Tonight at 9pm, I'm hoping a new era of CBC TV's relationship with Canadians starts.
I remember in my youth watching shows like King of Kensington and Street Legal and being entertained unbelievably, like DeGrassi, because they reflected my world.
The streets and the neighbourhoods and the kinds of Canadians I ran into everyday. Canada's grown as a country since then, both in population and in diversity. So CBC has a schedule of new programs that reflect that. You've got a comedy from Vancouver. A drama that flirts with our national pasttime, and a comedy adaptation of a hit French-Canadian show.
Tonight we try to inject a new voice into the Action Drama. It's a genre that comes with its own tropes and conventions, to be sure. Disturbingly, it seems some of those conventions now include things like torture porn.
You won't see torture porn on The Border. You'll see imperfect people cadging together imperfect solutions to intractable problems. But you'll also see a lot more, tonight, and in the weeks ahead.
I make you this solemn promise: Shit will blow up.
Tonight at 9pm is The Border pilot, filmed in October 2006 and re-shot a bit this summer. It has echoes of the Arar case -- not in a "ripped from the headlines" way, but in a minor key variation off a similar theme.
Next week brings the introduction of U.S. Agent Bianca LaGarda (Sofia Milos, from CSI: Miami, and The Sopranos) -- who shakes up the squad. There's also a bit of romance and a soupcon of tragedy.
Then, January 21st, is my first episode - a straight up action-fest. The three shows together, I think, represent the breadth of what The Border can be.
In the weeks to come I can promise you disgruntled soldiers, scheming strippers, sinister organ traffickers, petulant movie stars, and plenty of intrigue, sturm, drang -- and fun.
I hope you enjoy it.
CBC has a host of other worthy series you should check out this week, too.
J-Pod, based on Douglas Coupland's novel, premieres tomorrownight at 9pm. Yes, that is Alan Thicke. At one point at the winter launch, I was standing about three feet away from him. I was afraid to look directly at him. He is Alan Thicke. And in this show, he is batshit crazy. Do not mess with the Thicke.
Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. after a very funny Little Mosque on the Prairie, -- it features a curling faceoff -- you gotta see it...comes Sophie, a comedy about a woman on the verge. It's funny -- I was always amazed in the UK how people became stars from being Page 3 girls or appearing in ads, but I gotta tell you, every conversation I've had about this show over the last month has at some point defaulted to, "you know that outrageously hot woman in the Bailey's commercial? Yeah, she's the lead in that show."
Hey, whatever gets you to tune in. Just try to deny that publicity photo.
Finally, Friday at 9pm, there's MVP -- a sexy soap set in the bruising world of professional hockey.
"Why," you might say, "That sounds like a whole bunch of newprogramming!I thought there was a writer's strike!" And to you, gentle reader, I say, plucky Canada is its own adorable country! We get to have our own TV, writer's strike or no writer's strike! Yaaaay!
ONE OF THE THINGS that frustrates me the most when I talk to other people in the business is when they're not current. I've had meetings, or discussions with people who were raving about the first season of Deadwood, when season 3 was on the air. They wanted to talk about stuff in the show that I'd seen two years previously, and I had to be sure to edit anything I said not to reveal what was coming. The Sopranos was the same way. I've had producers and network people make pronouncements on Six Feet Under after having seen only a few episodes.
I can't imagine a Doctor going on and on about something he read in a three year old medical journal to his colleagues. Or a Pilot raving about the controls of a jet that everyone else had been flying for years. But there it is.
Not everyone's going to see every show, to be sure. But professionalism demands a certain currency.
And this is The Wire's moment. As the show enters its final season tonight, on HBO in the U.S. and TMN/Movie Central in Canada, it's the show that writers are talking about everywhere. It's an astonishing, complex, riveting show.
And I say that not having seen every episode.
The other thing that's come up in the last few years, of course, is the impulse to not watch if you haven't caught up. It's the "Oh, I'll catch it on DVD model." I tried that. I have the seasons I haven't watched, ready to be viewed...I just haven't had the time yet. But I'm out of time.
The thing about The Wire, is that its seasons are structured in a pretty self contained way. I haven't seen the last two seasons, and I worked my way through the first ep of Season Five with minimal discomfort. Really. I promise. You can do it.
It helps that the canvas is so large -- David Simon's beautiful, terrible, crumbling Baltimore, a city that's grown rougher and meaner since we last saw it on Homicide: Life on the Streets. It helps that it follows criminals and cops and reporters with equal focus and dignity. It's layered, nuanced storytelling. You can dive in on episode one, and go back and watch the rest later, because the parts all refract. You don't need to know this to understand that -- in fact, I'm pretty sure that the resonances I missed in the last two seasons will be even better when I go back and watch, having seen season five.
No, you need to watch The Wire now because the cultural conversation is now. Now is not the time, for instance, to talk about that ten seconds of black at the end of the The Sopranos final ep.
Even if you're not a writer, or a TV pro, even if you're, gasp, a viewer, this is a show that is the culmination of all the things quality TV has been pushing toward. It's note perfect in execution.
If you were a fan of Homicide, you even have a familiar face -- Clark Johnson, who spends most of his time directing now, is featured as the beleaguered City editor of the Baltimore Sun.
I've noticed over the years that the people who most enjoy The Wire are people who read a lot. That's not surprising. Every season unfolds very much like a novel. Time was, we would all embrace detail and complexity because we were used to it from our reading. Join the conversation.
Watch The Wire, and watch it tonight.
(And if you don't have pay, make friends with someone who has it. Bring beer, or wine, or cheese. Really.)
I'VE NEVER MET Jon Robin Baitz, but he's pretty familiar to me. At least through his words. I mean, I didn't watch his show or anything, and I've never seen his plays. But I do love his work.
Wow, I really need to explain that better.
Jon Robin Baitz is a writer and playwright. He created a show that I only watched twice, called Brothers & Sisters. Or, as my father calls it, "Bruddas and Sistisss," when he calls and asks me if I watched it this week.
No, Dad. I haven't. I don't watch that show.
"Yew shudd. Iss Good."
(For the record, my father is an almost complete teetotaler. My keyboard, sadly, does not feature an English-Bronx English transliteration function. Get on that, Google.)
Jon Robin Baitz isn't a reason to watch the show, anyway, since he's not involved in it anymore. He was rather unceremoniously booted from the show as it found its way through three showrunners. He seems mercurial, and passionate and brilliant and pissy. He seems all this through his writing -- which I have little doubt conveys what he's like in person.
Writers are ego and neurosis and convictions that are sure, but that can change. We can contradict ourselves. We go on instinct and on passion, and so sometimes, we find we've got to backtrack.
