Prep: Days Two and Three And Four

WELL THAT got away from me. See, that's the problem with Prep. You get busy.

Day Two of the prep of my episode had two major components for me.

The first was the Concept Meeting. This is the first big meeting where the producers, the writer of the ep, the A.D.'s and Art Dept and Locations sits down and gets their first look at the Production White Draft. The 1st A.D. walks through the script, scene by scene, basically giving a precie of what goes on in the scene. If there's things like props that will take a while to form, or stunts, that's noted. Sometimes it's unsure whether the people in the scene need to be actors or not -- they may not have a line, but are they really an extra -- or do they have to do something specific again and again (in which case, they're probably going to be upgraded to actor.) An extra really is someone just in the BG. If they do something like, oh, I don't know, dance or juggle or something, then they're a special skills extra. If the director's going to give them a specific action (ie: if they're not cued as background by the A.D.'s) then they're an actor. If they get more than five lines, then suddenly they're a principal. It all adds up.

The capable assistant to our producer Brian Dennis, Alex House, produced these notes from the meeting. This gives you a flavour for the kinds of things talked about.While, or soon after the concept meeting, the A.D.'s release their first Board of the show. The board is the idea based on the Initial Location Scout of how you're going to shoot the bastard. The trick is to get a certain percentage of the show onto your standing sets, and then to find the locations in such a way that you make up whatever your shooting days are and get it done in time.

It's math. But it's also voodoo. And here's the problem: You need to shoot a certain number of pages a day, yes. You have a certain number of days to shoot a script. And you have to fit it all in.

On a show like The Border, that can be even more challenging, because we've established a shooting style that is very fast, with a lot of cuts. A lot of cuts means more angles which means more setups which means you can shoot less in a day. But your episode has to be 43 minutes. And you only have X days. See the headache? Something's always gotta give.

We've found after a few episodes that because of our pacing, scripts need to be about 60 pages, give or take. You go too much under that and you can't make it to 43 minutes. Too much above -- too many scenes, and the board doesn't work.

On The Border, we generally shoot eight days per episode. Now, in the beginning we shot a couple of eps that shot for nine days. My first ep -- also the first show they shot post-pilot, was nine days. Then you also have to add in days for Second Unit shooting. Our show is set in various places across Canada. So we did a day of shooting in Vancouver last week. And we've been to Ottawa to shoot exteriors around the Parliament Buildings and recognizable landmarks.

That means that some of our episodes have to be seven days. My ep that's prepping now is our first one of those.

But when they did the first board -- the seven day version just looked...silly. There was no way that they were going to make those days. They worked up an eight day schedule, but the truth is that I deliberately broke, crafted the story and wrote it in such a way where there's high stakes drama but not a lot of stunts, and fewer locations.

The "production value" in the script comes from acting, and meaty scenes, and some stuff like populated scenes with extras, and Playback elements like TV and stuff.

If we couldn't get this puppy down to seven we were in trouble.

So that becomes a challenge for the Pink Draft -- cut scenes, combine others. Simplify and pare down so it becomes more manageable.

After the Concept meeting, I went with the Director to a Casting Session for our guest leads. Saw a bunch of great actors who gave great reads.

I kind of always feel bad for actors when they come in, but the more I go to casting, the more I really do appreciate the professionalism of those who really readily prepare, and the more ashamed I am of those long ago days when I went on auditions for, like, five minutes. What was I thinking?

The great thing about casting for the writer, especially when there's a time crunch, is generally they're reading off an earlier draft. Which is good and bad. Bad because it doesn't necessarily reflect where the script is now. Good, because no matter how good the actors are, when you hear a scene or two twelve or thirteen times, you start to really fucking hate it.

Anyway. Saw some good people. That was fun.

Day Three of Prep

Was my white whale.

The script is out to actors now, and the Director has given me his first thoughts, and some of those thoughts are really sharp for story. There's some stuff missing in the arcs of some of the characters through the piece. There's a few beats that were left over from the 1st draft that don't seem necessary now. And there are others that just don't work.

This is despite the fact that the feedback from the network on this script has been GREAT. Good suggestions, not too hard to implement, all in the service of making it clearer and more dramatic.

But today the story department sits down to try and come up with a direction for the pink draft.

And it's a brutal meeting.

Six hours.

There are lots of interruptions, lots of discussion about beats that may be missing, and beats that might be tried, things that might be made clearer or better. And there are also all those ideas that came out of the concept meeting the reality of trying to get that board down to seven days.

It's an interesting position to be in when you're the episode writer, when you're on staff. It requires you to be nimble. On the one hand, you know the story better than anybody else -- so some of the suggestions are going to be things you already tried and didn't work, or things that maybe screw up other parts of the story.

On the other hand, remember that "knowing the story really well" isn't necessarily an advantage. The people you're writing it for, after all, are only ever going to see it once. You can talk yourself into things -- Oh this is clear, oh no one will care about that -- and some of it is wishful thinking. You have to respect bumps -- when people don't buy something and think something is illogical, often they're right. I'd say especially when it's coming from your colleagues in the story department, they're probably more right than wrong.

Then there are other notes, the ones we call, 'different and not better.' That's the reality of the business -- no one will write things exactly the same, and there can be a great spectrum of difference on what constitutes improvement and what is just...different.

Somebody I worked for once described working for one of the legendary guys in the Canadian business (an L.A. dude, natch) and said that the secret to surviving notes sessions with him was that you had to defend your idea, or try to get it across three times -- so you didn't feel like a hack. But at the end of the day, the buck stops with the showrunner. They're going to do what they're going to do. You have to have the personality that can accept that.

I am a fierce advocate for my stuff, but at the end of the day, I know that what I write isn't exactly handed down on stone tablets. If three people are telling you something, you better do it, schmuck. Even if two have got a bee in their bonnet about something -- I suggest you take the note.

Being tired, irritable, under the gun -- all of this can increase the stress of a story meeting. And when the producers are being pulled in every direction at the same time, well...you're gonna go slow.

So it was that I sat down to pump out the pink at five pm.

I finished about six hours later, and sent the script to the story coordinator to be checked out and published in the morning.

I left on day three of prep, having worked a 14 and a half hour day. It. Happens.

I'm single. There are people -- on this show -- who do this and have wives and children. Seriously, if you're lazy or don't want to play that way -- best not to suit up.

Day Four of Prep

There's all sorts of stuff going on around me, but I take the morning to dog it a bit. When the draft's ready to go out, I get called by Sarah, my fellow writer, who's helping to get the draft out with the story coordinator. She runs a couple of mistakes by me that, in my fatigue I missed -- including one that blew a runner where a character kept getting a name wrong. The point of the last scene was that he got the name right...showing he learned.

I wrote the wrong name in. Heh heh. Fun.

I go into the office and do the best possible thing you can do when you're in this state -- think about someone else's story! In this case, Sarah and I sit down and start spitting a bit to come up with beats for her next script. It's just what I need.

The draft is out. I see the Director later in the day - he gives me thumbs up on the changes. Two of the actors call me to say they loved the script -- and they're talking about the last draft -- which in the way of the writer -- I now hate hate hate because all it does is reveal my hackery and imperfection.

Tomorrow, we see how that board's doing, and I start thinking about the Blue Draft.

So it goes, man. So it goes.

Parity in Quirkiness!

WELL, GREAT! The Canadian Dollar this morning hit parity with the U.S. Greenback for the first time since November 1976. This is, of course, great news for the Canadian Film and TV industry.

I'm kidding, of course. Like a lot of industries, our sector has leaned pretty heavily on the fact that currency made it cheaper to shoot here. So Thanks, W, you Rat Bastard! Way to Tank the Economy!

