Maureen Ryan Talks to Me Through My TeeVee

I LIKE Maureen Ryan because she thinks about TV. A lot. Anybody who thinks about TV is my friend. Anyone who turns up their nose at TV, who's casually dismissive without thinking about the medium, well, I won't say they're my enemy, but let's just say you're not getting a holiday card.

Ryan's been musing on her Chicago Tribune blog over TV storytelling and what kinds of stories work, and what kinds don't. She riffs off a piece that Jane Espenson wrote for the New Republic , dealing with SF narratives, which posits that audiences gravitate toward "The Chosen One," stories...comforting hero narratives. Most of the Sci-Fi that doesn't catch on doesn't catch on because it lacks this dimension. Interesting theory.

Where Ryan takes it further, though, is into the soup of what we who create TV do when we're doing what we do. (Doobie doobie do.)

I'm not sure I've ever heard it described so well:

Many TV shows similarly have an interesting, well-told "cover story" -- and a subtext that's just as intriguing, if not more intriguing.

This "TV disguise" is actually something I've thought about a lot -- many of the cleverest shows on TV use it to great effect.

For instance, I think "Battlestar Galactica" isn't just a satisfying tale of survivors on the run from extermination. It is that, on one level, but wrapped inside that overall structure is a meditation on governing, power, the tension between the military and civilians and an exploration of what human beings will do to each other -- and for each other -- when the "normal" restrictions of human society are taken away.

Likewise, I've always thought "House" is really a weekly ethics seminar. What is moral behavior? What constitutes brutal disregard for others and what constitutes selfless adherence to well-defined ideals? What's the definition of violating a person's individual rights, and when is it OK to ignore those rights in order to save a life? Those kinds of discussions and arguments between House and his staff, or House and Wilson, could be taking place in a graduate philosophy seminar. Lucky for us they take place within a tightly constructed mystery story.

"The Sopranos"? A gangster's tale, to be sure, but also a deeply resonant examination of materialism and what the definition of manhood is in the 21st century.

Would you believe that I think "Deadwood" is, on one level, a treatise on government as well? After all, if you put aside the boozing and the swearing and so forth, the show's really about how people on the edge of a lawless frontier choose to rule themselves.

And way back in the day, I used to think "Grey's Anatomy" was an interesting take on how friendship and ambition collided. Now I'm not sure what it's about, except about how desperate TV writers often seem to be driven by a desire to make their characters as illogical, unlikable and inconsistent as possible.

I've often thought that the smartest TV writers find an idea or a set of challenging ideas that they want to explore, and then find a TV-friendly format that will allow them to do that.

After all, a TV executive who gets a pitch on "a weekly morality seminar" is pretty likely to pass. "A cranky but charismatic doctor saves lives in an unorthodox way" -- sold!

Though I'm in the middle of storybreak hell, I'm also dipping my toe back into development for the first time since Across The River To Motor City got made last year. (It's coming this fall -- I swear to Dog, just waiting for the date...) I took a long break from developing my own projects after that, because 2005-2006 had me juggling three. It was a hard slog, and after all that, the tank was low.

Now, in my copious free time (nights and sleep hours) and those times when I'm banging my head against the wall for my current project, I'm starting to think through two new concepts. I have pitch documents for both, and my agents are putting them out there. There's a lot that's fluid in a concept at that stage. But what's essentially true about what Ryan's written is this: I know, deep down, what I want the shows to be about. I try to put enough of that into the pitch document to intrigue, but not scare people. After that, you really do range a bit to find the best characters, form, storytelling style and format to dramatize those big ideas.

I can't help but think that one of the things that's holding us back in some quarters of Canadian drama is that we don't do enough to make that leap. I've seen a lot of recent shows that were about their underlying ideas -- but...not much else. The characters and storytelling weren't worked through enough to support that underlying framework. I call it "broccoli tv."

I've been seeing a lot of shows where they sell the morality lesson without coming up with Dr. House. That's partly a network thing, and partly a creator thing, and partly a flaw in the development thing. Given a chance, a network person will always want to talk about big things rather than plot or story, because they might not be good about plot and story, but everyone's got an opinion on women's suffrage or preemptive war or rehabilitation vs. incarceration...And it's pretty easy for writers to fall into that trap, too. Because finding the right form and absolutely the right characters -- well, that's the hard part. But it's also the part that the audience expects you to do. They want you to do that work.

Shows where you make the audience do all that work, like, oh, say, John From Cincinatti, well, they may be interesting, and curiosity-sparking. But they won't be loved. I really believe that.

Lost and Gilligan's Island are the same show -- except, of course, they're not. Cause they worked it, and worked it, and worked it. And then they threw in a polar bear, but who's gonna nitpick that?

I think Ryan's words are something that any TV scribe, experienced or non, should keep going back to.

The underlying stuff is great. It's what feeds you as a writer. But it's not the bulk of your work. Craft demands more.

A Little of What I'm Doing

IF YOU'D LIKE to know a bit more about the show I'm currently writing for, Playback, in its latest issue, has a feature story from the set.

The Border was commissioned as an MOW from documentary stalwart White Pine Pictures, but was later reworked. Raymont submitted the first episode of the 13 x 60 series as part of the pubcaster's pilot scheme last December, and received the green light in February.

Episodes will be "informed and inspired" by headline news stories.

The war on terror also makes the job of the agents more taxing. "A lot of it has to do with our relationship with the U.S.," says Raymont.

The Border is set across all major ports and points of entry in Canada, but the shoot is limited to Ontario locales such as Toronto, Ottawa and Oshawa, where recent filming attracted the attention of locals, who reported the mysterious landing of an executive jet on a rural road (a scene from one of the first episodes) to local news outlets.

Creative producers and writers David Barlow (Blue Murder), Janet MacLean (The Murdoch Mysteries), Denis McGrath (Blood Ties) and Sarah Dodd are on board. The ensemble cast includes James McGowan (Warriors of Terra), Graham Abbey (Heartland) and CSI: Miami's Sophia Milos, who stars as a member of U.S. Homeland Security. The Border will run 13 consecutive weeks on CBC in January. Brian Dennis (The Eleventh Hour) is supervising producer, and John Fawcett (DaVinci's Inquest) is among the directors.

The series was the pet project of documentarian Lindalee Tracey, Raymont's wife and business partner, who lost her long battle with cancer during the filming of the pilot episode last October. Her award-winning docs on immigration, The Undefended Border and Invisible Nation, inspired the storylines, though Raymont says this fictionalized version is somewhat more realistic.

"We can work with a team of people now who have insider knowledge on how the border works and who won't allow themselves to be filmed on camera," he says.

Funny thing, um...so Playback published this article in their daily email update. You'll notice, maybe, that there's..ahem..a name missing from the story department. We have a four person story department. They mention three.

Okay. No problem.

What's a little funnier... is that they went back and corrected the piece, added in a few people they'd left out of the original article, including the Producer and one of the Directors...but they still left out...one name.

Sigh. The glamor never stops.

But what do you know? I read it now and there's my name! My name's there!

I am sad and require constant validation.

Mea Culpa.

Can Rescue Me be Rescued, or Should We Call It?

SO SUMMER winds on, and though I'm spending days crunching grey to try and work out a story, everyone's vacations and scarcity makes for some time to catch up on summer TV.

The first thing that surprises me a little is that I might be joining the chorus of those jumping off the Rescue Me bus. I understand critics like Maureen Ryan who've called Rescue Me on its misogyny and for pointing out how ridiculous it is that every hot woman that comes along immediately falls for Tommy Gavin. But that's not why I'm disenchanted.

There's a big tightrope series have to walk -- and season four is generally that gauntlet. If you've conceived your drama well, you can probably get three seasons out of it without breaking a sweat. But Season Four is where the bloom comes off the rose, and unless you've got some real great new tricks in your bag, people are going to start to drift away.

West Wing is a perfect example of this. Season Four was Sorkin's last on the show, and though his swansong featured some really strong, interesting episodes, the grumbles about the show at that time really served to ease his flight out the door.