I've been thinking a bit lately about what kind of writer I am, and how I got here. I've heard from people in my past who helped shape me -- thanks, CBC Radio -- and I've finally had time this holiday season to hang out with like minded writers; or even not so like minded. People with the passion of my approach, but different backgrounds and experiences.
There's this New Yorker Cartoon I saw some time ago - it's a picture of a girl sitting in the window and she's writing and the caption says "Dear Mom and Dad, thank you for my happy childhood. You've ruined any chance I have of being a writer."
I've felt like that in the past. And the nearest thing that I've come up with is that my writer entry point was moving around when I was a kid. You live in different countries and you pick up a different perspective. In my adult life, I've often been surprised to find myself drawn again and again to people who were born somewhere else, or who have spent time living in other countries. Baitz has that in his past. And in his writing for the Huffington Post, he seems impulsive, and frequently intemperate, and engaged and alive. I can see how maybe he wasn't well suited to work in the weekly grind of television.
I don't necessarily burn with the same revolutionary zeal as Baitz. I know that, in the pinch, I'm able to shove aside the personal and knuckle down to do what needs to be done to deliver the show. It's surprising how long in a short career I've had to employ that skill, but there you go.
What I want to direct you to now, is two columns on the Huffington Post that Baitz wrote about the end of his tenure on Brothers & Sisters, and his decision to leave L.A. It's about work, and love, and thinking intemperately, and saying too much, and fighting for what you believe, and maybe changing what you believe. In the second post he even backtracks and clarifies an earlier column he wrote about the strike -- even admitting that his reasons for writing the column might not have been pure.
That's a writer for you. It's why we would make lousy candidates. It's refreshing to read it in another. I haven't done anything as revolutionary as Baitz, who, I'm told, has finally gotten Gay characters to the point of banal normality in the family drama -- no mean feat.
The column fills me with hope, because I recognize traits in myself that I'm always laughing off and trying to apologize for. It fills me with hope because everything he says about L.A. makes me realize anew the things I love about my adopted city, and the reasons why I'm making my stand here. It recommits me to my purpose -- to not let go of the rope, to not stop fighting to make good TV in this country where so many talented writers and performers have been schooled to throw up their hands and flee south, leaving the business to charlatans and scoundrels -- and the beaten down creatives who could do so much more if they were allowed. It combines with the great swath of people I met this year who are capable and aching to do more. It fills me with the hope of working with and meeting more interesting, passionate people like Jon Robin Baitz.
Tomorrow, CBC premieres The Border, a kickoff to a week of new Canadian programming that I hope, finally, will connect with the people of this country. I'm hoping that 2008 is a good year. It's grey and foggy outside my window, but I read Jon Robin Baitz and I hear clips of Barack Obama in Iowa and I think, maybe, just maybe, the cynicism can take some time off.
We'll see.
Part one of Baitz's "Leaving L.A. - Work" is here.
THE PODCAST for my appearance on CBC's Q yesterday is now up. The conversation between me, Halifax writer Tara Thorne, and guest host Brent Banbury, is available here. (The fun starts about 12 minutes in.)
SOMEHOW I MISSED the leadup to the premiere to the PBS Pioneers of Television show, which runs Wednesday nights through January. Luckily, I caught a repeat of the first installment, Sitcoms, on the PBS HD channel.
The program focuses on the development of the sitcom format by focusing on five seminal series: The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Make Room For Daddy (briefly), The Andy Griffith Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Generally, the show's a bit of a disappointment. The analysis is a bit shallow and the voiceover tends toward the twee. If you have a grounding in these shows already, the program will play mostly as breezy nostalgia. If you're not familiar with these shows or don't really know why they're considered to be important, this program gives you a taste of why -- but only a taste.
Terrible yet enjoyable, welcome yet deficient, "Pioneers of Television" pays long overdue homage to the first generation of TV talent -- but does it in a clumsily bumbling way. About the highest accolade earned by the PBS production is that classic of dubious distinctions, "It's better than nothing." Actually, though, there are moments when even nothing starts looking pretty good.
The producers of this slapdash history keep things as trite and simplistic as possible, but perhaps there is method in their mediocrity; no one can say the show is too sophisticated for the audience. It's the polar opposite of sophistication and thus widely, hugely accessible.
TV history is reduced mainly to a parade of stars -- stars who ruled the tube from in front of the camera and behind it -- with little if anything that could pass for context, social commentary, perspective or original analysis. The narration, sonorously intoned, is a bouquet of cliches sprinkled with lavish and slavish accolades; the sitcom, subject of tonight's premiere, was "a whole new form of television," we're told, but of course many early sitcoms had obvious radio antecedents.
That doesn't mean the program, which is also going to be available on DVD, with its accompanying segments on Late Night, Variety, and Game Shows, isn't valuable -- especially if you're a toiler trying to make television comedy.
What's funny is that in a few of the shows profiled, they actually manage to extract a nugget that makes a Canadian TV writer shake his head. Because here are fifty year old lessons discovered in TV's golden age -- that still haven't been internalized by those commissioning, and in some cases, creating comedies in this country.
The first lesson comes courtesy of The Andy Griffith Show. They trot out a short bio on Griffith and his rise to national fame through a hayseed monologue routine. That got him a guest starring role on Make Room for Daddy as an episodic foil for Thomas.
In the clip from the first ep of his eponymous show, Andy's characterization is broad; the accent is laid on think, the wide eyed smile comes too quickly.
What Griffith learned rather quickly was that the secret to his show was to be the sane center -- that he worked almost better as the straight man with the satellites of more eccentric townspeople -- Barney, Gomer, Floyd -- around him, driving most of the laughs. You can see this echo in successful central characters from Sam Malone (who was able to be funny, but also was there to keep things moving) to Samantha Stevens, to Barney Miller, to Andy on WKRP,Dave Nelson on Newsradio, etc. etc. When you amp up the tone of the show, the central character can become sillier, while still fulfilling that sane center position. Think Liz Lemon in 30 Rock. Even Seinfeld, with all his quirks and flights of fancy, was more reasonable than George and Kramer.
The other type of comedy is one where your central character does drive most of the laughs -- like I Love Lucy, or Murphy Brown (who was less reasonable than those around her) or Sarah Silverman, Roseanne, etc.
A lot of the time we try to throw everything at the wall here in Canada. We have talk show hosts trying to be funnier than the guests and always be the center of attention (going counter to Johnny Carson's great gift of making other people look funny) We wacko up the main character, then put even wackier people around them. There's not a clear function for the main character: are they grounded, or out there? It's funny when the grounded character goes off the rails occasionally, but not if they're always lurching about, with others lurching about around them. That just gets noisy.
