'S the transition from thinkin' story to thinkin' bout boxes and Purolator pickups, but there's a couple things that have set my old head a spinnin'.

Remember we talked about the Junos? Well, turns out they got 912, 000 viewers in Canada. That's down from last year, according to Playback Daily:

The exact ratings for last year's show are debatable, however, because BBM's numbers differed considerably from those of its then-competitor Nielsen, which put the audience for the 2006 Junos at 1.2 million.

The difference works out to a drop in ratings somewhere between 25% and 46%. BBM and Nielsen have since joined forces.

That set friend of the blog JB to write in with this comment:

1.7 million versus 1.2 million? That's a hell of a discrepancy. How is anyone supposed to make any kind of decisions or pronouncements based on ratings when the numbers may or may not be off by 500-thousand viewers? And with BBM and Nielson now being one and the same, the problem of accuracy is just hidden, not solved. Picture the producer who finds out her show is drawing half a million viewers -- would you fault her for protesting that in fact it's getting a million? Would you join her in fearing that, actually, no one is watching at all? Hurts my head.

Mine too. Course, there's something about that whole spin that strikes of weird-spin defeatism. They trumpet the fact that the Simpsons beat the Junos (by about 40 000 viewers, not a lot.) And The Amazing Race, the show that caused the contretemps, pulled a million.

Canadian ratings. They are maddening. But why is the spin all about the negative, rather than the fact that a Canadian awards show is, in this day and age, competitive with the Simpsons and the Amazing Race? The last Geminis -- the Canadian TV awards -- drew under 200 000 viewers, I think. 912 000 may be down, but considering all the crap about the show moving over the last week, and the fact that it was live in the relatively small market of Saskatoon -- I think that's still pretty good.

But I guess that doesn't make for a good negative story. I'm with JB, though. The missing 500 000 viewers is ... troubling.

Now please -- let's not discuss ratings in the comments below too much, so my head doesn't explode. Statistical theory works. This is mainly a question of how they're determining the samp--

--oh. there they go. My eyes just glazed over.

There's other things spinning me round today, but we'll get to that.

Best. Video. Evarrrrr.

See, Canadians rule at this whole deconstructionist shit. Come back Alanis, all is forgiven.

While you're at it, you might also want to go over to sadkermit.com and check out the (audio-only, so far) cover of Radiohead's Creep. I was on the fence about it, right until Fozzie came in on backup.

I heart YouTube.

CBC Bobbles Its Legacy

Legacy is a funny thing.

Especially when it comes to something like broadcasting, which in one way has always been sort of ephemeral. Legacy can kind of be like obscenity. It's hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

A couple of years ago, the CBC showed a special that culled all the color footage they had of WWII. It was a real eyeopener. For those of us -- most of us -- who weren't alive on D-Day or VE Day or the day the Germans marched into Poland, that era is consigned to a history place in our minds partly by the nature of the images we've always processed from it: images that have always been in Black & White. Seeing some of the new, color technology marshalled to take images of everyday life, preparation, and battle -- well, it really reshuffled the deck for me. It made me think differently about something I hadn't really thought about before.

(I'd love to embed a clip here, but the CBC is too wise to use the technology that, you know, users use.)

That special is a perfect example of an organization understanding the value of its legacy. Knowing that that footage was valuable and set apart -- that's a TV understanding of the world. The CBC did a couple of interesting projects in other ways, too, like cutting together old cultural footage into a weird little program called Jimmy MacDonald's Canada. That show, through sheer creativity, took something that you wouldn't think could work -- hilariously square CBC reportage of the time, and made it fresh and PoMo. You know who can do things like that? Creative people.

These are hard times for the CBC. It's an organization beset on all sides. Firebrand wingnuts from Alberta fulminate regularly on the waste of their tax dollars; the organization is asked to do more and more with less and less. Yes, as a Crown corporation there is considerable waste at CBC -- too many managers. Too little accountability. I have a friend who recently left a job at CBC Radio somewhere in the country. She'd regularly describe the machinations and bureaucratic puffery that engulfed the office -- and in describing the show she worked on, I was always struck by the sense of just how incredibly overmanaged she was. There seemed to be three or four people doing one job. It sounded like a nightmare. And none of the machinations made content any better.

When the pressure comes to fix bureaucratic organizations, the people at the top never, ever seem to trim the bureaucracy. I saw this on a much smaller scale when I was at the start of my career at the Province of Ontario's educational broadcaster, TVOntario. Very often there, you'd see decisions made that just were not in the interest of making television, which was nominally the product we were selling. In fact, the tail wagged the dog: television needs were constantly subverted and sublimated to the needs of the bureaucracy. Shortly before I left, climbing up the next rung in the career ladder, I found myself in a huge meeting of about forty people discussing the then-revolutionary topic of what we were going to do about the internet. I looked around, and saw that I was easily the youngest, least experienced person there -- but damn, the things coming out of people's mouths were embarrassing. (A few of these people are still in Canadian broadcasting. And some are in great positions of responsibility.)