This fall, we'll see House try to avoid the stink of the fourth season curse. Will introducing new ducklings and shaking up the relationships work? Who knows -- House has kind of always had a problem with ongoing arcs (everything eventually resets to zero.)

I think Rescue Me might just have worn through its concept. I don't find any permutation of the Tommy/Janet relationship interesting anymore. Losing the Chief was a big blow...I agree with the many others who've said that he was one of two characters you actually could root for on the show (John Scurti's Lou being the other one.) Even the things that made Rescue Me audacious aren't working anymore. Those comedy scenes slapped up against the drama -- they were thrilling when they worked, and thrilling when they didn't. For some reason, they're just not working for me this year. Any of them. They just..lie there. I've seen up to episode 5, and I'm not burning to see the rest. I miss the Gavin brothers, too. In so much as that dysfunctional Irish hate/love/filial relationship struck me as something that really got at the core of who Tommy was. I spent a lot of time defending Season 3 to people. I'm a little bit mournful that the show hasn't continued the bold dance. This high wire act of series tv -- it is really, really cruel sometimes. But there you go.

I think the promo image for Season Four -- that ape like rictus from Leary -- says more about the state of the show than anyone intends. I think maybe the life is gone out, leaving an emaciated husk.

I've heard rumors that the episoodes I haven't seen yet get even worse -- and that Rescue Me's patented "shock value" slow burn storytelling might finally have erupted into full, desperate shock-for-shock's sake flame. It's a shame. Three seasons of a very interesting, very different show. Nothing to sneeze at, but man, I would have been happy to see them pull off two or three more.

Manohla Dargis: We're All Geeks Here

MANOHLA DARGIS weighs in in the New York Times today with a lively, lovely, and surprisingly touching essay from last weekend's San Diego Comicon. It's a strange time for those who create and those who consume -- with blurry boundaries and allegiances, and constantly shifting frames of reference. We may disagree on things from time to time, but there's no doubt that something important is happening in the video arts -- and maybe the relationship between comic artist and fan is the leading edge of that. I'm not sure. I just know that reading this article I felt like it was lapping at the shores of something very new in the artist/audience relationship:

The audiences are openly fawning, but you never lose the sense that they could turn against the presenters. The beast is happy as long as it’s fed, but woe to those who don’t feed it.

Such is the nature of fandom, which demands as much as it receives. That seems especially true of comic book fans, who appear to enjoy a more intimate relationship with producers than most pop-culture consumers. Part of this may be rooted in the very nature of the comic book, which is accessible even to young buyers. Comic books fit nicely in your hand, they’re relatively cheap and humbly constructed: just three staples and paper. Just as important — unlike movies, which until the introduction of digital technologies were almost entirely out of reach for most people — comic books are also something that anybody with a pencil and a slip of paper can create. Their seeming modesty is seductive.

At the same time, as Marshall McLuhan pointed out, the elliptical form of the comic book — which forces you to make cognitive leaps from panel to panel, jumping across that stretch of white called the gutter — means you have to fill in more blanks than someone watching a mainstream movie...The wild-eyed, worn-out Comic-Con fans fiercely clutching a cardboard “300” shield in one hand and a plastic bag in the other may not have been thinking about aesthetics and intellectual pursuits. But they were actively engaged in the creation of culture.

So much is changing, so fast, that it's almost painful to try and take a quieter, longer-viewed step back look at the state of fandom and creation today. What I think I loved about Dargis' piece is that it's informed by the truth of our times. She relates earlier in the article her engagement with the underground comix of her youth, when her family ran a bookstore. But the transition that happened in the past -- the "growing up" and "setting aside" of that culture as you aged -- it's not happening anymore. And as much as dumb superhero movies with simple hero narratives does nothing to grow our collective imagination -- I still find myself, when confronted with the old geek or nerd stereotype, feeling like it's a relic of another area. The geeks are not disconnected, they are not marginalized, they have, in fact, won. And Dargis says as much. Again...in a lovely, thoughtful way:

The cliché about fans being losers with no social skills, no friends and no clue is essential to its myths, marketing and even its most loyal readers. In the last few decades the emergence of a geek elite has helped legitimize this outsider culture and helped bring legions of 97-pound weaklings into the sightlines of the industrial entertainment complex. In some respects America is now a country of freaks and geeks, self-professed outsiders who imagine themselves somehow different from the herd, perhaps because they are Americans — radical individuals who are united if only by their increasingly narrow interests and obsessions.

This kind of atomization of the culture has its problems, as we know deep in our bones. Yet for all my worries that we are turning into a nation of iPod people, that’s only part of the big, postmodern, late-capitalism picture. Despite all the plastic and dissembling, events like Comic-Con represent something genuine and true and, yes, powerful about how people live in the modern world. Every day we wake up to navigate through a faceless, inhuman, Made-in-China existence. Some of us escape through literature, some of us burrow deep into movies. And some of us find sweet relief in what, to the outside world, looks entirely disposable, useless and — here’s that word again — childish. They find happiness in Hot Wheels, wonderment in Wonder Woman. Superman teaches them how to fly, and they do.

Poor Boy Wonder

JIMMY THE BAT, intrepid Border story coordinator, is beside himself. There's a dialogue change to be done. Which means going to the next color. Which would be, now, say it with me....Buff.

But we don't have the Buff paper yet.

What to do? What to do?

Jimmy gets a crazy look in his eye, a desperate, hungry look as he stalks through the mostly-empty office, shouting, "I don't care! I'm going tan!"

In Canadian TV, this is how we roll.

Smart Friends Sum Up The CBC

IT'S GREAT to have smart friends. I highly recommend getting yourself a passel of them. Often we get caught up in our own B.S. or opinions. Like, oh, I don't know, me for instance. I could write a whole couple of pages about this or that issue regarding Canadian TV or TV in general.

Or I could just reprint, in its entirety, an email I got from my friend Jeff yesterday, entitled "Everything that's wrong with the CBC in one sentence."

Playback buried the lead in the CBC/Rabinovitch/Headhunting story. The final paragraph is this:

"A network spokesperson would provide no further details about the search process. "It's a federal appointment, so we're really not involved in the process at all," says CBC spokesperson Katherine Heath-
Eves."

Right. Well that explains a lot.

Well done.

Indeed.

Oh, By The Way...

THERE'S A hilarious coda to this post of mine from last week.

You ready for it?

They ran out of light and dropped the scene.

Yessss! WRITER! ON! THE! SET!

Canadian Teeny Tiny Tip: Mad Men

TODAY SEEMS to be the day for little tiny program updates, so let's just go with that. I say this as a public service because I am increasingly becoming obsessed with Matthew Weiner's Mad Men. (Weiner is pictured at left.)

If you are in Canada and your cabler is Rogers, you should know that the first two episodes of Mad Men are now available On Demand on the Rogers On Demand Channel, under the TV category. You might not otherwise know that since it's not an HBO or TMN/Movie Central show. It's not on the TMN on Demand -- it's on the channel you go to buy PPV download movies.

I'm assuming that other Canadian cablers are also offering this, but can't speak to that definitively. And if we've got it, maybe some of the Yankee services have it too.

Oh, yes. Mad Men also airs the old fashioned way, live, tonight (Thursday) at 10PM on AMC.

I'm just going to say four words: Christina Hendricks as Joan.

Yowza.

Blood Ties Canadian Cable Premiere Date

JUST ANNOUNCED. From the fall highlights of Space: The Imagination Station:

BLOOD TIES, Fridays at 9pm ET / 6pm PT, beginning September 14

So for parts of Canada that don't get CityTv -- or for people who don't know when it's on in your market (and come to think of it, have they rescheduled the premiere yet on City? I think they had to move it because NBC moved one of the shows they were planning to simulcast) here's a definite, week-to-week, coast to coast slot where you can catch the show. And they'll probably play the series straight through -- all 22 eps. (They might pre-empt around holidays, but SPACE is pretty good about showing stuff straight through.)

Also...