Interestingly enough -- look at the Canadian sitcoms that have worked: King of Kensington, and Corner Gas. Both feature reasonable, laconic, often straight men at the center. (Which I think is in tune with how Canadians see themselves.) Problem? You need a confident actor to know that letting other people get laughs doesn't take away from you.
Now that I think about it, this is also one of the things that makes Rent-A-Goalie work (Full caveat disclosure, I did work on the second season of this show, and wrote two eps.) The central character, Cake, is usually trying to referee the greater madness of those around him. He's also got the Sam Malone lineage -- a past that was wilder than any of the wackos around him, that he tries assiduously to keep under control.
The second lesson of The Andy Griffith show? Find the concept that people want to live with. Griffith invented the single camera comedy by despising a studio audience. He wanted people to see the streets of the town, and get to know people that way. Griffith is quick in the special to distance himself from the rural series that came after him: Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies. Griffith says he never wanted the audience to be expected to laugh at the townspeople of Mayberry. It may have been a slice of life different from your own, but people connected with the show by finding commonality, not pointing fingers.
That tonal understanding is instructive in the Canadian context, as well. The residents of Dog River on Corner Gas couldn't care less what you think of them -- they ask you to accept the place where 'there's not a lot going on' on its own terms. Similarly, the rules of the Trailer Park in Trailer Park Boys may be ridiculous in the outside world, but so long as you're in that world, it makes sense.
Contrast that with Little Mosque on the Prairie, which in its first season lurched between asking you to laugh at the white people's ignorance, or the Muslims' challenges with the town, neither very successfully. The show only started to find its feet when the fictional town of Mercy was allowed to breathe a bit, just like Mayberry. People don't want to tune in to be edumacated by a sitcom, neither do they go for quirky for quirky's sake. They tune in to see a world that's different than their everyday, yet recognizable on some emotional level.
From the Dick Van Dyke show we learn, of course, that originally Carl Reiner tried to sell himself in the role -- a no go. One of the hallmarks of that show was that it was smart, but also silly -- through the use of Van Dyke's considerable slapstick gifts.
That wasn't supposed to be part of the show. Reiner worked it in as an adjustment to Van Dyke. Similarly, as Mary Tyler Moore demonstrated increasing comic gifts, they adjusted her role to capitalize on that. In fact, one of the most flattering things said in the special comes from Dick Van Dyke, who describes Reiner as being completely adept at writing and adjusting lines to the cadences of the original actors -- so saying the lines was effortless.
This may seem like a no-brainer: adjust the role, and the writing, to fit your actor. But you can't do that in a country where often you need to have six or eight scripts written, and characters completely developed, before you even get to casting.
You wind up having to shoehorn actors into a role and hope they can deliver, rather than create something that's liable to be funnier: a role where you can take advantage of the actor's talents and marry them with good writing.
Lessons learned fifty years ago by the pioneers of television: decide which role your central character will fill, build your show around the talent you have. Create a world that people want to spend time in, either because it's familiar, or because it's easy to locate the familiar in what's different. All lessons we've still mostly to learn in this country -- while we talk about making things "quirky" and "not too jokey." Sigh.
Two new sitcoms debut on CBC next week: Sophie, and J-Pod. Here's hoping we'll see some of those Conestoga-era lessons learned.
The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy were given much shorter shrift, so I couldn't cadge any real lessons from them.
But man, it was great to see the bit where Dick Van Dyke runs around looking for a tissue again.
THAT IF YOU live in the viewing area of one of the five Citytv stations, and you missed the premiere episode of Across The River To Motor City, a repeat cycle begins tonight at 10pm with Episode One.
I'LL BE ON CBC Radio's Q show again tomorrow, along with Halifax writer Tara Thorne, to talk about Letterman with writers, and the other guys without them -- and what you should be watching instead of a bunch of crappy reality shows. (Hint, it's on CBC and it rhymes with "A Quarter."
THIS IS A day late, but hopefully not a dollar short. (That's roughly 98 cents to you Americans.) Part One of this List can be read here. Part Two is here.
4) AMY WINEHOUSE - "Back to Black"
They need to try to make her go to Rehab harder. And don't let her say "no, no, no." If you look at the history in pictures of Winehouse from her first record, FRANK, to now, you'll see a disturbing evolution from a healthy, pretty, gorgeous woman with a great voice to a disturbed, sometimes-addled cautionary case.
But sadly, there is still that voice. What a voice. Whatever haunts Winehouse, when she can keep it together and channel it through her art, the results are breathtaking. Each song on Back to Black feels to me like its own movie.
And as good as the record is, Winehouse's artistic evolution continued through the year, making the record seem like a snapshot, rather than a culmination of something. I sometimes get a little obsessive tracking down b-sides by artists I like. (This is an undertaking made far easier, and cheaper, in the Itunes era.) In the case of Winehouse, the major catalyst for her further brilliance came when she hooked up with the Dap Kings -- the stellar soul-funk backing group of Dap Tone records, probably best known for supporting neo-funk goddess Sharon Jones (whose 100 Days, 100 Nights was another favorite of mine last year.) The Dap Kings backed Winehouse on her U.S. tour. And B-side recordings made along the way have offered tantalizing glimpses of where Winehouse might go, if she lives, that is.
The B-side cover of the Zutons "Valerie," covers like "You're Wondering Now," and "Hey Little Rich Girl" are fantastic (You can get them all on a limited edition 2-CD reissue of B2B.) and the remixers have cottoned onto Winehouse in a big way, too. The Rumble Strips reworking of "Back To Black" raises the threat level or the original and becomes a sinister masterpiece, and there's a couple of reworkings of "You Know I'm No Good" that best the original, as well. Hip-hop artists discovered Winehouse in a big way, too. I may not like those collaborations, but seeing as we live in a time when musical genres are as separate as possible, where there is no crossover -- the interest from that side of the fence in Winehouse is interesting, to say the least.
In a lesser sense, 2007 was all about female vocals for me. Feist, Kate Nash, Lily Allen, Jenny Lewis -- all produced records that demanded more time in my CD player than their scruffier male contemporaries. But Winehouse still stands up there, striding over them all, like a colussus. I want another record. I hope she gets well soon, so we can see the promise and the challenge of Back to Black fulfilled.
3) 30 Rock
"Never go with a hippie to a second location."
I can't even remember, beyond that, what my favorite lines from 30 Rock are. All I know is that once or twice a show, they rip a laugh from me that comes as much from astonishment as from craft. There are jokes that work even though they shouldn't, there are jokes that are arcane or simply weird, and there are jokes that are joyfully, exuberantly silly. Jack McBrayer's Kenneth is a wise fool foil monster character -- probably we haven't seen one better since the first time Kramer slid through Jerry's door. And how, when, who, where - WHAT do you say about Alec Baldwin? Supreme Ego and supreme vulnerability; the neurotic behind the bully. It's like somehow Tina Fey found a way to make Montgomery Burns lovable.
