Reprint: 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.

Righteous Ragin: A Daegan Digression

I HAVE ACTUALLY managed to stress myself into a neverending headache that Advil cannot cure. So I must still turtle and do my work.

But Award-winning JPod writer Daegan Fryklind wrote a bit down in the comments on my CBC launch piece that deserves promotion. So, over to her, then:

If people want to rally for Canadian TV, let them eat cake. I know you've pointed to your rules of engagement, and have shaken a finger at the jPod fans -- no, no, don't do it that way, don't alienate the CBC by telling them they're stupid -- of course this makes sense from the outside, but when you're a fan of a cancelled show in full stage 2 kubler-ross anger, some words are bound to get thrown.

Of course it'd be best of all if the fans in the world fought a fair fight (say that five times fast), but the fact that they're fighting at all for Canadian shows is heartening. Bless them for that. Bless any fan who fights to keep their favourite show on the air, who demands to see more. Yes, we never got the numbers we needed. But we got a consistent fanbase who came every Friday night.

We mattered to some people. And that matters to us, and in the end, that should matter to anyone who works in or is a fan of Canadian TV. Heaven help the system if we produce shows that don't raise a cry when they're cancelled.

Yup. Can't disagree with a word of that. And more importantly -- what did that passionate coterie of Jpod fans see in the show? And how can we make more shows that speak to that, while also speaking to a bigger audience? Is that doable? Desirable? Discuss.

Now I've gotta concept meeting and then I have to drill a hole in my head to release the foul humours.

Reprint: Prep, Day One

While I toil on prepping one show and outlining another, here's an oldie but goodie. This refers to the making of Episode 7 Season One of The Border, "Family Values," which will re-air this summer on CBC.

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.

Taking The Phone off the Hook

SORRY. I JUST REALLY need to focus right now. And too much has gotta happen too fast. I'm going to pre-load some old "classic" craft posts. I'll be back soon as I can be.

Five Second Movie Night

WELL, IT SEEMS like now we're down to brass tacks.

I start prepping an episode in two days but I'm also trying to pump out an outline for my next episode. It's a little bit stressful. Not only isn't there much time to blog, but there's really no time for other things, too.

I mean, I want to go see the new Indiana Jones movie, review or no review, but I just can't. So maybe the best thing to do is just cut my losses and enjoy the first one. At least I know it's good. But I don't have time for that either.

I guess I'll just have to enjoy the 5 second version.

A clever YouTuber who calls himself "ThatGuyWithTheGlasses" has done a bunch of wonderful 5 second edits of popular films. Others have tried to imitate him, but few capture his wit. So just cause I really do need to relax, I'm going to spend some time taking in an entire film fest of my favorites:













Ahhhh. That's better. Nothing like a great one minute night at the movies. Now, back to work.

CBC Fall 2008

THIS AFTERNOON IN the CBC Atrium on Front Street, Executive VP Richard Stursberg almost sounded...cocky.

It's true -- CBC's had a very good season. Mercer's at record numbers, Mosque held, and The Border and Sophie bested previous scripted efforts, leading to a kind of qualified optimism for what's to come. The CBC even scored with its second attempt to launch a daytime talk show.

Depending on how you fiddle the numbers, CBC even beat Global this year. And, as Stursberg pointed out several times, "we did it with all-Canadian shows."

It's probably the closest you can get to gloating without...well...it's close. Let's leave it at that. :)

CBC had their best season since 2001. The slogan for the upcoming season, "Canada Lives Here," suggested a comfort level with the programs. As they were announced, the warmest applause was reserved for David Suzuki, but The Border, Sophie, and the departing Air Farce got an ovation from the crowd that was certainly more enthusiastic than desultory.

So the schedule announced this afternoon by Kirstine Layfield, the Executive Director of Network Programming, looks a lot like what went before. In fact, two of the most notable changes come in the Fringes of the dayparts -- two game shows formerly on CTV will be used as lead ins to lift the rest of the all-Canadian schedule. Wheel of Fortune at 5:30 will flow into the regional newscasts, and Jeopardy at 7:30 (which, let's face it, is still the only Quiz show still out there that requires you to, you know, know stuff) will lead into the 8'o'clock Prime Time block.

When I was a boy, they used to call this, "providing a lead in." It'll be interesting to see if the investment pays off.

I got to interview Layfield just before the kickoff, and the results of that convo will be posted later this week.

For now, though, here's something that got sent to me that blows me away because of what it suggests -- actual break-through. I mean, man...if fans are out there doing shipper videos, that means somebody out there in viewerland likes you.



You can read CP's coverage of the CBC Launch here.

Leo Awards

THE LEO AWARDS are awards that celebrate the West's slice of the production pie. They were handed out over the weekend in Vancouver.

We're all about the whole Canadian industry here in Sticksville, so I point you to this Vancouver Sun article about the winners.