The SP ACE production team gets up close and personal with the cast and crew of the new series in Blood Ties: Behind the Scenes, airing Sunday, September 9 at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT .

This special was produced by some of my intrepid former colleagues. No, they did not interview me. I'd like to think that it was because they just had too much journalistic integrity to engage in that kind of potential-conflict, logrolling type behavior. Yeah. That's it.

No matter, so long as they've got Kyle, Dylan, Christina, Tanya and Peter Mohan in there, it's all good.

Production Rewrite Horror!

DID YOU KNOW that they've stopped making pre-punched salmon and tan paper? They sell the unpunched, just not the pre-punched. Does anyone use salmon and tan paper other than TV and movie production offices? Doesn't this seem a little upsetting and unusual to you?

I'm just upset because now I have to start referring to the "lilac" and "buff" revisions.

I'm never going to be able to say, "The buffs are ready to go out" with a straight face.

And as intrepid boy wonder story coordinator Jimmy The Bat points out, "what does it mean that once you put out lilac, the next thing you know you're buff?"

Indeed.

CSI and History: A Match Made in Mammon

JAIME WEINMAN, among others, has reported on the CRTC's final decision telling Alliance Atlantis that, um, no, CSI:NY reruns really don't belong on The History Channel, despite the fact that New York is a place where historical things, um, happened.

Alliance Atlantis has not yet announced how it’s going to deal with this ruling. Part of the point of the article was that the CRTC can make rulings, but there’s not necessarily any real mechanism for enforcing them. So it’ll be interesting to see if Alliance will comply with the order - thereby giving up one of the few obvious ratings-getters on History - or try to find some way around it. They could always replace it with CSI: Miami and claim that David Caruso is a historical artifact.

Playback had this to say:

In a July 25 letter to Alliance exec Elizabeth Duffy-MacLean, the feds conceded that "while an occasional episode may deal with a current or historical event, the series is clearly one that is about forensic investigations, not history or current events." AAC has been given until Jan. 1, 2008 to take "the necessary measures" to remove the show.

WGC chief Maureen Parker cheered the decision, remarking in a statement that the CRTC made the right decision and "restored integrity to the Canadian broadcasting system."

You could be forgiven if you choked a bit on that last one. I did. Anyway, Maureen Parker really does deserve credit for this -- she was the one driving it from the start. But let's step back for a second and ask, "what does it really mean?" "what does it really change?" and "what questions does this raise?"

First, to put things in perspective, CSI:NY has been running on History since last year. They have til Jan 2008 to remove it from their schedule. That means a solid year of pimping those reruns of a property they have an equity stake in. So don't cry for Alliance Atlantis.

Weinman states, and this is true, that there is really no mechanism by which the CRTC can force History to remove the reruns. That's true as far as it goes. But Alliance Atlantis is set to go before the regulator soon with its plans to merge, get bought, or otherwise corporately fornicate with Canwest Global and Goldman Sachs. So now may not be the time to thumb your nose at the regulator.

Especially since, with the CHUM/CTV decision last month, the CRTC seems to have awoken from a slumber and suggested that maybe they will occasionally do their jobs.

It's a measure of just how laissez faire the whole system has become to corporate interests that all this seems to be coming as a surprise. I'm sure that AA never gave a second thougth to the whole CSI thing; just as CTV thought they could bulldoze the "twin sticks" prohibition when they went before the regulator.

The companies are not used to being told "no" by the CRTC. They've gotten what they wanted for so long, that it's kind of set things a bit on edge.

It would be wonderful to think that this new muscle on the part of the CRTC is going to benefit the viewer, long term, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

In the short term, though, it's definitely good news for any cable subscriber who wonders why they're paying for all these channels that never seem to be showing what they got their license to show.

It happens everywhere, I'm sure, but in Canada in particular, we've gotten used to the rinky-dink process of shovelling programs bought over three or four channels, some with nominal or (in the case of History) non-existent connections to the themes they purport to represent.

But before everybody gets all gee whiz fight the power here, understand that I don't think that Alliance Atlantis did anything particularly wrong -- under the terms of the way the game's been played the last few years, I mean. All these channels are showing stuff they shouldn't be showing -- stretching their purchases till they snap. If the result is a shoddy and confusing viewing experience for the audience, well, what do you expect? They're corporate. They pushed. Nobody said no. What did you think was going to happen?

Now that the CRTC has started saying no...it'll be interesting to see if anything changes. Or if Gary Sinise's face will now be used to sell The Food Network, cause, hey, New York's got a whole lot of restaurants. And with that "In Case of Choking" poster displayed prominently in every one of them, well, um...that's close to forensics...isn't it?

One More From The CRTC...

AS FOR those letters about the CTF, well supposedly the CRTC got over 200 submissions, the vast majority of them negative. Even the whining companies who started all this: Shaw and Videotron, didn't like the CRTC's proposals. But let's keep this in perspective. They're doing quite well with their own protections, thank you very much.

This was my favorite article on the impasse, and not just cause it quotes my show-mate, the esteemed Mr. David Barlow:

"What in the world are you thinking?" asked David Barlow, a Toronto television writer who lists King of Kensington and the comedy-mystery series Seeing Things among his credits.

"If the CRTC aims to entirely subsume populist Canadian drama into the U.S. production framework ... then hiving off the majority of the CTF funds to a new stream is certainly an excellent way to accomplish that end," he wrote.

Still others objected to reducing the 10-point criteria that goes into qualifying a show as "Canadian," to eight points, arguing that would result in the hiring of so-called U.S. star actors in place of equally qualified Canadians. Points are allocated for having Canadians in key creative functions of a show, such as director, writer, actor, or editor.

With such an avalanche of negative feedback, much of it coming from different directions, a spokesman for the CRTC said there is a chance chairman Konrad von Finkenstein will hold public hearings to further explore options.

Hearings! Wheee! One thing about us Canadians! We loves us a good hearing!

Hang on...where's my...

BLAM!

Much better.

What Tom Snyder's Death Means To Television Drama

I'M SURE that elsewhere, the film geeks will all be publishing their paeans to Antonini and Bergman, but this is a TV blog, so for a moment, let's talk about Tom Snyder.

Snyder was a sometimes frustrating interviewer. But he was never dull. Like a few (too few, it turned out) I was thrilled when he occupied the post Letterman slot for a few years. As big a fan as I'd been of Craig Kilborn when he was the original host of The Daily Show (which I got on mailed videotapes from friends in the USA -- that's right kids, no YouTube, no Torrent, and ... well, I can't explain tapes to you) I always resented him for taking Snyder's beat.

Because Snyder's interview most definitely belonged to a different time. It's a time when Television had interesting people on, not just people plugging a project. Snyder's gift (among his many faults) is that you could always see him negotiating the terms of the conversation. And if you're a fan of conversation, that can be riveting.

By way of contrast, people always talk about how genius Carson was -- and he most certainly was -- but there was very little to relate to in Carson's style, because his genius was effortless. He made other people look good, and funny.

Snyder didn't. Snyder worked at it. And when he failed, you saw it -- he got testy. Yes, he was an ego and a blowhard, but he was also genuinely interested in people. And many of the interviews he did -- Lennon's last, U2's first, that crazy Manson thing -- are among the best interviews his subjects ever gave.

But all that came with a cost -- as Bill Carter pointed out in his NYTimes obituary of Snyder:

Along with the fame and a big salary — about $420,000 a year for “Tomorrow,” among the highest at the time — Mr. Snyder attracted a phalanx of critics who lambasted him as abrasive and pompous, and for inserting himself into the interviews.

He pleaded guilty in The Times in 1977. “Well, I’m supposed to do that,” Mr. Snyder said. “I’m not just there as piece of wood, for people to talk to. I’m a human being, I have opinions and biases and beliefs, and standards and I have to inject them into that program. Otherwise we might as well have an empty chair and give the guest a list of written questions.”

I know well that a great portion of you out there reading this blog will be wholly unfamiliar with Snyder's heyday, the freewheeling Tomorrow show that came after Carson in the 70's. I'm barely familiar with it. In fact, most of the Tomorrow episdoes I've seen I've seen in the screening room at the Paley Center (Museum of Television and Radio) in New York.