The great thing about truly transcendent comedy writing is that it overwhelms your efforts to discern its craft and construction. 30 Rock is just raucously funny; like Fawlty Towers, at this point, you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride.
But craft is at the heart of this recommendation, and also why 30 Rock makes me a little sad, at least in the current climate. The David-vs.-Goliath dynamic that greeted the show's faceoff with Studio 60 at the start of last season is rapidly fading into footnote territory, but it shouldn't be forgotten that the show did have a shaky start. The degree to which this show found its feet in the room, and worked itself out by the end of season one shows, to me, the value of the writing room, and the process, and how no matter how well you think you know a project going in (Could anyone be better qualified to write about behind the scenes of a comedy show than ex-SNL'er Tina Fey?) you have to find the show in the room.
But there's finding the show in the room, and then there's what 30 Rock did. Right now, 30 Rock is the New England Patriots of television comedy. How the fuck can you write a "comedy is dead on TV article" when you can point to 30 Rock? I have no idea. So the plaudits are there, and the audience is slow to catch on -- but they were slow to catch on to Seinfeld and Cheers too. How'd those shows do?
But it's that very clicking, that amazing confluence of writers and actors and subject matter that makes me a little sad now. Because those things have their moment. And that moment is ephemeral at best. Putting scripted television in drydock is going to affect different series differently -- but for the show that's captured lightning in a bottle, the stakes are higher. If the writing room of 30 Rock is down for months, maybe even most of a year -- what happens when it comes back? The dirty little secret every artist knows -- the subtext, in fact, running underneath my picks like Steve Martin and his standup, or Winehouse -- the reason why I always include a theater show or two is that these things all have their time. Time is a factor in any artistic collaboration, because you change with every script you write. That's less of a factor when you're doing a film or a book... A film or a book captures something and preserves it, but it's at least representative of a time -- and that time is preserved in the work forever. In contrast, a great theater performance stale dates -- a cast member moves on, the production closes and is lost -- it's entirely temporal. A great TV show exists somewhere between those two states. It's a high wire act that demands that something be done fast, and on a schedule that's always punishing, and yet reach for a consistent, and renewable bar of greatness.
30 Rock was firing on all cylinders before the strike. Will it come back just as strong? I hope so. But I curse the circumstance that stopped them when they were clearly hot, and clearly on a roll.
2) The Stage Takes on The TeeVee: Frost/Nixon and The Farnsworth Invention
Speaking of temporal greatness. I knew years ago when I sat in the dark and saw a play called "A Few Good Men" that I was seeing the start of a great new voice. Having moved into TV, three series in, Sorkin repays his new employer with a memory play that touches on many of his particular obsessions: people with principles who fall short of them, politics both corporate and personal, and that particularly American obsession with the little guy -- and how the little guy can't seem to win, even though the American myth tells him he can.
The Farnsworth Invention is ostensibly about the fight to create the technology of TV. It's a story of two unlikely protagonists: Philo Farnsworth, a genius inventor who comes up with the idea of a scanning cathode ray tube while plowing potato rows, at the age of 14. And David Sarnoff, a Russian emigre who invented most of his early history and created modern broadcasting with RCA.
Sorkin's play moves briskly, with each man telling the other's story. It's a story that involves American ingenuity, corporate espionage, personal tragedy and driven obsession. He resists the urge to make one character good and one bad, and he also does an admirable job of pondering the legacy of television. Hank Azaria as Sarnoff is commanding, brutal, and compelling.
"Nobody had it. Nobody was even close."
This play was a little personal for me -- because years ago, my ex-boss, Moses Znaimer, started collecting a whole bunch of old TV's. He opened his own Museum of Television, including the set that Sarnoff showed at the 1939 World's Fair. That got me interested in early TV, and led me to Philo Farnsworth. I was making notes about a possible stage play myself when I heard a few years ago that this was Sorkin's next project.
Wisely, I put the books away. Sorkin came up with a more even-handed, more poignant, more exciting vision than I probably had in me. Farnsworth is magical.
The other theater piece that transported me is one that you'll probably get a chance to see, in some form, at least. Ron Howard is currently making a movie of the play. Frost/Nixon was un unlikely beast. PeterMorgan (The Queen) dramatized the story of the groundbreaking 1970's interview that David Frost did with ex-President Richard Nixon.
Looking back now, how extraordinary the circumstance. A major network gave over multiple nights to an interview with a politician. Along the way, the commercialization of the project -- it was produced by Frost's own company and Nixon was paid -- caused much hand-wringing about what the future of news on TV was. (Like Good Night and Good Luck, Broadcast News, and Network, these concerns now seem sad and quaint, and all-too-prescient.)
The great thing about Frost/Nixon is that it's structured like a boxing match -- only it's about two men facing off in conversation. Frank Langella as the disgraced President is a revelation, and Michael Sheen continues the nuanced, fascinating and offbeat way of slipping inside a character he brought to Tony Blair in The Queen.
The whole point of the research and prep leading up to the interviews is "will they GET Nixon?" Will they get him to admit culpability? Frost doesn't seem up to the task. Nobody thinks he can do it. But there are twists and turns a plenty on the way to the ending.
Again, it's a glimpse at a time when TV did something more than make six corporations money. And it's also quaint because it comes from a time when we didn't just expect and accept leaders lying all the time and never answering a question. Compare the grilling of Nixon to the lightweight treatment George W. has gotten over the last seven years, and you can't help but admire Tricky Dick. On some level. For humanizing Nixon, for showing what TV can do, and for making compelling theater out of the arcane nature of a TV interview -- well, for that, Frost/Nixon inspired the hell out of me.
1) Mad Men
I wrote a lot about Mad Men this last year. I know that only a million or so people watched every episode. But I also know that the show drew the households with the highest income in all of television.
In many ways, the show is a shot across the bow to those who would idealize a past that never really existed. But it's also a testament to what happens when you let a truly gifted writer/producer do what he wants to do, with full commitment and support.
Mad Men was not an expensive show. It's a show that could be done in England or Canada. All it requires is people to support a bold vision. It's a show whose characters were indelible, and who revealed themselves like an onion, bit by bit, layer by layer.
If you haven't seen the whole season, I don't know how this will play for you. But this clip is from the finale. Don Draper, who has invented and re-invented himself, and lied, and ran, and sacrificed and nearly lost everything through a desire to protect his secrets, waxes on family to sell Kodak on a new campaign for their slide projector. This is the culmination of everything we've seen Don go through. It's terrible and beautiful and subtle -- great writing, great nuance...just...wow.
I hope one day to be able to write something 1/10th this good:
Last night I went out for a couple drinks. (It's always nice going out on December 30th. You kind of have the the city to yourself.)