(Unlike the Geminis, the Leos apparently don't have the Sticks on their mailing list)

You West Coasters can quibble about the legitmacy of the Awards all you want, (supposedly, big whigs like Chris Haddock don't participate, which is why you don't see Intelligence nominated,) we out here in Central Canada do not have a dog in the hunt one way or another, so we will not express an opinion beyond our fervent hopes that you all were dressed up and handsome.

See, we don't have Ontario Awards for Film and TV. Just living in beautiful, cosmopolitan Toronto every day is its own rich award.

That's a joke, Vancouver. Ease off the throttle.

Anyway, special writerly congrats to scriptor extraordinaire Daegan Fryklind for her Best Writing Award for JPod, and also to Blake Corbet for his script for Elijah.

Mea Culpa Pulpa

A FRIEND OF the blog wrote last week, in response to this post, and specifically, this excerpt:

"And this staffing season (which in Canada is to the U.S. staffing season as a Mosquito is to the U.S.S. Nimitz) actually saw, for the first time, active competition for writers - with 'go' shows going after the same small pool of talent. It's ... an interesting development, to say the least. And instead of the usual for-me-to-succeed- you-must-fail Darwinism that's always prevailed, there's a genuine feeling of camaraderie and support that's emerged, largely in the last year, year and a half. More and more, it seems like maybe a rising tide actually does float all boats.

I know you weren't around in the 80s and 90s, but there was a community of writers. And it was an active group of working writers who were all in demand in a MUCH more active market (more series and every show shooting 22 or more episdoes) who were fought over and who bumped their rates time and time again because there were so many shows looking for their skills. Unfortunately, many of those people can no longer find work, have lost the stomach for the bullshit involved in the business or have, quite literally, died.

Yup. And as the same person has been wont to exclaim, "Then, people bought houses."

Every generation tends to skew its own experience, and I'm certainly no different. Anecdotally, I know that there was a period in the not-so-distant past when things were much better for TV writers in this country.

I've had the experience of being told every time I've done something, that it was the worst time to do it. When I graduated high school, it was supposedly the worst time to go to University (I forget why now.) When I graduated University, it was the worst time in years to be entering the Media Job Market. (The Job board in my faculty that had about 14 or 15 jobs on it in my first year, sported just two when I graduated. And one of those was in Fort Frances, Ontario.) When I quit my job to go to the Canadian Film Centre, it was the worst time to try to get into writing in Canada.

After a while you just gotta harden your heart to all that and plunge on.

But I'm also of the generation that's not entirely self-focused. So that leads to a question. (Let's see if we can raise any of you lurking leviathans of the good old days)

If there was one thing -- just one -- about working as a TV writer in the 80's and early 90's in Canada that you could bring back, what would it be?

And "free flowing cocaine" is not an acceptable answer. Just saying.

Puttin It Out There...

SO, MY SUGGESTON that the almost-omnipotent TV knowledge of Macleans TV blogger Jaime Weinman might make him a good consultant, or even CBC President, was met with some amusement by his Macleans colleagues.

It's not just Macleans, of course. Any TV writer with a decent working knowledge of the medium, or anybody who reads Desperate Networks, for instance, knows that bench strength at a network is a rare and incredibly valuable thing.

But sure, maybe it was an outrageous suggestion.

Or...was it?

NEW YORK, May 23, 2008 -- Frank Rich has signed on as a creative consultant to HBO, it was announced today by Richard Plepler, co-president, and Michael Lombardo, president programming group and west coast operations.

In this capacity, Rich will both initiate and help develop projects at the pay-TV network.

"Frank is one of the smartest and most astute observers of popular culture and we are thrilled that we can call upon his judgment and superb instincts," said Plepler and Lombardo.

Added Rich, "To my mind, HBO has always been the gold standard for some of the best work in television. I'm excited to be a part of this collaboration."

Rich will recuse himself from writing about HBO and Time Warner in his weekly OpEd column, which is largely about politics and public affairs.

See, Toronto media elite? Not a crazy idea at all. I mean, look...they do it in New York and everything!

Seventy Thirty?

DAMNIT. LOOKS LIKE The New York Times giveth and taketh away, depending on your perspective. There's a piece on the new Adam Sandler film, You Don't Mess With the Zohan. When I started reading the article, I think it's fair to suggest that I had less than zero intentions of seeing the film. But Damn you, Dave Izkoff. It actually sounds interesting. Some excerpts:

About eight years ago Mr. Sandler conceived of the Zohan character, an Israeli assassin who has been trained to hate and kill Arabs; exhausted by the ceaseless bloodshed, he fakes his own death and flees to New York to become a hairdresser. There he finds Jews and Arabs living together in grudging if not quite harmonious tolerance.