It's frustrating when somebody goes on and on about how much better things used to be. Especially if you have no reference point. But if you weren't an insomniac in the 1970's, Dave Itzkoff captures the spirit of what it was like to watch him in his prime:

The ethos of “Tomorrow,” whose desk Mr. Snyder arrived at after lengthy careers as a radio and television news anchor, was total inclusiveness. The show could vary wildly in its guest selection from bleary-eyed night to night: one episode might feature a cerebral interview with the author Ayn Rand, another a freewheeling chat with the rock band Kiss; a segment spotlighting Elvis Costello or Iggy Pop might be followed by one featuring Frank Capra or James A. Michener.

No matter whom Mr. Snyder was interrogating, he approached every guest with a uniform demeanor that was equal parts journalistic inquisitiveness and genuine human interest. He wasn’t there to help you plug your new movie, album or tell-all memoir. He sincerely seemed to believe he could get to the bottom of who you were in 12 minutes or less.

Sometimes this approach could prompt Mr. Snyder to ask some downright bizarre questions, more memorable than the answers they elicited. When he sat down with Steven Spielberg, who had just directed “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Mr. Snyder asked him, “Do you believe in U.F.O.’s?”

Of a pompadoured young rock star named Bono, Mr. Snyder wanted to know, “Is it tough to be an Irish band and get noticed?”

And in his legendary prison interview with Charles Manson Mr. Snyder asked the diminutive madman, “Were you happy when you found out you weren’t going to go to the gas chamber, Charles?”

But in those moments when Mr. Snyder appeared to be losing control of his show altogether, he was usually about to reclaim his authority with boldness and verbal flair.

When he was inexplicably paired with John Lydon, the petulant punk-rocker who once led the Sex Pistols, Mr. Snyder’s farewell remarks were withering. “It’s unfortunate that we are all out of step except for you,” he told his noncompliant guest.

So an era passes. And a man passes. And we're left with a "so what?"

Well here's the so what:

Very few people know how to talk anymore. Conversation is a desperately lost art. Ride any bus, eavesdrop on a dinner date, and very quickly, you'll see what I mean. In the age of TMZ, it's all about the money shot and cutting to the chase. The whole point of the "soundbite" used to be to mine one nugget of gold from a longer point, to boil it down to its essence. But we've boiled over as a culture, and there's nothing left in the pot. We're not just going for the choicest cut anymore. We've devolved to a media culture where that nugget is zapped and worked over and processed to the point of irrelevance. There is nothing behind the nugget anymore.

Watch any speech, any press conference, any Q & A with the President of the United States and deny to me that this is true.

The cost of this lost art of conversation is great for the republic, and probably for democracy. But there's a cost to be paid in terms of drama as well, and in drama's ability to reflect and challenge a culture; to make it think and to prick its conscience when needed.

Arthur Miller's response to what he saw going on in Washington at the HUAC was to write The Crucible. Here, in our day and age when it's the television and not the stage which drives the culture (for better or worse) what is our response?

Forensic porn. Simple procedurals with answers wrapped up in a bow. Uplifting hero narratives with no basis in reality. Gimmicky Desperate Housewives. Shark Week. And yes, open ended, not-so-neat cable dramas which reach only a small portion of the population.

TV should be comfort food, yes. But it should also be more. But it's very hard to do that without conversation.

When people mourned the passing of Sorkin-era West Wing, that's what we were missing: the crackling conversation.

What made that collaboration of Sorkin and Schlamme such genius was the way they learned to make conversation kinetic -- to make the words flow and sing and pop.

More often, today, you're liable to get directors who are terrified at a scene where people talk for two pages and nothing blows up or gets infected with a zombie virus. And that's how soundbite culture has filtered down from our real world to our fictional worlds.

If you watch a British show like MI-5 (Spooks) the amazing thing is just how incredibly dramatic the scenes with people sitting around a table are. They're far more visceral, far more engaging than the equivalent scenes on 24, where they have to keep Jack Bauer moving constantly.

Is that because the UK is still a more literate, articulate culture than either Canada or the United States? I don't know. What I do know, as it relates to what I do, is this:

We need someone to seize those dormant conversational threads, and give 'em a yank. We need someone who'll work at it, who'll show that drama isn't all about keeping the camera and the action moving. We need someone to show us how conversation can be riveting.

We need a Tom Snyder -- and we need him stat.

You Can't Keep a Good Den(n)is Down...

WELL, I was supposed to be writing this from the Carnegie Deli, or at least that funky little wifi Cafe down in the Village, but instead I'm still in Toronto. But that's a tale for later. Much later.

For now, here's some good news about old friends:

(Via Screen Africa)

Prolific Cape Town scriptwriter, Dennis Venter (Home Affairs, Interrogation Room, Stokvel, Madam & Eve) has optioned his screenplay The Fubars to Hollywood-based Original Content Productions.

The Fubars will mark the directorial debut of Nick Powell, who started his career as a stunt director and later move to second unit director (Braveheart, The Bourne Identity, The Last Samurai, Cinderella Man, The Hours, Magdelene Sisters).

The film title is the name of a band turned bank robbers. It stands for ‘fucked up beyond all recognition’. In this dark comedy, the band’s name becomes all too real when they decide on robbery to fund their careers.

Original Content’s Jim Thompson, producer of the upcoming Diamonds in the Rough and War starring Jet Li and Jeremy Statham, describes the thriller/black-comedy script as twisted, funny and original.

Venter is a published author and his career as a television writer was launched on the Penguin sitcom SOS. He has been involved as a writer on Going Up, Stokvel, Madam & Eve, Charlie Jade, Brothers in Law, Shooting Stars, Interrogation Room, Divers Down, Kululeka, Fela’s TV, Home Affairs.

Congrats, Dennis. When you're sipping mojitos at The Ivy, remember us. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a plane to catch. Again.

I Buried The Lead

SORRY, I just realized how buried this news was:

I'm going off for a long weekend of rest and jauntiness, and Theater, and maybe the Simpsons movie. No blogging til toward the end of next week. Maybe you can use this time to think about what you've done.

See you on the other side.

A Plea From Me, To You, Re: CRTC (and this will be the very last time, promise!)

YOU'VE HEARD from me on this issue. So now, finally, I'll end my week on the words of others. Other letters sent to oppose the CRTC's disastrous proposals for "reforming" the Canadian Television Fund.

But before I do that, I ask simply this:

Are you Canadian? (Americans, those of you hanging in still, I'm very sorry about this. I have to give that shout out to the Americans because the Brits and Aussies and Citizens of Other Countries probably understand a bit better the nature of the hand to mouth homegrown TV industry.)

Have you ever read and enjoyed this blog?

Do you like Television?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that if you are a reader of Dead Things On Sticks then you do enjoy TV. And that's why I'm going to ask you to do something for me.

Please, make a submission to the CRTC about this issue.

Make it if you're a fan of Corner Gas, or Degrassi, or Little Mosque. Or even Canadian Idol. Make it if you watch Trailer Park Boys. Make it if you like British TV too -- if you like The Office, Cracker, Life On Mars, or Hustle. Make a submission if you would like your viewing palette to be something other than what a handful of ever-larger American entertainment conglomerates decides you should see.

A pretty wise person I know reminds me now and again that a lot of the arguments we creatives make seem to be self-serving -- that we're trying to save our own jobs. And there is that. I get that.

But at the same time there is a tangible benefit to you. If you're a fan of the Canadian shows I've mentioned above, you've already seen it. If not, well, then all that means is that we haven't hit the show that moves and speaks to you-- yet. The only way we will is if we continue to work, and try to carve out a little space not for American-based companies, or Canadian-in-name-only artists -- but for us.