Of those forty people, there were about six or eight of us that had anything to do with TV. I went to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, went back to my office and started phoning around for other jobs.

What does this have to do with legacy?

Bureaucratic organizations just cannot be trusted to make decisions that have to do with history or legacy when it comes to broadcasting. TV and cultural product is simply different. It's not just a product, it's a reflection of a society. And as the notion of "reality" becomes ever faker thanks to TV, preserving that which helps us really define our industry grows ever more important.

Here's the kind of thinking that I'm talking about. To many fans, it's inconceivable to think this, but great swaths of early TV shows were once erased by organizations like the BBC and NBC because they needed space. That's why many early seasons of Doctor Who are missing. It's why we have very little of the early Tonight Shows with Johnny Carson. Now, the United States has the Museum of TV and Radio, and the BBC has become much more rigorous with preserving its history.

But right now, even as other organizations start to realize what they have, and recognize legacy, the CBC is looking to do something monumentally stupid.

Yes, CBC recently did something great for Canadian TV history. But they're about to undo that good work, through a bureaucratic, widget-minded decision that will seriously impact the legacy of broadcasting in this country for years to come.

They're going to close their design department.

Even more than firing all the publicists, as they did in 2005 (a move that everybody but CBC Management and Media Profile now know was an utter disaster -- outsourcing having proven more expensive and less effective than what they had before) this move is a true case of ignoring legacy in favor of expediency.

In this case, kids...brace yourself for the big ha ha. They want to get rid of these floors on the huge Broadcast Centre in Toronto -- the one we all paid for to be built in the 1980's -- so they can rent them out for real estate.

Meanwhile, the costs have already started to come back about life in the post-CBC Design Department era, and lo and behold, it looks like it's not going to be cheaper to outsource! Wow! Who'dathunkit? Doesn't matter, though, because by the time that really filters out, the decision makers will have rolled over! yayyy!

As you watch this video, I want you to marvel at the fact that CBC -- who are supposed to be making TV -- are getting rid of the people who make stuff for TV. It's hard to believe that it even made it this long, but it did...and there's no organization in place that's going to preserve ANY OF THIS.

Whatever your argument about outsourcing - I want you to pay close attention to those pans over old phone booths, lamps, period washers -- all this stuff that the CBC has right there, ready to be used -- all of that was built up, paid for by years of the tax dollars you use to fund the CBC. This is the CBC's legacy, but it's yours too. But now it's going to be sold off piece by piece. And anybody who wants to do something with this stuff in the future won't be able to go to one place. That's right. We're going to do something to make it harder to make TV in this country.

Of course, in the new bureaucratic world of CBC, that might actually be the point. Sell the store, then no one can complain when you can't open up for business. It's already done. No use crying over spilt milk.

They'll probably find a way to lose money on the real estate lease, too.

It doesn't matter that in years to come, everyone will say this decision was a stupid, say, as wiping all that early Carson. By then it's going to be too late.

Your tax dollars, not at work. What a colossal goddamn shame.

Blood Ties: The Wrap Party

SO HERE it is, what precisely no one has been clamoring for...the gathering of the Blood Ties writers, from the wrap party Saturday night.

Back row (L to R): Rick Drew, Sarah Dodd, Denis McGrath
Middle Row: Dennis Heaton, Shelley Eriksen, Travis McDonald, Tanya Huff (original books & "Stone Cold,") Peter Mohan (show creator & showrunner)
In Front: Mark Leiren-Young
Not Pictured/Present: Charles Lazer, Victor Nicolle









And before you ask, yes -- there were Dead Things On Sticks...and they were delicious.

Although in this photo you can clearly see the chicken is trying to pitch me a story...something about the egg, blah blah blah, no one knows the truth, Man...

... those two effing hate each other.







Finally, lets play an awesome version of my favorite game: Spot the Actor in the Group of Writers.

Although, as Dennis is pointing out, there's just something about Travis.

Clockwise from L we have: Dennis Heaton, Me, Kyle Schmid (Henry Fitzroy) and Travis "Blue Shirt" McDonald.

Along with Peter Mohan, these three guys were the story department for the second half of the season. We worked hard, and laughed a whole lot. So there.