At the time, Mr. Sandler (who rarely if ever gives interviews to the print news media) delegated the script to Mr. Smigel, who had frequently written for him on “Saturday Night Live,” and Judd Apatow, a former roommate of Mr. Sandler’s, who was not yet the one-man comedy juggernaut of “Knocked Up” and “40-Year-Old Virgin” fame.

Both writers found “Zohan” a subversive, somewhat improbable assignment. “There was always this question of, can you make this movie?” Mr. Apatow said in a phone interview. “Because it is making fun of the fact that people are so mad at each other.”

In revisions of “Zohan,” the Mideast nations cited in the script were given fictitious names, and their ancient territorial feud became a dispute over orange groves.

However, Mr. Sandler and his team ultimately returned to a draft that did not disguise the political subject matter, believing that some filmgoers would be upset by it no matter how subtle their approach.

“Any time you do any version of comedy that has anything to do with race or prejudice, you’re always going to make some people mad,” Mr. Smigel said. “Whether your intention is pure or not, they’re going to find something to be angry about.”

To the extent that “Zohan” deals with the intractable cycle of violence in the Middle East, it is careful not to take sides, and mocks itself for making such perilous source material a subject for comedy. In the midst of elaborate fight sequences, its characters debate the region’s complex history of aggression and retribution, even as they continue to act it out. (“I’m just saying, it’s not so cut and dried!” an assailant shouts as he falls off a balcony.)

The movie does not dare to suggest solutions to these conflicts, or to offer false hope that they will soon be resolved: in one scene, three Arab New Yorkers attempting to take down Zohan call the “Hezbollah Phone Line” for instructions on how to make a bomb. In a recorded message, they are told the information is not currently available during peace talks with Israel, and are instructed to call back “as soon as negotiations break down.”

Even in satirical discussions of race and ethnicity, Mr. Smigel said, a certain amount of self-censorship might be prudent. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that people can’t freely call me a dirty Jew, like they might have been able to 30 years ago,” he said.

For now, advocacy groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations are taking a wait-and-see attitude with “Zohan.” Given Mr. Sandler’s previous work, “I would say I’m a little worried,” said Ahmed Rehab, that organization’s national strategic communications director. He added that Mr. Sandler, like all artists, has a right to freedom of expression.

Mr. Badreya, who was recently seen playing an Afghan terrorist in “Iron Man,” said that by offering Arab or Muslim characters that are in any way divergent from the usual Hollywood stereotypes, “Zohan” is a step in the right direction.

“The movie presents what happened to me,” said Mr. Badreya, who grew up in Port Said, Egypt, during the 1967 and 1973 wars and emigrated to the United States in 1979. “Since it happened to me, it will work for someone like me.”

Mr. Badreya said that the comedy in “Zohan” was not quite evenly divided between ridiculing Arabs and ridiculing Jews. “The jokes are not 50-50,” he said. “It’s 70-30. Which is great. We haven’t had 30 for a long time. We’ve been getting zero. So it’s good.”

The Best Self

WOW. A GREAT profile of Salman Rushdie by Patricia Cohen in today's New York Times, which ends with a quote that made me clap my hands in joyful recognition. Which was unfortunate as I was holding a coffee at the time.

“There’s a writing self which is not quite your ordinary social self and which you don’t really have access to except at the moment when you’re writing, and certainly in my view, I think of that as my best self,” he said. “To be able to be that person feels good; it feels better than anything else.”

The Political vs. The Personal: Elijah meets Recount

ONE COMES WITH a chad, the other a feather. Both make their points with grace and a little humor. And both are richer viewing experiences for knowing the context which follows.

Canadians have a rare viewing choice this weekend. Two movies about politics. It's a measure of how colonized our culture truly is that the homegrown story might seem the less familiar.

First, then, to RECOUNT (TMN/MOVIE CENTRAL, Sunday) a classy HBO Films retelling of the debacle that ensued in Florida after the botched 2000 Presidential Election. With star studded performances from Kevin Spacey, John Hurt, and Denis Leary, clearly this is the film that's got the higher pedigree.

All the queasy ins-and-outs of that election (doesn't it seem 1000 years ago?) are here...Gore turning the limo around, the first hint that thousands of elderly voters in Florida mistakenly pulled a lever for Pat Buchanan, the Bush/Cheney bully boys airlifted in to play the part of "activists."

What's interesting about this film is its authenticity in all the public details. The State of Florida has something called "the Sunshine Law" which forces an incredible degree of openness on the government there (Florida may leave a bad taste in your mouth for what happened there in 2000, but this law is exemplary, a model of its kind.) so the filmmakers were given access to many meeting rooms, locations, and the tapes of most of the relevant meetings and committees.

But since the drama is so familiar in what played out on CNN, the film rises and falls on its postulations of what went on behind closed doors. And for the sake of verisimilitude, they largely pull it off.