You pay for cable. Or satellite. And you get U.S. networks. And probably some of you get specialty channels too. And you want to be able to see good shows -- you want value for your money. But you're not getting value. Right now, all you're getting is U.S. shows on Canadian channels at the same time as they show on the U.S. Channels. That's a duplication you pay extra for, but see no extra benefit for. You might subscribe to channels like The History Channel because you like history; instead you're getting CSI reruns. There are all these cable channels that are showing the same stuff -- because the CRTC lets them do it.

The whole review of the CTF was sparked by two cable companies who suddenly decided they didn't want to abide by the deal they made ten years ago -- a deal for which they received a very cushy, protected market -- a deal where they benefited and you paid more to get less.

Just a few weeks ago, the CRTC decided to lift the limits on Ads on TV. That's right. Soon you'll be seeing more commercials. What did you get in return?

I know you sometimes don't get good Canadian shows. I recognize that some of them need to be better. I'm one of a whole bunch of people really working very hard to try to get them that way. So that you're entertained, and more -- so that maybe when you turn on your TV you're not seeing a totally American worldview.

The whole point of the way the CRTC has put out this "call for comments" was to leave a short timeline in the middle of the summer hoping that they could slide this through again because you don't care. They're counting on you not to care.

Care.

It would do my heart good to know that among the interventions the CRTC gets by end of day tomorrow, that there were viewer letters in there. The airwaves, theoretically, belong to you.

I'd like you to have good TV. And if you're not one of the two million who watch Mosque, or Corner Gas, or the close to a million who watch Trailer Park Boys, then maybe that next show down the pike will be for you. Maybe it'll be The Border. Or Maybe Blood Ties. Or J-Pod...

If you write that letter, at least the CRTC will know that every once in a while, they actually have to think about the people they serve.

How do you do it?

As Will Dixon put it:

If you've made it this far down the page, go HERE where you'll find Notice 2007-70...scroll down to where it says you can submit comments, click and write up a comment (preferably opposed), follow the prompts and submit it by tomorrow Friday July 27.

Thanks, D.

Now, some excerpts from other people's letters:

And here we are again, defending our talent to our own. Again. Some days I wonder there are any of us left to fight off the self-serving private interests who believe an American actor or director or writer will solve their endemic creative management issues. I can already assure you here that those companies cannot afford quality foreign talent on the prices they are willing to pay, here. More importantly, ‘hits’ are cultivated by responsible entertainment professionals in collaboration with willing broadcasters. Hits are not bought, and they do not travel exclusively with non-Canadian passports.

Imagine seeking US pre-sales of Little Mosque on the Prairie, Da Vinici’s Inquest, The Trailer Park Boys, Degrassi, or Da Kink In My Hair with mainstream American networks. These shows are only possible, can only exist because of the unique experiences their authors forged as a result of their uniquely Canadian perspectives – in a uniquely Canadian system that recognizes their value over their subscriptions to any given moray of the day. Other nations have no trouble seeing our talent and our experiences as vital to a dynamic and diverse world programming experience. In fact, we – Canadian writers, performers, directors – are actively sought by foreign markets precisely because we are NOT liable to cookie-cut for what is already widely available in the mass market.

Only in Canada do we constantly question our own talent’s bankability, and so its validity. Why is that?

Professionally & culturally, any plan to cut back on the development of 10/10 Canadian-content programmes seems equally self-defeatist. If one wishes to improve upon a product, one invests in its development – and well. And in those capable of developing it in a manner that reflects its purpose: professional Canadian artists, telling our stories to our country, and to the world. It is the poverty of the development economy and a great deal of short-sighted thinking about the health of our creative communities that directly impacts the quality of the resulting productions, not the calibre and potential of its creative talent. Cutting back on development is like sending soldiers to a war with fewer guns so you can pinch a few pennies on the cost of ammunition.

KAREN WALTON -- Writer, Ginger Snaps, The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, The Eleventh Hour, Queer as Folk, Straight Up

Splitting the CTF into a “Heritage” pool and a “Broadcast Distribution Undertakings” pool will only hinder those of us who are already fighting for recognition in this industry. Adding that the CBC will also be pulling from this smaller pool is even more disheartening as it continues to limit the venues for which we young Canadians may take to display our talent. What was once an already small, competitive market will fall upon itself like rabid dogs, fighting for whatever scraps are available. You may believe that this will make us stronger and better but what this will do is destroy any hope of true individuality. If you want Canadian-ized carbon copies of American shows, this is truly the path you must take.

But they will not be our vision. And they will not have our heart and our unique perspective – things which Americans prize above all else in our stories.

Our voice is distinctive because we as a people are distinctive - and the moment you crush that delicate balance, the moment you push us away in favour of flashy titles and bumping, soulless music, you lose that. It will simply fade away and you may never get it back.

A long time ago, when I was in high school a man once asked me: “What makes a Canadian different from an American?” He was being facetious, thinking that there really was no answer. And as a young child growing up with the Fresh Prince of Bel Air instead of Hockey Night in Canada, I really had no answer to give. Like most Canadians, I don’t think many would be able to answer that question.

But I can. And the answer is quite simple:

Roots.

No one growing up in Wyoming will ever understand the struggles of a single mother raising her three children in a town like Napanee or Deseronto. No one living in the fast-paced world of LA will ever be able to truly grasp the harsh life but loving nature of the Newfoundlanders or the laid back, kindly style of British Columbia.
And nor should they for they are OUR stories to tell.

Please, sir, do not lock out the very voices you claim you wish to hear.

BRANDON LARABY, New Writer

I passed on a ‘respected’ career as a doctor in favour of becoming a Canadian writer and contributing my voice to our country. With the passing of the recommendations in the Task Force Report, my decision to take the road less travelled (a harder road of tough times and struggle) will be sacrificed on the altar of the “Hollywood” sign.

I wish I could say that I am a successful scribe with many credits to my name, but I did mention above that it has been a tough road. Under existing conditions I often find myself at the door of a producer being told, “We need some work done on the project, but we have nothing in the budget for a writer.” Or, “We need some research done – we’re desperate due to our timeline, but we only need you for a day or two and there are only a few bucks in it for you.” If you go ahead with the recommendations I will no longer even see myself in their offices scrabbling for bits and pieces.

I grew up preferring to watch BBC television programs over American programs. As a writer I studied them and their creators carefully, snapping up any interviews or articles; the singular thing that stood out was the dedication to quality in writing and crafting the programs. They never fell prey to the cheap tricks and “crutches” of American TV. Now the Americans are jumping on BBC productions at a near record pace and making U.S. versions. Why? Because quality transcends borders – it has a universal appeal. The BBC has years on Canadian productions – we’re young and finding our way out from under the Hollywood monolith. But how will Canada make our “Doctor Who”, or our “The Office”, if we throw ourselves in front of the American TV production train. (If you have a beloved BBC series that crossed the pond to the U.S. watch it again – then watch the American version. How comfortable would you be with throwing the BBC version in the trash for all eternity?)

JAYSON M. KOWAL, Writer and Multimedia Producer

Great stuff. Hope there's more like them.

And with that I take my leave for a bit. This blog will be on Vacation til at least the middle of next week. Daddy needs some recharge. Best.

Writer On The Set!

EVERY ONCE in a while, you have to drop a scene. And sometimes when you drop a scene, you try to get it the next day. But sometimes that requires you to rewrite said scene for a new location. But you can't rewrite the scene til the director signs off on the new location. But the director can't sign off on the new location until he sees what you've got in mind, or picks a new one. Conundrum.

So it is that you become the most useless carbunkle in the world -- the writer on the set.

Not a "Writer - Producer" mind you -- at least then you could bitch about how much this is costing. Just a writer.

Here's a fun little diary for you.