As for the rest of the photos from the Blood Ties wrap, I'm afraid they are already being flown to that secret warehouse where they put the Ark at the end of Raiders. They will be watched over forever by top men. Top. Men.

Short Note to American "Blood Ties" Viewers

THIS WEEK is the first week that Blood Ties is not up against a new Battlestar Galactica on Sci-Fi, so it would be a really awesome thing to suggest to any and all your friends who might have been Galactica watchers to give BT a try this week.

If, by chance, you happen to know someone with a Nielsen box, well, this would probably be a good week to invite yourself over to watch Blood Ties. Bring s'mores. The s'mores probably won't have any effect on the ratings, but they're delicious, so yay s'mores.

/Shilling

Would You Like That Wrapped, Or Are You Going to Eat It Here?

They're for the crew.

That's the first thing you learn about a wrap party when you're a writer.

All those in-jokes that happened on set, the bonding between endless takes, the day-player who couldn't remember the lines or had weird B.O., the arrangement of words that stopped meaning anything on take four, the cast member who always had the giggles and couldn't ever seem to stop...The day it rained and rained and there was no rain cover and you just had to be outside for the shot - you're never part of that. Most likely you're up in the office surrounded by empty cans of Diet Coke, staring at the bile yellow walls and that picture of David Hasselhoff and Gary Coleman doing the 'thumbs up,' pounding out pages. (Alright, that last part is pretty specifically me, but let's just zoom past that.)

Someone clever who I work with recently opined that writers are kind of like the leper priests of a television production: no one was really sure what we did or how we did it, but we do not walk among you. We perform a vital function, but are very much apart. Very occasionally someone would wander by the room where we were breaking story and say something like, "you guys have a great job" or something like that. But most of the time, it's not like that. It's just a small group, you don't get to join in on the reindeer games, and like the misfits and weirdoes of old, it's left to you to make your own fun. It's hard to explain to anybody how half the useless, filthy crap we talk about -- all the YouTube mashups, hotlinks, downloadable outrages, and images you can't ever unsee (grim operatic abstractions that stupefy everyone) lead to story breakthroughs, but they do.

About a month and a half ago, they installed a nice wardrobe seamstress in a corner desk near the writers room. I can only pray that her sewing machine was very loud.

The other thing that's interesting about writing on a production train is that things ease off for you first. Episode 21 was my script. I kept the prep crew there late one night going from a WHITE draft to a BLUE draft to incorporate changes that grew out of something I had screwed up in the writing. It took longer than I thought to fix it after the cast read through. They never once complained (to me, I mean.)

But then they shot the blue. There were no other major changes. I was mostly...done. The last episode was written by the Showrunner. We all gave our notes, and moved on, and now it's shooting, and...

...we sit and wait for something to go wrong.

And it rarely does. Because once a script goes to production it's just a blueprint like the one-line schedule or the call sheet. I'll always remember the first set I was on when I was handed one of my scripts reduced to the tiny sides they use for reference. To see the script reduced to its tiny little form -- perfect for sitting unread in your back pocket -- well, that was a serious eye-opener. A great little attitude shift. There may be a call to fix a line here or massage something there...but they tend to be easy fixes.

(One example from my Episode 21: a line that referenced the characters as children going to somewhere specific -- it tracked in the script because the character was written as early forties. They cast an actor who was considerably older. It works for the part, but not for the line. I'm sure you can see that any fix for that line is not particularly onerous.)

I always intend to go to set more than I do. When the train's still running, it's cause you just don't have the time...there's another draft, and notes on someone else's draft, and then you have to read a second or third draft...) And once the script train slows down you're up against the very real sense that on a set there's nothing for you to do. You're the only person there not doing a job. And that gets a little weird. At least it does for me. You can of course learn by watching how things are staged, and seeing the director work, and I guess if you had active pretensions toward directing it might be useful...but I'm not sure I've got any of that impulse now. When I think about directing, it's way down the road. I'm learning too much about the thing I'm good at. I feel I'm at a point in my career where I can finally play Smoke on the Water like a pro on the guitar. Why would I now pick up the clarinet?

So the leper priest slinks off to the edges of Molokai, and thinks about the packing he's got to do, and what he's going to ship back first, rather than try and buy another suitcase. I've got a little over a week left in Vancouver, and suddenly there's a bit of sun, and there's other reasons to stay, too. But... my home's back in Toronto, and I know that eventually the odds will be against me and one of you nutbar Vancouver drivers are going to take me out, so... What to do? What to do?

Well, even though there's still four days left to shoot, on account of Easter being next weekend, tonight's the wrap party for Season One of Blood Ties. So, you know, I guess I'll go to that.

