No Accounting For Taste

AND THANK God for that.

Finding a way to quantify art is a disastrous and persistent pursuit in some quarters. Every pilot done in the USA (and Canada, now that we've started doing pilots) is subjected to a battery of tests to predict and gauge how audiences will receive it.

And every year, you hear story about high-testing pilots that go nowhere, and low testing shows that run for years (like Seinfeld.)

All across America, thanks to Clear Channel and companies like it, you have robocalls calling random people three times a day and playing twenty second snippets of songs. Depending on how that sample reacts, that's the songs you get to hear on just about every radio station in America.

Quantifying art leads to bad art. And yet for some it's still the golden grail. I think it's retarded.

Anybody who's worked on a TV show or movie knows that it's as much work to make a bad work as a good one. And when you're working on something, you may get the vague idea of whether it's bad or good, but that's notoriously unreliable.

So, too, when product is put out there, and people finally get to judge it, reactions can be baffling and puzzling. Is Californication an interesting show? Or rather, is it

clear that it had been green-lit by some network BSD who's contemplating leaving his wife for an underage hottie and he thought YEAH, baby, YEAH, this series speaks the TRUTH!

When somebody you know and whose taste you admire says something like:

I couldn't sit through this one. I had it on DVD, and I tried to watch it twice, and both times it turned me right off.

I wonder what happens in the second episode? Because I didn't see a hook there.

What does that really mean?

My favorite kind of criticism is the kind where the people run down what they didn't like about something, and I can't really disagree with it. I remember feeling that way about Superman Returns. My agent ran down a particularly devestating critique of that movie, and I saw every one of his points. I couldn't really disagree with them.

Yet I loved the movie. I think it's in these moments that you see little things about yourself. Some good, some bad -- always interesting.

I'm having a similar reaction to Californication right now. Further down in comments there are several people left scratching their heads by Mad Men, another show I just love.

Yesterday, in the Globe and Mail, Arts Writer Kate Taylor (taking her crack at TV criticism) wrote about Seinfeld reruns, from the perspective of someone who never watched the show when it was on. (Yes, there are a few.)

Watching Seinfeld today, you can note with amusement plots that turn around answering machines but which wouldn't work with cellphones, but you can also observe that these are people who can afford to worry about pizza cooks who don't wash their hands because they aren't worrying about terrorist attacks.

Perhaps, after Sept. 11, we are simply living in a less funny era: The sitcom landscape is a desert these days and the only heir to Seinfeld is Curb Your Enthusiasm, the show in which David gets his kick at the can, building a series around the travails of a producer's life in L.A. On a smaller scale, it's a successful series - HBO recently renewed it for a sixth season - but it also has a much harder edge. David's bleak comic persona is one less able to shrug off his character's anxieties and embarrassments than Seinfeld's was. You can suffer the distinctly uncomfortable sense, watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, that you are laughing at David, not with him. Perhaps it's no coincidence that none of the other spinoffs ever took hold: The Seinfeld moment is history.

Ooooh. Really? We're living in a less funny age, post-9/11? Knocked Up deals with terrorism head on, right? And the 40 Year Old Virgin had some amazing things to say about the war in Iraq. And, of course, that "No Blood For Oil" runner on Corner Gas was hi-la-ri-ous. Pffft.

The point is that this impulse -- to quantify, to explain, to debate -- we all do it. And the more we come at it from different perspectives, the more interesting our culture is. Thank God the banal assertion that "comedy is dead" that really was everywhere after 9/11 never took root and became canon, apologies to Kate Taylor.

Comedy on TV sits there in its periodic troughs, waiting for the next breakthrough hit. People praise John From Cincinnati while I scratch my head. (Even if Joss Whedon's little brother did write the finale.)

It's all good. It's all glorious.

The Nine -- remember that? -- It was the sure fire hit of last year. And now they won't even air the rest of the burned-off episodes, because it was too low rated.

