Reprint: Gettin Schooled

(Originally published Dec 1, 2006)

THUNKA THUNKA THUNKA.

That's rain outside my window that looks suspiciously like it wants to be snow. This is the kind of weather that makes a rewrite much, much easier. Blueglow will be relieved that I shant be haunting the coffee shops today. (Still gotta write about that.)

So the better to get to work, and ease into the weekend, I need something easy to write. Hmm. Let's see. Here we've got an email from Nicole. Nicole is a journalism student somewhere here in the fine Province of Ontario, and she writes:

For my final assignment I am doing an article on Canadian media—specifically how America affects Canadian television and Canadians viewing habits. If you feel like you could give me any insight or views into this subject, I would like to interview via-email.

Sure Nicole, sounds fun. And since everything is repurposed for content here at Dead Things Labs, let's have a giggle and share Nicole's questions and my answers to the group, shall we?

Here are my questions..thank you so much for taking the time and helping me out. You rock!

I really don't. At best, I sway. But Thanks. Shoot.

Do you think there is any difference between writing tv for Canadians as opposed to Americans? Explain.

I think so. There's several ways to answer that question. First, though I truly believe there is a difference, I'm not sure our industry has done a very good job of exploiting what that difference is, yet.

On a basic level, the difference is that Canadians are not as insular as Americans are. The great bulk of Americans have very little curiosity about other cultures or an international perspective. (They have more now than they did five years ago, to be sure, but it's still tied up in post-9/11 fear and a sense of threat, not genuine curiosity about the world.) Americans tend not to be too interested if the show isn't about Americans, or something happening in America. I have a hard time explaining this to Canadians, a lot of the time, but Americans tend to kind of be isolationist as a people. (Their government's experiments in imperialism notwithstanding.)

What that means is that I think you can write a bit more about the situation in the world, or feel free to set something other than Chicago or New York, or have a character from a different part of the world in a Canadian work, rather than an American work.

The peculiar thing about Canadians, of course, is that they spend their whole lives absorbing and observing a culture that they're intimately familiar with, of which they aren't really a part. I think that might make Canadians more introspective as a people. So maybe characters who are more thoughtful, and more considered, rather than "men of action" could play here, more than in the U.S.

If you believe the ratings, smarter shows that use irony do a little better with Canadians. God bless'em, the great bulk of the American people don't really cotton much to irony. They didn't get it when Mark Twain tried it a hundred years ago, and they don't get it now. Irony rules the internet, and snarky magazine pieces, but not that mass TV audience.

On a more practical level, the differences have to do with social pressure. Because the religious right isn't quite as militant or influential in Canada, you can portray things that you simply can't in the USA: teenagers can have sex on TV here, without immediately getting pregnant. If they do get pregnant, they could actually have an abortion, not be forced to keep the baby or have a magic miscarriage. Degrassi actually had lots of trouble getting some of their shows past the N, though it's their most popular show. Shows that aired here and were no big deal were too hot to handle down south. That's telling. The Sopranos runs on CTV here unbleeped. Dropping an F or an S bomb won't be thought of as bringing the whole of western civilization to a halt. And, of course, Canadians are mostly allergic to jingoism, that kind of "My country right or wrong" rah-rah stuff you see in a lot of CBS shows. Oh, and people here who smoke pot do so without immediately trading up to heroin. They are not necessarily evil.

But on the other hand, there are lots of things that are going to be similar in writing TV for Canadians. They demand the production values, pacing, and quality they see from the best U.S. shows. And so they should. That's the place where, sadly, we have to do better. And it's a challenge, because we're never going to have the money most U.S. shows have.

That's a long answer, Nicole. But that's what you get for asking a complicated question.

What do you think makes a successful Canadian show?

I don't think there's a magic bullet or yardstick. And again, that question needs to be parsed a little bit, because are you talking success in terms of ratings or revenue, or in terms of being artistically successful? I'm going to assume the latter, because I think it's a more interesting answer and I'm the one answering the questions here, Nicole, let's not forget that.

Oh..you're getting a text message? I'll wait.