There's an element of gearing up for the wrap that's kind of like the leper priests showing up at the potluck. I've been at parties where I barely came up with a couple of concepts and had a wonderful time. And I've been at a wrap where I co-created the series, and felt like I had less connection to it than the stills photographer.

That's just the way it goes. It's nothing personal. And wrap parties do have one amazing thing going for them, if you're a writer: free booze. I know at this point in my life, there is absolutely no reason to still get excited by the prospect of cost-free libation, but I can't help it. Writing is hard. And cocktails are just so yummy.

So tonight, the priests conclave for Sushi at the legendary Vancouver sushi place I haven't been to this trip, and then we head en masse for the party where we'll undoubtedly be greeted like...

...those weird people who nobody really understands what they do.

It's okay. Fans will continue to think that the actors come up with their own best lines, Online trolls will continue to blame anything they don't like on the writers, Day Players will continue to suck up to the stars by talking about how much the stars "fix" the scripts. Everyone will continue to obsessively read the online reaction, blow past all the positive stuff and pick on that one mean, awful, ignorant, bile-ridden turd blossom; followed immediately by swearing off anything on the 'Net for a week. Human nature will out.

There are the other compensations. Sometimes, like now, as they shoot Episode 22, you get to see an actor be really excited by having something new and different to do. Sometimes another actor comes up and shows you just how closely they're reading the script by a telling comment and suggestion that work.

Sometimes maybe it's just seeing the exhausted showrunner grabbing a microsleep in his chair, the pressure easing, knowing the end is near. Or maybe it's the fact that when he's not dozing, he's taken to shouting "Spartans!" every few minutes.

Tonight we drink in hell! Anybody? No. Mm. Okay.

When it works, when you've got a good team, and the egos support and mesh and don't clash, you kind of get to have your own wrap party all the time. And all you have to do for that is face the blank page. Every...single...day.

Okay, maybe it's not a great trade.

But at least the drinks are free.

Sopranos in Seven Minutes

What a long strange trip it's been. And now we wait for April 8. But let's face it, cause there have been a couple of YEARS between seasons, it's tough to keep all the goings in the Sopranos in mind. It's almost like we need a refresher.

Done. Thanks YouTube. H/T to "L'il" Rob Sheridan.

Blogger Sucks Bum

Does anyone out there know why Blogger has suddenly decided the default setting for posting is "comments off?"

Somewhere Inside the Walt Disney Company, a Lawyer's Head Just Exploded

So watch this while you can. I'm not responsible for what it does to your kids. Nor do I expect this link to work for very long. The audio is safe for work, the video...depends on where you work.

You have to promise to watch to the end.

The thing that's my favorite? There's actually a genuine, touching moment in here. But admit it -- you always knew there was something hinky about that Rainbow Connection. The lovers, the dreamers and me, my ass.

Ah Genius. In the YouTube era, the bar, she is so very very low.

H/T to "Evil" Dennis Heaton.

B.C. Actors Settle

In the end, the B.C. Union of Performers got a contract without any of ACTRA's drama.

From Variety:

Terms of the new deal, inked Wednesday by negotiators for the Union of British Columbia Performers and those repping the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the B.C. Producers' Branch of the Canadian Film & Television Production Assn., will not be made public until the union's members have seen and ratified it.

The process is expected to take about a month.

Okay, I would like to know now, from people smarter or at least more plugged in than me, what does UBCP do right that ACTRA does wrong? How, in this case, did two unions looking for much the same thing get such different results?

Anybody?

Culture vs. Commerce, Again.

An interesting up and back today for CTV.

Let's break it down. Because of the simulcasting goldmine, CTV tries to run the Amazing Race at the same time as they run it in the USA. That way they get to substitute their commercials over the US network feed in Canada. This is standard practice; it's done all the time.

The problem comes when CBS, the originating network decides to run a special two hour episode on Sunday night. The problem? CTV has already committed to broadcasting the JUNO AWARDS, the Canadian music industry's version of the Grammy Awards. CTV has been promo'ing this for weeks, with ads and promos featuring the show's host, the very comely and once-again-hot Nelly Furtado.

What do you do?

Well, the first thing CTV tried to do was make their money. They announced that they were going to tape delay the awards in the east, so that the show wouldn't air live anywhere. (Like the Grammys, the Junos have traditionally always aired on tape delay for the West Coast, so they get to be seen in Prime Time.)

That set off a bit of a contretemps. Here's part of the Canadian Press reportage on the incident as it ran this morning:

Mar 28, 2007 04:30 AM

TORONTO–Canada's premier music awards show will be pre-taped for much of the country when it airs this weekend, a controversial turn for the much-hyped Junos that has raised the ire of industry critics who question CTV's commitment to homegrown talent.