1. 0630 Print out map and call sheet.
2. 0701 Starbucks
3. 0705 Gas
4. 0710 On the Road; map in lap
5. 0726 Brake hard; map goes flying
6. 0727 Can't reach map; decide to wing it
7. 0800 Crew Call
   
8. 0805 Get off Highway
9. 0810 Where the fuck am I?
10. 0811 Fish out map; nearly die
11. 0812 Oooh! Cones! Never Mind. Oohh! New Ryan Adams song.
12. 0814 Back on track
13. 0818 Find entrance to set on farm; have to go park at base camp
14. 0820 Not basecamp. They are selling pies here, though. And they look delicious. Ponder that.
15. 0821 Go to ski resort that's supposed to be basecamp.
16. 0822 I am the only human for miles. Shit.
17. 0825 Cones! Cones! I'm OK.
18. 0828 On shuttle to set
19. 0832 Arrive on set; no one cares
20. 0850 Ask for and receive headphones to watch shooting of scene
21. 0902 Already bored
22. 0910 Actor calls me, "Hemingway." Am momentary mollified.
23. 0911-0930 Contemplate that the real Hemingway eventually grew so bored and despondent that he shot his face off. Worry about the next outline I have to write.
    
24. 0930 Something hot with bacon is on the craft table. Must resist.
25. 0931 Come on. Get serious.
26. 0932 Mmm. Bacon.
27. 0940 I have never been this bored ever.
28. 0950 Go with second A.D. down to area to try and see if Director's idea to make the lake look like a creek will work.
29. 0952 Um. That looks a lot like a lake. What am I walking in, here? Is that poison ivy?
30. 0954 Smack mosquito. Blood goes everywhere. We're talking end of Carrie, here.
31. 0955 Still a lake. This isn't going to work.
32. 0958 Find interesting copse of cedar trees. This looks pretty cool.
33. 1005 Climb into minivan to head back to set
34. 1008 Have to reverse back down the road because they're carting in a small float plane for the scene at the lake.
    
35. 1011 Still reversing. I may be sick.
36. 1012 Still reversing. Oh. God.
37. 1013 Okay. Good. I'm okay. Back to set.
38. 1020 Kibbitz with actor while they re-light or something. Am asked what the name of the actor who played Tubbs on Miami Vice was. Answer with confidence: Philip Michael Johnson.
39. 1028 Shit. It's Philip Michael Thompson, isn't it?
40. 1033 Is it Johnson or Thompson?
41. 1034 This is the first time in about ten years I haven't had the internet. I'm freaking out.
42. 1044 Thomas. Philip Michael Thomas.
43. 1046 Director yells "CUT." They have to adjust something.
44. 1047 Go tell actor it's "Thomas." Am very proud of myself. Actor does not seem to care. I surmise that he has in all likelihood moved on.
45. 1053 Third bottle of water. I am not peeing in a porta potty.
    
46. 1055 Watch the actors run the scene. The woman playing the grieving widow getting the news of her husband's death is beautiful, vulnerable, lovely. The acting is really good in this scene. Wow, it plays really well and they're really nailing it. And there's a baby in the scene (one of two twins, natch) and he coos or cries almost on cue. This is awesome.
47. 1104 Two takes later. I'm bored again. But the baby sure is cute.
48. 1115 Director has a moment before the next setup to go down to set to check out the possible location for the new scene. Awesome!
49. 1120 Director arrives at the set he'll be shooting at this afternoon. The plane's being set up by the crane. There is too much ammo in the little lean-to. The camo is too thick on the tent. He wants it turned around.
50. 1126 They want him back on set...wait..it's just over ther---Shit.
51. 1130 Decide to take a flyer, rewrite scene anticipating Director will love the new location.
52. 1136 You're kidding me. I've been here over three hours, and that just took three minutes. Longhand! Why didn't I stretch that out? What am I going to do now?
    
53. 1145 I have not been this bored since I laid down on the floor of Huffman Koos furniture store in Nanuet, NY when I was five years old, and my parents were shopping for a couch for like, six hours. I can't kick and scream like I did then because a) I am nearly 40 years old and b) It would just blow the take and make things longer.
54. 1154 Take transport up the hill to where I can get a cell phone signal. Call production office to dictate rewritten scene to Story Coordinator.
55. 1155 Bee! There's a Bee in the van!
56. 1156 Fuck Bee, that's a motherfucking wasp! I am getting the fuck out of this van!
57. 1158 Transport guy kills Wasp. Story Coordinator is still laughing at me over the phone. He will have to die.
58. 1207 At basecamp, waiting for the Fax of the new scene to come through.
59. 1215 Still no fax. Stupid story coordinator. Play bullshit game on my cellphone.
60. 1220 Actor who's supposed to play scene tells me how much she loved it when it came through yesterday. Heh heh. Uh, yeah! Shit. No pressure.
    
61. 1230 Back on set. Scene in pocket. They're moving stuff. I try to sit on a flatbed truck because it's the only place I know I'll be out of the way.
    
62. 1238 I have to move. Console myself with chicken salad wrap.
63. 1242 More shooting. More takes.
64. 1250 They wrap grieving widow, and everyone claps. Am very pleased to join in on this set ritual, since clapping is something I'm very good at. I feel a momentary unity of time, place, and vocation.
65. 0100 We've moved down to the Beach, but I still can't show the Director my new location because he has to block the next scene.
66. 0105 People everywhere around me are working. This is excruciating.
67. 0107 I am being eaten alive by mosquitos. I have very tasty blood. I have been told this before, believe it or not.
    
68. 0128 Grab D.O.P. to try and show HIM my location.
69. 0129 First A.D. yells that I can have Director.
70. 0134 Show Director great location. Walk him through rewritten scene. D.O.P. points out it'll be dark in here end of day. Heart sinks. Try not to process white-hot hate for D.O.P.
    
71. 0138 Director likes field with tall reeds. Can we rewrite the rewrite for a field? Yes. Yes we can.
72. 0145 Back at base camp. Sit down to rewrite scene.
73. 0147 C'mon. You're kidding! Really? I've, like, had a birthday here while I was waiting!
    
74. 0148 Dictate scene over the phone to Story Coordinator.
75. 0151 Story Coordinator reads it back to me. It's gold.
    
76. 0154 Fax of new scene comes through. Hand it off.
77. 0155 Back in my car listening to Amy Winehouse, heading for the Office.
78. 0157 Thomas. Thomas. Philip Michael Thomas.
79. 0158 Realize that I have committed the most serious professional sin a writer on set can ever commit: I have left before lunch.
    

Time on set: Approx 5 hours.
Time spent working: Approx 12 minutes.

* All times are not necessarily exactly to scale. I'm estimating most of them -- it's not like I wrote them down.

No one is that bored.

EDIT: sadly, there's one more entry to be made:

80. 1030 Find out that they ran out of light, and dropped the scene.


But you saw that coming, didn't you?

What's That Going On There in the Background?

IT LOOKS like this week is about riffing on the posts of others, or, as I like to call it, "the internet."

Alex Epstein found this hilarious and fascinating experiment from the UK where they hoodwinked two ad guys. It's too delicious not to watch in its entirety:



He then went on to make this point about how that impacts your writing and the audience:

When it comes to getting the right details into your story, my feeling is "the audience doesn't notice, but they notice." To unpack that a bit, the audience sees all sorts of details they aren't aware they're seeing. They don't consciously read them, but they process them. In particular they notice when they are wrong. They might not bump consciously, "Hey, that's wrong!" But they'll get a sense that something isn't right.

I'd like to expand upon that a bit and speculate about how it affects making television everywhere -- but especially in Canada.

Details have become ever more important as our age has speeded up. If you go back and watch a lot of TV programs from the 1970's -- even the good ones, you're liable to find yourself somewhat bored. People will point to the fact that the pacing is much slower, with stories unwinding at a snail's pace. They may also note that our propensity today to "cut into the action" isn't nearly as pronounced in the older material. But there are a million other little things that affect that perception -- a million other things that the audience notices and doesn't notice.

On one level, this is what we talk about when we say that the result of a mystery has to hide in plain sight. If there's anything to be figured out in your drama, you have to seed things in there up close, as you go along, so that the audience could figure it out for themselves before you go off and tell them what happened. We all know how delicate this balance is...if it's too easy to figure out, the audience's enjoyment will be ruined because they "saw it coming." If you don't seed in something that indicates where you're going, they'll complain it "came out of nowhere."