Taken one way, this could induce an almost paralyzing fear in anybody who tries to pick something up and create. It can be used to support a lot of bad behavior (there's no accounting for the audience, so I'll do what I want, the audience is dumb so give them the lowest common denominator) and it can be used to glorify inaction (I can't figure out how to make this appeal to people.) It can send gatekeepers with no imagination to a batty and strange place.

I will never forget the weird meeting I had with the Canadian Network Suit who told me he'd passed on The Sopranos -- he wasn't telling the story as a "you know how I screwed up?" He was admitting that he'd seen the same show everybody else had and hadn't seen anything great in it...so he passed.
He told the story to show how much POWER he had -- he was able to Pass on the Sopranos.

People think in some strange ways. They think all sorts of strange things. They may hate the thing you love. You may agree with them and still love it, or think their critiques may be out to lunch. They may hate a show because of a woman's nose. You may love it for an irrational reason -- how it reminds you of your first babysitter or that goldfish Sam you had when you were a tot.

Whatever. It's all a big, fat, unpredictable ride, and the only thing we can do as writers or artists is keep seeking out opinions, and keep honing our instincts.

If your instincts are right, you'll do well.

If your instincts are off, you won't.

That's as quantifiable as things get.

In just a few weeks, the carnage will begin anew. People will make their choices. There will be winners, and losers, and once again as always, whatever they decide, the audience will be right.

Yes, even about Two And a Half Men and According To Jim.

Meantime, all I can do is tell you that Mad Men continues on AMC Thursdays at 10, Californication runs on Monday nights on The Movie Network (eastern Canada) at 9 p.m. ET and Movie Central (western Canada) at 10 p.m. PT. Watch em and judge for yourself.

And keep that debate raging, and don't let anyone put that opinion in a box.

John From Dunzo

WELL. SO. I guess John gets to go back to Cincinnati.

David Milch's latest, canceled, and though there's much in me to like with the show. Zippy, who breathed and said not a fucking word and then was dead. And Cissy, a bitch these many years on no good account of that asshole husband, and Shaun, dear God, Shaun with his blankness, Jesus Christ Jesus Christ!

I don't know Butchie instead.

I have yet to watch the finale so I don't have much to say. But Tod VanderWerff at South Dakota Dark sums it up pretty well in the lede to his wrapup:

Frustrating, enervating and enthralling, John from Cincinnati might be the most awesome show that I couldn't ever determine the quality of.

Yup. That's about the size of it. I'll watch, but I won't be happy that this is that which cost us more Deadwood. Go read Todd here. Me, I'm sticking with the Mad Men.

Californication

I AM LEERY, always, of shows about writers or featuring writers. Yes, yes, I think we are endlessly fascinating. How could I not? I'm just not sure that the world needs to share our solipsism.

The last real Inside-Showbizzy series I loved was The Larry Sanders Show, and I think my unreasonable love for that show is an instructive one. It was the first of the big behind-the-sceners (unless you count Mary Tyler Moore or Dick Van Dyke, and I don't.) but the juice of that show didn't necessarily come from its setting. It came from a triumverate of truly amazing characters: Artie, the always on the edge of a beating hardass producer, venal, complex, damaged Larry, and the sublime Hank Kingsley. (How is it possible that the show never made a big impact, yet everyone seems to know, "Hey now!" Does Howard Stern really have that much power?)

Shows that are too inside baseball never age well. I liked Murphy Brown, but man, those shows are well nigh unwatchable now.

When Studio 60 came along, I was willing to give it a flyer because of Sorkin. And we all know how that turned out.

Entourage, interestingly enough, bores me the more it becomes about the business, and the less it focuses on those four guys. I think giving Ari his own plots free of the boys -- while inevitable -- was probably a big creative mistake.

And 30 Rock -- well, the TV characters on 30Rock are the lamest -- Jenna, Tracy Jordan...it's Alec Baldwin, Fey, and the Intern who sell that show.

See how I just rationalized all the inside baseball shows I watch as not being inside baseball? Nifty trick, self delusion.