First, there's Laura Dern's performance as Katherine Harris, a woman who during and after the debacle aptly proved herself to be an over-her-head wingnut thrust into something she was clearly unprepared for. Warren Christopher, the leader of the Gore legal team, is portrayed as somewhat feckless -- a man concerned with propriety and honor, not willing to go the extra mile to win it for his guy. Christopher has come out and complained about his portrayal in the film in recent days, but I have to say that he comes off as honorable -- but too concerned with history. The rules of dramatic convention kind of demand a price from Christopher -- he did leave halfway through the process (a sick daughter) and he also lost.

The great thing about the film -- and Danny Strong's capable screenplay, is that it manages to portray the leader of the Bush team, James Baker III (Tom Wilkinson) as likable, affable, and even in a way, principled, even as he outmaneuvers the Gore team and perpetrates one of the most awful miscarriages of the popular will in American history. "We're in a street fight for the Presidency," is Baker's first piece of advice. And from the get-go, you have the sense that this is an essential truth about Republican politics for the last several years. You've heard it before -- it's pure Rove: all that matters is the win. As a primer and a caution, Dems should watch this film, and watch the likable Republicans clean their clock once more.

The outrages are too painful to recount, but they're here: the African Americans stricken from the voter rolls, the uncounted votes, the mealy mouthed Supreme Court decision that handed the Presidency to Bush but sidestepped making precedent...the whole sordid mess. And lurking in the background is your knowledge that once the fight was over, the tough but pragmatic Republicans like Baker, they were shoved immediately aside so we could get Wolfowitz, Cheney, and the fantasy of the neocons. The pain may have cooled, but the most searing thing about election's dark comic take on the whole 2000 thing is this:

The punchline, seven years later, is 4000 dead American boys, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, a wrecked economy, and oil at 130 dollars a barrel.

Street fights never end well.

What a delight, then, to take in ELIJAH. (CTV, Sunday) It's a retelling of an important footnote in Canadian history, when a single MLA from Manitoba, Elijah Harper, used parliamentary procedure to scuttle the Meech Lake Accord, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's attempt to broker a Constitutional Deal with Quebec.

Harper is a shy figure, the first treaty Indian ever to serve as an elected MLA in Canada. We see his early life, kidnapped and forced into residential schools. The POV and narration is darkly comic, with captions from the Indian Point of view.

A delicious early scene shows Harper's political philosophy forming when he wanders into a presentation on the Indian "White Paper" being presented by a young Indian Affairs Minister from the Trudeau Government. The man's name is never said, but from the moment he opens his mout' an you here dat voice, you know who you're listening to.

The film is full of deft touches like that -- and it gets points for explaining some complicated constitutional concepts through the use of inventive Python-esque animations. There's a bit of mawkishness in the middle, but the performance of Billy Merasty as Harper and the fierce Glen Gould as Phil Fontaine carry you through.

Like in Recount, the big pols are mostly seen as figures on the TV screen, which adds to the realism. And it's in the human moments as Harper's refusal to budge ticks the days toward ratification away, where you really get to see the nut of the story. The sense is strongly put across that the impasse might have been solved, if only Mulroney came to meet the natives. Mulroney says he can't because he has to meet Nelson Mandela. You think that's a flourish too far for the script -- no way, no way could that have happened without anyone seeing the irony in the situation and the parallels with the Native struggle...

...and then they show the footage of Mulroney and Mandela on the tarmac.

Ultimately, we know that Canada didn't break apart -- and what's more, Harper's actions finally got Native issues onto the front burner. The quiet man with a feather and the word 'no,' accomplished more than a team of democrats counting undervotes and dimpled chads ever could. Harper makes a cameo near the end of the film that's unbearably moving.

It's nice to have a guy named Harper in a Canadian story who you can actually be proud of...anyway, if you've gotta pick one film, I'd say go with Elijah. It's well told. Screenwriter Blake Corbet and Director Paul Unwin pull off a dynamic story far better than many of CTV's recent real life films. I've been hot and cold on this CTV Programming stream, but when they put out a film like this, you have to give them props. It's relevant, it's Canadian, and it's interesting as hell.

What If Everyone Hates Their Homegrown TV?

REMEMBER SCREENWIPE? That's the BBC Four series starring presenter Charlie Brooker. If you've got any grounding in TV at all, you've probably been forwarded one or two YouTube clips dealing with "How TV Is Made."

(Those links are courtesy of Will Dixon, who originally posted them. See Beavis, you do good!)

Anyway, along about sometime on my cottageless Holiday Weekend, last weekend, I managed to go back to YouTube and try to find some more Brooker I'd missed.

And that's when things got really interesting.

See, a couple years ago now, Brooker took Screenwipe to the USA, and did a show from Hollywood, focusing on American TV -- from a British perspective. What follows in the clips below is not always what you think; it is an outside survey of the medium. (ON YouTube, the special is posted in six parts...I've embedded the most relevant ones below, and linked to a couple of others. Part One is mostly forgettable filler and setup.)