In most parts of the country, viewers will see a delayed version of the annual awards gala, to be hosted by pop superstar Nelly Furtado in Saskatoon.

The unusual situation is all because of a two-hour episode of the hugely popular reality show The Amazing Race.

CTV wants to simulcast CBS's broadcast of The Amazing Race, which airs at different times across the country. As a result, the Junos will air at 10 p.m. in Ontario and Quebec and as late as 11 p.m. in the Maritimes on the main network.

"It definitely sucks that the most important event in Canadian music and an important Canadian cultural event has to take a backseat to a cheesy reality television show," said Aaron Brophy, managing editor at Chart Magazine.

By midday, though, after a storm of protest, CTV reversed itself. Again, Canadian Press explained:

The network announced Wednesday afternoon that Sunday's show will now air live at 7 p.m. local time in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

So what's going on here? Well, as it turns out, the Toronto Sun's Bill Harris explains it pretty well:

CTV discovered it had a problem when this Sunday's Amazing Race became a two-hour instalment rather than one hour. CTV asked CBS for permission to air The Amazing Race early, but that request was denied.

So CTV had two choices:

1) Annoy its regular Amazing Race audience by splitting up the show, or running it at a later date. The problem with this from CTV's perspective was that anyone really devoted to The Amazing Race simply would watch it on CBS.

2) Annoy its Juno audience, which admittedly might not be as big as the audience for a simulcast of The Amazing Race. (Actually, with Furtado hosting, the Junos numbers might have been really good. Ratings may be impacted negatively now, though.)

In a backhanded way, this whole mess could be seen as an argument for the continued existence of a public broadcaster like the CBC. Then again, CBC prompted similar outrage last year when it bumped its nightly newscast for a short-lived U.S. talent show called The One.

Harris also points out that since CTV took over the Junos broadcast from CBC, it's been very good for the show. It's had a much higher profile, better advertising, more pizazz. They really have done well by the property.


But that pesky culture vs. commerce thing keeps rearing its ugly head, too, all because of the peculiarity of broadcasting in Canada: private broadcasters make their money by aping and piggybacking on U.S. nets, NOT by developing and broadcasting their own programs.

A couple years ago, the Junos conflicted with a special ep of Desperate Housewives. If I remember correctly (and I might not be getting this right; that's the nice thing about blogging vs. journalism, I can put that caveat right there and wait for the hive mind to correct me in comments) they took an hour long episode and showed it over an hour and a half slot, cutting away for Juno "updates" throughout the show. It might have been another awards show, now that I think about it. I don't know. Anyway, bottom line is that it was desperately clunky and served neither property particularly well. (Marc Cherry, DH showrunner and creator, was horrified when he was told about the scheme.)

What makes this story more than the usual interesting is a couple of other ripples going on out there.

First, there's Hockey Night in Canada. Earlier on this year, there was much speculation that the CBC might lose the valuable Saturday night broadcast to CTV's much bigger pursestrings. This week, the NHL re-signed with CBC, so the hockey's place on the national broadcaster is preserved. (News junkies who hate it when The National is delayed, grumble now.) Apparently CBC dealt away some of the first round playoff games involving Canadian teams in order to make the deal, but we won't deal with that here.

The problem is that, if that deal went the other way, there could easily be a similar Juno-like problem somwhere down the line with the playoffs. What happens when American Idol butts up against the Habs vs. The Canucks? Given a choice between cultural icon and dollars, what would CTV do? Would Canadians without TSN on Cable be out of luck? Thanks to that deal we, don't have to ask that question til 2016.

The other issue, is, ironically, a cultural parable. The fact that this is a difficult choice for CTV at all is due to the fact that a Canadian music awards show is a viable viewing choice. Why is that? Because Canadians like Canadian music. The domestic music industry has produced a number of robust acts with mass appeal, including Juno host Nelly Furtado herself. The Junos is not a 'good for you' broadcast; it's a moneymaker, because it's a product that Canadians like.

And how did the Canadian music industry get that way?

Protectionism.

Cancon.

Quotas and play rules instituted in the late 1960's by people like (trivia alert here!) Pierre Juneau, for whom the Junos are named.

Blows your mind a bit, hey?

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: the very same arguments made against continuing subsidies and support for the domestic TV industry were made against Cancon in music. Yet Cancon rules for radio allowed the Canadian industry to mature, grow, and eventually become popular; popular enough that a Canadian private network would face a difficult choice between two properties. (You can bet that if it was a choice between the 2 hour Amazing Race and a Very Special Jeff Ltd, that this would be a very different conversation in the CTV boardrooms. Aw who are we kidding. It wouldn't be a conversation at all.)

