Reprint: The Squid, The Whale, Backstory and Busywork

(Originally published May 20, 2006)

I watched The Squid and The Whale on the weekend, and quite enjoyed it. The evocation of 1986 was subtle and clever, the performances were all solid, and I was intrigued by how the characters could be sympathetic even when they were saying and doing ugly things that were messing up their kids.

It was also yet another note in what's becoming my standard chorus: why I write TV, not movies.

Though I enjoyed the movie very much, at the end of it, I didn't want to spend any more time with the characters. The story about them was over. They were movie characters, I saw them at an interesting time in their lives (the span of the movie) and once that story came to its resolution, I had no wish to revisit them. What was interesting about them was done, and the parts that were unpleasant, weren't unpleasant in a 'have to see more' kind of way.

This, of course, is the very essence of a movie. It's probably one of the reasons why sequels to good movies (as opposed to Popcorn movies) usually kind of blow.

I admire the craft and the toil of any screenwriter who comes up with a competent, workable, readable screenplay. There's a lot stacked against you -- and I'm not just talking about the lack of respect you get from other stakeholders in the moviemaking process. But I still don't think it holds a candle to conceiving a really great television series.

Because a series is about creating a world from which multiple stories will spring. A well-crafted movie script is building a house. A well-crafted TV series is building a village.

Which is why it sometimes takes a village of writers to truly make it fly -- but that's a point for another time.

The delicate balance that one strikes when coming up with an original TV series is a living, organic compromise between the need to make a strong impression, and the need for space. Your character, setting, situation, secondary characters -- all need to be clearly mapped out so that when we meet them, we have an entire sense of who they are -- but at the same time, you have to leave room so that the characters can change and grow, and the situation can be re-invented, and the world you know so well can surprise you.

I'm not talking about a show like LOST here, that's built on mystery and surprise, I'm talking about your solid, kitchen-sink character based dramas.

So -- you can't blow it all in the Pilot, but at the same time, you must always remember the feeling you need to evoke at the end of the pilot: a desire to return. If people don't want to go back and see more from those characters, spend more time in that world, then you've got a situation like my reaction to The Squid and the Whale. You're done. You've written a movie, not a TV show.

In Canada, where there is a lot less opportunity, traditionally you've had a lot of crossover from people who write movies to tv series. To my mind, the fundamental differences between the two mediums, and the writer's inability to grasp this, has hamstrung more than a few series before they ever got going.

And there's another bugaboo that constricts and constrains the development of series television: fear of dynamic uncertainty.

What do I mean by that?

Well, a standard part of the tortured development process in this country (and I'm speaking not just from my own experience here; this is gathered from at least half a dozen writers I know who are currently, or have recently developed shows) is coming up with ever-more-detailed character descriptions and arcs. Sometimes a network will demand page after page of information about a character and where they came from. Early life, family life, romantic trauma in their pasts -- in short, everything that makes them what they are.

It's not hard to understand why. A TV series is a huge risk. It's very expensive. And hard to get going, and at the end of the day, you don't want to face the most terrifying idea of all:

It has to be allowed to develop organically as it goes along.

By asking for page after page of backstory, what the developing partner thinks they're getting is a fully-fleshed out character that will make the series all the more compelling.

But to a writer, a real writer, or a team of writers who are clicking and sparking on the same page, that's going to be, in the end, just a lot of busywork. You have to do it -- after all, you're not paying for the show, are you? But it doesn't really help. And you have to have the freedom to ignore all that backstory if the character takes you in another direction.

There's a problem I call "backstory fatigue." I've seen it quite a bit working on Canadian shows. You're talking about a story point and somebody says something about the character, and you have to shake your head and say, "that's not in the show yet."

One of the problems of writing so much backstory is that you get confused. You lose touch with what's been revealed to the audience and what still sits in that brick of a development document, begging to be woven into the story. Or not, as the case may be.

I'm starting to think that much of the criticism of Canadian stories being "slow to develop" is grounded in the desire to work more of the brick into the storytelling. The reality is that beyond the broad strokes of your character, your audience only needs to know what they need to know as demanded by the story... anything else is just slowing you down.

In The West Wing, for two seasons or so, Bartlet had two daughters, Annie and Zoe. You saw Zoe, and Annie was just talked about. But then they needed a third daughter. And so they invented Ellie. And it worked. You know why? Because they'd been clever enough to never specify that Bartlet had two daughters. (which surely would have happened had they been developing the show with the standard Candian brick of a bible.) They told you only what you, as the audience, needed to know in the drama at the time, which left open the storytelling possibilities until there was a need for a third daughter. Then, rather than have to "work in" that they have three daughters, that reveal of backstory drives a story of its own, in its proper time, that also reveals character.

That is the high wire act that is series television.

In Season One of The Sopranos, you see Tony's sister. In Season Two, Aida Turturro shows up and we meet Janice, the older sister. Ah. Now we have another piece of Tony. In season five, we meet Tony's good friend and cousin Tony B. Wow. We now see another side of Tony.

We didn't need to hear about Tony B. at the beginning-- only when he became relevant. Going back to The X-Files, we had the setup off the top: Mulder was a believer, Scully was a scientific skeptic. Only a couple of seasons into it did you learn that Scully had religious faith -- which Mulder derided. This was not in the show at the beginning. It does not live or exist anywhere in a bible document. It was, instead, a dynamic invention by the writers that served to illuminate the characters down the road -- and do so in a wonderfully evocative, inventive story.

It's hard to have faith. In God, in writing, in proof of concept. But as much as people want to take the uncertainty out of the development process, that can never happen. Successful series run for years, which means that everyone involved with them grows, changes and develops as surely as the characters and world they're inventing. You can't front load the process.

Which doesn't mean anyone's going to stop trying to do exactly that.

Ah well, c'est la guerre.

Reprint: The Eyeballs of Men

(Originally published Feb 3, 2006)

This is a story, and within this story lies a tale.

A little over fifteen years ago now, I was dating this very nice actress. (I had yet to learn.) We had gone to school together. She was a peach, really, but I knew the whole thing was doomed from the start. She was too pretty, and I was too insecure. But anyway, that doesn't really figure into the story or the tale. One night, I went out with her and a couple of my good friends from high school came along. One guy was my roommate at the time; he was blowing off steam because he was studying astrophysics. (That's right, bitches, I know an astronomer. I expect a gas giant named after me any day now. How appropriate that would be.) My other friend was working on his history master's at a school a ways outside of Toronto, so I didn't see him too much. (Of course, I saw him a whole lot more then than I do now. Such is the nature of those college good times -- you never think they're going to end.)

Anyway, me and my girlfriend and my friends went out and we had a great night. She was genuinely interested in people, and they were nice to her, and I thought we had a great night.