Part Two is where it gets really interesting. Brooker compares American Format sales to British ones -- delving back into pre-history for All in the Family and Sanford and Son. He makes the point that transfers the other way don't work, and shows a short clip of a British version of Golden Girls as proof.

Now, those of us more familiar with the American oeuvre might be sputtering, "well, wait...the American Coupling was dreck, and the American Cracker didn't work, and don't even get me started at the Fawlty Towers thing with Bea Arthur..."

...but that's the point, you see. And as we all nervously contemplate the American version of Life on Mars, what this special does a really interesting job of is showing just how a slight shift in perspective changes ... well ... your entire perspective.

The commentary on the grinding down of the American sitcom practice is good, but the really juicy bits come when they show a bunch of British format shows to an American focus group.




But just when you think you know where it's going, look what happens when the Americans get their view of the less prettified English version of the Soap Opera...



Let's just skip over the next couple -- you can go watch them on YouTube on your leisure, and while they're interesting, they don't really do anything to make my point. (Which I'm getting to.)

Part 3 -- On the "Fear" sold on American TV

Part 5 -- Comparing British & American Reality Cop shows, & "The Wire,"


Finally, let's watch the last segment -- and go right to the end and check out Brooker's wrap up.



Did you catch it? Sure, mixed in there is some very interesting social commentary (especially when comparing how Americans are fear-soaked in their TV presentations) but the baseline Brooker comes to in his wrapup is that British TV lacks imagination.

He thinks, to put it in Brooker's own vernacular, that it's shit.

Now I know that's going to come as quite a shock to several different constituencies of Canadian Television viewer. There's a anglophilia at work in TV circles here that's sometimes breathtakingly unhelpful. In fact, the whole reality of having American TV pumped in over our networks 24/7 has made Canadian tastes weirdly schizophrenic.

But not really in the important ways. Brits run down their homegrown cop shows with the same epithets and dismissiveness that Canadians do theirs. Brooker bemoans that British programmers don't take chances.

And here we look at TV and say, "why can't we be more like British TV?"

That's when we're not trying to be more like American TV.

For me, the most interesting thing is how I keep coming back to that American focus group. Sure, Brooker sets them up to react with incredulity to verrrrrry boring clips from Cop Shows and Bullseye. (Yes. Darts. On TV.) But the moment they're shown something different -- a paradigm shift away from what they're used to -- gritty British Soap Eastenders, they're intrigued.

The same thing happens with Canadian shows, too. Exactly the same. The pale US imitations fade and fail and are utterly despised.

But the moment they catch a glimpse of a Slings and Arrows, or DaVinci, or Intelligence, or Trailer Park Boys or Corner Gas, they're intrigued. They recognize not just that it's good -- but that it's different than what they're used to seeing.

Where British self-hating TV trends and Canadians diverge is that there does seem to be a recognition of what is done homegrown that's good. You don't see Brooker taking the piss out of Bleak House or Cracker or Prime Suspect ... Whereas here, it's not unusual to hear people running down Corner Gas or Durham County or - okay, it's self serving, sure -- The Border just because it doesn't stand up to some imagined quality bar in their head -- a quality bar that's distorted not by their own self-hating -- which I may have claimed here on more than one occasion, but by the schizophrenic thinking that anything, from anywhere is better than their homegrown fare.

We don't even judge our own shit right, because we're overrun with another country's shit.

In Britain, they see ALL of what they produce -- whereas we only get the best.

BUT, we see pretty much ALL of what the Americans produce. When Canadians go down and buy programs each spring to be simulcast? They're the only ones snapping up all the shit that gets canceled after two eps. The rest of the world waits a season to see if the show's any good. So yeah, they see CSI. [Insert flop here] not so much.

Still, it both gladdens and perplexes me to see the same critiques being set up -- it looks cheap, it looks like this, it isn't daring. The grass is definitely not greener. That being said, the fact that we have eight or ten series currently being exported....for a nation of 30 million, only 23 million of which speak English.....you know, maybe we're not the best judges...maybe we're actually doing well?

I don't know anymore.

I just know I don't want to watch darts.

Food for thought, anyway.

When Does a Show Peak?

IN THE MIDST of an entertaining paean to one-season wonder show Square Pegs, Jaime Weinman of Macleans came up with the following wonderful digression, breaking down various types of shows and when they peak:

My theory is that shows that are very premise-dependent are usually at their best in the first season, while shows that are character-dependent are never at their best in the first season. A procedural show is often, not always but often, at its best in early episodes because the writers are using their best ideas early and the formula is still fresh and new. Whereas a sitcom, or a very character-dependent hourlong show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, always improves in the second season when the characters’ relationships have developed further.