Now that we've lost our advantage, I guess the only thing we can take solace in is the fact that at least we're getting all those consumer goods cheap...

...oh wait. We're not. Right. Retailers and manufacturers haven't passed much (if any) of the savings on to me. Ah well. I guess there's always Amazon.com.

This morning Russell Smith in the Globe & Mail has an interesting column about U.S. cultural quirkiness, which riffs off an article by Michael Hirschorn in this month's Atlantic. It's interesting because, of course, quirky for quirky's sake has traditionally been a Canadian film and tv development ... uh ... quirk. From Smith's article:

The article has provoked condescending reaction, predictably, among the kind of person who spends a great deal of time arguing on Internet forums - that is, exactly the kind of contemporary hipster to whom quirk is most likely to appeal. Their objections focus mostly on Hirschorn's bathetic conclusion - that another American comic movie about urban life is the serious art to which we should aspire.

But they have also been railing against Hirschorn's job: He is a vice-president for programming of the television network VH1. That means he has overseen such reality television as Flavor of Love and The Surreal Life. He has apparently been a driving force behind a series called So NoTORIous, starring Tori Spelling. In indie culture, a guy producing Tori Spelling vehicles just has no credibility, no right to make any pronouncement on culture at all.

Interestingly, of all the movies and books Hirschorn names as examples of this trend, only one is not American (it's Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time). Clearly, this quirk thing is a trend in American art, but it's never named as such, even by Hirschorn's detractors. It's just called art.

This relentlessly narrow vision is familiar to any observer of culture: Those inside the United States tend to see its culture as culture, period. It's frustrating, but it's the way it is. (And frequently Canadian observers see the world this way too, which I find sad. Surely one of the great advantages of being Canadian is to be conscious of the rest of the world?)

That last sentence -- honestly -- is probably the prime reason why, with all the bullshit, I stay in Canada to work. Not the point of view that I currently see represented in a lot of our cultural output -- that's still a little narrow, a little too reactionist, a little too ... quirky ... but because of the potential POV we could bring to the world. Harold Innis. McLuhan. Both Canadian. Coincidence? I say, nay.

But anyway, now that we have quirky parity with our southern neighbours, I expect a Wes Anderson - Atom Egoyan Summit, where we discuss the new synergistic terms where we'll all stick it Hollywood together...in the name of the great almighty twee!

Parity for the dollar, liking a Russell Smith column -- it's truly dogs and cats sleeping together time.

Meanwhile, another article I cadged from the increasingly invaluable Tv, Eh? website goes sideways off the same riff -- with a special guest starring role from everyone's favourite screenwriting guru curmudgeon, Robert McKee:

Basically, McKee said English-Canadian film and television is currently a wasteland. Literature and theatre aren't doing so well either. Thanks to a combination of dark forces like the grant system, poetic prose, our fealty to all things French, cultural inferiority and a reflexive anti-Hollywoodism, we're making "art" instead of story.

But according to McKee, story is the highest art. And if Canadians want to express themselves, as storytellers, they must eschew the dark forces and embrace "classical design," storytelling as it has been understood since men and women gathered around the fire to entertain one another.

It's not as if Canadian screenwriters and producers have set out to make bad television and movies. It's tough to argue, for example, that Corner Gas is bad television: It's a huge commercial and popular success in a country unaccustomed to commercial and popular success. David Cronenberg, a Canadian, is one of the most interesting and successful directors in the world. "Since," McKee would argue, his finger in the air, "he said goodbye to the non-linear mumbo-jumbo and hello to classical storytelling."

If you've ever been to a McKee seminar, (and if you entertain any thought of writing film or TV professionally, you really should go see the show) you recognize all this. It's his whole bag. There are those near and dear to me who'll accuse your humble Stickster of being a bit...hyperbolic, shall we say, from time to time. Oh how I wish these people could see McKee up close. It's a show, it really is. But... though he's certainly, frequently an ass, from where I sit, he's also more right than he's wrong.

I'm thinking of changing my political affiliation to "story partisan."

Anyhow, John Doyle brings it all home by joining in the defense of the Trailer Park Boys against Jim Shaw.

Taking out newspaper ads to attack a successful Canadian production is the work of an oddball. If Jim Shaw doesn't like Trailer Park Boys, he doesn't have to watch it. If he loathes Trailer Park Boys and Kink, he can decline to offer the Showcase channel to his customers. But he doesn't, of course. Shaw Cable offers Showcase, along with a bundle of other channels, for $52.95 a month. Shaw obviously has some affection for the money generated by fans of Trailer Park Boys who want to see it on Showcase. In turn, he uses the money to condemn the show in newspaper ads and, by association, condemn everyone who enjoys the program.

Leave it alone, fella. We'll decide what we like to watch on TV. Then you deliver it on your cable service. If you're smart, and not the crank you appear to be.

Note to Doyle: "fatuous gasbag" has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Note to self: Is it just me or does McKee look a little like Jim Shaw? Ulp.

You know what? Let's let the Boys loose on the quirky. They'll sort it out right proper.

And then Bubbles will be nice to the kitties. Heartwarming ending. Roll credits.

Jack is a Dull Boy

IN A HELL HAIL OF PINKS. Hopefully I'll blog more tomorrow.

Also, tomorrow, on CBC Radio's Q, I'll be discussing the Fall TV Season -- and the role leaked pilots are playing in separating wheat from chaff.

K-Ville and The Narms!

SO ON THE whole I enjoyed K-Ville last night. I thought, like Jill Golick, that the end of act action sequences were a little overamped. (And how come these guys always have time to get to their car even when they've just been shot at by somebody going 80 mph?) And that whole "I deliberately want to kill the 9th Ward" thing was ... meh. But there was stuff that was inventive and great in it. The gag with the firehose dousing the house was undeniably creepy. That was an echo of Katrina that was freighted with dread.

But there's definitely a sense that what this show has going for it, initially, is a couple of good characters and a fantastic setting. You can't oversell those things. The charity event in the bar in the French Quarter, well, I've been in that bar. The colors were vibrant, and the cars traveling along streets that were not L.A. definitely made a difference.

Golick gets into the character breakdown pretty well, so I won't, but suffice to say that the pairing of the two men changed by Katrina -- and the plot twist at the end of the episode that gives new light to the narrative were well handled.

But what remains to be seen is whether they can leverage that wonderful setting and great characters (and the actors, too -- both Cole Hauser and especially Anthony Anderson are first rate) into a suitable narrative. Homicide started with character and setting too, but it also had the backup of David Simon's book.

With K-Ville, the central question is, "is it a cop show set in New Orleans?" Because I'm sure they could do that show and have one kind of show. But the failures of Katrina, and the continued problems that bedevil the Crescent City could also stand in for something greater: the problems of New Orleans -- poverty, neglect, infrastructure meltdown, education, stratification -- are the problems of America. The Baltimore in The Wire and Homicide is unmistakably itself. Over the course of that series, you actually saw the Waterfront revitalization happen -- you saw the City's flirtation with the CFL onscreen, for heaven's sake! For K-Ville to succeed artistically, Katrina can't just be a mint. It can't be window dressing -- an overlay of bathos on a standard cop show formula.

I'll be rooting for them to pull it off, but I'm not entirely optimistic.

K-Ville is also hard to judge by its pilot because -- Holy Gods -- that was a lot of money up there. What will they do when they have to shoot on a budget and a schedule?

Remains to be seen.

Which brings me to The Narms.