So I stayed over at her place, and it took til the next day at breakfast for me to realize that something was horribly wrong. I was getting the Silent Treatment. Thus began an hours-long odyssey that every man dreads, and endures: the honey-what's-wrong? After the requisite punishment period elapsed, I was shocked (shocked!) to discover that for once I hadn't said or done anything to her. Nope. Finally, with frustration and maybe even a real fear in her eyes, she looked up and through heavy-lidded eyes spat out, "I don't know how you guys can be friends. You're so horrible to each other."

And then I replayed the evening. And yeah...I guess, in a way...well...we gave each other the dozens. Pretty heavily. My astrophysicist friend, when I was in high school and ran for Student Council, spearheaded a write in campaign for a parrot. That parrot just may have been my Ralph Nader. My other friend was going through his 'harsh' phase. Everything was about being harsh. Then there was me. I got thrown off the announcements in high school for refusing to stop saying "What the hell?" because David Letterman said it. (Jesus. This was a different time.) Anyhow, no matter how I tried to explain it, she couldn't get it in her head that giving each other shit -- sometimes mounds, and mounds, and mounds of shit -- was how we expressed friendship. We enjoyed each other by torturing each other. That was how we communicated.

This is by no means a rare occurrence in male friendships, by the way. Just as women share every secret, men haze each other. Go to a schoolyard and you can see it every day. It's one of those basic differences.

I've been thinking about some of those differences lately, and how they affect the way that I do what I do. There's one truism in animation that isn't too surprising when you think of it: when you make an animated series for kids, or tweens, if you're expecting a mixed audience of boys and girls, you must keep in mind the following, unfair truth:

• Girls will watch stories where the main character is a boy
• Boys will not watch stories where the main character is a girl

Is it fair? Hell no. But it is so. There aren't a lot of boys watching Kim Possible. And there never will be.

How does that change through the years? Turn the boys into men, and what's the viewing pattern, and how is it affected?

Well, there's the usual cliches. Guys will get dragged to date movies only through extreme coercion. And for a great percentage of women out there, I would say that they've seen probably about 120 percent more Ninjas, about 342 more decapitations, and 35 873 more torture killings than they otherwise would have chosen to view, thanks to their boyfriend picking the movie that night.

Gradually, the television audience has been shifting for years now, skewing ever more female. It's changed the ways stories are told, and it's influenced the kinds of shows that are a success. A few years ago, like the makers of cartoons, TV programmers were afraid to make any shows that didn't have male appeal built in. Then came Sisters, Gilmore Girls and Sex in the City and what do you know, that's not such a concern anymore.

Except...

Men have been disappearing. In droves. It's been a heady concern for a while now. Where have the men gone? Especially the young men? They've seemed to desert TV. Lost, Invasion, Threshold, Criminal Minds -- that's an attempt to lure'em back. Women and Men both like Law and Order and CSI? Thank the Christ! Let's order ten of them!

Where'd the men go? Well, the pointy-heads can give you a hundred answers for that. Some of 'em are watching more male-friendly shows on cable like The Shield, or Curb, or Deadwood, or Sopranos. Some have decamped for videogames or the Net. And a whole, whole great whack of 'em are watching Adult Swim. (Way more than they thought. When they finally started rating that block, Cartoon Network found their ratings were mondo-higher than they thought. All. Young. Men.)

So, what the hell's going on?

I have a bold theory about this. It's going to get me in trouble. It's going to make for a lot of defensive "but's...". I understand all this.

I also want to say up front that I understand, and deplore, and find creepy, the whole trend of the fat-guy-with-the-skinny-wife sitcom, and the arrested development (as opposed to Arrested Development) man-boy trope that runs through the shows that still do stalk the earth, looking for male eyeballs. I also think it's a crime that beautiful, wonderful actresses from Joan Allen to Julianne Moore to Meryl Streep to..well...all of them, have to endure a litany of "the wife" and "the girlfriend" roles on their way to "the mother." This is not a grand unified theory of television. But for what it's worth, from a writing POV, here it is...my theory:

1. Mars doesn't understand Venus.
2. Venus doesn't understand Mars.
3. Mars responds to not understanding Venus by either consulting Venus, having Venus on staff or in the room, or ignoring Venus.
4. Venus responds to Mars by declaring that Mars is fucked.
5. Er..that's it.

I'm working on a couple of shows right now that have female protagonists. I do this partly because I grew up in a house of sisters, and a strong-willed mom, and partly because my particular style of writing favors dialogue. And if you're going to do that, then you better be writing women, because men don't talk that way. (Unless you count Al Swearengen, and even then, you have to throw in a lot of c***suckers.)

I am still learning the female voice -- in writing as well as in life. I am constantly on the phone to my female friends, grilling them on "how would this play out?" or "you're in this situation...how does that work?" My sister is a total type-A who studied feminist philosophy as an undergrad and right now is doing a big, big high falutin fellowship in Washington, D.C. She's smart as a whip and occasionally cranky -- but the few times I see her, there's always some point of female wisdom that drops out of her mouth and I lap it up like I'm a dog and she's tossing dinner rolls under the table.

I don't know what I would do if I couldn't talk to my female friends and run things by them. I don't know how I could possibly consider working on a show if there weren't female writers in the room. I understand that their perception of the world, by design, is always going to be different than my own. I'm a guy who likes to talk, and I'm not shy with sharing what I think. But I damn well listen, and learn, and it makes my characters better and my writing richer.

Now, does this mean that women understand themselves way better than men?

Well, uh. Hell no. Women do share. Or overshare. They talk out an issue. A lot. And in subtle observations of people, often there is an edge. I have come to fear and trust female intuition implicitly. But at the same time, I've watched women compete in the workplace. Ugly...I've seen several of my female friends as they cycle through a new best friend every two years. (They burn them out, I guess. Most of the men I know, their friends are people they've known for a decade or more.) And it's not like men are the only ones who make the same bad dating choices over, and over, and over.

The difference is, unless he's a total ass, and doesn't care -- a Male in a development position will read a script and wonder at the female reactions. He'll want to know that they're accurate. He will not attempt to say, "women do this or women do that." Because he'll know he's probably got it wrong. At least, he'll want confirmation that it's reading true.

But now there are a lot of women in development positions, at production companies and networks. In Canada, it seems, it's nearly all women in those positions. (And here's the sexist valve -- I know, I know, in many cases they are not the final say -- the final say is ... ahem ... a man.) Naturally, a lot of those women execs are focused on correcting the years of sexist portrayals by making the female roles meatier, more meaningful. In fact, I dare say that I have yet to get a note about how a female character was portrayed, and could be portrayed better, that wasn't spot on. And great -- after all, TV is indeed about pulling in female eyeballs.