Apologies to Chris Haddock, but if anybody's gonna run the CBC and pick shows, shouldn't it be a guy like this? Weinman consistently shows an incredibly detailed, trenchant understanding of the TV medium. His disquisitions and analyses of genres and TV series shows a sensitivity to both audience trends and issues of craftsmanship. He has watched more drama and comedy than any network executive I've ever met (and I've met some who've seen a lot of tv. A lot.)

Last time I checked, the CBC job was filled, but any time somebody moves on, if they decide to make "knowledge of television genres and trends" a premium -- here's a guy to take a long hard look at.

A smart network would make him a creative consultant a la the deal Al Magee had with Showcase. Just sayin.

The Question and The Answer

I HEARD THIS week from a few fans of the show I worked on in Vancouver last year, BLOOD TIES, that they'd heard from Lifetime, the U.S. Broadcaster, that the show was not going to be picked up for a second season; that the reasoning was that it had not performed up to ratings expectations.

Which kind of closes an open secret door. It's been pretty clear that Lifetime wasn't going to pick up the show for the longest time now. Since I was just a hired hand, and it wasn't my show, I kept mum whenever anybody asked me about it because that's what you do.

But now that it's official, and coincidentally, because I got more than four emails this week asking essentially the same question in essentially the same way, now I'm gonna answer it.

The question I've been asked this week is: Do you think that BLOOD TIES is going to come back, that someone else will pick it up and more episodes will be made?

The answer is No. No I don't.

Because there's more than one Vampire show that's been shit-canned recently, I should also answer the email that I've gotten from a couple of Moonlight fans: Do you think that Moonlight has a chance to wind up somewhere else?

No. No I don't.

I put those two things together because I'm now leading into the larger point: I'm not the guy who owns either property, and the dude who's doing the negotiations, so I can't really say for sure. I don't know for sure. I'm not involved. Take that with any grain of salt that you want. (And I'll get back to this, too. Remember the salt.)

I would say that Moonlight probably had a better chance because it had been on CBS, but since they passed, and since the sets have been struck, and since the Jericho thing worked out so well, I'm gonna say full page ads or no full page ads, that show's probably toast. And if the network version's done, then the cable version's definitely done. (Again, all this is my-- you know what? Can we just take as read for the rest of this post that at the end of every paragraph, I'm silently mouthing that warning that appears on every DVD now about the opinions not necessarily reflecting the opinions of anybody other than the people making the statement, and not the corporation that owns the show? Can we just take that as read? Good, cause qualifying this shit is exhausting. )

I think it's a shame that Moonlight and Blood Ties are both toast. Because I think vampire stories are fun and I love'em and I think there should always be some sort of Vamp show on the air. (Although, seriously dudes, that whole can go out in the day thing is MONUMENTALLY fucking cheating. NOT cool. It makes the tragic scary vamps seem like my redheaded friends. And trust me, none of them are particularly scary. Okay. Maybe K-Mac. But still.)

Blood Ties is tragic for me because it was fun to work on, and I think it was a fun show, and a different take on the whole thing because no matter what the fangirl squee, the vamp was actually the sidekick. I think that was the genius part of the world that Tanya Huff created in her books and that Peter Mohan brought to TV. The central figure was the girl. That's a different spin.

There's a couple of other perplexing things about BT going down, and some bad timing things. The show was not helped by the fact that by the time we'd shot the only season (and it was not two seasons, that was just marketing) the originating Canadian Broadcaster who had started it rolling, CHUM, essentially ceased to exist when it was split in twain and sold off to two companies. The show kind of got lost in two differing agendas.

But -- and this is something that we all point out every time we who worked on it get together -- the show did good numbers in Canada -- better than the lead in and the lead out. Better than what was in the timeslot before it premiered, and better than what they put in there afterward. And it sold everywhere -- well. I'm told that the international sales guys were clamoring for a second season.

But that just goes to show you how hard it is to finance a TV show if you don't have one of those big six media corporations behind you. That's just how it is, I guess. I think they may even still be trying. And if they did somehow bring it back, I'd whoop de doo with everyone. Believe me.

Okay, I'm halfway through this thing now and I'm starting to lose my nerve, because I'm starting to get the spidey-sense pounding in my head that tells me that the batshit crazy fans are going to bombard me with all the weird hate-on messages. And the BT crew is fine, but Moonlight was a network show and ... some of you 'Murricans are a little crazy... but I'm almost to the salt. Be patient.

I think there's also a weird bias against genre stuff at channels these days. Scratch that. I know there is. It doesn't get respect. And neither does its fans. And that sucks. It does. I think the problem is so many of these shows reach the diehard geeks and people who like this kind of stuff, but it doesn't widen out. And that bigger audience is what they really want. And they're convinced that genre shows are too narrow. Nevermind that they're also the ones that have the ability to branch out and touch everyone if they truly hit. See Heroes, X-Files, Star Trek -- should I go on?

But when it doesn't hit that magic branch out, the genre fans feel burned. And they think that they shouldn't watch shows because they're just going to get canceled. And they don't realize that hey, that's true of like 7 out of 10 non-vampire or werewolf or space opera shows, too. Most shows fail. That's the reality.