Anyway, on to Californication. I have to admit, I was pretty held by it. And yup, this is not a likable character. I mean, that speech he gives in the restaurant to dress down his date is just...horrific.

He also suffers from Tommy Gavin syndrome. There is something off the charts ridiculous about that many women leaping over themselves to get a piece of the Duchovny magic. And flash their bits in the process. There are a lot of actresses in Hollywood, yes there are.

And yet...

The show charms. It does. It helps that Natasha McElhone and Duchovny have a lot of chemistry. (I think Natasha McElhone is one of the most beautiful women on TV. Finally, a woman that I could see someone being all moony over for years. Duchovny sure has good luck with redheads.)

The late-episode reveal of the nature of one of buddy's bed partners is probably what everybody's going to be talking about...and it was a pretty sickening reveal... it was a little uncomfortable that they played the same beat as Rescue Me (when the father is delighted by the possibilty that his daughter's a lesbian. That was funny the first time...)

But all that being said, and despite serious reservations about the character, (and serious envy about the Soundtrack...I mean, who digs up My Morning Jacket singing Rocket Man, AND licences Sympathy by the freaking Stones?) I think I'll be watching. The dialogue was cutting, and there were some genunie surprises.

Like, say, I never thought I'd find myself laughing so hard at a donkey punch.

I think it comes down to Duchovny. This is the David Duchovny that you saw on Larry Sanders, and in the extras on the new excellent Sanders set. He's loose, he's enjoyable and charismatic and low key. David Duchovny is yet another one of those actors (like Jimmy Smits) who's made for TV. He looks so damn comfortable out up there on that screen, and he's just so likable, that I want to spend time with him, even if he is a shit.

But hocheemama that was a lot of nudity. That's a lot of closed set days there, by gum.

For Golick's take on Californication, click here. What did y'all think?

Sometimes Fiction Just Isn't Up To The Task

As Rove goes, there's just the matter of believing the six impossible things before breakfast.

Woody and Marty Make Me Think

TWO INCREDIBLY WORTHWHILE remembrances today in the New York Times:

Martin Scorsese muses on the power of Michelangelo Antonioni, "The Man Who Set Film Free,"

Where almost every other movie I’d seen wound things up, “L’Avventura” wound them down. The characters lacked either the will or the capacity for real self-awareness. They only had what passed for self-awareness, cloaking a flightiness and lethargy that was both childish and very real. And in the final scene, so desolate, so eloquent, one of the most haunting passages in all of cinema, Antonioni realized something extraordinary: the pain of simply being alive. And the mystery.

“L’Avventura” gave me one of the most profound shocks I’ve ever had at the movies, greater even than “Breathless” or “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” (made by two other modern masters, Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais, both of them still alive and working). Or “La Dolce Vita.” At the time there were two camps, the people who liked the Fellini film and the ones who liked “L’Avventura.” I knew I was firmly on Antonioni’s side of the line, but if you’d asked me at the time, I’m not sure I would have been able to explain why. I loved Fellini’s pictures and I admired “La Dolce Vita,” but I was challenged by “L’Avventura.” Fellini’s film moved me and entertained me, but Antonioni’s film changed my perception of cinema, and the world around me, and made both seem limitless.

and Woody Allen talks of Ingmar Bergman, "The Man Who Asked Hard Questions."

His work probed the deepest concerns of humanity, often rendering these celluloid poems profound. Mortality, love, art, the silence of God, the difficulty of human relationships, the agony of religious doubt, failed marriage, the inability for people to communicate with one another.

And yet the man was a warm, amusing, joking character, insecure about his immense gifts, beguiled by the ladies. To meet him was not to suddenly enter the creative temple of a formidable, intimidating, dark and brooding genius who intoned complex insights with a Swedish accent about man’s dreadful fate in a bleak universe. It was more like this: “Woody, I have this silly dream where I show up on the set to make a film and I can’t figure out where to put the camera; the point is, I know I am pretty good at it and I have been doing it for years. You ever have those nervous dreams?” or “You think it will be interesting to make a movie where the camera never moves an inch and the actors just enter and exit frame? Or would people just laugh at me?”