I met my friend, in from L.A. for the holidays. During the course of the evening, she told a funny story about working as a shopgirl in L.A. and, since it was slow, reading Steve Martin's Shopgirl on the job. You probably know how this ends -- Steve Martin walked in the door. I'd like to say that my friend talked to him -- but she didn't.
Reading Born Standing Up, (or more accurately, listening to it -- I bought the audiobook, unabridged, read by Martin) it's pretty clear that she made the right choice. Martin's always been that most fascinating of performers: Closed off, basically introverted, private. Unlike the desperate attention seeking of today's brand of tabloid celebrity, Martin disappears totally between projects. You can tell that he considers promotion a chore, he jealously guards his private life, and there's something a little unlikely about the triangulation of his obsessions: art, writing, comedy. He seems almost ill suited to the performer's life -- yet he's very, very good at it.
What's always been even more interesting to me is that once upon a time, Steve Martin was one of the biggest stand up comics in America, but he walked away from it and never, ever looked back. I'm far more used to the other comic trajectory: you make it, maybe you move on, but you always crave the stage. I'm used to Robin Williams slipping into the back of a room somewhere to do a few minutes. Or Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Brent Butt -- who all get something out of doing their live act that they don't from their TV shows. Even Jerry Seinfeld, a guy who redefines the phrase "never has to work again," felt compelled to retire his lifelong act, and build a new one from scratch, (chronicled brilliantly in the fascinating documentary, "Comedian.")
But not Martin. Since walking offstage in 1981, he's never performed his act, never missed it, never looked back, never really talked about it, and never explained why.
Born Standing Up doesn't exactly explain why. I mean, it does, but the explanation is so specific to Martin and his personality that I'm not sure it gives any real insight into the decision.
What is brilliant about this book, though, is how it shows the building of Martin, the performer. The sheer tenacity and family tension that took him from a teenager working in Disneyland's Magic Shop to the Tonight Show, SNL, and finally, to a life outside of standup.
Martin calls it a chronicle of his "war years" and it's hard not to agree. A restless, often lonely soul, the memoir traces his early life, strained relationship with his father and sister. It touches on lost loves and missed opportunities, and some key moments in the life of a performer's life. When he decides to cut anything that isn't original from his act, you share in his despair when he realizes his act's just been cut in half. He notes a bit where he has to drink a glass of wine on stage, and hears a tape back later, hears a slight slur, and never drinks during or before a show ever again. In fact, the wonderful thing about this book for anyone who's a performer or a writer is how goddamn serious he is about it, and how hard he has to work. That's the number one thing that I find I can never quite get across to people who ask me for advice, or students that take a writing class from me: it's hard. It's harder than you think it is. And it never stops being hard.
I guess maybe Martin walked away because to him, performing was a means to an end. He continues to do interesting work. The fact that he hasn't thought about his act for almost a quarter-century and can look back on it now and still admire some of it, well, it makes me quietly hopeful. But mostly, I appreciate his toil. Just because you don't see the sweat doesn't mean it wasn't there all along.
Oh, and his encounter with Elvis is hilarious.
6) Paul and Rob Make Tracks for the Mosque
Now it can be told. Almost exactly a year ago, when the first articles about Little Mosque started to appear, I spent the night talking about the show with a bunch of people who write comedy in this country.
Our concerns about Little Mosque turned out to be mostly justified. The general consensus on the show when it came out was that it was cute, but not exactly gut-bustingly hilarious. That first, eight episode season finished with an average of a million viewers a week -- a great number, but troubling, since it represented just 50% of the initial tune in. What's more -- the show would never again have that burst of insane-pre-publicity. Something had to be done.
Then, wonder of wonders, something was done. I broke the story here on this blog in March.
Little Mosque on the Prairie has hired away two writers from Corner Gas for next season.Paul Mather (The Rick Mercer Report) is taking the showrunning reins and Robert Sheridan (Naked Josh) has also signed on. This is in addition to at least two of the writers from last season who will be continuing with the show.This is great news -- not just for Little Mosque. Mosque (which we must remind people, was rushed to air - originally it wasn't supposed to debut til Summer '07) will get the advantage of two people who've worked in the most professional and successful writing room in Canada.But it'll be good for Corner Gas too. The show is now a mature hit, and new blood and a new spin will be good. Plus people who've been there for a while can now move up. (Because there was nowhere else to go in Canada, that roster has been pretty static for the last few years.)And it's that last bit that's best for the industry as a whole. Imagine! Competition for Canadian writers.It almost makes me misty. If I had tears left to cry for Canadian TV, I mean.
By going to Mosque, Paul and Rob shook up a whole bunch of tenets in the Canadian industry. Shows in this country aren't used to competing for talent. There's a certain attitude of misplaced noblesse oblige that's ruled the producing and network class in this country.
Years ago, before I started writing, I knew a few guys who got a comedy show on the CBC. This was post-Kids in the Hall. They wrote their six episodes, they went to air, and they waited around to see if they would get picked up. And they waited. And they waited. And they waited. And then the CBC said, "well, we're not going to do it now, but maybe in a year."
And that was it. "Maybe in a year" is an attitude that springs from feeling you have all the time in the world, and all the cards, and that people are entirely at your mercy. But Corner Gas, having proved that it was a show that worked, that took bright, funny writers and let them work to the top of their abilities, trusted by both producers and network -- it was a template that begged to be copied.
As Mosque passes the halfway point in its sophomore season, the huge promo budget is spent; the articles have slowed to a trickle. And yeah, the ratings haven't been as stellar. They've stayed north of 750 000, for the most part. But most of the reviews, even from the Mosque haters, had to admit that Mosque was, in fact, funnier in year two. It's a better show, because it's more enjoyable. It works at being what it is: a comedy, instead of a show that fulfills a social agenda.
What's more, people tune in when they do know it's out there -- when it gets a little promo. The Christmas/New Years specials I wrote about in this space last week took Mosque back up to the million mark -- and a subsequent rerun drew almost 75% of the same audience.
What's more, Mosque's numbers this whole season have been in line with Global's numbers for Back To You, which enjoyed heavy promotion, ad buys, editorial coverage, and the presence of Patricia Heaton and Kelsey Grammer. That story hasn't really been written in the Canadian Press. Strange, that.
But in every article that does get written about Mosque, part of the story now is those two writers who were lured away from Corner Gas.
As for Gas? Kevin White moved up to become showrunner. They shuffled their staff -- creating openings on an existing show -- also a new thing in Canada. The show this season had a couple of episodes that drew their highest ratings ever.
And it didn't stop there. Robson Arms lost a couple of writers -- one to a new CBC show, J-Pod.