I feel the need to validate all that fan love and support because, well, it starts early and it's just so passionate. I mean, there were BT fan sites up weeks before the show premiered. I'm sure there are Dollhouse sites popping up even now. That's awesome.

So to not acknowledge both the depth of feeling and the unlikeliness of success at this point, in all the "save the show" campaigns, just seems to me to be cruel. And the fans deserve better than that. Blood Ties fans, and Moonlight fans too. A lot of people will keep silent because they just don't want the grief of the crazier side of fandom. That side is indeed fearsome. But that's not enough of a reason to keep everybody hanging forever. So the only thing to do is to try and do the impossible and explain it a bit.

Now. Here's the salt part.

Part of the problem of the fan campaign, as I've said before, is that the internet makes it seem like there's so many of you that it makes it even harder to imagine how a show could be not popular enough to go on. What do you mean it's not popular! Look at all of us here!

It's at these times that I say, "I want you to imagine rolling coins." You know how there are 50 pennies in a roll? Well, you know how big a roll of pennies is, right? How much space it takes up? Got it? Good. Now, how easy would it be to store 100 rolls of pennies? That's 5000 pennies. That's gonna take up space, right? Probably a whole drawer. Okay, now say we're talking, oh, I don't know, 5 million viewers. That's a level of viewership that gets you totally canceled. How many rolls is that? Well, it's um...5000 is 100..uh...Holy cow.....can that be right? 100 000 rolls of pennies?

You're going to need more drawers. And a reinforced floor.

Do you honestly have that many posters, fans, on forums, posting regularly? I've never seen the forum where a thousand people post regularly. Ever? Maybe. Regularly? Nope. At that level it would become noise. That's an unmanageable number.

Oh, By the way. What they really want is American Idol numbers. And that's like, 25 million. 30 million. 4, 5, 6 times that. I can't even do that math. Because I'm a dumb bad-at-math writer.

Point is, it's not your fault. The shift to a focus on "save our show" campaigns sets up a dynamic where it's just easier to feel like you failed. It's not a failure if there was never a real hope of success to begin with. You can't help it if the show didn't catch on, and if what seems like a ridiculous number of fans to you STILL ISN'T ENOUGH.

Now....here's where the salt comes in. Because some of the people out there are licking it right now. How dare I? I mean, really, How FUCKING DARE I say that they won't succeed! How dare I say JPOD's not coming back! Or that the NUTS THING WITH JERICHO DIDN"T TOTALLY WERK WHO DO YOU THNK U R, ANYWAYS?????

I'm gonna get a lot of those emails. I know it. I'll take it. It's fine. Bring it on, baby. My back is strong.

I just feel bad to see people building up false hopes. And not moving on and remembering the thing you loved for what it was.

In the case of BT fans, and I've said this before -- you can at least go back to Tanya Huff's original books to see where the story goes. (It's pretty great.) And if you're feeling burned because you're a Moonlight fan and you were thinking, somebody's gotta pick up the show, right? And now here's this asshole in CANADA saying, "probably not going to happen. And oh yeah, DO NOT SEND BLOOD PRODUCTS TO CBS!" and maybe you're bummed.

Cheer up. Don't be bummed. TV and movies are cyclical and weird. You never know what happens down the road.

Judd Apatow was a guy who failed with two TV series -- Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared. F&G broke my heart when it was canceled. Now he's the biggest Director in Hollywood. Seth Rogen, who starred and wrote for Undeclared, is a freaking sex symbol, for heaven's sake. I loved those shows, but hey, maybe he was meant to make movies like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up instead.

David Schwimmer was on some failed show the season before Friends. If that had gotten picked up, No Ross. Lisa Kudrow was originally cast in Frasier. She was fired and replaced by Peri Gilpin, and if that didn't happen, no Phoebe. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if Jennifer Aniston had kept her original nose.

A show that I loved that failed big in the 80's was this one season wonder called Almost Grown. It was this trippy show tracking a family in three time periods. Starred Eve Gordon and Tim Daly. The guy who wrote it was named David Chase. He'd go on to create The Sopranos.

My So Called Life -- a beloved show, canceled after 19 eps. Claire Danes is a star and Winnie Holzman went on to write the Broadway smash musical WICKED.

The point is, you just never know.

The people who made Blood Ties and Moonlight sure loved bringing them to you. And you never know, who knows what comes next. Maybe this is all for the best. Or maybe it's random.

Anyway, my point is, the people who make these shows are always humbled by the depths and the lengths fans will go to support them and not lose faith and not lose hope. And we'd hate to see failure and silence make you turn away from that. And sometimes, when you know it's not going to work, even if you know you're going to get crazy mail, you just gotta man up and say that. 99% chance it's not going to work, so you might want to think about the time you put into it. Just saying.