This season, it seems to me, we have a lot of shows on the networks that might just have fared better if they'd been on cable. More time to find their feet. Less restrictions on the kind of stories to be told. The ability to push it further. We're coming off one of the strongest summer cable seasons ever, and network just seems to suffer for that.

I want to see the Dirty Sexy Money where people really push it. You know, get actually dirty. Be actually sexy. Not the TeeVee version.
I want to see Gossip Girl where they do drugs and swear.
I want to see Pushing Daisies get 13 episodes.
I want to see Swingtown make it to four episodes.

Maybe I'm just catching up -- but the hangover from this great summer cable season means for the first time I'm looking at the new fall offerings and I'm much more interested in the concepts that I think could have been if they weren't restricted by network rules, and the need to hit a ratings jackpot overnight.

I mean, even Viva Laughlin might have worked, and from the sounds of it, everyone thinks that sucker's dead before it even unspools one episode.

So, I'm creating an award. Nominations are open now.

The Narms will be awarded to the show -- canceled or successful -- that is most ill-served by the network straightjacket.

We can talk about it for the next few weeks. Oh, I'll be talking about the The Narm, believe you me.

I'll offer a list of nominees once the season is underway. Then we can all vote. It'll be fun.

For those who don't remember, "Narm!" played a very, very important part in Six Feet Under. (I thought of calling the award The Krauses, but that might get one into legal trouble.)

Narm! Narm!

Now, hopefully, tonight I'll get a chance to see Gossip Girl. Depends on how my meetings go.

Now We Know

ONE OF THE THINGS I love about the internet -- and those things are dwindling -- is the ability to discover crap. Great crap. Crap you totally haven't seen.

So it was that I got sent that link to British comedians Mitchell and Webb's Notes sketch. If you haven't seen it, you can try Alex or Kung Fu Monkey. 'Tis verra funny.

I've never heard of these guys - but thanks to YouTube, you don't have to work very hard to find more. So I'll link to this one of theirs instead:






Interesting thing -- just goes to show you the other side of comedy that we sometimes forget about. Oh yeah, we're all about stoking the surprise...but sometimes we forget the kind of comedy that's a little older -- where the laughter and satisfaction comes not from seeing something that totally surprises you -- but by seeing something build to exactly the place you thought it was going to go, and the satisfaction you get from seeing it get there. Commedia Dell'Arte - where all the characters were stock and recognizable, was like that. You kind of got a hint of it in the Marx Brothers or the Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. And now, there are bits like this one from Mitchell and Webb:




It goes on to part two, but that build to the punchline....I mean, that punchline is not a surprise...but it's still funny.

In this day and age where lots of people look at something like Family Guy, with its weird, impossible to predict randomness, it's interesting to remember that anticipation can sometimes be as potent a comic weapon as surprise.

And for my fellow North Americans who'd never heard of these guys til they got that notes session clip in their inbox, this may strike you as ... odd. Yessir, it's localized Apple content!



Neat, eh?

Ah, Internet. You have pleased me.

Prep: Day One

IT STARTS with a friendly meeting. The Director of the episode, Phil Earnshaw, sits down with me in my office and we go through the script and talk about his notes.

This is a first-blush discussion, based upon the Production White Draft. This draft represents probably the 3rd or 4th full draft of the script. Of those, there was a pre-first draft of about 65 pages that was only for my eyes. The pre-first that I sent to the Story Department was about 61 pages. There were changes made on that draft which then went to the network, on a 60 page script. The Production White is about 58 pages, which is what we're finding is a good length to get us to 42 minutes and change -- we're a fast paced show. I would have liked to have maybe one more draft to tinker with it, but we were a little late on getting this one out, so there will probably be some more story rewriting at the Pink and Blue draft stages.

You can learn a lot about what your work experience is going to be from this first meeting. Some directors come in with very clear ideas off the bat of things they'd like to change, and some don't. Those who want to change a lot don't necessarily make for a bad first impression and those who don't don't necessarily make for a good impression. Because TV writing is so much a temporal art, there comes a point where you just want someone who's got a handle on your story other than you to tell you what they respond to, and what they don't.

As we talk through the script, the Director's notes are very logical and straight forward. What does so and so think of here? When he's doing this, what's the intent? Why wouldn't this happen instead of that?

There are a few questions that have to do with changes that happened to the script from the First Draft to the White Draft. Many of those changes have to do with streamlining, some have to do with network notes and a few have to do with notes from other people in the story department. There's discussion back and forth of a few moments that are missing from the current draft that might be worth going back to re-explore. And there are a couple of questions that arise from "widows." Widows are lines of action description or dialogue that are left over from an earlier draft and either duplicate something or don't make sense in the current iteration of a story. If you change the setting from, say, the ocean to an outdoor swimming pool, but still talk about a seagull landing in the surf, or someone shaking the sand out of their shoe -- that's a widow. The Director hasn't heard that term before -- but gets it immediately. Much little bits of bonding ensue.

Widows can be really, really bad if you don't catch them early enough. Because the last thing you need is the props person bringing you five pink lifelike dildos when, in story terms, that didn't make it past the first draft.

Note: there are no pink dildos in the border. Unless you count yours truly, and I'm actually probably more of a dil-weed.

But back to "Family Values." There's a mystery at the core of the story, and several characters acting in ways that conceal their true agendas, so we discuss and track these characters through the draft, pointing out what the audience is supposed to think what's going on at this moment, and what's really going on in the character's mind.

Directors are usually pretty good at this, because they're used to having actors come up and say, "what am I thinking in this scene?" And when they ask that, you better have an answer, bub. Them actors, they'll eat you alive if you don't.

There's a famous Canadian Director who was told on his last movie by the Star you've heard of, after ten minutes of cerebral reasoning about a scene, "Okay, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. You've given me nothing I can act. Just say 'Action' and I'll do something."

Directors and writers can talk subtext and stuff till we're blue in the face. But actors have to make it tangible...We writers can fudge that stuff. Directors can't.

In a couple of cases, there will be playback of video surveillance that's meant to repeat an earlier scene, so that you see something different this time. That requires a lot of talk of staging, how to approach the scene, and precisely what everyone's doing so it's clear. You don't want to telegraph it to the audience, but you also don't want to make it so obscure so people need a decoder ring to figure out what the hell is going on.

Canadian TV usually suffers from two scourges: either over explaining the obvious, or not explaining enough. (I realize this is perverse. But it's true.) I'm hoping we can avoid both extremes.

We get to the end of the script, and the Action takedown, and I offer that I'm really flexible on how this goes down. I'm not married to the way I've written it. I mention the three story points that need to happen. We're basically in agreement.

The Director will go away and come back with more thoughts, and that will probably generate another draft or so, before we get into changes sparked by locations and other production considerations. I'm open to good ideas -- a good idea is a good idea, and it's part of my job, as I see it, to make the Director excited about the script. At this point, my story is structurally pretty there. But there are different colours to the palate to be explored. The next 48 hours will be all about that.


Tomorrow: The Concept Meeting and Casting. My next rewrite will probably happen tomorrow night and Wednesday morning.

That Shiny New Blog Smell

MMM. NEW SEASON. All those shows smell so shiny right now. They're covered in baby powder and you just want to kiss them and love them.

And in a few weeks, some of them will be colicy and shitting everywhere, and we'll just be wishing we could get some more sleep. But for now, for glorious now, every baby is beautiful and pink and cuddly.

On the blog this week, we're going to try some different things. Later this week, in anticipation of Corner Gas' fifth season premiere Sept 24, I'll have a convo with two of the writer/producers, Mark Farrell and new showrunner Kevin White.

I'm also going to try to give you a taste of something different and more inside. (Without, you know, revealing anything privileged.)