But when it comes to the story, and how the men are portrayed -- the cringing starts where will is imposed on how men actually think and act. The stories I've heard from various writers, and my owe experiences too, have led me to conclude that part of the problem with why men are fleeing tv is because it's getting harder and harder to get scripts past the process where men act like men really act, and do what men do, and bond how men bond -- because women don't like it.

And that's a big problem.

Remember the story at the top, about my girlfriend hating how horrible me and my friends were to each other? Well, I've had two separate conversations about two separate projects with two different creators where there's serious pressure to have the guys be nicer to each other -- because that makes them more 'likable.'

It makes them more likable to women...but to male viewers...uh...it makes them...um...aliens.

A half a dozen times in the last year I have found myself in a head-scratching position where I had to figure out a way for two male characters to have a conversation that they would never, ever have, because they would never, ever, ever talk that way.

It's really frustrating.

And it doesn't just extend to development either. Sometimes, you can see how the summary judgement based on female-skewed perceptions trickles down into the review process.

In the Globe TV guide this week, writer Ceciley Ross spends a whole column being mystified at what the appeal of Family Guy is. It's racist, sexist, homophobic, and juvenile. (I would add, 'she says,' but in truth, I can't disagree with any of that.) She kind of mourns the fact that anyone would watch this show. Meanwhile, her husband is on the exercise bike killing himself laughing, and in the end she has to admit she laughed, too. But she seems singularly ashamed by that.

I'm not. Family Guy is awful. And awful funny. South Park, ditto. Next.

Then there's the case of Love Monkey. I want to quote you a bit of the Entertainment Weekly review of that show by Gillian Flynn.

"The more mystifying tweak to the novel is the decision to switch Tom's occupation from tabloid headline writer to an earnest music A&R guy...Love Monkey seesaws awkwardly between this music biz intrigue (don't care) and Tom's big city social life (wanna care.)"

Sigh. To one hundred percent of men I know -- the A&R hook is the thing they most liked. Flynn name-checks High Fidelity early in her review, but she obviously doesn't understand the lessons of that book -- and how deeply that resonates with the male psyche.

She goes on, in talking about the heightened dialogue:

"One entire scene is devoted to explaining the curiously dated "Grant's Law" -- that all men are like Hugh Grant, who despite having a gorgeous girlfirend at home (Liz Hurley) will want someone, anyone else (in this case, Divine Brown.) A good comedy rule: If your joke needs a PowerPoint presentation, it's not working. The Sex In The City women spawned their catchphrases within the course of natural, witty conversation. It can be done."

Again. Every guy I know who watched the pilot - Grant's Law was their favorite scene. For my money, too, especially in the first couple of seasons, Sex In The City's "catchphrases" were mystifyingly forced. I remember scratching my head, wondering how in the hell women were responding to what, to my ear, was so obviously a gay-male parody of how women talk. It was only in later seasons, where Michael Patrick King took some truly heavy-hitting female writers and gave them power (Jenny Bicks, Alexa Junge, Cindy Chupak, and others) where the show started to sound authentically female to me.

But you know what? Whatever. I wasn't the target for it. And therein lies the difference. There's not a guy alive (at least none that's working, that I know) who would point to a scene where women were speaking and say, "Women don't talk like that!" At best it would be a question, "Do women really talk like that?"

The reverse is not true.

And I think until we fix that problem...male eyeballs are going to continue to flee the small screen. It's not so much that big, grown up boys don't want to watch shows built around women. It's that we're creeped out when we see men who don't act or talk anything like the men we know.

Our culture spends a lot of time telling men that how they interact is broken. But it's not. And if TV presents us with only that view too, well...we're gonna go somewhere else.

For an intriguing illustration of what I'm talking about, there's a book I really want to read, and that I think should probably be on the bedtable of every female development executive, too:

Norah Vincent's Self Made Man.

They printed an excerpt from this in the paper last weekend. Vincent tells the story of her interactions in an all male bowling league. The climax is a ritual that she at first finds puzzling: one guy is having a hell of a game, and one by one all the men stop bowling. They just sit down. Eventually he bowls a perfect game, and everyone whoops. Vincent's amazed by the lack of communication, how the men just stopped, and waited respectfully for the man to finish his game. It was a sign of respect, yes -- but it was also a communal action taken without having to talk about it at all.

Reading the story, I immediately knew what was going on, and I suspect most men would, too. It's nice to hear the refreshing point of view that just because we don't hyper-articulate everything, it doesn't mean we don't communicate.

It took a gay man to give women their voice in Sex and the City. I love the fact that maybe, just maybe, it takes a lesbian writer from California to give men their due, without the fooferal and crap of all that bogus Iron John stuff. I hope this book gets read in TeeVee land. (At least in Canada. I know none of you Californios read.) It may point a way to get some of those male eyeballs back.

Reprint: Why Vera Makes Me Uneasy

(This article originally published Sept 3, 2006.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot Enough For You?

I'M HAVING focus problems, and I need to start working up my second story for The Border, so I think I'm going to help myself out by taking a little BlogBreak. We'll return July 16 or 17. If I get up the gumption, I might post a few reprints. If not, well...go buy somebody you know a coffee. They'd love to see you. See you next week!

About Face: Maybe 8/10 is the Devil

SO, ALL weekend I received furtive emails. They weren't the kind of missives people post to the blog. Oh no. These were more on the down low. But they all had one purpose - to convince me that the post I made musing that 8/10 wasn't such a bad change was wrong, wrong, wrong.

And I have to admit, in the sober light of a Monday morning, I'm swayed.

Not because I don't think that there shouldn't be some flexibility in casting if you can't find a Canadian 'star.' And not because I think that I need protectionism to work in my own industry. Not totally.

What it comes down to for me, is this: the system's being gamed again, in an unpredictable way, without providing any relief or hope to the people who got screwed over the last time they gamed the system.

In 1999, when the CRTC relaxed the rules on drama spending by networks, allowing them to count reality and cheaper fare as Cancon, they insisted this wouldn't result in less homegrown material. Instead, the number of Canadian scripted shows dropped off overnight. With a business model based solely on rebroadcasting U.S. hits, there was no reason to do more than the minimum. And so it goes.

Now they're talking about reforming the fund again, and when I wrote about the bit last week, I missed one very important part. As someone wrote to me:

The main thrust of the CRTC report is that the CTF should be divided in two– the Heritage contribution of $100 million, renewable annually, and the Broadcast Distribution Undertakings’ (BDU) required contribution of 5% of revenue which is about $130 million. The report makes a clear distinction about which projects should be funded from which stream of money. Also there a whole bunch of new governance provisions, etc. for the BDUs’ portion. It is a return to our murky past with different streams of funding and two different boards and policies.

See what happens when I read too quickly?