Both articles are fully worth your while, of course, not just for their insight, but also their heart and humanity. Scorsese always talks about film and filmmakers this way, of course. Allen's melancholy says a lot, I think, not just about his striving, but his knowledge of his own mortality. And am I the only one who detects in Allen's writing an envy of Bergman's ability to not worry about what others think of his work? Or am I reading that in?

I don't have this kind of connection to film. I think I've admitted that many times. For better or worse (frequently the former, lately, it seems, the latter) film is as it is currently perceived: a director's medium. And it's about the visual sweep and motion. So I get it when Scorsese talks about how great it is to leave things unresolved.

And yet. And yet.

I'm starting to think of my love of the medium of television drama is something more. It's not just the love of someone working in a millieu where his gifts are better appreciated and respected. The conventional wisdom about TV is that it, even still, is film's poor cousin. Oh sure, sure, there are those who will make the bold point about the narrative of something like the Sopranos being better and more sophisticated than film, but generally I think there's a lot of unchallenged thinking going on out there in middlebrow and high falutin circles that TV is still largely what it was: film done more cheaply, on a tighter schedule, smaller budget, and more punishing schedule.

A lot of that (especially in Canada) comes from Directors -- who never quite seem to shake off the sense that by directing TV they're somehow lowering themselves. We have a high falutin cinema in this country, you see. (I should say that I've seen this less from the B.C. directors I've worked with, who seem to understand the medium a bit better.)

Directors want everything to be about the moment. It's very difficult to have a conversation in series with them, where you have to explain that what they may be doing here is setup for a character's reveal down the road. They tend to resent anything that does not pay off in their episode.

Television, by virtue of the fact that we live with characters and stories for so much longer, tend to revel in smaller reveals, telling details, and the slow build. This is all stuff that I've written about before.

But reading these two great men discuss the work of the giants in their field puts me in mind of those who I admire: Joss Whedon, who clearly is meant for TV rather than film; Sorkin, who for all the bombast of Studio 60 demands, I think, a hearth that's closer to the stage than the cinema. James L. Brooks, whose films have been hit and miss, but whose command of the TV medium is never less than masterful.

Increasingly, I'm starting to think of TV as not a cousin or brother to film, but as an evolutionarily distinct beast all its own. It's almost that moment few years ago when they discovered that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens weren't really related -- but evolutionarily distinct. We think of one proceeding from the other. But they don't. TV's DNA is encoded with the stuff of Radio Drama far more than the stuff of Film.

Maybe that's why (even though they are hugely popular) I find the big film sensibility to tv transfers -- yes, you, CSI -- so empty.

I can appreciate and marvel at the love of masters like Antonini and Bergman, but they don't make my heart quicken. They're not of my tribe.

Now, the only question is: who's the neanderthals in this little parable and who's the homo sapiens?

I know where my vote goes. And I'll say only this...three words:

Brett Ratner, Auteur.

And Then There's Tom DiCillo...

WHO'S DEFINITELY a film guy after my own heart...From the NYTimes:

“Look at the movies people are watching,” he said, sitting in his Upper West Side apartment and shaking his head. “They’re about nothing. You invest nothing.” Mr. DiCillo blames, in part, the events of September 2001. “People can’t invest real emotion because it’s too terrifying.”

“Have you ever noticed,” he asked, “that the entertainment business is the only one where there has never been somebody picking up a machine gun and going berserk? A guy in a post office in Cincinnati will bring an AK-47 into his place of business because somebody used his coffee cup. Nothing like that has ever happened in the film business and never will. Never will. You know why? The stakes are too high. It’s life and death. No one is ever going to jeopardize their place in the food chain.

“I’m not suggesting they do,” he said with a smile, “but it’s a brutal business.”

Full Disclosure: I wrote and produced a short film years ago about paparazzi. So I can't wait to see DeCillo's new film. Mmmm.