My second episode of The Border, Ep 107, called "Family Values," starts prep today. I've written about prep before. But this time, I'm going to try to give you a blow-by-blow of some of the many, many meetings that you go through when you're prepping a script. It's one thing to be writing along in your garret, quite another to watch a talented group of professionals try to get a show on its feet. So this is gonna be a crafty wonk thing. Hope you all don't mind.

Finally, Jim Bawden in today's Toronto Star has a nice little article about the fall season from the Canadian perspective. The CAB wants you to think that no one in Canada wants to see Canadian shows, because that fits their agenda. It is indeed codswallop, and Bawden calls it as much.

Underfunded and underappreciated, Canadian TV comes tiptoeing back into view after summer's reruns. It's not that Canadians don't like watching themselves on TV. Try saying that to the million-plus fans who eagerly await each new episode of Corner Gas.

Or what about the sudden hit status of last year's Little Mosque on the Prairie, definitely a breakaway success after only seven episodes, big enough for the stars to get interviewed on CNN and written up in The New York Times?

What Canadian TV doesn't have, and never did have, is a plethora of smartly scripted hour-long dramas. This fall, CTV only has one hour of Canadian drama a week in Whistler, which is back for its second season, airing Saturdays at 9. CBC has the second season of the well-made thriller Intelligence (Oct. 1 at 9) and a new family entry, Heartland (debuting Oct. 14 at 7), to entice the Sunday suppertime audience that once doted on Wind At My Back. Citytv is back in the hour-series game with the vampire detective story Blood Ties (in November, there'll be another one titled Across The River to Motor City). Ten years ago there were 11 well-crafted hour Canadian series, but the glory days of Traders, ENG, Street Legal, Wind At My Back, Due South, and The Eleventh Hour are long gone.

It's not that they weren't popular – Global's Traders valiantly found its audience despite being smack dab against red-hot U.S. import ER. Programmers say it was the mounting cost – these days an hour of scripted drama costs at least $1 million in Canada, a top U.S. hit like CSI or Grey's Anatomy hovers at the $4.5 million (U.S.) mark...

More please! That's the reaction of viewers. But Canadian TV production is notoriously short of money.

Now, I've got to go read and give notes a script! I've got that back-to-school feeling! Who's with me!

James Spader? Really?

AND THAT'S all I'll say about that.

...okay...as one of the dozen viewers, I'll just add, 30 Rock -- yay.

But really. Really. That's it.

The Night Before Christmas...

THAT'S WHAT it feels like to a committed TV type. The fall season starts tomorrow. And thanks to Diane, I'm reminded that when it comes to TV news, the first place one always needs to check is The Futon Critic.

As she puts it:

I mentioned before that Mr. Futon Critic himself, Brian Ford Sullivan, was listing the 10 things you need to know about the new television season. He's done now, and he used statistical analysis to prove or disprove common assertions, like that Friday is the death time slot (it is), or that networks try to kill their shows (they don't). That's enough to earn my devotion -- opinion based on data, instead of the glut of trend articles that prove nothing but how cleverly writers can pick and choose details to suit their purpose.

But his last item, #10, is "Television is the best medium out there - and most of it is free!" and it's a lovely little article on how TV consistently produces "great content in a format that really isn't conducive to creating great things. "

Diane's particularly adorable when she's channelling her inner Spock, or Lisa Simpson, I guess would be the more flattering comparison...but I remind you all that here at Dead Things on Sticks, your humble host likes to engage in the messy first draft -- saying bold and occasionally stupid things about TV for your amusement and/or horror. I'm all about "choosing the details to suit my purpose."

Which doesn't mean that I too, can't also enjoy "opinions based on data." And bow down before the logic of their conclusions as presented. In any case, I for one think there are a couple of other items on Brian Ford Sullivan's list that demand your attention:

His number 2 point: Shows succeed and fail at the same rate, regardless of the genre, should be required reading at the Canadian networks. They all have a deep seeded allergic reaction to certain types of genre pitches. Many of us have grumbled that it's based on prejudice, not experience. Now Sullivan's crunched the numbers. Everything fails. Everything. Following the "hot" genre is no more a predictor of success than going it alone. You may as well try to stand out from the pack.

Then, take a look at number 6: Shows generally get canceled for one of three reasons. This is a nice, dispassionate article for the fan who's already wringing her/his hands over one show or another. When Mark Twain wrote that "a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on," he didn't anticipate the Internet. Now the lie's gotten all around the world, hit a bar, gotten on its cell phone in the bathroom stall doing a line of blow with a tranny hooker before the truth's feet have hit the floor. This season, as in the past, there will be all manner of vitriol directed against "suits" for making "idiot" decisions. Many blog posts will be writ, and forum theories be floated. But it's worth noting that none of this is really that voodoo. If you follow the ratings week-to-week, you'll probably know a show's going to be canceled before it is. And no, it won't be because there's a grudge against that star, or because "the suits were stupid."

Which is not to say that some of them aren't stupid. They're probably stupid in the same proportion to the rest of the population. Isn't that comforting?

Yes, you say, but Canadian networks don't generally release ratings. So how can I figure out if my favorite Canadian show is doing well?

Um.
I punt.

Then you get to other entries like number 9: Box or not you are represented in the Nielsen ratings (the tiresome argument I myself had a million times with viewers, and that I never want to have again) and number 8, Television, for better or for worse, is a business, and to me, Sullivan's true agenda is made clear:

When it comes to thinking about TeeVee, please don't be a crazy person.

Our relationship with TV is personal. I remember, years later, that Ted Harbert canceled My So Called Life. It's natural to invest in shows you love. But remember at the end of the day, you are getting it for free, or so close to it it's silly, and, really, it's still only TeeVee.

Now get out there and start your couches!

And thanks, Diane, for the Futon tip.

Taking Reality Seriously

DOWN IN the comments on one of my previous posts, commenter JH was defending the virtues of Reality TV. Interestingly enough, in that "I love my commenters and I love the internet" kind of way, Caryn James picks up that very baton in today's New York Times, pointing to two new fictional works that move beyond our culture's recent "tut-tut" or "society is crumbling" view of the genre. Has it really only been seven years since the first Survivor? That means I'm barely 1/1000th through the half life of the image of Richard Hatch's naked ass burned on my retina. Bummer.

In her article, "Imaginary Trips Beyond Reality," James writes:

But now the form has become such a fixture of cultural life that a smarter, post-reality-television generation of novels and movies is beginning to emerge. The clever little film “Great World of Sound” (which opened on Friday) and the graphic novel “The Homeless Channel” (published in May) tackle the issues behind reality television with subtlety and a true understanding of the genre’s appeal. And even movies like last year’s satire “American Dreamz” and the current fantasy “The Nines,” which don’t go far in analyzing the genre, appreciate its allure.

That acceptance is significantly new. Before reality television became a cultural force, prescient movies from the late 1990s like “‘The Truman Show” and “Edtv” sounded an Orwellian alarm, forecasting a world in which a person’s entire life might be televised. When that actually happened, books and movies continued the easy path of sneering at the trend, in smug works that deserved their obscurity...But “Great World of Sound” and “The Homeless Channel” are informed by the knowledge that reality television is popular for a reason: Viewers become emotionally invested in the players, even if they disapprove of them for playing. And these works convey the queasiness that is the essence of the genre: the voyeuristic attraction and sense of unease on the part of the audience and the complicity of the contestants themselves.

Besides plugging John August's new film, "The Nines", James also gives a shout out to one of my favorite films about TV:

Reality television has so rapidly broadened — to encompass everything from the Machiavellian deceit of “Survivor” to the bone-headed guesses about which briefcase has the money in “Deal or No Deal” — it’s a wonder that it took this long for a postmodern twist to occur, especially since one of the most accomplished films about the genre was one of the earliest.