This is indeed a disaster. Because it's a return to "bureaucrats decide what makes a program Canadian." So the ridiculous, hamfisted values of "visibly Canadian" (you know, wheat and beavers) will rear its ugly head. Also, inevitably, a two fund system will mean one favored fund and one idiot cousin. Wonder which will be which, hmm? The "commercial" fund or the "100% Canadian" fund? It'll be the wild west fighting over the "commercial" fund, while Canadian producers fight over the scraps tossed by Heritage. Feh and fie.

Besides leading to a further institutional ghettoizing of Cancon, the inanity of this process is clear to see. In kicking off this whole tantrum-driven imbroglio, Jim Shaw, regulatorily favored monopolist, criticized the bad shows his money had to support. And one of the examples he used was Trailer Park Boys.

Trailer Park Boys. The successful Canadian show which has run six seasons, spawned an Ivan Reitman produced movie, made cultural icons out of its stars, and pleased fans all across Canada.

But not Jim Shaw. And he's rich, so, you know, he gets to make the call.

Now, is TPB 100% Canadian? Fuck yeah. Is it 100% Canadian by whatever bullshit definition Jim Shaw and his ilk want to use? Ummmm....derrrr.

By two-tiering CTF investment, we could well take a step back. And the track record by production companies and broadcasters -- who immediately go to do the absolute minimum and no more -- isn't good.

Lead Actor, and Writer both equal 2 points on the 10/10 system...so that's why getting 8/10 is essential to a lot of these companies who want to access Canadian Taxpayer money. But when there were 6/10 options, the L.A. writers grew fat off our dime, while actual Canadian writers were left out in the cold. It's easy to see it happening again.

We're the ones who are still fighting the perception that we're not good enough -- even though there are plenty of us who want to write in a more commercial vein -- we just don't want to have to go to L.A. to work on Canadian shows.

Forget about finding the next "Corner Gas."

If this goes through, I can easily see a return to the days when L.A. based firms hired a "Canadian producer" and ran the whole creative on their end. And we'll be paying for it.

You know what else seems suspicious? The fact that the DGC hasn't said a damn thing.

Sure, I'm still pissed at ACTRA for selling out writers in the past -- but this is a separate issue. A stronger waver system where you could "waive" the lead actor for foreign sales could accomplish the same thing.

The whole thing's a mess. And it basically still comes down to: you haven't fixed what was wrong from 1999, and you're rolling the dice on us again.

The WGC, right now, is preparing their response. So for any of you out there who have experience from the 6/10 days, about working on a show (or trying to work on a show) where all creative decisions came out of L.A. and your voice or input was ignored, tell your tale in the comments below...and also drop a line to Maureen Parker at the WGC.

It's not that I don't think the CTF needs reform. It does. It's just that this tinker seems, once again, to put creative people firmly in the bullseye of experimentation, when all the experiments they've tried in the past have been disastrous for us, while they made other people very rich.

UPDATE: Doyle's got a column about this this morning.

Hey, Whaddya Know!

IT'S TRUE. Someday, we will all know someone who's on a reality show.

I somehow missed this, but Toronto comic Debra DiGiovanni made it onto Last Comic Standing this year.

Deb's been working the comedy circuit here for about seven years. She's a superb host -- that's a hard job in any comedy club, but her infectious energy and outgoing nature always carries her through. I've seen her lots of times, and she works harder to get that audience rapport than just about any other comic I've ever met. I've seen her turn around audiences that were ice-cold. It's a thing of beauty to behold.

I first met Debra when she toiled on the switchboard of CityTv back in the CHUM days. (Yes, she was funny then, and no, they didn't appreciate her there.) So. Those of you looking for the toiling up from the bottom story, there she be.

I might have to break my reality show-celibacy for this one. Go Deb!

The Lass From Nantucket, and other Smut

MY FATHER is a man of his generation and upbringing in a classic sense. That means that throughout my life, one of my clearest recollections of the cultural distance between us involves his attitude toward profanity.

My Dad doesn't use it. I can't reliably recall ever hearing him use 'those words.' Not in jest, not in anger, not in conversation. Not ever.

He would never cease to upbraid me when I'd let one slip. He judges entertainment based on how many bad words there are. He grudgingly admits that maybe gangsters would use those words, so he can watch The Sopranos. Somehow he got through Deadwood, though I don't see how. (I was not around to watch him watch it -- the soul can only take so much pain.)

It's when other people; people he doesn't expect to use that language, erupt with a curse here or there that my father really lets loose. If a young woman uses a curse word, he never fails to comment on it. All my life, he's encouraged me not to use the bad words. "They're common." He'd say. "It's the sign of an inferior mind."

When I was younger I'd try to argue the point. I'd try to explain that, in fact, there were plenty of quite superior minds who enjoyed a well placed "fuck" now and then. He'd hear none of it. I'd try to explain the inconsistency between his enjoyment of gruesome, bloody horror fests and his Calvinist attitude toward 'cussin. Doesn't matter. Wouldn't wash.

My little sister tells a hilarious story of watching The Exorcist on TV with my Dad, when she was about seven or eight. You can imagine it made an impression. But try to drop a compound word involving an unseemly action tied to one's parentage: no sale.

My father hasn't wavered from his contention that the really bad thing was to use bad words. And though the fight between us is over, damnit if I haven't spent time going through play scripts counting my 'fucks' and taking them out where I could.

Of course, we live in an adolescent culture that completely agrees with my Dad. The United States can't abide sex but pornifies all violence. Janet Jackson's nipple and a dropped F-Bomb on an awards program or a PBS documentary draws the ire of cultural warriors and the FCC. It's a lot less cute coming from the power structure than my Dad. But what are you going to do?

Well, if you check out Jody Rosen's delightful article in the NYTimes today, you'll see that it's ever been thus. Yes, it seems that in those waning days of the Victorian era, when the Edison phonograph was new and shiny, one of the things that people immediately jumped and used it for was....smut, and bad, bad words.

IN 1997 Bruce Young, a collector of memorabilia from the early phonograph era, placed a newly acquired 100-year-old wax cylinder record on his Edison Standard Model D player and heard a surprising sound: a young man saying filthy words. It was a 2 minute 25 second poetic recitation, suggestively titled “The Virtues of Raw Oysters,” written in the voice of a sexually voracious woman. “I never had it but twice in my life/Make me, just for tonight, your dear little wife,” went one of the few lines suitable for newspaper quotation on a recording laced with curse words and hair-raising sexual slang.

“My wife and I just stared at each other in disbelief,” Mr. Young said, recalling that first listening session. “We were just amazed that that kind of language — what you think of as very naughty late-20th-century schoolyard talk — would exist in the 1800s.” Mr. Young realized that he had stumbled on one of the earliest examples of audio indecency: a 19th-century record worthy of a parental advisory sticker.