Is it possible that this could be, you know, a trend? Maybe experience and craft counts. And maybe down the road we'll start talking about how writers don't have to scramble or wait a year til the next season gets setup; maybe, just maybe, we'll start seeing real-money options on writers, and deals that reflect that creative is worth something; that in fact, it's everything.
From there, maybe you start getting more shows like Blood Ties, and The Border, and Corner Gas, where writers were respected, listened to, and allowed to do their very best, by tending to their field with the support of their producers.
Old battles will still need to be fought. There are those out there in Canculture circles who are disappointed that Little Mosque isn't as "socially responsible" now -- whatever the fuck that means. But whatever. The precedent is set. Paul and Rob have blazed a trail for every hardworking writer in the Canadian industry. And that episode where Layla wound up wearing the hijab to school because the popular girl said "nice scarf" was a great piece of comic construction. Well done, Paul, Rob, and the rest of the Mosque writing staff.
5) Spring Awakening
Won the Tony this year, and there's a ton of articles that have been written about it by people wiser and more erudite than me. But as a sometime dabbler in the musical form myself, I have to say that there's nothing more thrilling than seeing perfectly choreographed dancers & singers flail around the stage to a rousing chorus of "Totally Fucked."
Spring Awakening, based on Frank Wedekind's 1891 play, is coming of age. It's a rock musical that's worthy of the appelation. It's joyful and mournful and beautifully staged. It's the kind of spectacle you pay 100 dollars to see and never regret for a second.
I'd been aware of Duncan Sheik for awhile. Oh sure, sure, sometimes I'll put on the coffee house channel on the XM and you'll hear one of those sweet strummy songs -- but he was clearly saving something for the stage. The powerhouse performance of one of the show's more disturbing numbers by Sheik and his book/lyrcist Steven Sater on the Tonys proved that:
The great thing about doing things from period is the ability to use it to view our attitudes today through the same prism. So The Crucible says things about McCarthyism that even Arthur Miller wouldn't say directly, and Spring Awakening, by dramatizing the tortured coming of age of adolescents in 19th century Germany, shows not how far we've come -- but how disturbing the undercurrents are today -- the misinformation, self-hatred and mixed messages we throw at young people, and how toxic they can be.
Also, how ... ANGRY it makes you. Man, it's a weird thing when you pay a privileged premium to sit in a New York theater and remember what it was like to be PISSED OFF AT EVERYTHING!
LAST YEAR at this time, I had a tough time trying to narrow down what I'd put on the list, and what I'd leave off. I guess it's kind of indicative of where I am right now that this year has made for an entirely different challenge.
I managed to staff on two entirelydifferent shows this year, with just a couple of weeks off in between. I also spent the first quarter of 2007 in a different city -- part and parcel of the nomadic, spread-out reality of the Canadian Television business. It's the combination of those two events that most profoundly influenced my thinking this year. This was my year without time.
Friends -- bemusedly or not -- got used to me lamenting how I didn't have the time to read this year. Let's lay aside for a moment the fact that, of course, that's ridiculous -- I could have always snuck ten minutes before bed, or something -- but, you know, sometimes it's just easier to be angsty about things. I've never quite managed the feat of being able to read a novel just a few chapters at a time...I become a little monomaniacal and devour it all at once.
But my (self-directed) resentment over not being able to read as much as I'd like led me down a path when it came to other media, too. I broke up with TV shows at an alarming rate -- Sayonara 24, Prison Break, Rescue Me, and many others. I didn't go to the movies very much, either. It takes a lot to drag me out to the theatre these days -- and when I get there and see something shoddily made and crappy, well, it bothers me way more than it used to.
When you work as a TV writer, and you define yourself by how much time you haven't got, it can make you a crazy person, or it can affect your story sense. I chose the latter, and I think it's made for a positive turn in my work.
Simply put -- that impulse "Don't waste my time" started to affect the way I thought about story, character, act outs, and craft. I've had the tendency in the past to hit the "what is the audience getting out of this?" drum a little heavily in the past, but this is the year where it personalized for me. If we expect people to give us their limited time -- in a world where there's a new thing competing for that slice of time every ten seconds -- well, that means bringing game. It means not settling for good enough. It means making sure that if you're doing a comedy, that it's funny above all else. It means pushing to not settle for a twist that isn't a twist because you've seen it before; it means trying to find the original, even the original in the derivative -- not to show how clever you are or to say something important -- but because that's the compact you make with the audience: watch this, and I'm not going to waste your time.
In the past week, I've watched a bit of TV, I've read and listened to audiobooks and seen plays, and walked the streets of my favorite city in the world. I've revisited childhood haunts and come to terms with the fact that the most authentic pub you can find in Orlando, Florida is in a mall. I've had visits from relatives I see too infrequently, and a relaxing time with the people I've known all my life. The battery fills, ever so slowly.
At the same time, there's also the knowledge that what inspired me the most this year is the people who challenged me, supported me, explained and disagreed and synthesized with me -- in story rooms or in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies, in the side booth at the Paddock, or right here, in the comments section of this blog.
This blog became the thing I wanted it to be all along this year -- a great, rollicking conversation that brought creators, fans, TV partisans, onlookers and even the occasional troll together. I've had my hand slapped, my cheek tweaked, my mind blown, my heart broke, and my butt moved by the rumbles I've seen. I've had people describe this blog as a "must read in the Canadian industry" and as "just a bunch of insiders" - in the same conversation, by the way - but in the end, I've learned as much from my regular commenters as I've put out there, warts and all. So that's a good thing. I think.
Thanks also to the fabulous writers I got to work with in the room of two great series this year: Peter Mohan, Dennis Heaton, Travis McDonald, Shelley Eriksen, Mark Leiren-Young, Janet MacLean, Sarah Dodd, Steve Lucas, and David Barlow. And to the other writers who've given me encouragement and advice through the year.
But that's inside baseball. So, besides the flesh and bone inspiration, here are the things that helped shape my thinking this year. (And though there's a numbering here, remember, this does not connote ranking)
The 2007 List:
10) Radio, Radio...Tell Me a Story
For most of us, concurrent to falling into the TeeVee, there are campfires and ghost tales, or a relative who weaves family stories together in a compelling manner. Before we add picture and music, the mood, the idea, the thrill of the story is how it engages our imagination. And the oral tradition of storytelling is alive and well.
There's nothing like being able to fall asleep, drifting off to a world that's evoked entirely with voice and sound. Theater of the Mind can be mind expanding, if you do it right.
Matt Watts toils in radio series storytelling, and sometimes it seems like he suffers way more for his art than anybody should. But if the result is funny, geeky, wise, and wonderful programs like Canadia, well, then, your suffering pleases me, Matt. Bwaahaha. Best of all, if you go to Matt's site right now, you can get the skinny on how you can catch up on Canadia from the beginning, starting this Wednesday, Jan. 2. Yaaaay!