“Series 7: The Contenders,” from 2001, takes the shape of a reality show in which contestants track down and kill their opponents. From its shot-on-video look to the stentorian announcer’s voice that says, “Real people. Real danger,” the mock film is less a satire than a shadow version of a reality show that is also a devastating comment on it. And “Series 7” effectively taps into its viewers’ emotional investment in the players: a pregnant woman, an unemployed father, a gun-toting lunatic. Daniel Minahan, the film’s writer and director, gets television so well that he has since become a top director on shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy.”

Far from being reflexively anti-reality TV, like many of my compatriots in the scripted arena, I've always maintained a healthy interest, if not utter engagement, with the form. It helps, I guess, that once upon a time I was a TV producer, so I've got that professional appreciation for the level of craft involved.

When it comes to the shows themselves, though, I have to admit my viewership was limited to the first few series of Survivor (they lost me in Africa, and got me back, briefly, for the one with Rupert and the All-Star Edition.) I feel like I would probably like The Amazing Race if I watched it, but not enough to commit to doing so. I did have brief and dirty flings with Rock Star: INXS, and Hell's Kitchen last summer, but I think that's probably just cause watching Gordon Ramsay shout at people is so sickly entertaining. I may be a bad person.

No, though I remember thinking right away, back in that first season of Survivor, that I was humbled by how well produced and well-edited it was, the main thing I thank reality TV for is its absolutely crystal-clear commitment to defining character. I think it's sharpened all of us -- those who cast for types, and those of us who try to create our characters out of whole cloth.

Canadian Reality TV never quite goes far enough -- not enough pre-research, not enough time shooting, not enough time to cut...but, like James, I'm glad that other forms have at least let go of the reflexive reality-bash to start seriously considering how the format has changed us, and the way we think about story.

For we all think about story: whether you're a writer or not. And I think if you're writing something and your character isn't as interesting as any bloke you'd see on a reality show -- then, my friend, I would hope you'd take that as your "Come to Jesus" moment.*

*Your "Come To Jesus" moment may not actually contain Jesus.

Well This is Something

VARIETY.COM has added a TV blog, "Season Pass." And so far it seems pretty good. Adjust your blogroll accordingly.

Or as Variety might put it:

Kudos to Biz rag for putting skeins front and centre on new internet shingle. Don't ankle, add.

Christmas Comes Early to Canadian TV

I HONESTLY THOUGHT that there was nothing left, no indignity suffered or bureaucratic cough that could be inflicted on my industry that would catch me by surprise. Well, I was wrong. But in a GOOD way.

Yesterday, the CRTC released a report it commissioned that basically asked, "why is Canada's broadcasting system screwed up and how can it be made better?" In the CRTC chairman's direction, better meant how can the system be made more market driven, while still protecting the goals of the broadcasting act on things like CanCon.

So, what does the report say?

Well, first of all - it looks like the guys who wrote it just may have been reading, ahem, a few blogs.

From Playback:

While the review's authors believe that market forces alone can't achieve the Broadcasting Act's Canadian-content objectives, they question whether current regulations are working to promote homegrown programming. Specifically, the report criticizes the practice of simultaneous substitution -- whereby Canadian broadcasters substitute their own signal to broadcast American TV shows with Canadian advertisements. Because U.S. programs draw higher ratings -- and hence ad revenues -- broadcasters program shows such as Desperate Housewives and CSI during primetime rather than homegrown stuff, says the report: "This undermines the economic value of Canadian programming and the very great efforts that the regulatory system and the industry exert to produce more Canadian content."

The 300-page report also says that Canadian-content requirements are largely being filled by "the broadcasting of entertainment magazines and reality TV programming." The authors suggest targeted incentives to encourage broadcasters to program Canadian shows, particularly drama, during primetime.

Among their numerous recommendations is to give TV consumers more choice by getting rid of the much-maligned cable bundle: "Forcing Canadians to subscribe to truly 'discretionary' services that they do not want in order to get one they do want is precisely the type of regulation that may drive consumers to the Internet, pay-per-view and on-demand types of services," say the authors.

This is an enormous sea change. Now we have the CRTC's own report saying the things that basically the creative guilds have been saying all along: that the system is designed to marginalize homegrown voices.

But the report doesn't stop there -- because it finally frames things the way they should have been framed all along: from the audience's POV. SimSub does not help audiences -- it actually reduces their choice by forcing them to watch Canadian channels instead of American ones, and programs at the same time. It would be way better for the viewer, for instance, not if they could watch the CTV broadcast of LOST on two channels at the same time, but at different times.

And, of course, the gift of SimSub means Canadian channels don't have to offer real choice on Canadian stuff. It's not where they make their money.

The report also recommended the end of "bundling" channels together -- which is the number one complaint of viewers -- that in order to get the channels they want, they have to take a bunch of stuff they don't.

Moving to change those two things would set the industry on its ear.

So how did the industry react? Guess:

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters is up in arms about a recent report suggesting that restrictions should be placed on a network's right to simultaneously broadcast American TV shows during primetime.

"We believe that the report's far-reaching recommendations, if not properly applied, could fundamentally undermine the foundation of the Canadian broadcasting industry," said CAB president and CEO Glenn O'Farrell in a statement.

"Simultaneous substitution is a mechanism of fundamental importance," he added. "To remove this mechanism would effectively expropriate rights holders. It is irresponsible to suggest such a recommendation without any rationale demonstrating an understanding of the economic underpinnings of the industry."

But Canada's largest actors union, ACTRA, welcomes the report's findings. "This is really the first glimmer of hope we've had in a long time, we are really quite pleased," Stephen Waddell, ACTRA's national executive director, tells Playback Daily. "The broadcasters have made billions in revenue piggybacking on U.S. product... It's time for the broadcasters to wean themselves from this regulatory benefit. They can't have their cake and eat it too."

Waddell is also pleased the authors took a hard look at what passes for Canadian content on most networks, such as reality TV and entertainment news. "This report validates what we've been saying for five years. The CRTC's 1999 Television Policy is a failure. And Canadian TV drama is important." In 1999, the CRTC allowed Canadian broadcasters to satisfy their Canadian-content requirements with reality TV and other cheaply produced programming.

If you listen really closely, you can hear the sound of chickens coming home to roost. The CAB pushed for the 1999 rule change, arguing they needed more "flexibility" for CanCon requirements. They got what they wanted. It killed Canadian produced programming.

Any successes we've had since then have been the weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement. But now, on the table, in the CRTC's own report, is a questioning of the holy underpinnings.

I don't believe SimSub should be completely scrapped, but it's going to be nice being able to talk about it as an option. The "you can't ask us to do anything" stance that the CAB has so ably pushed for years is dead.

Things just looked up - a tiny little bit - for Canadian creatives. And finally, too, somebody's talking about what's really best for the audience.

Like I said, it's like Christmas.

You can read the whole monster report here. But you won't. 300 Pages? I actually DIG this stuff and I'm gonna skim...

EDIT: Will's got his slightly more Rodney King-ish "Can't we all just get along?" take up at his digs.

The problem is -- no. No we can't. Creative people not talking about what's wrong -- quietly hoping things will get better, is what got the creative industry to the brink of extinction in this country in the first place. Now that an officially sancitoned report is out there, we have to beat the drum about it a bit.

As someone just emailed to me, "you better believe the broadcasters are going to push back, hard."