If Canadian TV hasn't reached a popularity point with audiences yet that rivals the Junos, it's a problem of implementation -- NOT basic philosophy.

CTV is not the villain here; they face a difficult choice, and the reversal of their decision shows that they weren't sure they were doing the right thing anyway.

As CRTC hearings start, and people bat around the battered Canadian TV ball again, I hope the Junos and CTV's problem is brought up somewhere, by someone. Because the one thing I'm sure of is this:

The Viewers don't benefit from this business model.

U.S. networks are already on the air in Canada. Amazing Race fans could just watch the show on CBS, without inconveniencing Juno fans watching Nelly on CTV.

All the usual suspects like to talk business models and stakeholders, and boy oh boy, I would love to know what happens if anyone ever brought up this weird up and back with the Junos: what that says about our culture, and our interests, and maybe, just maybe, about making more shows like Corner Gas.

But it's likely we won't hear much about that ... we'll probably instead hear 'bout how all those huge profits Canadian companies make with the public's airwaves...that's right....The PUBLIC'S airwaves...are going down and that's why they can't invest in domestic program...what? Oh. Wow, that was fast.

And the CRTC, who are supposed to protect the public interest? Yeah...uh...we'll get back to you.

Will Dixon's peeved. I seem to have sand in my tear ducts. I just got nothing left. I'm just gonna look at pictures of Nelly Furtado.

And wish that someone would take the example of the Junos and run with it.

UPDATE: Wow.

If it wasn't already a great symbol of something, here's the kicker. The Amazing Race and CTV's need to simulcast it has actually caused them to change the start time of the actual, real live physical awards show so it starts two hours earlier. (For people going to the show in Saskatoon, that means 5pm! Rock out!)

And what of the production people, who now have to scramble to put together a highly complicated broadcast with a completely different timeframe?

"There are large complications, as you can imagine," said Stephen Stohn, chair of CARAS. "This will require a massive effort from everybody involved. This has not been undertaken lightly."

Sigh. Words fail. Agin.

The Maple Leaf List

FROM the moment I heard about it, I was fascinated by the concept of The Blacklist. No, not the 1950's purge of screenwriters with supposed communist sympathies. This blacklist was more about the cool side of black -- more black ipod than black mark.

Each year, ninety Hollywood executives are polled and asked to mention their favorite scripts of the past twelve months. Although the organizers make it clear that the list does not represent the best only favorites, it is difficult to separate the two in a town where subjectivity rules.

The fact that one of the most hated terms in Hollywood writer lore has been repurposed to shine a klieg light on talent, is, for me, the proof that the great thing about America is that everything finally does come around.

But in Hollywood, looking for great new material is the norm. Okay, there's nothing normal about it, but you know what I mean. In Canada, we suffer from a number of odd and strange structural problems in our industry. (Discussed ad infinitum elsewhere, or go take a gander at Jim Henshaw's latest . (Jeez, Jim, the way I hear you tell it, the mistake I seem to be making is that I've yet to feel that cold metal gun barrel right in my mouth...)

Indulge me here with a bit of personal history. For a little while, a period of say about a year, when I wasn't getting work, I was a reader for one of the Canadian networks. In that time, I read a bunch of pretty bad, undercooked scripts and did reader's reports. Several of the undercooked scripts I read were subsequently made into a few undercooked movies and MOW's.

But there is this one script which haunted me.

It haunts me still. I loved this script. I know the writer who wrote it, and he's a successful Canadian TV writer. He's worked on many big budget one-hour Canadian dramas. But this script... it was a Canadian story about Canadian themes that nevertheless would have total universal appeal. It's about a forgotten icon and time in Canadian Cultural history. It's about Canada's place in the world, but in the same way that The Full Monty was about British de-industrialization. It covers similar ground to a novel that was a breakout hit a few years ago, and which won the Pulitzer Prize.

This story, though...this story was true. Damnit, I wish, I wish I could see that movie.

But the network passed. And as far as I know, (I've never talked with the writer about this,) the project's dead. I wonder....are there more out there?

Let's find out.

Announcing the First Maple Leaf List.


Here's how this will work.

Accounting for Canada's smaller population and less vibrant industry, the thesis is nevertheless that there are excellent projects out there that for whatever reason, were passed over and not made. The hope is that we can discover some of these forgotten gems and maybe shine a little light on them.

1. What sort of project is eligible for the Maple Leaf List?
   
   The project can be any feature screenplay, 1/2 hour comedy/drama television series (based on pilot epsiode), 1 hr television series (based on pilot episode) or animated series (based on bible & sample script.) The project must have been under paid option to a production company or network in Canada in the last five years. (So, anything from Calendar year 2002 on.)
   