Afghanda is another CBC Radio drama that won a Canadian Screenwriting Award this year. It's tough and wise, and timely all at once.
And finally, Decoder Ring Theatre's original old-time radio serials make me pine for a time when people actually gathered around the radio. Now that Gregg and co. are collaborating with the Mad Pulp Bastard, who knows what evil (and good) will lurk in the click wheel of your Ipod?
9) Desperate Networks by Bill Carter
Meeting Bill Carter was one of the highlights of my trip to Banff this past June. His clear-eyed reporting on the Late Night Wars (as chronicled in The Late Shift) continued in this book.
Desperate Networks is actually a 2006 Publication, but I include it this year because it figured in just about every conversation I had with someone about the Canadian TV business this past year. Specifically, Carter's reportage revealed, fundamentally, that there's not a show on TV that got to be a success without a champion within the network. That champion usually isn't the person in charge, and it can sometimes be somebody not that far up the totem pole -- but it has to be someone with the tenacity and courage to stick their neck out and say, "this is good. this is what we should be doing." That kind of courage is sometimes in short supply in Canada -- because we're not a nation of risk takers.
DH revealed to me that there's no sense railing against network types.
The only path, difficult as it might seem, is to try to inspire them -- or at least infect them with your enthusiasm. I almost feel like every time I make that point in a conversation (and I've made it a lot this year -- I feel like I should send Bill a nickel.)
8) The Lookout
It's slightly bad form to punt to someone else's blogpost on your year-end list, but I want to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear for a moment, when you could check out The Artful Writer on a subject other than the strike. Craig wrote about this scene from The Lookout several months back. As I said up top, there weren't a lot of movies that got me into the theater this year, and even some that I did go for, like No Country For Old Men, didn't entirely do it for me.
I saw The Lookout near the end of my time in Vancouver. And months later, I still find myself thinking about it. It's not just that the level of the writing described in that scene above extends through the whole movie. It's not the aching beauty of the fireflies scene, the compelling character relationships, or the quiet, devastating moments that move me...it's all of those things. It's the kind of story that is complete -- the thing that I love about the movie form. As a guy who writes stuff that is meant to continue or go on, always, it's wonderful to see a story that's adult, complete, rich and human. The Lookout inserts itself into my dreams. If you haven't seen it, rent it or buy it. It's a thing of beauty.
THERE'S A VALUE for any young aspiring TV writer in reading books on the craft. Everyone's got a few that they'll recommend as Gospel. And there are sites like Jill Golick's and Jane Espenson's that are invaluable when you're trying to put together those first, all-important sample scripts.
But after a while, if you're not careful, it's easy to descend into a pit of script porn -- where you discuss format or technique endlessly; where discussing the minutae of craft starts to crowd out the ass-in-seat time that's actually going to get you somewhere. For all the resources now available to the aspiring, there are very few, I think, that offer the one thing you desperately need: perspective. A leg up so that your baby-writer gaffes aren't fatal, a way for you to understand what you're getting into before you're too far down the path.
Billion Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson's Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing (available right now as a bargain book from Amazon...5.99!) isn't just the truest, most straightforward tome I've ever read about the actual life and process of writing for TV, it also serves as a pretty decent history of the last twenty years of the business -- and it's now particularly timely as a backgrounder to how we found ourselves in the morass of the current WGA strike.
This book is also the only TV-writing related book I'd recommend to a fan -- somebody who has no intention of ever writing themselves, but is interested enough in how the game works to want to know more. Billion Dollar Kiss sometimes reads like a good thriller, sometimes like a psychological study. If you read this book, you'll definitely be the smartest cookie in the sleeve when anyone wants to talk about realityTV, or the strike, or how a show gets made, or why TV sucks so often -- and why it's good, when it's good.
That's a pretty tall order, but Stepakoff's straightforward prose and his willingness to explore his own mistakes and shortcomings makes for a refreshing, and ultimately inspirational read.
He also nails the personality of a TV writer to a T:
It's hard to explain in succint terms just what makes a good TV writer, and by association good TV, because of course you're dealing with something that is subjective. But by this time, just like I saw a pattern in the pathology of all my colleagues, I saw similarities among the most talented. Obviously, they all have good skills, a mastery -- or at least an intuitive understanding -- of craft. But with hard work and commitment that can be picked up. There's something else, too. The best way I can explain it is tha they have a sensitivity to the world around them, a sort of sixth sense. They pay attention to the little things that others miss. Every outing to the bank, mall, or post office is a chance to people-watch. They listen for subtext instead of just what someone is simply stating. They watch body language, what someone is wearing, how someone is behaving. They always look for the inside joke. They examine and consider how everything tastes and smells, to the point where even a simple lunch from Baja Fresh is subjected to extended critical analysis. Everything is turned over, reflected upon. They look for connections in the chance. Meaning in the random. Metaphors in everything. Their interactions with the world beocme a process of looking for secrets and clues that will unlock the Great Truths, so that these things can be examined and written about for the ever-approaching next episode...
At times, frankly, this life can be downright exhausting...Simply put, TV writers are original and whacked-out people.
That last part's important. Elsewhere he puts it in less diplomatic terms, describing himself and other TV writers as "nutjobs."
And we are.
But that's not what makes Stepakoff's story compelling. What gives Stepakoff a leg up is the peculiarity of his timing. He entered the business -- thanks to a break from University alum John Wells -- just as the 1988 WGA strike got underway.
Besides evocative passages describing how he came to sign with his first agent, the author relates a story about his struggle with being a brand new writer, not yet union, in a time of labor unrest. A top exec offers him a secret deal to scab for $10 000 -- at a time when he's flat broke, and fresh in town. The struggle is something that I imagine several people are going through right now as I type this. You owe it to yourself to read about his experience, and how he came to turn the offer down.
Stepakoff's career straddles the end of 80's style schlock tv like Simon & Simon, to stints writing for The Wonder Years,Sisters, and Disney animation. He witnessed first hand, the gold rush into TV writing that defined the 90's (he runs down the numbers...and they're staggering) and the end of fin-syn rules that profoundly changed the relationship of studio and network to writer, and led to the rise of the conglomerates (and in many ways led us to the brink of the current strike.) And for process wonks, the insight into the story room and production process behind Dawson's Creek (where Stepakoff worked starting in a very troubled season 3) is worth the price of the book on its own.