F*** The Average Reader

MMMM. Friend of the Blog Radio Eli passes along this juicy bit from this month's issue of The Believer, where Nick Hornby interviews David Simon (Homicide, The Wire)

In fact, I found this so delicious that I just went to The Believer/McSweeney's site and re-upped a sub to both The Believer and McSweeney's. So thanks, Eli. You just cost me money.

Simon Says:

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

Beginning with Homicide, the book, I decided to write for the people living the event, the people in that very world. I would reserve some of the exposition, assuming the reader/viewer knew more than he did, or could, with a sensible amount of effort, hang around long enough to figure it out. I also realized—and this was more important to me—that I would consider the book or film a failure if people in these worlds took in my story and felt that I did not get their existence, that I had not captured their world in any way that they would respect.

Make no mistake—with journalism, this doesn’t mean I want the subjects to agree with every page. Sometimes the adversarial nature of what I am saying requires that I write what the subjects will not like, in terms of content. But in terms of dialogue, vernacular, description, tone—I want a homicide detective, or a drug slinger, or a longshoreman, or a politician anywhere in America to sit up and say, Whoa, that’s how my day is. That’s my goal. It derives not from pride or ambition or any writerly vanity, but from fear. Absolute fear. Like many writers, I live every day with the vague nightmare that at some point, someone more knowledgeable than myself is going to sit up and pen a massive screed indicating exactly where my work is shallow and fraudulent and rooted in lame, half-assed assumptions. I see myself labeled a writer, and I get good reviews, and I have the same doubts buried, latent, even after my successes. I suspect many, many writers feel this way. I think it is rooted in the absolute arrogance that comes with standing up at the community campfire and declaring, essentially, that we have the best story that ought to be told next and that people should fucking listen. Storytelling and storytellers are rooted in pay-attention-to-me onanism. Listen to this! I’m from Baltimore and I’ve got some shit you fucking need to see, people! Put down that CSI shit and pay some heed, motherfuckers! I’m gonna tell it best, and most authentic, and coolest, and… I mean, presenting yourself as the village griot is done, for me, with no more writerly credential than a dozen years as a police reporter in Baltimore and a C-average bachelor’s degree in general studies from a large state university. On paper, why me? But I have a feeling every good writer, regardless of background, doubts his own voice just a little, and his own right to have that voice heard. It’s the simple effrontery of the thing. Who died and made me Storyteller?

Okay...now that's the weekend, folks. Hand me an olive. I'm done.

Mad Men Drops The Hammer

THE EPISODE was called "New Amsterdam." I thought that was a particularly clever title. In this show about advertising and generations, how great to see that old name -- Noo Yawk 1.0. --Much may be made of what this show had to say about the divide between generations, then. (And boy you're going back a few if you reference Dyckman in NYC.) But I'm more firmly convinced than ever that the genius of Weiner is that he's writing about today, not about the past...

This is the episode, to me, where Mad Men reached up and touched that Sopranos crown. It was that good.

Learning more about Peter Campbell's backstory was a fascinating turn that pivots the series on its ear. Nice writing, boys -- take the villain and make him all understandable. Very 21st century...And there's something so interesting in watching the steel magnate, for a company that you know went down in 2001.

In fact, that's the whole amazing, tense thing about Mad Men. You watch knowing that all these people are about to get swept up in something none of them understand, and can't stop. And you don't know how, or if, anyone will come out the other end.

But the beauty, the true beauty of the writing shines through in one scene right near the end. This is so close to subtext becoming text (and by the way, I just almost typed 'sex' rather than 'text' there -- say of that what you will, advertising types) that it's amazing they got away with it. But they did. This is a beautiful scene, in a show that's so good that it makes me feel like the squealiest fangirl ever.

(by the by, this is not script, this is my transcription of the scene.)