2. What sort of projects are not eligible?
   
   Spec scripts of any kind. Stage plays. Documentaries. Projects that were written on spec and never received any option money/development funding. This is not a search for new writing talent. This is a search for passed-over projects. Projects by people who are not Canadian Citizens or Landed Immigrants residing in one of Canada's 10 provinces and 3 Territories as are also ineligible.
   
   
3. Who can nominate a project?
   
   Theoretically, I'm going to leave the ability to nominate a project open to anyone, with this proviso: You cannot nominate your own work. I also state here that I will, as the organizer of this little game, recuse my own work from consideration. In practice, I will give special attention to any project that is submitted by a Development Executive, Network Executive, or Agent. If you feel a piece of work has been criminally underattended, here's your chance. ONLY ONE PROJECT MAY BE SUBMITTED PER PERSON.
   
   
4. What do I need to do to nominate a project for the Maple Leaf List?
   
   You may submit an ADOBE PDF of the script in question to MAPLELEAFLIST@GMAIL.COM. Dead Tree Scripts (paper) will not be accepted, as I have neither space to store them nor help to organize them. The PDF of the script should not contain identifying features such as the writer's name, on the document itself. Along with the script, a separate document should be submitted with the following information (which will be kept completely confidential:)
   
   • 1) Nominator's name and position/occupation/relationship to script
   • 2) Project's development history (dates of development/option)
   • 3) Project's current status
   • 4) Synopsis/description (200 words or less, including genre & length)
   • 5) Impact Statement: why you think this project has been unjustly passed over. (300 word max)
   • 6) Author's declaration: contact information from the author
     
     
   Please note that projects that do not contain these elements (or any script that identifies the writer by name) cannot be considered for the Maple Leaf List.
   
   
   
5. How will the list be determined?
   
   After the submission deadline, a shortlist will be prepared by me. Then scripts will be forwarded to a selection of confidential judges who will be asked to pick their #1, #2, and #3 choices for inclusion on the list. The judges decisions will be collected and averaged out, and the list will be determined from that.
   
   Since this is new and unknown, I have no idea how many projects will be received, therefore I cannot currently speculate on the number of judges, or in fact, the number of projects that will appear on the list. Because the projects will be of different types and genres, the list will not be ranked hierarchically.
   
   Right now, I would be ecstatic to be able to come up with a Top 5 list. If there's more, then there'll be more. If there's less, there'll be less. As I said, this is new. It's entirely possible we won't get enough entries and I'll conclude that either the naysayers are right and there are no good projects being passed over out there, or that Canadian Creatives are as cowed as everyone says we are. We're doing this as a lark. I'm making omelettes and breaking eggs. What are you doing?
   
   Judges will be drawn from different disciplines in the Canadian Broadcast Industry.
   
   
6. What is the Deadline for submitting a project to the Maple Leaf List?
   
   The deadline will be May 18th, 2007, at Midnight. Results will be announced June 10, 2007, on this blog -- just as the Banff TV Festival Gets Underway.
   
   
7. What do I win?
   
   Absolutely nothing but bragging rights. Okay, and if you are in and around Toronto or anywhere else I happen to be and pin me down, I will buy you a drink and an Appetizer of your choice.
   
   All listers will also be profiled on this blog (unless they choose not to be.)
   
   
   Are there diamonds in the rough? Let's see. Let's see. My guess is, any notable scripts will not shamelessly deploy the icons of Canadiana as I have here. But who knows? Maybe somewhere out there is a script about a maple syrup guzzling beaver who chomps back bacon while prepping for his role in the big hockey game. You just never, ever, ever know.
   

(Canadian bloggers, please feel free to publicize this on your shingles.)

Are You Kidding Me?

Do I really have to start watching The Simpsons again?

The Joker, The Thief, and the Geek (Me)

Dude! Battlestar Galactica finale! Dude!

Well, while I'm trying to wrap my head around that, here's something interesting from Ronald D. Moore, via Salon, Laura Miller:

Creatively, serialized dramas are tricky because you can plan some of it out in advance, but not all of it. Do you have story arcs plotted out over the whole series or over the season, and how much of it do you decide as you go along?

A good amount of it is improvised in terms of how we develop story, which is how I like to do it. At the beginning of the season, we arc out about 10 episodes. I can think in groups of 10.