Today it has one. “The Virtues of Raw Oysters” is one of 43 profane monologues, skits and other spoken-word curios on “Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s,” the newest release from Archeophone, a small label devoted to early sound recordings.

The album provides a new vantage point on sound recording history and offers some contemporary lessons as well. The zeal with which phonograph pioneers took to indecent material is a reminder that, from the Victrola to the Internet, smut peddlers have always been among the earliest and savviest adapters of new technologies.

I don't find it the slightest bit surprising, of course. But it is instructive. We tend to think of the cultural wars as new and of our time. It's strangely comforting to know that over a hundred years ago, people went to jail for recording dirty words into a wax cylinder. And that, faced with a society where half the population was oppressed and couldn't vote, where labor conditions were scandalous, worker protection nil, child labor common and poverty unchecked -- there were still fuckwits who made it their life's work to stamp out dirty words.

The Best Years: Yankee Swap?

THAT DIANE KRISTINE is a wily one. Here I was, all set to write an article musing about the contrasting critical receptions The Best Years received in Canada (where it carries the "Canadian" flag, and therefore is subject to every reviewer's feelings about Cancon and the 'proper' execution of Canadian culture) and the USA (where it was reviewed as a show aimed at young people. Period.) and what all that could mean...

...and she's gone and written it already.

The show, a co-production between the N network in the US and Global in Canada, started airing on Global about a month before hitting US airwaves. The reviews at that time were nearly universally lukewarm to negative. The most positive Canadian review I found was by Dana Gee of the Vancouver Province, who tried to put herself in the shoes of the intended audience — teen girls — and decided they’d overlook its flaws.

When the show was about to premiere in the States, on the other hand, the reviews were nearly universally positive. Sure, there was a review or two that sounded a lot like Gee’s. And even the positive reviews didn’t consider the show flawless. But from the New Jersey Star-Ledger to the Hollywood Reporter, American reviewers liked the show.

The New York Times even wrote a baffling piece about The Best Years’ take on the class divide that didn’t actually get into whether the show was good or not, but you have to assume they wouldn’t have put out that many polysyllabic words on a show that wasn’t worth the effort.

(You can see all the reviews at TV, Eh? At that link, you’ll be seeing everything on The Best Years from newest to oldest, so the American reviews will be first, Canadian reviews towards the end.)

By clicking the link above, you can read Diane's full article and even see the difference for yourself. (She links to most of the articles.)

And even though Diane goes out of her way to say she's not trying to prove something, I think the comparison probably does prove something's up in the whole reviewing firmament in this country.

That being said, even though I'm way less afraid of the broad generalization than Diane is, I'll end with a few disclaimers of my own:

• this is not an excuse to go whinge about a bad review.
  
• there are just as many reviews that give the benefit of the doubt to Canadian shows when maybe they shouldn't.
• maybe the problem here is that you can't trust the reviews of Canadian shows at all because there's always some sort of weird agenda flitting around the edges.
• we need better writing about television and media in this country.

Enjoy.

Is 8/10 Really The End of The World?

SO ON Friday, The CRTC released recommendations on how to change the administration of the CTF.

You may or not recall that this process was triggered by a cabler's tantrum earlier this year.

The main recommendations:

• Qualifying Canadian programming would be broadcast in prime time, would meet
a minimum of 8/10 Canadian content points on the Canadian Audio-Visual
Certification Office of the Department of Canadian Heritage (CAVCO) scale, and
would continue to fall within the CTF’s traditional genres of drama, children’s
and youth, documentary and variety/performing arts programming;

• Audience success would be the primary criteria for continued funding;

• Actual and potential return on investment would be a factor in allocating funding
and taking into account the different realities of English and French markets.

To my eyes, the recommendations looked somewhat unremarkable, except, of course, for the one that suggested that Producers lose their seat on the CTF board. Because they benefit, and are therefore in a conflict of interest. That's hilarious because, of course, that's exactly the argument the producers used against the Writers getting a seat on the same board. What goes around...

The WGC and ACTRA both didn't like the new recommendations much. From Playback's reportage:

Actors took aim at the CRTC's recommendations for the Canadian Television Fund on Tuesday, warning that the proposed changes to the embattled fund could lead to fewer key jobs for Canadians.

The CRTC's recommendations, released on Friday, include lowering the minimum CAVCO requirement for eligible primetime content to 8 out of 10 points, down from 10 out of 10.

According to ACTRA national president Richard Hardacre, this "would permit CTF-funded productions to be made without a Canadian in the key roles of a director, or a writer, or a lead performer." Under the current regulations, all three must be Canadian.

The WGC, natch, took a different tack and made (to my mind) a better point:

“Why are we perpetuating this myth that Canadians can’t make TV shows that we want to
watch, about the country we live in. According to Jim Shaw and our regulators, Canadian
talent and market success is inherently incompatible”, said Maureen Parker, executive
director of the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC).

Shows created by Canadians for Canadians draw great audience numbers when promoted
and financed – i.e. “Corner Gas”, “Little Mosque on the Prairie”, “Degrassi: Next
Generation”, “Rick Mercer Report”, “Trailer Park Boys”, our TV movies like: “One Dead
Indian” and “The Man Who Lost Himself.” When shows aren’t fully developed, have cheap
production values, aren’t promoted and are scheduled on Saturday evenings, they won’t
draw an audience. “But what the CRTC fails to understand is that Canadian screenwriters
can’t be held accountable for poor broadcasting decisions. Why is it that on our nation’s
birthday our regulators are reinforcing the negative stereotype that Canadians aren’t good
enough?” said Parker.

That is a larger question, though. We need to first hammer home: when we make good shows, people do watch. People don't want to watch bad shows that are badly promoted and buried.

But...that's another topic for another time.

Here's the part where I get myself in trouble.

Once upon a time, there were a lot of shows made here that were 6/10 productions (by the CAVCO definitions.) What we're arguing about here now is the rump of what's left because most of those 6/10 productions (Canadian in name only, with no meaningful Canadian participation at the top creative rungs) dried up; the market didn't want them anymore. So goodbye Relic Hunter, Earth: Final Conflict et al.

The thing is, when all that was going on, the people who got thrown over the rails first were always the writers.

Writing rooms would be in L.A. These nominally 'Canadian' shows did nothing to help the careers of up and comers here.

But Actors got work. And Directors would get work too. So they did fine. It was writers who got hung out to dry.

Now, suddenly, the 10/10 shows are the only games really in town. If you don't live in Vancouver under the UBCP agreement, you're probably not getting too many guest shots on American series.

So, yeah, we have noisy ACTRA protests complaining about the changes to the rules.