There. (I'm kidding, of course, this is an email interview. I've never even met Nicole, though I think she has superb taste in interview subjects.) John Doyle, the TV writer for the Globe and Mail, thinks there's a gentleness to it. And I tend to think that's part of it. American comedies really evolved to a place where we were laughing at people being nasty to each other. Corner Gas is a lot more gentle, and a million and a half people watch it every week, which is a huge number for Canada. The people on Corner Gas tolerate each other, and may get annoyed from time to time, but there isn't nastiness. Trailer Park Boys has a ton of swearing, but the characters form, in their own way, a sweet, supportive family. (One of my favorite things in TPB is the way they handled the gay relationship between Mr. Lahey and Randy. Nobody cared. It was just matter of factly revealed. Nobody has a problem with the two of them because they're gay. It's a far bigger deal that Lahey is always drunk and Randy never wears a shirt.) Degrassi, in all its incarnations, was successful because it spoke to its audience about subjects that U.S. TV wouldn't touch, and it didn't judge or talk down to them. So that's something.

I think successful Canadian shows come out of not replicating U.S. formulas -- but in trying to speak to the parts of the Canadian psyche that don't get represented on U.S. TV. Sometimes that's executed in a clumsy or unsatisfying way, but when creators here do a series with the audience in mind, and not so focused on "what they want to say," that helps. And being different because we're different -- not being different than American shows for the sake of merely being different, is huge, too. I don't know if you see that there's a huge difference between those two things, but there is. If you take another Canadian show that I think works, Rent-A-Goalie, the obvious, surface thing is that it's about hockey. But the thing that makes it work isn't that -- it's the gentleness underneath the fart and jock jokes; the sense of family, just like Trailer Park Boys.

How is Canadian TV affected by America?

Profoundly. We're the only country in the world that receives U.S. network feeds in their entirety on our cable systems. So their shows are all on at the same time as in the USA. No other country has this burden, and it is a burden, because in many ways we really are what Hollywood would like us to be: an extension of the U.S. domestic market.

The USA is the largest and most successful exporter of culture the world has ever known. And we're right next door. In other countries, people love U.S. shows, but they also love their own cop shows, their own lawyer shows, or family dramas, or soaps, or talk shows. Canada is an anomaly in the sense that most of our top 20 shows are American.

What makes it even stranger is that you'll see lots of Canadians stand up and wave the flag for Canadian music, or Canadian books, -- hell, they'll get all misty eyed at Hockey Night in Canada and the "I Am Canadian" beer ad, but they're more than happy to watch another nation's values and obsessions on TV every night. It's a disconnect, to be sure. I just happen to think it's a disconnect that we in the Canadian TV industry have sometimes made worse.

The new season of Degrassi seems to be sexed up. Do you think this is this a way for CTV to compete with American shows kike the OC?

I really don't think so, no. I think it's just a function of where those characters are in their lives right now. I actually haven't watched Degrassi for a few years, so when I tuned in I was shocked by how old they've all gotten. No wonder they're all sexed up -- they're all 19 and 20 years old and totally hot.

Degrassi always aged the kids in real time. And now that they're practically adults, well, all those hormone stories aren't so taboo anymore. And the great truth that Canadian TV can say that U.S. tv can't is that by the time kids get to the end of high school, the majority of them are sexually active -- at least in some fashion.

What is your opinion on the Cancon mandate?

I think it's important. There are some really radical people in my industry who think that we should have a quota system like France where I think 60% of their prime time has to be homegrown fare. I think that's totally unrealistic, and you'd probably have a viewer revolt, and the Canadian networks would really suffer. And Oh My Lord that would mean a whole lot of crap on the air. So I don't favor that at all.

But the arguments that people make against Cancon quotas are exactly the same arguments they made against forcing stations to play Canadian music. And for a few years, yeah, that meant playing the same bad stuff a little too much...but the industry matured. And now, I think you've got to say that Canada's domestic music scene is arguably more vibrant and interesting than the U.S. scene, especially since we're ten times smaller. Whether you're talking bands that only really succeed domestically like Blue Rodeo or Tragically Hip, buzz bands that are indie music darlings in the U.S. like Broken Social Scene, Feist, Arcade Fire. K-os, Sum 41 -- hell, none of these bands would be around if not for the regulations that allowed Canadian artists to get a toehold and not be overwhelmed by the much larger American market.

If there's a consistency to support for Canadian TV, we'll get to that place, too. Because people will be able to get better, get more experience, move up in the ranks and not have to go south to work in TV, which is what happens now. In fact, if they hadn't changed the rules in 1999, I bet we'd have more hits on the air right now than Corner Gas. It takes a few years. But I think we saw with the rule change where the Networks' priorities are. Once they didn't HAVE to put Canadian drama and comedy on the air...boom...they stopped. Overnight.