That's probably what they'll complain anyway -- but the difference with a good use of the technique is the more they think about it, the more sense it will make. Or the theories or analysis will make them say, "oh, man, it was right there!" I'm thinking now about The Sopranos ending. I'm pretty sure there were a lot more people who hated that ending five seconds after it went out, than there were the next day. Just saying.

That whole "hide in plain sight" aspect of story breaking is something that other people have written about before and probably written about better.

What I've been thinking about lately is how that drills down to even the barest, smallest details.

When you write, you are always asking your audience to fill in some parts. If the hero wakes up in the bed of the guest star the next morning, we're asking you to imagine what happened in the off time you did not see. When someone says, "well, I guess we better go check it out" and you cut to them at the location, we're asking you to surmise that they got there under their own power. There are a million and one other examples of this, some of them even a little more complex and less lame.

But if we writers are on our game, we are also sometimes asking you to NOT understand a few things. We're asking you not to be able to put together clues too early in the narrative. And we're sometimes shoving stuff past you that you're not meant to understand at all -- because you not understanding it adds to the realism.

E.R. is the king of this. Or it was, once upon a time.

When E.R. came out, there were people at the network who freaked out, thinking that people would be highly alienated by terms like "blood gas" or "chem seven" or whatever other obscure medical lingo they used. The opposite, of course, was true.

The level of talk lent authenticity to E.R. that exceeded -- far exceeded -- what we'd been used to from other medical shows. It raised the bar on realism.

N.Y.P.D. Blue did the same thing not through its headline-grabbing stunts like showing bare bottoms -- but more through the roughness of its largely invented language. Did it matter that no one called suspects "skells" In real life. Hell no. In that case, art led life -- I remember hearing that cops had picked up the term, which was entirely an invention of David Milch.

Similarly, if you've seen the great film Children of Men, you doubtless know the effect that all these little animations had:



I've been thinking about this a lot lately -- because The Border is meant to be chock full of all this info. It works on many levels. That kind of overloaded, busy background is essential in a world where people are texting and talking on the phone with monitors in the B.G. as bustle goes by.

Sometimes on Canadian shows we try to get away with too few extras, or dressing that looks art directed rather than real, or -- not enough bustle.

Sometimes we won't go with acronyms or jargon because somebody somehwhere says, "people can't follow it."

Not only can people follow it, but if you try to take it away, they're liable to think your whole show is bullshit.

But man, it makes it harder to write.

One More CRTC reminder

JUST TO keep things mixed up, today we're going to talk about how you can send in your letter to the CRTC about their ridiculous task force report, by old style stampy-mail! How fun!

If you like, write it with a fountain pen as they did in olden times! Make it a craft.

(the sample letter below is courtesy of InkCanada's Karen Walton.)

Remember, you only have til Friday for public comments. You don't have to be a Canadian writer or have credits -- you just have to care about having a tiny bit of what happens on your TV not coming out of L.A.


HERE'S A SAMPLE LETTER YOU CAN CUT/PASTE/SEND...
(fax or email details would be available at CRTC site mentioned prev)

Date

CRTC Public Notice 2007-70

Dear Robert A. Morin
Secretary General
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A ON2

RE: Broadcasting Public Notice CRTC 2007-70 – Call for comments on the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) Task Force Report.

1. This is my written intervention regarding the CRTC’s call for comments on the CTF Task Force Report.

2. Tell them who you are, where you live, and in what your capacity you work in industry and your TV credits to date.

(KW EDITOR'S NOTE: IF YOU DON'T WORK IN THE INDUSTRY YET, YOU CAN CERTAINLY TALK ABOUT ALL YOUR TRAINING & PLANS TO)

3. Then tell the CRTC why you do not believe that our country has or will achieve commercial success by being any thing less than 100% Canadian.

4. Writers – use your experience in a story department or as a freelance writer to explain why it is essential to be Canadian when writing stories “that reflect Canadian experiences.” Writing stories that “reflect Canadian experiences” is a new criterion as listed in the new recommendations. Previously, the criteria regarding content was far more detailed, and included the requirement that a program be set and shot in Canada.

KW EDITOR'S NOTE: LACK OF EXPERIENCE WRITING TELEVISION DOES NOT MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE AN OPINION ON THE ABOVE. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT WHY YOU WANT TO TELL CANADIAN STORIES, WATCH CANADIAN MADE MATERIAL, HAVE AN INDUSTRY TO WORK IN, IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY. AS FOR 'CANADIAN EXPERIENCES...' WELL THAT'S ANOTHER TOPIC. I HOPE THEY DON'T MEAN OLDER WHITE ANGLO MALES IN OTTAWA'S STANDARDS OF 'RECOGNIZABLE CANADIAN EXPERIENCES'.

5. You should also include that a professional writer (one with experience) can write a cultural program that is also commercially successful. The CRTC Report is defining “cultural” as 100% Canadian.

KW EDITOR'S NOTE: I THINK EXPERIENCE IS GREAT, BUT THERE HAS TO BE AN INDUSTRY LEFT TO GET ANY, RIGHT NEWBIES?

6. Also you should explain why development is essential to any program’s commercial success. This Report now recommends cutting development funding by allocating it only to the Heritage portion of the funding - $100 million. Currently development is 3.2% of the entire $230 million CTF.

7. KW EDITOR'S NOTE RE. POINT #7/ORIGINAL SAMPLE: THE WRITERS GUILD - CANADA IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON A FORMAL SUBMISSION ON THIS ISSUE. YOU MAY OR MAY NOT WISH TO CITE THAT, AND/OR THAT YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THE WRITERS GUILD - CANADA (ONLY IF YOU ARE, OBVIOUSLY) AND/OR MENTION YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE GUILD'S SUBMISSION/GUILD IN PRINCIPAL ON THE MATTER IN GENERAL.

Signature
Writer

KW EDITOR'S NOTE: I PERSONALLY ALWAYS SIGN WITH MY JOB TITLE "Screen & Television Writer', BETTER KNOWN CREDITS, FULL HOME ADDRESS & POSTAL CODE. I ALSO CC EVERYTHING I SEND TO OTTAWA TO MY LOCAL MP, WHICH YOU CAN FIND BY GOOGLING CANADA - Member of Parliament, or going to the Feds' Parliament site.

YOU ARE WELCOME TO CC YOUR LETTER HERE ON INK, BUT YOU MUST POST IT YOURSELF.

TV Critics and The Flyover

[This piece was edited slightly after publication to amplify a few points.]

DIANE KRISTINE has an interesting piece over at her digs about the recent news that America's Televison Critics are disappearing.

I think we're further down that road in Canada than the Americans are. We have national TV columnists at the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Macleans magazine, and unique voices at the Toronto Star, with Vinay Menon, Jim Bawden, and Rob Salem covering the TV beat, and at the Vancouver Province with Dana Gee, whose online columns are, unfortunately, generally behind a subscription firewall.

But CanWest News Services, Sun Media and the Canadian Press supply the majority of television coverage here, which means I can pick up the Vancouver Sun and get the same coverage as I'd get in the Calgary Herald or the Edmonton Journal. Alex Strachan is a fine writer, but he's one man with one opinion on any given topic. I didn't even realize he was based in Vancouver until I looked up that hyperlink.

Besides that, most of what I can find in my local papers -- Gee usually excepted -- I can find online, along with much, much more of the same, of varying qualities and varying opinions but all filling the same role, because it's all meant for a mass audience.

Even our niche papers, the alternative arts and entertainment weeklies like the Georgia Straight, don't cover TV with anywhere near the same frequency or devotion as they cover film, music, theatre, visual arts, dance, food, books, fashion, politics, good grief, even crafts and sex shops get more coverage. I might as well call them the "arts and entertainment except television" papers.

John Doyle, essentially Canada's premiere TV critic, writing for the Globe and Mail, recently left his Toronto confines and wrote a series of columns from Vancouver, where he interviewed the people behind shows such as Intelligence, Robson Arms, Sanctuary, and the upcoming JPod and About a Girl. I loved those articles. Loved them. Partly, it was because I'd met some of the people he talked to. Mostly, it was because this was insight into television from my hometown perspective: what's filming here, who the players are, and how the city makes it onscreen in subtle and obvious ways.