I've gotten a bit of a different perspective on this process since I started getting involved with casting last year. And that experience has made me sympathetic to a number of the Producers' positons. If you're going to have to sell your stuff abroad, you might well need a name to help you do that. There are very few Canadian names, and they're already working all the time.

What I've heard from people who are going through this right now is something a little surprising, and it's this:

It's hard to find good leads.

Lead actors are a different beast. They just are. When you think of the U.S. system, with all their many, exponentially larger acting market, it's still hard to find a good lead. The dirty little secret of our talent pool here is this: there are plenty of good actors in Canada. But LEAD actors -- the ones who are smart enough, pretty enough, charismatic (in that incandescent 'star' way, not in that 'character actor' way) and capable of carrying a series on their shoulders are in very short supply because if they are that good, they do go to the USA. We are also thin on the ground in other areas of talent. It's hard to find good, trained Arab actors. Asian actors (outside of Vancouver) can sometimes be difficult. There are others, too.

(And I know that the same argument was made about black actors in Canada years ago, and there was a concerted effort to improve that, and now Canada has a pool of great black actors. I know that. I'm not saying this is an absolute slam dunk argument...just one to be raised.)

But let's get back to leads.

Lead actors -- smart, star quality, good chops -- tend to have agents in the USA. And try telling that US agent that you're missing Pilot Season for a lead in a Canadian series that only shoots 13 episodes, has no back end, won't put you on option, and oh...you're only making scale. Or close to scale.

I know people going through this right now; tearing their hair out because they can't find a lead. And I know series that have had to cast Canadian because they can't afford to make their budget work if they're not 10/10 -- so they violate the one rule you're never supposed to violate: they cast someone that isn't the best actor for the role. And then they can't sell their show. It's ... ugh.

And yes, maybe casting agents here could try harder, but ACTRA isn't looking to discover new stars either; they're looking to get their current members work. That's their job. All this messianic stuff about 'telling our own stories...' let's sidebar that a moment and focus on the practical.

What I know is this: if the hardest thing to do is find a lead actor, and suddenly you can not do that...well...who are they likely to trade away? The writer? Or that Canadian lead?

We haven't been one big happy family before now. In good times, the actors weren't exactly standing by the writers. I think my script's probably as good as any. With 8/10, sure, maybe the actor will be American and maybe they'll go with a Yankee writer too...

...or maybe I'll be able to set up my script with an American producer and an American actor and shoot here with all the advantages...and it'll still be Canadian.

What goes around comes around, hmm?

-CODA-

Such is the Stockholm Syndrome of working in this industry that I bury the most important point in all this:

Rating, deciding, and allocating money to creative works based on an actuarial "points" system is inherently focacta.

Want Fresh New Programming? Try Blighty.

FROM VARIETY:

LONDON -- The BBC needs to set its creative sights higher, according to a survey of its own audiences.
In a more candid than usual annual report, published July 3, the corporation admits that viewers are saying "loud and clear they want fresh and new ideas."

This is according to the BBC Trust, the Beeb's new ruling body, which replaced the board of governors in January and is designed to be more representative of the audience than the old system.

The BBC Trust asked 4,500 people to assess the BBC's performance across a range of categories.

Education and news were ranked as the top two BBC priorities while entertainment was number three.

Almost half the sample said the corp. was failing to do enough to innovate and back new and exciting programs.

"This message, alongside a desire for high quality -- which need not necessarily mean high cost -- is consistent across all groups who have participated in our consultations and it is one of the key factors we will consider when deciding the BBC's strategic priorities in the autumn," said Lyons.

Director general Mark Thompson singled out fare like "Doctor Who," "Strictly Come Dancing," "Life on Mars" and "Planet Earth" for praise.

A body that regularly polls the audience, hmmmm. That seems a little more responsive than the Canadian model of traipsing everybody up to Gatineau to the CRTC, and seeing all the grubby cablers and casters first, does it not?

I wonder, if you wrote the questions in a neutral, non-ax grinding way (a la Shaw's hilarious, "don't you think we should be able to make more money and not ram Ontario crap down your throats?" survey earlier this year) what would people really have to say about Canadian programs? Especially if you started with the successes like Corner Gas?

CBC is the only network that I believe gets this kind of feedback regularly. And unless I miss my guess, what their surveys usually find is that people in Canada believe in the concept of the CBC and are dissatisfied with the execution -- esp. on the TV side.

Polling the audience. What an interesting idea.

For My Own Edification

WONDERING IF I could get a little help here. I'm looking for an idea of the number of Made-In-Canada adult drama/comedy series that are shooting here this summer. (That means the creative made here, for a Can audience, so for instance, the new Flash Gordon wouldn't count because it's the Smallville guys making it for SciFi)

By my count, shooting right now or soon is:

VANCOUVER, B.C.

Intelligence (CBC)
Robson Arms (CTV)
J-Pod (CBC)
Stargate: Atlantis (? TMN, right?)

REGINA, SK

Corner Gas (CTV)

ALBERTA

Heartland (Do they have a new title yet?) (CBC)

TORONTO, ON

The Border (CBC)
The Murdoch Mysteries (Fmr. CHUM -- City? Bravo?)
Little Mosque on the Prairie (CBC)
Re:Genesis (Global/TMN)

CTV Drama Pillots (Critical Incident + 2 others)

OUT OF COUNTRY

Zos (Eastern Europe; TMN)

Am I missing anything? Are there currently any series shooting in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or Newfoundland? I'm looking for series primarily aimed at an adult audience, not kids or tweens. And it's got to be live action. And it has to go to camera by Summer's end. Thanks.

How To Give Notes

"I HAVE a few notes..."

Ooooh. Ooohh. I think I actually heard groaning coming through the innertubes.

I've been talking (commiserating?) a lot lately with fellow TV scribes who are (it's the summer, remember) all presently drowning in notes. What are they saying? It might surprise you. Because sure, there's a little bit of carping of the "they just don't understand" variety. But most professional writers I know express their frustration a bit more plaintively. Vis:

When I am going to get some script notes that help me write a better next draft instead of leaving me on the floor in a pool of confusion and despair?

Contrary to popular belief, most of the pro writers I know understand that an outline is an outline, and a first draft sucks. Always. It's never where you need it to be. And what you need is an astute reader to help you out and get you to where it needs to be. If you're doing a poky spec script, that's one thing. But if you're in production, or prep, all of this has to happen in an incredibly compressed timeframe. But everyone needs that step. Even the Writer Gods who (barely) walk among us.

A good friend of the blog tipped me to Brian Lowry's article in Variety about notes.

Chuck Lorre was speaking with admiration when he told the New York Times regarding "The Sopranos" finale, "This is what you get when you let a writer do whatever he wants." But the "Two and a Half Men" co-creator's observation exposes a larger point.