Now, this scene comes informed perfectly by the two scenes before it: the chilling meeting with Cooper where we see how Don and his boss both dance to another's tune, and the scene where they convince Pete that it's Don who stuck up for him - Don who saved his job. They are all on the edge, these Mad Men -- always selling the better version, never pausing to think about how precarious it is. Sterling's last line in that scene above....is it provocation? A challenge met? Slattery was neutral in his delivery. It's left for you to fill in.

Also, notice that Peggy is minimal in the ep, and Joan doesn't appear at all. I can't think of a Canadian network person anywhere who'd let you get away with that. Sigh.

I can't even think of really intelligent stuff to say about this ep. It just washed over me. I loved it. For a better analysis, check out this entry on The House Next Door.

If you're not watching Mad Men, then I gotta say, why not? What the hell's wrong with you?

Golick Brings the Babe Ruth-Aaron Pilot Heat

IN MY DESIRE to not be pissy and to try to shovel new content your way as often as I can, yo, yea, I sometimes have to rely on the kindness of, well, not strangers, but maybe those who have been doing this longer than I have and who manage to teach me things.

If you're a spec monkey, a baby writer, or even someone who's mid-career like me, you've got things so crazy good compared to when we scrabbled around in the dirt before the dawn of time, when networks were king and before scribes stalked the internet en masse. I can't even tell you. We've come a long way since the only thing you could count on was Syd Field and Robert McKee's eyebrows.

Never mind Jane Espenson's crazy good blogging on specs....I think you all should give a what-what to scripto-blogging's new Barry Bonds, but without the antisocial behavior and obvious doping: Jill Golick.


Never an * for the Golick's mad skillz, yo.

See, Golick crunches the numbers so you don't have to. I remember laying out for my Ryerson students the nitty-gritty of the whole TV ep breakdown and getting the blank stares of incredulity. Well, Golick breaks down Pilots regular like, and it's an awesome resource to behold.

In her latest post, she lays out what she's a-seein about trends in pilot writing. You could not click through and just read through the cadged material I'm going to quote below, but then you'd also be a very silly, stupid, pig-eating, farty english turdblossom.

(Sorry. I saw Spamalot last week. I'm having Post Traumatic Spam Disorder.)

These are the structural trends emerging from the pilots I've read and watched:

Open long.
A lot of teases are running very long. Or scripts are eschewing teases altogether and leading off with titles followed by a long act one. Once you get the viewer tuned in, why give them a commercial and let them escape. Hang onto them as long as possible without giving them a break.

Act lengths aren't even.
There's usually at least one very short (9 page, for example) act. Sometimes, I see symmetry between the first and second halves of the show with acts 1 and 3 almost exactly the same length and acts 2 and 4 the same lengths. I never see all four acts equal.

State your theme in the third act.
Very often the series theme is spelled out in dialogue just as the conflict is rising to its apex in the third act. Isaac Ho pointed this out in a post on Script Enabler. I've found it too. It usually falls at the thirty minute mark which would be around page 40 in a 60 page script.

Oh, there's more. More. More. Over at Golick's hood. She's got pictures and shit. She's even got a Part Two. I dare you not to click through, bitches. I dare you.

In completely unrelated news, Public Enemy has a new CD out. Deal with it. That single makes my heart palpitate.

Blood Ties Site Up At Citytv

Blood Ties finally makes its Canadian TV debut in the next two weeks. Citytv has responded with their own show site for the show. You can find it here.

So Very Wrong.

I can't help it. She's a powerful woman. And that's hot.

UK TeeVee from Piers & A Bit About HOUSE

PRODUCTION MAKES one a little remiss in checking the fine bloggings of others. But Man-Across-The-Pond Piers Beckley (mug at left) weighs in with this interesting news from Blighty:

ITV TO COMMISSION LONG RUNNING DRAMA SERIES

Michael Grade announced today that ITV are specifically looking for long running series.

To wit, "series that are on 14, 15, 16 weeks a year, on every year for three, four or five years".