I also think this is contingent on separating the Canadian Film and TV industries a bit. Canadian Film is arthouse film. Nobody wants to see arthouse TV. The people who should be creating TV shows here should be people with a commercial, audience-entertaining sensibility. These people, in the past, haven't been the ones getting TV shows here. So, like David Shore (House,) Hart Hanson, (Bones, Judging Amy) and a bunch of Simpsons writers-- they went to the USA.

What do you think the CRTC must do to ‘save’ Canadian TV?

Go back to the carrot and the stick. Right now the networks are asking for carriage fees, so they can charge cable operators to carry their signals. Which are mostly simulcasts of U.S. shows, which is a big fat joke on the Canadian public. Try explaining to the Canadian public that they have to pay 10 bucks more a month for cable just so they can watch CSI on CTV and not CBS. See how far you get.

They also want more ad time, they want to count infomercials as CanCon. It's pure greed. Utterly silly.

The CRTC should restore a quota: 7% of private broadcasters revenues have to go into Cancon, period. They should also stipulate a number of hours a week in primetime that has to be devoted to homegrown scripted programming. That's the stick. Then offer the carrot: breaks or credits on Adtime for spending money to actually promote these homegrown shows. There are people smarter than me that probably have better ideas about this, but the bottom line is that Canadian networks have treated their homegrown shows as a nuisance. Something has to be done to force them to really try to invest in these programs' success. Broadcasting licenses in this country are not a right, they are a privlege, and they have to step up as corporate citizens here. They're crying poor, but broadcasting in this country has been and continues to be ABSURDLY profitable. All we're asking for here is our fair share -- and 7% is not a lot, in context. Networks who spend 300 million a year on U.S. shows and then balk at spending more than 90 million on homegrown shows just aren't credible.

What do you think about the CRTC hearing going on this week?

It would be nice if the commission showed some teeth. The broadcasters have gotten their way for so long that I think they just expect to get whatever they ask for. It's outrageous that they're standing up there, asking for even more breaks and protection, and then out of the other side of their mouth whining that there's no room to spend money on domestic shows. I hope people finally wake up and realize that these guys want to charge them more every month for stuff that they're already getting, and not give anything back to anyone. We'll see.

Reprint: Stop Pushing the Vegetables, Start Working The Funny

(Originally published Dec 15, 2006)

Last night I found myself in one of my favorite urban hangouts here in Toronto. It's a chic, but unpretentious bar where they know how to pour a Guinness and mix a cocktail.

I was there with a few writers - a couple friends I hadn't seen for a while, and another guy who I've met and talked to a few times before. We ruled the corner booth and had way too many drinks and laughed and laughed. I could certainly see why these guys are pretty much top of their game in this country.

It was a bit of industry night. At another table was a writer I know (and taught, years ago) who's just wrapping his movie. A group celebrating their CBC pilot's wrap was in the centre of the room. There were actors I knew, a couple of development guys from companies I've worked with, and a passel of network execs from at least two Canadian networks. In the corner were a bunch of people from the Globe & Mail, gnawing dead things on sticks, god love'em.

Toronto really is terribly small.

Anyway, the thing that struck me is the way I had the same conversation five times: all about Little Mosque on The Prairie. Everyone's amused by the coverage. Everyone's worried. Everyone is holding their breath and wondering how CBC will react, or overreact, if the show doesn't do well.

I have to say that the drumbeat of articles is starting to make me nervous. It would be easy to fall into the pattern of thinking that the pre-press can only help the show. There's only one problem with that. Having been a journo myself, you have to separate out newsworthy from buzzworthy. Little Mosque is a great news story, no matter how it's played - the creator's story is interesting. The idea behind it is very interesting. But none of that is going to get an audience to stay tuned after minute one if the material isn't also funny, and relatable.

Jim Bawden takes up the case of Little Mosque today in the Toronto Star:

Storylines poking fun at small-town life are mixed with problems unique to Canadian Muslims trying to fit in. Sort of like Corner Gas, but with a difference.
What's missing are the usual stereotypes.
"The stories come from my own experiences and observations," says creator Zarqa Nawaz, who was born in Liverpool, grew up in Toronto, and now lives with her husband and four children in Regina.
"The feeling out there — the media's caricature — is of Muslim extremists," said Nawaz, who is creator as well as co-executive producer. "I'm showing a group of Canadian Muslims trying to keep their religion and family together, but facing everything with a lot of fun."