Network notes have gotten a bad rap, but as several recent programs attest -- including David Milch's bizarre "John From Cincinnati," Aaron Sorkin's self-indulgent "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and, yes, David Chase's much-debated blackout -- left to their own devices, even the finest writers can produce material that leave audiences cold and occasionally slack jawed.

Executives once joked that every A-list producer has a dud inside them just waiting for its owner to achieve success affording them the freedom to release the beast -- a dynamic that begs the age-old question of how to guide creativity without shackling it.

You can quibble over Lowry's choices (I loved Sopranos, still am not sure about John, and agree wholeheartedly about Studio 60,) but Lowry's whole column is well worth a read. But the best part, I think, is this:

Notes aren't inherently bad; bad notes are, and even pedigreed talent can benefit from a little direction.

Let's take that as a bedrock given. I mean, I believe I've written before about the effect good notes can have on a writer. So let's proceed to the next step:

How do you give good notes, rather than bad notes?

This is an entry that could, I hope, benefit Canadian network execs - because as I've said before, rigor, passion, and smarts at that level is what we creatives in Canada desperately need. But it also could benefit people acting as Story Editors, of which there are many in this country, mainly because Telefilm will sometimes pay for them.

Step One: Get the Relationship Right by Managing Ego

As Lowry says in his article, the person giving the notes is not exactly a collaborator. They are, if anything, meant to inspire. But how does that inspiration work? Well, if you remember anything from your philosophy classes, or science classes, the way the progression of intellectual thought generally works is this: thesis + antithesis = synthesis.

So an idea meets another idea, or a counter idea, and the fight between them results in a new (and hopefully better!) idea. Figuring out story goes the same way.

If you're in a position to give notes, there are two ways you can approach it -- you can try to get the writer to do what you want them to do, or you can try to challenge their assumptions, see what their intent was, and talk them through to a place where the result is better.

There are type-A's out there who will snort and snigger at this, and think that it's "touchy feely." There are producers who'll want to say, "hey, what I say goes," and there are network-editor types who'll say, "Hey, we're the ones paying the bill." And both those things are true. And both those things will result in you winding up with a crappy script and a writer who's just trying to get to the end of the project -- and away from you.

Down the line, what it also means is that you'll find fewer and fewer good writers want to work with you. There are producers out there -- even in Canada -- to whom this has already happened. They have trouble attracting talent to work with them because "the word is out." The community is small; people talk. There are also networks that have slid to the bottom rung on who to approach simply because their development process is known to be unpleasant and confrontational.

This sounds like "coddle the writer," a bit, doesn't it? It isn't. Because on the other side of it, the writers, if they're good and serious -- are undergoing the same process. They're trying to decode your notes and really understand what you meant. They're trying to let go of their immediate ego reactions and move on to getting and dealing with your points.

Understand that doesn't always mean taking and executing your note. Sometimes, the thing that's bothering you isn't really the thing that's bothering you. A good writer always takes note of the bump -- and if they don't agree with your diagnosis of how to fix it, they're still going to look for a way to deal with your concern. You don't see the way we're trying to manage our ego, in good faith, but trust us...we're doing it.

Then we drink a lot of beer. Unless we're one of those writers who have stopped drinking beer. Then we go to the gym and punch a bag. Same difference.

If you're a note giver, getting the relationship right, and managing ego means taking a couple of things on faith:

• Your writer understands the story better than you do, because they've lived with it longer.
• Your writer doesn't think it's perfect, and they don't understand the ins and outs perfectly either -- so there's plenty of room for your input and shaping.
  

From there, like in writing, note giving comes all in the execution. Rather than approach your notes as, "In scene 5 we don't think this should happen," or "I don't like this," how about trying more open-ended questions that require the writer to clarify -- really clarify -- what they're trying to do. "Why do you have Jenny discover the boyfriend's infidelity here? Why not later?" Or "What does killing the Mexican get us in this scene, and is that really worth the risk of making our protagonist unlikable?"

Coming in imperiously: cut this, move that, make this funnier -- hate this line, but don't have an alternative...well... that's not helpful. It's just not. I mean, really, ordering writers around can't be that fun. It's not like we're actors or something...we're not....bendy.

If you ask open-ended questions, and get a dialogue going -- you might have a longer notes call, but I guarantee you you're going to have a more interesting discussion. By forcing your writer to clarify and to articulate their intent, you can focus like a laser on those parts that really aren't integral to the story. And what comes out of the subsequent discussion will make the end product better.

By the way - this is also how writers work with each other.

I recently finished a story editing gig for a young writer who's trying to get his series off the ground. I was clear always, when I made a suggestion, to frame it with, "I feel..." statements, and "What was the intent of..." and "How are you going to..." statements. I didn't impose my ideas on this writer, because I didn't have to. By asking the right questions, and reacting positively to his ideas, we got to a much better place organically. And of course, some of my ideas got in there, too. But they got in in such a way that the writer bought into it. They didn't feel imposed -- it wasn't me vs. him. It was us. Us is always better.

When something wasn't working for me, the other thing I did was frame in terms of "what is the audience experiencing right now?" Which brings us to step two:

Step Two: Who are the Audience, and What Should they Be Feeling Right Now?

The fight over the audience is where you could have some legitimate sparks between network and writer.

In theory, knowing the audience is the network's job. In the United States, they will have very sophisticated testing to show you just what the audience is thinking and feeling, and exactly how they react in razor thin increments. They'll show you the testing data, and what it means, and what they want, and how it all results in success.

Which is why, of course, every fall all of the networks' shows become massive giant hits.

Do the Dr. Evil pinky with me now...

Rigggght.

Leonard Stern, the producer of Get Smart, wrote a book a long time ago called "A Martian Wouldn't Say That!" which collected some of the most inane notes given by network executives. In the Lowry Variety article, he quotes Stern as talking about the downside of testing by executives.

Stern agreed that writers have cause for skepticism in dealings with executives, especially when the suits cite research and testing -- betraying their willingness to "surrender instincts, or a refusal to acquire them."

In most cases, the writer's objection is having someone try to quantify or "prove" something unprovable, when the steady application of common sense would probably work better.

Part of that common sense is arriving at a baseline agreement about who the audience is, and what they're likely to know.

The most famous story I can think of on this point is something I heard from the mouth of Peter Casey, one of the Executive Producers of Frasier. He came to visit us when I was a resident at the Canadian Film Centre several years ago. He told the story of the early days of Frasier, when they prepared scripts, they had Frasier and Niles make jokes about opera and art and wine. They got a lot of pressure from the networks to take those jokes out because it was felt that they would alienate the audience. Casey and his partners argued that Frasier and Niles were who they were, men of erudition -- and that they would make jokes like that. To not have them make those jokes would be to betray something about the character. And they felt that if even 10% of the audience got those jokes, they were worth it. There would be plenty of other stuff to keep the people who didn't get the "ten-percenters."