Then we break all the interior shows. But as those shows get translated into teleplays and we get into production, things will change. We'll get different ideas or get inspiration in the middle of a scene I'm writing and think, "Oh, know what? We should make a hard left turn here." Then all the planning goes out the window and we have to make a change on the fly. But we still try to maintain that goal. We still aim to get to that same place by the end of the 10th episode, but the path to get there I consider much more flexible.

As you get deeper into the series and start planning the next 10 and what's the season finale, it's the same process. You think you've laid out a path, but as you do it you find that there's this other more interesting path to get there. It causes chaos and you have to scramble to change things that you've already set in motion. But I find that it's just a more organic way to do it. It's more interesting, it's more fun, it allows the writers' creativity to come to the fore. It certainly has its downside, because sometimes you make big mistakes. Something that sounded really good at that moment, and you grabbed onto it, doesn't really pan out. Then you have a bad episode.

What's an example where that process really worked well for you?

In this season's finale, I decided on the fly to give Laura her cancer back. It's been bubbling in the back of my mind for a while. When we cured her cancer in the second season, I knew I didn't want that to be a permanent thing. I knew at some point I wanted to bring it back, because we'd changed her character in a way I wasn't happy with. But it wasn't until I was sitting down doing a rewrite of the finale that I decided this is the moment, let's do it. Tigh losing his eye was done in the same way. I was writing the teaser for the season opener and I decided on the fly that Tigh's lost an eye. That became a huge thing for the character and shifted a lot of things in the show. It just worked.

And when did this method not work so well?

We'd developed a whole story line this season about a colony called the Sagitarions, and they were going to be an issue in the trial of [former president] Gaius Baltar. During the missing year on New Caprica, when Baltar was president, a massacre had taken place among the people from this one colony that had isolated themselves from the rest of the people. It was this long intricate back story built into a lot of the previous episodes of the show and it just didn't work. And I basically decided to throw it out while I was writing the finale, on the spur of the moment. We then had to go back into previous episodes and take that out, reshooting and re-editing. Some of those episodes suffered from that decision. It was important because it saved the finale and made it much stronger, but certain episodes in the second half of the third season are weaker as a result of that.

Here it is, the faultline in the viewer/writer conundrum. This is undoubtedly all the ammo needed for the "they're just making it up as they go along" army. My friends, my friends...that is indeed...the POINT.

More from Laura Miller's article here.


PS -- we're cooking up something big(ish) here at Dead Things Labs..stay tuned.

"Well," he said, Sheepishly...

I haven't even seen the season finale of BSG yet, so I'm sure as heck not blogging. However, in my pique of a few days I made a request, and darnit if all you pot smoking, left coast praising, birkenstock wearing, bad driving, gluten-free, nuclear-free, free love, love the mountains, mountains are pretty, pretty serious about your coffee lower mainlanders didn't come through with the sun. Just in time for my weekend in Victoria.

So...uh...thanks.

You need more ferries, though.

Not Spending Enough Time With Your Kids?

And torn because you haven't had enough time to go see blockbuster film "The 300?"

I know. Life is tough. I've fallen behind in my TV shows and my reading. But I'll tell you man, I'll definitely get out to the theatre to see this: the PG recut of The 300. I hear this is also the version they'll be showing on airplanes.

Shmoppyright Now!

Jonathan Lethem has done pretty well by copyright. Motherless Brooklyn is being made by no less a conscientious adapter than Edward Norton. Lethem himself is helping with the adaptation of The Fortress of Solitude.

Still, he's gone and done something pretty bold for the film rights to his seventh novel, "You Don't Love Me Yet."

He's offering the rights, for free (and a percentage of the back-end) to whoever comes up with the best proposal.

On his Web site, he offered an option on the film rights free to the filmmaker who presents him with the best proposal by May 15. In return, the filmmaker will agree to pay Lethem 2 percent of the film's budget when the film receives a distribution deal, and allow the rights to the novel to return to the public domain -- for the free use of anyone, including other filmmakers -- within five years of the film's release.

Lethem also wrote an essay for the February issue of Harper's called "The Ecstasy of Influence," in which he argues for a new approach to copyright law, based on the recognition that "appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act."

Salon.com continues a fine tradition of iconoclastic and interesting arts journalism today with a very interesting interview with Lethem by Amy Benfer.

What struck me reading this interview is that I've now heard three or four really, really interesting conceptualizations of how copyright and rights should work in the new era. They've all been from writers and artists. The only proposals you ever hear from the people on the other side of the table are proposals that benefit big corporations and demand clunky DRM schemes; all these things that accrue no benefit to the user whatsoever.

Half of us have entered the new world and are trying to figure out how to make it work. The other half have lawyers plunging 300-page fingers into ever widening holes in the dyke. After me, the deluge...