It's already started:

Look at how the linked Globe article -- in Report on Business -- frames the report (click the link above) That's what we're up against. They make it sound like the sky is falling. Not for viewers, man. Not for you and me, Jack.

The broadcasters pushing back is perfectly understandable. They have had a sweet deal. Look at those profit statements and acquisitions. They made a lot of lobbying choices and backroom deals to secure a rigged game that benefited them. What we have now that we didn't before is the weight of an outside perspective, a commissioned report, saying what we've been saying. So it doesn't sound like we're just a whining, self-interested group. (Because, face it, we creatives are that, too.)

If we're smart, we will embrace the spirit of this report where it relates to audience choice. No one's suggesting anyone not be able to see CSI. We're just saying, you live in a country with a lot of channels. Maybe those channels shouldn't all show the same thing you could see on the American nets on your cable box, anyway.

There is a middle way here. There always is. It's just that the CAB and the Broadcasters and the Cablers have never even had to contemplate trying to find it.

Now a meaningful discussion can begin.

But not if we take the heat off, Will. Not if we take the heat off.

Can You Stand One More about Jim Shaw?

I KNOW THE answer is probably, "no." To be honest, I'm sick of it myself. But the WGC sent out a sample letter yesterday to send to the people Jim Shaw wanted to reach in his tantrum ad.

I thought the letter was a little too nice. The problem is, this is a guy who is a bully. And call it the Catholic in me, but I believe in the power of positive shaming. So here's the letter I wrote to all those addresses. Please take a moment to write yours.


My name is Denis McGrath. I’m a professional television writer and a member of the Writers Guild of Canada. In the last three years, I’ve written just about every form of commercial television made in Canada. I’ve written cartoons for YTV. I’ve written sci-fi for the Space channel, documentaries on the CBC and lifestyle shows for Canada’s specialty channels. A show I co-created, Across The River To Motor City, will be premiering on Citytv in November. The show I’m working on right now, The Border, comes to CBC in January 2008. And the show I wrote earlier this year, Blood Ties, is currently airing around the world.

I’m writing to you today regarding Jim Shaw. As you know, earlier this year, Shaw escalated a feud with the Canadian Television Fund by withholding payments he was legally obligated to make. Shaw Communications and other Canadian Cable companies agreed over ten years ago to make annual contributions to the CTF on behalf of their subscribers. When they agreed to this arrangement, they were given significant regulatory relief by the CRTC. Jim Shaw has done very well by Canada’s broadcast system, but now he seems to think that he’s making some sort of donation. He isn’t. It’s not his money, it’s money collected from Canadians by him, to help fund television for Canadians.

In his latest move, he’s taken his crusade against the CTF into the realm of propaganda, taking out expensive ads in many newspapers in Western Canada. The ads promote a tissue of lies and half- truths about the CTF, and the Canadian TV system. The CTF has a board of directors. It is responsible to the Heritage Minister. It does not decide what shows it funds: broadcasters do, through their performance envelopes.

In his ad, he alludes to shows that don’t reach Canadians. There are certainly some of these, just as every fall dozens of shows in the U.S. fail to find an audience. The problem is that one of the shows that Shaw targets – a show he’s mentioned by name in interviews as an example of the worst of the CTF excesses – is the Showcase program Trailer Park Boys.

The problem with that thesis is that Trailer Park Boys is the opposite of what he says it is. It’s not an example of the worst of the CTF’s failures. It is, in fact, a popular success. I know this because I’ve seen the ratings over the last few years. I know because I see that the DVD sets are among the top sellers on Amazon.ca. I know because I saw with my own eyes, as one thousand people sold out a cinema in Toronto in the middle of a cold January for a chance to meet the actors. I know because I saw the same thing happen at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver earlier this year. I know because I watched as these actors hosted the East Coast Music Awards, and drew raucous laughter from the audience, at home and in the auditorium. I know because I’ve stood outside Muchmusic and watched as the Boys were greeted like they were members of U2. And I know because, like many Canadians, last summer I plunked down my own money to sit in a theatre and watch the movie version of this little TV show that could.

How could Jim Shaw get it so wrong?

Well, I’m afraid the answer to that is really quite simple. Jim Shaw doesn’t like the show.

And here we come to the root of the problem. Shaw thinks he should be able to decide what kinds of shows get funded, and which ones don’t. He wants control.

His sense of entitlement is unwarranted. His taste is not the taste of a nation. Ivan Reitman, (Ghostbusters) whose movies have grossed over a billion dollars, produced the Trailer Park Boys movie. But Jim Shaw thinks he knows better. He has acted shamefully, and the response of the CRTC and Government has been equally shameful. By not forcing him to fulfill his obligations, they have sent the signal that a well-connected millionaire monopolist with the ear of powerful people, can bend the will of an entire creative industry to his own. It’s an old story. But optically, and culturally, it’s not good for Canada. It’s not good for Canadians. And considering the huge strides made in popular production in the last few difficult years, it’s not good for Canadian Television viewers.

In listing my credentials up top, I left one thing out. I’m an immigrant to this country. I have American citizenship. If I wanted to, I could fly to the United States tomorrow and start working. It might take me a while to make it -- I don’t have any broadcast contacts down there. But I believe I’d make it. I’m that good.

The reason I don’t go, is because I believe passionately in trying to make the TV I want to make in Canada, for Canadians. I want to make, I try to make – stories that entertain and touch and speak to quirks and eddies in the Canadian character, truths observed by me in over thirty years of living in this fantastic country. I have done my part to try and help other people train themselves, and learn the ins and out of storytelling, too, by teaching screenwriting at Ryerson University for over a decade.

Please forgive me, but I think I know the hell of a lot more about crafting stories than Jim Shaw ever will. Yet in a million years, I would never think of making the kind of bullying, arrogant, boorish moves Shaw has. The Canadian Television Fund is not broken. We don’t need Jim Shaw to fix it. And it would probably be working a lot better if its staff and board didn’t have to contend with this man’s self-absorbed quest to impose his will on Canadians.

There are always reforms that can be tried, and things that can be improved. When he’s not ranting, before he summarily declared that the Canadian Television Fund can’t be fixed, Shaw even came up with a few himself: tying successful shows to repaying into the fund, rewarding ratings success. All of this could be accomplished within the current framework. But Jim Shaw won’t come to the table, because he knows better. And the CRTC and the Canadian Government won’t make him fulfill his responsibilities because…

…well…that’s the part I don’t know. Because he’s rich, his opinion matters more than the two million who watch Corner Gas, Little Mosque; the kids who flood Degrassi’s site, the hordes who brave the cold to meet the Trailer Park Boys, and even the professional TV critics who praise superior entertainments like Durham County or Slings & Arrows?

I ask you to act on behalf of Canadians. Tell Jim Shaw to stop with the silliness and fulfill his obligations. Tell him to stop lying about the Canadian Television Fund.

Send the message that millionaires can’t get their way because they can afford full page ads in the newspapers.

And let people like me get back to writing TV, not letters.

Sincerely,
Denis McGrath
Screenwriter

In Other TeeVee Blogs...

SALON.COM, in the leadup to the Emmy Awards this Sunday, are hosting a "TV Week" of articles. Rebecca Traister has a provocative essay called Women are the new men on TV:

Welcome to the new world on television, where the women are strong, and the men are cavemen. Literally. ABC's "Cavemen," based on the Geico ad campaign character, is about a trio of Cro-Magnons with low self-esteem and a little hair-growth problem. Small-screen heroes who aren't actually dragging their knuckles behave even worse. In the face of professional and sexual equality between the televised sexes, these fictional guys are cowed, angry and generally emasculated by the successes of their female counterparts.