Will the new UK standard force a shift to a writers' room model? At the moment, the showrun shows (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Robin Hood) use a model with a head writer commissioning, creating the overall story arc, and (sometimes) rewriting scripts. The main proponent I'm aware of for this writing style in the US is David Shore.

What we're not doing yet is breaking stories in the room. And that's where the heavy lifting goes on in most US shows.

But mainly, the question is this: Will we have a writer in charge of the new breed of shows at ITV?

If so, then this may be the beginning of the end for the old UK model.

Pretty heady stuff. The Brits are doing longer runs, the Canadians are shooting pilots...My God, all we need is the Americans to realize there's a world beyond the Southland and the Island of Manhattan, and it'll be like Dogs and Cats sleeping together.

Again -- woe betide the Canadian producers and channels that, due to economic reasons, rush headlong into six-episode orders. You may be out of step with what the market is saying to you...

By the by -- Piers also had some excellent reportage about a session with David Shore in London a month or so ago. I'm giddy at the thought that I might actually be posting something House-related that wasn't posted or referenced by Diane at Unified Theory of Nothing Much, first. But then again, she's been a bit of a slacker lately.

For those of you too lazy -- or cool -- to click a link, here's some of the juicy stuff Piers wrote about Shore and his process:

David only has about twelve days a year in which the staff are all gathered together to break story, and these are used to break the serial elements of the show.

A writer will come to him with a basic idea, which he'll give a Yea or Nay to. After that, it goes to a 2 page story outline: What's the disease, and who is the person. David will give notes on that, along the lines of "Here's what's good about it, and here's what's not."

When it goes to script, the writer will get two or three drafts. The final draft is then done pair-writing in David's office. This works by having a big computer with two screens. They'll then go through it line-by-line, with the script on-screen, amending as necessary.

Obviously this doesn't happen all the time due to production deadlines - but he does it this way so that the writer will learn more about his writing style, which should ease the writing next time.

David used to set a writing exercise for staffers on a previous series:

• Choose an issue

• Write a paragraph about what you believe on the issue

• Write another paragraph completely disagreeing with you

Regarding notes: If someone doesn't like something, there's probably a problem. It might not be the problem they've identified, and the solution they're offering may be awful... but it's likely that there really is a problem somewhere.

Sometimes you read stuff from great showrunners that makes you happy because you think, "hey! that's how I think too!" and for a brief shining second you get all puffy and, "hey whaddya know I'm on the right track!"

I love the exercise of writing the paragraphs. Sometimes I get the feelings on some of the shows I've worked on that the deck is stacked toward one of the positions a little too much. Making that exercise your starting point means you can't put your finger on the scale by hiding behind character and dialogue.

And his idea about notes and bumps -- hard as they are to deal with sometimes -- is also my philosophy. I tend to say, "you don't have to respect their reasons, but you do have to respect the bump."

But it was this observation that almost made me do the whole Diet Coke-through-the-nose thing:

Finally he passed on some advice he'd received years ago: If you want to teach a junior writer a lesson, shoot their first draft.

Oh man. Amen to that.

Burn Notice and The Takeaway: Not Just For Curry and Chinese Food

I AM really enjoying Burn Notice. It's not just that Jeffrey Donovan gets to play a character that's way better (but still just as dangerous) as the guy he played in Touching Evil; it's that old hybrid juice flowing freely. It's amazing that you can mix and match genres so much, slap on a fresh coat of paint, and come up with something that feels so fresh.

For those who haven't seen the show -- the premise is simple. Donovan plays a spy who finds out that there's a "Burn Notice" out on him; which means he's persona non grata. His accounts are frozen, he's got nothing, and he's dropped in Miami and told he can't go anywhere. In Miami is an old friend who's keeping tabs on him for the FBI (Bruce Campbell) and an ex-IRA ex-Girlfriend (Gabrielle Anwar). To top it all off, he gets to relive and reconnect with his mother (Sharon Gless.) Now he has to pass the time and eke out a living working cases and helping people til he can figure out why he was burned.