Well, lo and behold, a few weeks into Frasier airing, when it was already a big hit, they got the data back and they found out that fully 40% of the audience was getting the "ten percenters."

At this point in the story, Casey paused and looked at all of us. "Makes you wonder. Those shows that won't go for the 10% percenters. What level are they aimed at?"

That story has particular resonance for the Canadian TV industry. Because traditionally, we never go for the ten percenters. Ever.

There's a few ways you can get lost on the way to your audience.

• Assuming that the audience is dumber than you.

Audiences have (a la Stephen Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You) gotten used to watching Lost, and Heroes -- shows with rich narratives and lots of stuff going on. They watch CSI and they watch Ugly Betty and they have no trouble keeping all the characters straight. They watch E.R. and since the very first episode, they do not worry about jargon and medical stuff -- so long as the drama (or the comedy) is there, they are carried through all right.

But if you get 'noted' to over-explain everything; if you can never use jargon or shorthand, and if you always have to make sure that everything. is. explained. always. Well...then two things are going to inevitably follow: your pace will be deadly slow, and your audience will be bored. Remember the lesson of the ten-percenters.

• Assuming that the audience is you.

Some writers do this, especially new, starting out writers writing autobiographically, but it's far more common with network execs and producers: they extrapolate their single experience and make it universal. "Women don't think this way," "A man would never let himself be..." etc, etc. It's a deadly trap and it can derail a character or a story faster than just about any other pitfall. Insisting on a behavior, or an action without taking it through the questioning process in Step One above serves neither audience nor script.

• Making the audience surrogate character the blandest person in the piece.

You'd be surprised how often this happens. If so and so is supposed to be me, and they're as boring as a dog's ass because they're so chaste/perfect/virtuous/saintly/straight/buff/teetotalling/flawless ... well, then what are you saying about me?

• Surrendering to your agenda.

See: Canadian Drama. Your theme is not your story. It is one arrow in your quiver. If you desperately want to "say something," then may I suggest drafting a manifesto? This one can come from either side, but it's always deadly. We know racism is bad, people. You don't have to tell us. And tell us. And tell us.

...you could show us, maybe. How bout that?

• Adding a scene in to show us "more about the person's character."

Not if it doesn't move the story along, buddy. You're on the deadly pace express.

It's amazing how much you can deflect a trip down a bad road -- whether you're the network or the writer, by asking the simple question: "what is the audience feeling right now? why are they rapt? what are you showing them that makes them not care about reaching for that remote?"

This is where the proper definition of "fridge logic" comes into play. Some writers use "fridge logic" to be a bit of a band-aid to coverup bad plot holes. (But, if you're discussing the story like in Step One, likely those holes won't stand up to challenge, right?)

What fridge logic is, is those little bits of coincidence or plotting that won't interrupt the flow of the story for the audience. They're so named because they're the kinds of things you will only care about a half hour later when you're looking for something to eat in the fridge. Yup, there's probably some goof over on TWOP that will stand up and say, "they forgot about X and it ruined it for me!" but those people are not a large part of your audience.

In the end, one of the best definitions of fridge logic, and they way you can learn to tell the difference between fridge logic and a legitimate story concern is in the application of a fix. If the fix for the "problem" seems convoluted, long, or drags more than the problem itself...that's fridge logic. Solving plot problems -- real ones -- makes the story seem cleaner, not more convoluted.

This is a skill that any good note-giver can learn. But again -- it comes from centering yourself thinking, "what is the audience experiencing right now?" And it requires developing those critical skills. Research aint gonna help you.

Step Three: Stop Reading the Script and Start Seeing the Movie

This one, writers can be guilty of. Or story editors. Or network suits. Or anyone. And it comes from the willful forgetting of one very important fact:

The audience will never read the script.

Repeat that to yourself. What you are poring over, what you are slaving over -- is a transitional document. It is a physical representation of something that your audience is going to experience in an entirely different medium.

When you're reading to give notes, there will inevitably be some things that seem confusing on the page, that won't be confusing when they're filmed. Unfortunately, one of the only ways you can start to tell which is which is to go through it a few times. But in my experience, I've found that we often spend far too much time obsessing over details of presentation that just aren't going to read for an audience.

Reading a script is hard. There's a lot of detail to keep straight and you don't have all the visual and auditory cues: voice, look, manner, inflection -- that communicate character. We've all seen deleted scenes on DVD where a whole speech was cut to a line and a reaction shot, and yet nothing was lost. That is the magic of the medium.

There is nothing in the world more dehabilitating for a writer than to have to cut something because the person reading it wasn't reading it closely enough. Nothing will take the fight out of a writer faster than going through that experience a few times. You start to feel, "what's the point?" You make your peace. And the next thing you know, greatness has escaped out the door once again.

Seeing the movie takes time. It takes more than a cursory read. And it might have to involve you going back to step one a couple times too: maybe you do need the scene explained to you. That's no matter. That doesn't mean you're not good at your job. And it doesn't necessarily mean the scene isn't working. You'll know if it does by what happens when the writer tries to defend it. If they're unclear, then you're right: the scene isn't working. Maybe you can come up with something better, together.

Step Four: Review Your Notes and Don't Allow Contradiction

There are some people who read all the way through and then give overview and specific notes, and there are some people who give notes as they go along. Ie: if they don't get something, they note it right away. I tend to like to do the latter -- even if that means that I do a "take back" note. ie: Page 8 - OK, that explains my confusion, page 5...never mind...but is it too long a gap?"

By reading and giving notes that way, I feel I'm doing my best to approximate the audience experience -- feeling my way through the story in real time, imagining I'm watching it.

Your notes should be written, as succinctly as possible. Don't lecture or hector. Know your writer: some need more praise than others. Sometimes, a checkmark or a good goes a long way.

What's desperately needed at the end of this, though, is a final clean and wash. If you've expressed thougths or questions about the character acting in a certain way in Act One, you can't give the opposing note in Act Three. Your writer is working very hard to try and have internal consistency in the story as it progresses. Doing the same thing with your notes is the very least you can do.

In Canada, we do a lot of international co-productions. And inevitably, different sets of notes come from different countries and the notes all contradict each other. I'm not sure if you can always make those notes agree...but if you've got different people in the same organization reviewing the material, you should take the step to harmonize those notes and present a unified front.

Otherwise, writers heads tend to explode. And it's the middle of the summer. No one likes to be covered in viscera.

There are good notes out there, and there are people who give good notes. And though it may not always be a Kumbaya festival, it is always rewarding, and it always makes the script better. And there's not a writer I know who wouldn't want to work with someone who approaches notes like I've outlined here, again and again and again.