It can't all be coincidence that this season is coming at the end of a summer in which the biggest movie hits have featured dopey, ill-groomed, irresponsible boys who score beautiful high-achieving women and then have no idea what to do once they land them. That's right, we're in Apatowland, baby, where the idea of a male romantic lead now begins with a water bong and ends with a fart joke. This isn't an isolated trend; it seems to be a broad cultural response that speaks to enough people to keep it floating. The shows this fall are not clones of each other: They're written by men and by women; they're geared toward teens and adults; they're comedies and dramas and dramedies. And they all seem to be expressing an anxiety about what on earth is going to happen to American men now that their women are not simply competing at work, sex, friendship, money and politics, but sometimes winning.

Among the degradations about to be heaped on television's men? There are guys whose wives cheat on them, whose girlfriends get promoted over them, whose mates make more money than they do; guys who get left out of baby-making, who date women with penises and at least one who gets anally raped by a monkey.

Traister runs down the various shows which show this new, emasculated man and muses a bit on what the heck could be going on here. But she sees only part of the story, by ignoring the fact that, with the viewing audience tipped more heavily female than ever before, at least part of this has to be because these are the kinds of shows and treatments that women want to see. This is what I was more or less alluding to in my post, The Eyeballs of Men. Traister offers an interesting prism through which to view the fall season, but I'm not sure she's entirely on the money on how and why we got here.

For my money, I look at show ideas like, "Big Shots" and just think, "Ick." Nothing for me there.

Salon's also got a monster article from Heather Havrilesky that I think every showrunner, or TV writer should be honor-bound to read. The thesis of "TV's triumphant overclass" is that the medium that once celebrated the middle class now exclusively mines the rich, and the super rich.

Today's TV denizens aren't just comfortable, they're loaded. Even as the mortgage crisis exposes the fragile foundation that lies beneath our culture of excess, the TV industry trips happily along with its tales of stylish executives attending gala functions in couture gowns. Whether it's the glamorous businesswomen of ABC's "Cashmere Mafia," quipping about their big-deal jobs over an expensive lunch, the rich men of ABC's "Big Shots" having drinks on the veranda at their exclusive club, or the sugar moguls of CBS' "Cane" wheeling and dealing in their antique-lined smoking rooms, the backdrop is always big money. Even if we're shown that the Hilton-inspired troublemakers of ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money" or the angry, backstabbing prep-school brats of CW's "Gossip Girl" are deeply unhappy, desperate people because of their wealth, it still only feels like an excuse to show them unraveling over drinks at the Palace Hotel, or wandering listlessly among the clothing racks at Bergdorf's. While the tag line for NBC's midseason "Lipstick Jungle" -- "These women aren't looking for Mr. Big, they are Mr. Big" -- should feel empowering, the notion that the almighty dollar is the only surefire escape from the desperation of the late-30s single is more than a little noxious. Even on the new dramas that aren't focused on money or power, like HBO's "Tell Me You Love Me" or Showtime's "Californication," characters live in massive, pristine houses, eat at expensive restaurants and wear flawless designer clothes. While the gap between rich and poor in this country widens to an almost inconceivable chasm, our TV sets conjure a vivid picture of an American dream that most of us can't begin to attain.

She's dead on the money in so many ways. And the thing is, there are a lot of strange, sinister things that conspire to make things the way they are. First, you've got a lot of showrunners who, you know, because they're good at what they do, make a bit o green. So when they reflect their lives, it's...um...a little opulent.

Like reporters, who a couple of generations ago were of a totally different class than the establishment, and now think they ARE the establishment, the medium of TV -- which was film's dorky younger brother, employing hungry up and comers - has entered its middle age pricing boats and Maui retreats.

And then there's the subtle pressures -- things like Art Directors and Production Designers -- who naturally want to make things look cool. Cool equals expensive. Rarely do you find people getting excited about recreating that lower-middle class mismatch of bad Ikea furniture just so.

On Blood Ties, one of the things I found most interesting was that it was always easier to get new, fresh, upscale looking stuff than to get stuff that looked dingy or worn or downmarket. The downmarket stuff was always way too expensive. The consumer, throwaway culture comes to the set!

I mourned the death of Lucky Louie partly because of the money and class issues at the heart of that show seemed fresh to me -- it's not a world we see anymore. That show was actually about people struggling economically. I wonder if Roseanne would be a hit today. I doubt it. I don't blame the Friends, per se, as Havrilesky does...but read the whole article and it's hard to deny that maybe Monica and Rachel do have something to answer for.

A little more middle and working class on TV wouldn't just be socially responsible. At this point, it might actually help us connect, and open new veins of comedy and drama. But first we have to break through this current vapid glamordome that seems to rule everything in our culture today.

What do you think? Is TV doomed to shovel us rich people with zero body fat who make us aspire to economic heights we can't reach?

Maybe that's why I loved Flight of the Conchords so much. Their apartment sucked, man.

Finally, if there's anyone out there who still misses the gloriously inside "Why Television Sucks" blog, Kay Reindl's got a bit of insider cooking going on over at Seriocity.

All the comings and goings and shutdowns and panics in advance of the fall premieres -- is it just the normal sturm and drang of the fall, and the difficulty of translating pilot to series, or has something indeed fundamentally changed? Read and judge for yourself:

So what the hell, right? Well, the hell is this. TeeVee ain't the movies. In order for a TeeVee show to work, it has to move seamlessly from the pilot to the next episode. You have to feel, as an audience member, that you're still watching the same show. The trouble with "Pushing Daisies" is that the pilot makes this virtually impossible. It's SO stylized, its mark made SO clearly, that nobody can come in and duplicate that. And then there's the expense of the show. MASSIVE. Pilots have gone from partial sales tools to the ultimate sales tool. The studios will throw fifteen million bucks and two weeks of shooting at these pilots and then expect the show to be made in seven days and for under two million dollars. The studios and the networks, by demanding that show creators think big and aim for the stars, are setting these shows up for failure. It's impossible for a writer to pitch a show that doesn't make some huge splash. Being responsible with the studio's money is a large part of what being a showrunner is about. But with regards to pilots, they don't seem to care anymore. EVERY pilot must make its mark. EVERY pilot must be unique, huge, exciting, unprecedented.

But that's not TeeVee. That's a fucking summer blockbuster. I don't know how to sell in this climate. I really don't. Do I want to end up in a situation where a feature director is screwing my show? No thanks. It's not worth it.

But as screwed as "Pushing Daisies" seems to be, no show is more fucked than "Bionic Woman." As I'm sure a lot of you saw, Glen Morgan left the show last week. People have been whispering about the show being in trouble for some time now -- over time and over budget. But when someone leaves this close to the show premiering... that's indicative of a bigger problem. There've been rumors about a permanent shutdown as well. Even if these rumors aren't true, you don't want to hear that two weeks from premiering.

Sounds like my Bionic Woman's never gonna happen. Aw well. Still, kudos to Kay for reframing my idea of success for Pushing Daisies. Now, never mind it being a big hit (too much to hope for,) I now will be happy merely if it's got a short sweet run of great episodes. You know, like Love Monkey. Ladies and Gentlemen, not even George W. Bush can move the goalposts better than that.

I Love You, I'm Just Not IN LOVE With You

SO HBO debuted its latest offering on Sunday night, Tell Me You Love Me. The advance word was dirtysomething. The attraction was the prospect of graphic sex -- some of it featuring actors you vaguely recognize. "Hey, is that the Profiler chick with her hand OH MY GOD."