Pretty nifty combo of a number of items:

• Light serialization (ie: Veronica Mars style)
• Romantic comedy will-they-or-won't-they stuff
  
• Family Problems
• Spy stuff
• Investigations
• Witty Voiceover
  

Jill Golick's got a great breakdown of the pilot for Burn Notice here.

The mixmaster of story items make for a light and escapist viewing experience. You get a hit of House-like impossible relationship with mom, a bit o' sexy sexy with Fiona (Anwar's character); some buddy-buddy with Campbell, and the episodic investigation plot...

...and it's this plot that gave me a sudden brainwave.

Because what I really liked about it is that about twice during each show there's what I call a couple of "MacGyver Moments." That's where Donovan explains in witty voiceover, some aspect of spycraft using everyday materials...Ie: most 40 dollar garden lights have a pretty good motion sensor, you can shoot through drywall just around the door, etc, etc.

(Someone who's seen the show, if you can come up with more specific examples of what I'm talking about from Burn Notice; put 'em in the comments and I'll do an edit to give more examples here -- I just don't have time to go back and rewatch)

The MacGyver moments aren't just entertaining, they actually send you away with some cool fact or truth you didn't know before. And that's tremendously satisfying.

In fact, it puts me in mind of West Wing (as most good things in TV do.) Because one of my favorite things about watching the early, Sorkin-era episodes was that in every episode you learned a fun, strange little fact about American governance (which way the seal of the U.S. faces, the fact that the government doesn't execute people on the Sabbath, how we built 100 000 airplanes before WWII, etc, etc.)

On XM radio, they're about to launch an all-Presidential Election channel called POTUS. It's worth noting, I think that before West Wing, nobody really knew that acronym. The pilot for West Wing put that out there for everybody.

It was a little something to take away.

The "takeaway," in fact, is something that they were obsessed with in my former life as a (shudder) lifestyle TV writer. All those makeover and design shows, the Holmes on Homes and Debbie Travis'es and Queer Eyes are all about building in "takeaways" -- useful bits of knowledge the audience can take away with them and apply in their own lives. (Or not.)

Now in dramatic terms, not many of us have practical uses for knowing little bits of spycraft. But that doesn't mean it's not cool. And anyway, all those shows on the Travel Channel aren't really so you know the Top Ten Places to Go in Helsinki because they actually think you're going to go there. They know that 90% of us are going to stay with asses firmly planted in couch. But still -- it's nice to learn something new.

USA has actually done a brilliant job of extending this aspect of Burn Notice into its online offerings. They actually have a series of "Spy Tips" on their site. Oh sure, they're less funny than Ask a Ninja...but they're actually...useful. They're fun. Go watch.

And oh yeah, they've got a writers' blog, too.

This can get into dangerous territory with some projects, and some writers, because you can turn into a bit of a research wank. (Well, here's an interesting bit of Tudor-era crockery...) But if the subject is fun and interesting, the nice thing about building in a takeaway is that it a) makes your audience feel like they've learned something (smart) and b) makes your world more realistic and involving (smarter.)

So when you're working up those scripts, ask yourself, is there room to give the audience a little bit of a takeaway?

I'll have chips with mine, please. Yum.

Yessss!

SOMETIMES WHEN you're a writer on a TV show, you get to fulfill terrible parts of your personality that you didn't even know you had, that would otherwise have no outlet.

Like when the playback/art dept calls with a dull idea for a newspaper headline that's supposed to feature in an episode about government ministers and lapdancers, for instance.

Oh sure, you could go with "Strippergate." That's been done. You don't want to go there, do you?

No. No you don't. So suddenly, there it is, your opportunity to fulfill your secret dream of being a trashy, evil, exploitative tabloid headline writer.

With cheap puns and everything.

You know how it feels? It feels good. Not "mansquito" good, maybe. Not "Headless Woman Found In Topless Bar" good [Which is a famous actual New York Post headline] But mmmm, mmmm, good. Real good.

Thank you, Baby Jesus. Thank you for my little career.

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.