But there's other wisdom in here too. Why is TV so white, and why does the industry consistently fail to deal with its diversity problem? It's in there. He's also sympathetic to actors in a way that many writers aren't:
For a writer to work on a troubled show, your career is not on the line. For one thing, everyone around town knows it's a troubled show, and for another your agent is already working on getting you another. The most important thing for a writer's career is not the show, not the credit, it is to work hard, contribute to the Room, write scripts that satisfy the showrunner -- basically to get along. If you do these things you get good recommendations, your showrunner and your colleagues want to hire you again, and good buzz follows you, no matter how stupid the show.
However, if you are an actor on a stupid show, it's your face saying those stupid words. You become forever associated with them. Actors' businesses are the characters they are associated with, and if the characters on the TV show they are doing are not being cared for, they get tense.
The effect of POD deals, Vertical Integration, how MTM invented Quality Television, why a pitch is easier to sell than a script, and how the end of independent studios damaged the training up of young talent...it's all in there. If you read this book, you'll understand TV a lot better...you'll understand why this strike is so bitter, and you'll hopefully see why writer-driven TV is really the only sure path to putting out a decent product.
Interestingly enough, though Stepakoff works in L.A. there's a lot of parallel wisdom in here that informs the Canadian industry. The problems aren't the same, not by a long shot. But in reading Stepakoff's explanation of fin-syn, I saw parallels to the 1999 CRTC decision that killed drama in this country. That's the thing about clear-headed prose. It helps you see things -- even things you already know -- just a little bit differently. I'll be working that into a separate post in a few days.
Billion Dollar Kiss is like the Cliff's Notes of how to live as a TV writer. It's a fast read, just over 300 pages -- and it's wise. And like any good TV story, it even ends on a note of hope.
RIGHT. I can't see it. Cause I'm, um....a long way away right now. But it occurs to me, I do believe, that the finale of Across The River To Motor City airs on most Citytv stations in Canada tonight.
If you've watched til the end, and seen the whole show, I hope you were entertained. My profound thanks for sticking with it.
And yes, shooting in Tiger Stadium was cool. The director, Michael DeCarlo, tells me the fog was totally flukey. They just went with it.
AS YOU FLAIL and digest turkey, and contemplate Macy's disappointing fourth quarter, know, chickens, that I toil on the Year End List, as well as something about the zeitgeist and U.S. Theater and also, um, a book review.
Stop. It's coming. What the hell have you done in the last 72 hours, smartass?
I MET HIM once. A generous smile. A quiet, humble, decent man. He spoke up and out about human rights. And he helped change jazz. Forever.
I also bought his Powerbook 170 when he sold it to a Toronto used dealer. It was great to have him in Toronto. He'd pop up every once in a while, even in his later, post-stroke years, and his presence brought warmth and smiles from everyone. Jazz never had a better Ambassador. Toronto's lost another of our icons.
Here's some clips to show you what was lost:
With Ella!
And at Newport.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Peterson. Thank you for your gift to us all.
IT'S STRANGE returning to a place where you were a child, and where you haven't been for a long time. I've been back to Florida only a handful of times since I moved away when I was eight. The last time was Christmas 2004.
Last night, after a long-delayed flight and an interminable wait for a rental car, I found the house by muscle memory. It was 3:30 in the morning, after all.
What struck me driving in though, was all these long-ago thoughts about the two Christmasses I spent in Florida as a child.
One year, we went to this big party up at a golf club. And at the end of the party, Santa arrived on a helicopter. It was impressive, to be sure, but it didn't really beat the whole sleigh and reindeer thing. He handed out presents, the whole magilla, but the pomp and pageantry couldn't make up for something being... off.
Then, the next year, Santa came in on waterskiis. And I just thought, "man, they're really messing with Santa's dignity there." It didn't feel right. It felt ... sweaty ... like it was too hard to work in the legend, so they were going to shoehorn something else in there. It was outrageous, bending and stretching Santa like that. Had they no shame? The moral of this story? Writers are born early. And the first thing that comes is indignation, and a desire to protect the character.
FLYING IN THE United States sucks. That's all I'm going to say.
This morning, better rested and all, I came across this interesting article on Firefox News.
Written by somebody with the delightful handle of Merlin Missy, Canon Versus Fanon Versus Authorial Intent explores three sides of how fans react to work, and order their understanding of a constructed Universe. If you've never dabbled or watched genre stuff, this might seem mindblowingly arcane to you, but it's actually sweet -- and her deconstruction of the point is very wise.
Author intent is the personal canon of the person (or people) who wrote the source.When J.K. Rowling said that Harry and Ron became Aurors as adults, that is author intent.
Author intent is not canon.
Let me repeat, because it's going to be important: author intent is not canon.
Most authors know what happens next to their characters, who they marry, how many kids they have, that the grandkids are called Vera, Chuck and Dave.Their favorite breakfast cereal.How they're going to die.Some authors end up giving out all this information, either via writing it in the text or including it as an appendix in the back ala J.R.R. Tolkien.Some writers can't, because the medium (TV, film) won't allow it, but that doesn't stop them from knowing what they want to do.In this day and age, message boards allow them to share with fans what they intended to do, had they time.It's lovely and helpful for fans who want to know more.It is not, however, canon.
The same thing can be said for authorial interpretation of the source material.Canon is what is in the source material.Reader/viewer interpretation is up to the individual, although the author may have intended something else entirely.For example, Ray Bradbury recently claimed that Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship, but instead warned against the perils of too much television.In an episode of Torchwood, a character utilizes the alien equivalent of Rohypnol in order to get lucky.Showrunner Russell T. Davies was called on the carpet for this by some female fans, who said these actiosn made the character a rapist; Davies said it was "just a joke" and did not.Authors don't always intend to show what appears in the text, but the text is the canon.
What's more, I completely agree with her about authorial intent -- when the work is over, I mean. The final word on interpretation can't be the author's, or why is it out there to read in the first place? Understandings change. Hemingway was once famously quoted when asked about the symbolism in his books: "I suppose there must be symbols, since people keep finding them."
One of the most famous cases for me of the limitations of "authorial intent" is actually an afterword to George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. There's quite a tart essay at the back about how Eliza could not, ever, under any circumstances, ever wind up with Higgins. And I read it, and I saw what he was saying, and in the end, I thought, "I don't care."
That is the miracle of an art that demands to be interpreted.
Next week brings the introduction of U.S. Agent Bianca LaGarda (Sofia Milos, from CSI: Miami, and The Sopranos) -- who shakes up the squad. There's also a bit of romance and a soupcon of tragedy.
Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. after a very funny Little Mosque on the Prairie, -- it features a curling faceoff -- you gotta see it...comes Sophie, a comedy about a woman on the verge. It's funny -- I was always amazed in the UK how people became stars from being Page 3 girls or appearing in ads, but I gotta tell you, every conversation I've had about this show over the last month has at some point defaulted to, "you know that outrageously hot woman in the Bailey's commercial? Yeah, she's the lead in that show."