One thing the internet has made extremely easy is finding out info about a television program. But how deep does that info go? When I worked at SPACE, the Canadian Sci-Fi channel, it used to drive me crazy that they'd bring around the "press clippings" and be impressed by the one Canadian Press story that got picked up in 85 papers. But wide exposure does not mean deep.

Newspapers treating television writing like wallpaper is nothing new, despite the fact that more people watch TV than ever go to a movie or a dance recital or the opera.

What is new is this idea that it's all the same, you might as well rip and read from the wire.

By coincidence, I was out with a good friend last night who until recently was fairly high up at one of this country's largest papers. He expressed a lot of frustration about the state of entertainment writing in general.
Apparently it's a hard sell in this newspaper-challenged age, despite the fact that after local news, entertainment writing is the only part of the paper that draws both male and female eyeballs reliably.

It tests well, younger readers are interested, it's a way to differentiate yourself in the market, and people want as much as you can give them. So why isn't there more of it?

You got me. I think that the "flyover attitude" (ie: New Yorkers and Angelinos think that anything between those points is "the flyover") and the Canadian equivalent, best expressed as "let's all hate Toronto because they think they're the centre of the universe," pretty much demands that you have a local touch when it comes to watching TV and writing about it, doesn't it?

I happen to think that critics like Maureen Ryan, who writes for the Chicago Tribune, or Sepinwall in the Star-Ledger, bring a real strength to that paper -- a clear editorial voice in an area that everybody cares about. Snobs may pooh pooh it -- but everyone watches Television. But I don't think they watch it the same way across the country.

I was way more interested to hear Sepinwall on Sopranos because his paper was in New Jersey -- and he was writing for NJ readers. I think a Vancouver-based story on CBC's Intelligence is going to play differently. You have room for more color, and have to explain less. I mean, it's bad enough that every show seems to be set in New York or L.A. already...don't you want to hear some more reactions by people out there? Isn't that, in fact, the point?

You can't tell me that Seinfeld plays the same way in Billings as in Brooklyn. And, yup, I fully believe that Corner Gas, when it starts on WGN in the fall, will do really well outside of the cities.

I give it pretty hard to Two and a Half Men -- but as a commenter put it further down:

I've watched every episode of Two and a Half Men. It's just the Odd Couple in different (dumbed down) clothes. The humor comes from the clashing lifestyles of Charlie, the bachelor, and Alan, the divorced chiropractor with a kid.

The kid also factors into it. When it's just the kid and Alan, it's still the Odd Couple. When it's the kid and Charlie, it's still the Odd Couple. The kid opposes each of them, and then both of them. Etc.

I encourage everyone who makes fun of the show to watch 5-6 episodes and then see if you still think it's stupid. Most people can't get past disliking Charlie Sheen, but he really does have good comic timing. Jon Cryer, Holland Taylor, Conchata Ferrell and the kid are all excellent comedic actors. But the best of all is when Jane Lynch does her recurring role as the family's psychiatrist.

Now, with my smarty pants east coast snobby sensibility, what if I'm a TV writer getting out there on the wire and going to a whole bunch of papers where they love shows like Two and a Half Men and hate shows like Mad Men? Why should I get to be a tastemaker? Or worse...do I chuck my compass altogether and just start writing what I think, "those people" would like to see or read about? Ugh. Shoot me now.

Wasn't music, in fact, more interesting when radio DJ's had a little power to break a song and it wasn't just all Clear Channel polling data and Independent Promoters pushing Payola? Hasn't the internet made music more interesting just by breaking that Marconi lock?

Even laying aside the role that culture writers should be playing in issues like media concentration in this country, or the very different reality Canadians get by watching American shows instead of their own -- doesn't "serving your community" mean that maybe, just maybe, you should write about the thing that most people spend 21 hours a week or more doing?

In a business that's dying even faster than the TV biz, it just seems an odd, self-defeating choice.

My New Favorite Show

HOW GOOD is AMC's first foray into original series programming, MAD MEN?

Well, it's not just the art direction and acting, which is impeccable. It's not just the presence of clutch actors like John Slattery and Elisabeth Moss, or the very fine Jon Hamm & Christina Hendricks.

It's not even the nifty tag line, "where the truth lies."

What sets Mad Men apart is from the moment it unspools, creator Matthew Weiner paints a world as indelible and interesting as that first blush you had when you saw The Sopranos, and thought, "Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a mob story like this before."

And not to steal from Golick's gig, but I think that the Pilot of Mad Men is an absolute textbook evocation of how to manage your audience's expectations.

There's a lot that works thematically about MM. Setting the show in 1960 really does cry out for you to recognize the watershed between then and now. This is America at its most righteous and confident. The biggest industries aren't those who leverage things, or cut costs, they're people who make things and buy things. In this zippy, confident, post-war New York City, JFK is just on the horizon, but Vietnam is not. Advertising types pooh-pooh research, they don't swear by it.

Much has been made of all the red meat eating, highball drinking, smoking in every scene (including a gyno exam) -- but what's ingenious from a story standpoint is how much you're filled in about the world of the show just by the simple needs and wants of the main characters.

Don Draper, our main guy and hero, just wants to come up with a new slogan for Lucky Strike, cause they can't claim their product is healthier than other cigarettes anymore.

Peggy, the new secretary, simply wants to negotiate this new world of work, and maintain a bit of dignity.

But in that world there are a number of tough-sell elements for a modern audience.

The smoking, of course, is simply astounding. But so is the sexism and the casual racism, too. Peggy endures being talked about openly and lewdly. When she gets a prescription for the Pill, the doctor -- in the most demeaning way possible -- lectures her, basically wagging his finger and telling her not to become a slut.

How do you make anyone in this world sympathetic? (We're going to get into spoiler territory below. You're warned.)

Well, right off the bat, they do it by putting Don Draper in the arms of a woman named Midge. Midge is a character that you're apt to recognize from our time. She's independent, self-employed, strong. "I don't make plans and I don't make breakfast," she says to Draper first thing in the morning. He muses they should get married. She makes it more than clear that that't just not going to happen.

That buys you a lot of room to have other people carry the water when it comes to the sexism in the piece. Draper, such a good guy, apologizes to his new secretary for some of the boorishness of the other men in the office. Okay, you think. Okay.

Then, just as you're comfortable, they start taking the rug out from under you. "I'm not going to sit here and let a woman talk to me this way," says Draper, our enlightened hero, when challenged by a new client -- the female president of a large Department Store.

And Peggy, too, our ingenue, isn't what she appears to be. Early in the episode, she's told by Joan, the seen it all and sexy as hell Queen of the Secretarial Pool, "find out what your boss likes so you know what kind of girl to be." The job's described to her as somewhere between a mother and a waitress. So, maybe it's not so shocking when she makes a play for her boss -- a play that he turns down right away. But the ending -- where she invites the drunk, soon-to-be married letch who humiliated her earlier into her bed -- well...that's just...

Why would she DO that?

But there's one more surprise coming. Just as we think we've gotten used to Don Draper's quirks -- he redeemed himself with the Department Store lady, after all -- he heads home. To his house in the suburbs, with his waiting wife and two kids.

Who we haven't heard about before.

And now we think back to that early scene with Midge, and we're thinking very differently about Don Draper. Very differently indeed.

The brain-scratching WTF of John From Cincinatti is one thing...but this is pitch-perfect writing and storytelling. This might be the next great, thoughtful Drama series. And I get the strong feeling that just like all good sci fi is about the present, well, the world of Mad Men may purport to show us 1960 -- but around the edges and in the cracks, I think it's really all about us...not about how much things have changed, but really about how little they've changed.

We just don't smoke and drink and say it all out loud anymore.

That, and the best presentation since Adult Swim. They got me to sit through every commercial break, simply by value adding info to each commercial. Genius.