You gotta feel for HBO. At this point it's like they've hit that point in Sinatra's It Was A Very Good Year when he starts thinking about his life as Vintage Wine from fine old Kegs, you know? How it poured sweet and clear and all? By the way, the last age mentioned in that song is thirty-five. They go straight from thirty-five to "my days grow short."

Don't tell me that song's not about TV.

Anyhow, Will Dixon wrote about this a couple days ago, and I think he and I had some similar reactions:

There's a distancing effect that occurs to a viewer when you intercut three or four disparate storylines --- you feel like an observer as opposed to being drawn in and moved emotionally (think Syriana or Traffic or Babel). I know this style makes the whole and the juxtaposition of the parts more important than the parts themselves, which can be swell for a movie, but for a continuing dramatic TV series, I'm not sure how well it can work.

And then there's the discomfort that can happen when you watch shows that cut a little too close to the bone, as it were. In this boys opinion, real life and real issues and realistic relationships can be informative and educational, but they're not very fun or entertaining. Entertaining is what I want my TV to be.

Then there's the fact that the world of the show is pretty, um, normal. The Sopranos and Buffy and Six Feet Under and Deadwood and The West Wing and Oz and on and on were fascinatingly entertaining because they took us to a unique new arena. But real life...real relationships...real problems...real issues - all set in a non-unique arena?

This is where the dirtysomething comparison really threw me. Because I was kind of a big fan of that show at the time. But thirtysomething strayed from the bedroom into the workplace -- it was as much about Michael and Elliot's adventures with Mad Man Miles Drentell as about the minutae of Michael and Hope's relationship. It wasn't that it had a unique arena -- it's that it switched it up. It had many arenas. I think that's what made the Sopranos work, too. It was the combo of Tony's home life and mob life -- the two families -- that was unique.

By putting the focus squarely in the bedroom, and on sex as a litmus test for everything going wrong in the various relationships, Tell Me You Love Me makes its world unbelievably claustrophobic.

But at the same time, I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what the creators of the show would say IS their unique arena -- they stay with scenes where other places cut away.

The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin liked the show, and essentially makes that point (the linked article also has an interesting take on Californication):

“Tell Me” has its flaws, but it’s very watchable (and not merely because it’s arousing); its aim is to show you what committed relationships feel like, and how they work, and how strange and fragile and complicated they are. And, despite the fact that there are frequent therapy sessions, the show isn’t talky when it comes to sexual issues. There’s a creative clarity about the series: Mort is also an executive producer and the main writer, and you’re willing to go where she takes you, even if you find that one or two of the characters aren’t worth your attention, as I did. You get to know the couples’ marriages so well that you become invested in their problems; one couple, devoted upper-middle-class parents of elementary-school-age children, have become like sleepover buddies; they haven’t had sex for almost a year, and can’t find their way back to each other. It’s to the show’s credit that, as you watch these two aching people not have sex, week after week, you begin to feel that you’re invading their privacy.

Will also mentions the complete lack of any levity (one of my drama pet peeves. I don't trust anyone who can't build in a humorous or light or non-ponderous moment every once in a while.) But in figuring out where the show goes wrong, I think Will may be giving too much blame to the intercut storylines, for a reason I'll get to in a moment.

The thing is, Tell Me You Love Me is well intentioned, and there are some lovely moments in the pilot. My disappointed reaction kind of sends me off to want to know more about the show. So I found the creator, Cynthia Mort, talking about the program on the HBO site.

With 'Tell Me You Love Me,' I really wanted to write a very spare, very intimate show about intimacy. I was interested in people who are in a relationship, yet so very lonely. They never thought of leaving their husbands or wives or boyfriends or girlfriends. But what happened? How do they get there?

In-Between Moments

I don't have any patience for artifice anymore, and I think people have a collective awareness of what's real, what's authentic. I wanted the moments on the show to play out, including what is unspoken in those moments. Because that's how you live -- people are not chattering non-stop. And if they are, they're irritating.

When you're in a relationship with somebody, more often it's about what's not said and what's hidden, and what comes to light and why it comes to light. I don't think you can have a show about intimacy without allowing those moments in between to play out.

It's somewhat voyeuristic, and that will make some people uncomfortable -- it made me uncomfortable watching at times. But I didn't want to turn away. And even if I did want to turn away, I wanted to come back. And that's the journey of the couples.

No Bailing on the Sex

When I was writing the pilot, I never thought about the amount of sex on the show, not once. Even when we shot some of those scenes in the pilot, scenes that were very intense and emotional. Not until I saw the footage did I realize what we were capturing. Then I thought, "Whoa. This is a lot." But we had many meetings about it. Sex is part of the language of intimacy. And just as I don't want to cut away in the therapy scenes, I don't want to cut away in these moments. It's not about the physical act. It's about the emotional act. Every sex scene, truly, is part of an existing scene. I was not willing to bail on any part of their stories, whether it was sex or therapy or a dinner party.

Sigh. That didn't help at all. Because I love what she's saying. I just...don't like the characters or the world she's created. I find their struggles and challenges real...I just don't find them...interesting.

By complete coincidence, last weekend also afforded me the opportunity to take in a treatment of almost exactly the same subject.

Now, the couples of Young People Fucking are younger and better looking. And it focuses strongly on the sexual encounters, over the course of one night. Like Tell Me You Love Me, the film follows multiple storylines. In this case, through several identifiable types: The First Date, The Exes getting together for a "no-strings" booty call, The Best Friends trying it for the same thing, The Threesome With the Roommate, and The Couple -- looking to spice it up in the bedroom.

One word: pegging.

Young People Fucking is by no means a drama. It's a raucous, scabrous, dirty, hilarious sex comedy. But there are also those moments that hit the sweet spot -- quieter moments of surprising depth and poignancy.

Here are two pieces of work mining the same territory. The thing is, those serious moments in YPF land with a grace and resonance that Tell Me You Love Me simply cannot match. There are some truths that are just better gotten at through comedy, I think. The ebb and flow of the intercutting storylines in YPF start out with the effect that Will's talking about -- there are some stories that you naturally just find more compelling than others. But somewhere along the line, that changes. The storylines that you thought were weak take a turn that make you go, "huh." That's how engagement works.

The last time I mused over the general differences of film versus television storytelling, I talked about The Squid and the Whale, and how its story made you not want to go back; you felt complete after watching it. TV is about creating a world that you want to go back to, again and again. I'm sure Cynthia Mort thought she was doing that -- that these delicate, troubled characters would inspire you to follow them through their therapy and their time together.

But for me, and judging by the premiere ratings, (it actually got closer to a Canadian TV number. Very. Very Low) for a lot of that audience that once loved the fact that "it's not TV, it's HBO" -- this is a show that could have used a little more TV. And a lot more laughs.

Is laughing at sex, and the foibles of couple more of a male reaction? Is the distancing I feel at Tell Me You Love Me Y-chromosome based? I don't know.

But here it is, folks, my up is down, black is white, cats are dogs confession:

The Canadian Film treated the subject with humor and mined truth, and I loved it.

The TV show eschewed humor completely, and in the process wound up seeming brittle, enervating, and joyless -- like a lot of the bad old Canadian films I tend to criticize. (Although there IS a Canadian film connection to Tell Me You Love Me -- Patricia Rozema directed the pilot.)

I don't know if I'll dip in on Tell Me You Love Me to see if it gets better. I try to give series three eps. But I'm still feeling burned by John From Cincy, so ...

In any case, if you want sex with a dose of truth and a whole lot of fun, I'd say choose the Young People Fucking.

Tell Me You Love Me airs Sundays on HBO, and in Canada on TMN and Movie Central.

Young People Fucking is (hopefully) coming to a theatre near you next year.