As far as it goes, that's great. But the dark thing is that Bawden's article is titled, "Comedy With A Mission."

In the New York Times article last week, which set off the round of international attention Mosque is getting, an even more telling quote snuck in in the last couple of 'graphs, where Neil MacFarquhar wrote:

In an earnest manner not atypical of Canadians, one goal of the show is to explain Muslim behavior, or at least make Muslims seem less peculiar, much as humor about Jews, Italians or gays helped those groups assimilate.

“On the news all you ever hear are voices from the extreme end of the spectrum,” Ms. Darling said. “This gives voice to ordinary people who look just like other ordinary people.

Does anyone see the problem here? MacFarquhar seems to get it, though he softpedals it by burying this observation near the article's end:

Selling the social responsibility will not work.

Traditionally, in Canada, we have done this a lot. We talk about how "worthy" the series is, not how engrossing or entertaining it is. There's no wonder Stephen Colbert wants to talk about Mosque -- it's a great story. But a great story is not neccesarily a great show - or a show that I want to tune in. Shows do not succeed or fail based on their news coverage or how worthy they are...they will succeed or fail based on how entertaining they are. How funny they are.

I worry about Mosque because I think, if you're a viewer looking for something to tune in in the New Year, you're going to choose what to watch based on what sounds entertaining and funny. But they're not making that case strongly -- the P.R. of this show is playing into the angle that's good for the people writing the stories -- but not for the audience who might tune in.

Imagine an alternate universe where all these articles still appear, and the lede is the same, about how this show could change people's views of Muslims blah blah blah, but all the relevant quotes from the show were, "You have no idea how funny this stuff is. We laugh all the time. I mean, if your faith dictates you must be veiled in front of a man, how do you take a swimming class when they change the teacher from a woman to a man?" "If you're just a regular person going through security, and you know you're a fourth grade teacher and they're looking at you like you're a shoe bomber, it's scary, but there's also something ridiculous about it, isn't there?"

The angle of the article doesn't change: just the sell. If I'm a reader, now my takeaway message is, "Man...that might be something to watch. Sounds like it could be funny."

Listen. Nobody wants this show to be funny more than me. I want CBC to have a big, fat, monster hit that pushes the envelope and kicks open the doors, and has people laughing at the foibles of intra-Muslim problems, and the misunderstandings with the larger community. It's a great idea, it's cutting edge, it's time, and it's daring.

But none of that matters if it's not funny. I just wish they spent a little more time selling the funny, and a little less time telling us how good this show is going to be for us.

Or as one of the people at the bar said last night, "If the show is all about how stupid all the white people are, I am so out of there."

Remembering Honest Ed

JUST POKING my head in from my break to note the passing of the man who did more for theatre in Canada than anyone else I could name. And since it's theatre where I first got up the gumption to put my words in front of an audience, I, like everyone in the Toronto arts firmament, owe Ed Mirvish a huge debt.

He brought culture to Toronto, but he also brought soul and fun. And as a resident of this city that always takes itself too seriously, that was a huge plus.

I met Ed a couple of times, usually at the celebrations of his birthday, which would close down Markham Street in the midst of the summer. He was a kind man without pretense or frummery. One time I chatted to him for about five minutes or so. He clocked my accent and we talked about New York and then he told me theatre stories and I lapped them up like they were manna. And in a way, they were.

When I came to Canada exactly 30 years ago, Toronto was a very different place. Still caught in the wasp-y Orangeness of its Toronto the Good beginnings, even as a kid it seemed like a place that was less colorful and vibrant than the cities I was used to. I strongly remember, that first summer, Ed Mirvish and his crazy store and thinking "that man is not like everyone else here. He's more like someone I remember." He brought life to the city as well as inspiration and good works. There are others who will eulogize him better. You can read about him here and here.

Last night, I also had the pleasure of taking in DUEL OF AGES at the Toronto Fringe. It's the show that I wrote one segment for. It was joyous, rocking, galloping fun -- with a very funny scene by Mike McPhaden, a swashbuckling take on Errol Flynn by my friend Gregg Taylor, and an amazing combination of dance and fighting you have to see to believe. It was unpretentious fun and the whooping of the audience -- the sheer enjoyment of the thing, the energy carrying out of the theatre and onto the street -- reminded me of everything I love about writing for an audience, and for a living.

Honest Ed made a lot of that possible through his support of the arts. I thought of him a lot last night, as did many Fringers.

Toronto is a much more staid place, even now, with his loss. Thanks for everything, Ed. You were truly one of a kind, and we'll all miss you a lot.

Reprint: Helluva Towne

(Originally published February 17, 2006)

Checked out Robert Towne's talk last night at the Art Gallery of Ontario's Jackman Hall, as presented by the Toronto International Film Festival Group and Cinematheque Ontario.

Host Geoff Pevere reined in his more annoying side, and proved to be a very able moderator. He actually did an excellent job - I've been left twitching in the past at those kinds of things by the double whammy of bad moderator/bad questions from the audience. But mercifully, not this time.

The stories from Towne were definitely worth the journey on a very wet and rainy Vancouver winter night (made marginally more disturbing by the fact that, um, I live in Toronto, so heavy rain in February is...um...out of place.)

They showed a bunch of clips and one of the highlights, of course, was that scene from The Godfather between Michael and Vito in the garden, where Vito expresses regret that he never wanted this life for Michael.

Towne said that he got a call from his friend Francis Ford Coppola to come to New York. They were about to lose Brando from the picture, and they realized that Puzo hadn't written any scenes between father and son. Puzo was in no condition to do it - he had other troubles.

Towne was ushered into a screening room in the Gulf & Western building on Columbus Circle and shown 45 minutes of Godfather footage.

Here's the most interesting part of the story for me: at this point, Coppola was a beaten dog. The studio and everyone was saying that the Godfather was a disaster. When Towne saw it he told Coppola it was "the best daily footage he'd ever seen." And Coppola shook his head. He didn't believe it at this point.

Just goes to show. Those brilliant executives being so supportive of their talent.

Oh, I hope there's a special slab in hell for those types of executives.

Anyway, Coppola said he wanted some sort of scene where the father told the son that he loved him. And Towne immediately said, "I can't do that." And Coppola agreed. Towne took the part that said "at that meeting you will be assasinated" and split the speech, shoehorning all the gold in between about "I never meant this life for you" and all, and then ended with the "whoever comes to you will be the assassin" line from the original script.

When they went out to shoot, Brando made Towne read the scene to him twice. He then went through every line with him and asked what it meant. Then he did the scene.

What a fucking scene.

There were other entertaining blind alleys and half-steps -- Towne got involved with the film version of The Firm, for instance, when his next door neighbor Sydney Pollack asked him for help one day. They were both outside, and Pollack was taking out the garbage -- Towne thought he needed help with the cans. I liked hearing about The Firm because years later just about the only thing I can remember about that film was the jazz score and the fact that Towne's ending in the screenplay was so much better than Grisham's ending in the book. Every time the bookists break out the "how the book is always better" canard, I'm right there with, "Oh yeah? What about The Firm?"

Someone in the audience asked Towne if when he was doing the work on Godfather, Shampoo, Chinatown, etc, if he wanted to direct even then, or if he was happy screenwriting. He replied instantly, "No, I was happy screenwriting. Very happy." That made me feel kind of good. Occasionally I've had friends ask why I don't seem particularly interested in directing right now. I've always had this vague sense that maybe I'd want to direct -- someday -- but I guess it took hearing Towne to realize that my reluctance has nothing to do with fear -- it has to do with marshalling energy. I need to focus my energy and work on making my scripts great first, before I go off on a tangent and start trying to direct. The word at this point in my career is more important to me. That's not fear. That's focus.

After the session, they showed Towne's latest film, which he wrote and directed, called Ask The Dust. That was a bit of a treat because the film isn't supposed to open til March, and they had only said they'd be showing 15 minutes. Also, there was a weird sense of things coming full circle screening that film, since it was shot in South Africa while I was there shooting Charlie Jade.

To my everlasting dismay, I never did see Selma Hayek, but the Cape Times was full of Colin Farrel sightings, and I even saw the guy once as he sidled up beside me to wait for his Sushi order at my beloved Beluga Restaurant, whose bar and fine wine cellar I still miss.

Ask the Dust is an interesting, strange, weird, messy film. It really is all over the place, strangely paced -- but with something compelling at the core. It makes me want to read the book, which Towne apparently has been trying to film for 30 years, and which was one of the inspirations for the L.A. he painted in Chinatown. If you're a Towne buff, I think it's something you have to see -- but it's a strange film. Stranger still seeing a bunch of places that four years ago would have been exotic to me, but now are as familiar to me as my own street.

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.