But if you say that, you also do the fucking disclaimer. Here it comes again: Yup, I'm not privy to everything. You want to grasp at straws, grasp away. GRASP AWAY!

But to the rest of you: don't stop loving what you love, and don't ever apologize for the shows you love. And know that people who make the stuff really, really do appreciate you. And don't write angry letters to Lifetime. They're a business and they made their decision for a reason. And don't bombard CBS with fake fangs. TV is expensive. You know how many pennies you have to roll to pay for it? A LOT.

Focus on the thing you loved, and let go. Cause I guarantee there's something else coming just around the corner. And the people who met and forged relationships on that show you loved? You never know what they're gonna cook up next.

Thanks for watching. Don't be discouraged. You're awesome. And one of these days another show you love will break through and be a hit, and then a couple seasons will pass, and you'll get to complain about it jumping the shark. I promise.

Oh, one more thing.

Please don't send me hate mail. I'm really quite a nice fellow.

Late Night Is Dangerous!

OOH. JIMMY FALLON? Whither Conan? And will Jay go to ABC, and gawrsh, what about Letterman and Craig and all the others?

You know what? Sod it. It's all the same, innit?

But When Will You Go to the Bathroom? Joss Whedon and FOX's "Hail Mary" Pass...

PROBABLY THE MOST interesting thing to come out of the upfronts weren't the choices of any of the new shows, but the following announcement from FOX:

At its upfront presentation Thursday, the network announced it will air two new drama series, J.J. Abrams' "Fringe" and Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse," with dramatically reduced commercial breaks.

"It's a simple concept and potentially revolutionary," Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori said. "We're going to have less commercials, less promotional time, and less reason for viewers to use the remote. We're going to redefine the viewing experience."

Both "Fringe" and "Dollhouse" would have network commercial loads of about five minutes per hour, about half the usual. The commercial pods would also be shorter and they would have about half the promo load as well.

In an interview after the presentation, Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly acknowledged that "Remote-Free TV" was a risk but there needed to be a "paradigm shift" in network TV.

Cutting down commercials will make the two already pricey sci-fi series even more expensive as they have to produce longer episodes. To offset that and the reduced commercial inventory, the network is planning to charge advertisers a premium.

Ad buyers were generally upbeat about the idea, and said they liked the two shows picked.

This ripples through on a few levels, and I'm coming a bit late to this particular party. From the Canadian TV perspective, Jim Henshaw points out how the headache unaccustomed buyers from the Canadian nets are having trying to pick shows based on pilots they haven't even seen may have just gotten worse. After all, the Canadian nets just went in the OTHER direction -- demanding (and getting) MORE commercial time per hour from the CRTC, plus asking for "carriage fees" from Cable Companies (which will be passed on to cable customers.)

The two series will have to either be edited to fit the Canadian format or allowed to overlap into the next time slot.

The former approach would likely alienate an audience who will know they can purchase the full show the next day on iTunes or stream the unexpurgated version from another source.

The alternative is probably even more terrifying to a Canadian network suit -- because overlapping the hour will create a conflict with whatever American series they've scheduled to simulcast following "Fringe" or "Dollhouse".

Remember, these guys aren't usually buying full nights from one network. They're mixing and matching from all of the Big 4 (and elsewhere).

Therefore that overlap could allow viewers a few minutes to sample the American feed from its original source before its usurped by the simulcasting Canadian channel -- and most remotes go searching if the first five minutes of a show haven't grabbed the viewer.

To additionally compound the problem for Canadian broadcasters, FOX is placing a premium on the ads for "Fringe" and "Dollhouse" feeling they are two of their "must see" shows of the season -- and of course to pay for the additional content of the programs and the fewer commercial slots.

That'll likely mean a certain amount of branding, like Ford has done with the season openers of "24".

I'm not sure those same sponsors (or a Canadian equivalent) will be willing to lay out larger ad fees to reach the much smaller Canadian audience.

Boy oh boy -- wouldn't it just be easier to make Canadian shows instead?

For my money, though, I think as interesting as the business implications are, the creative implications are even moreso. Jaime Weinman raised some good points in this Macleans "TV Guidance" entry:

Will this “fewer commercials” idea work? I hope it does, because I think that some of the problems of network television today are related to the too-short running times. People used to point to many reasons why premium cable could do things that network TV couldn’t, but they rarely pointed to one of the biggest reasons of all: premium-cable episodes are longer than network TV episodes, and therefore have more time for pauses, character development, and all the other stuff you can’t put in if you have to chop the show down to 42 minutes (minus 30 seconds for the main title and another 30 seconds for the closing credits, and also some time for the “previously on…” segments). Comedies especially would benefit from longer episodes, since 21 minutes just is not enough time to tell one story, let alone the two or three you get in most comedies. But on the other hand, Dollhouse and Fringe don’t seem like the type of shows that are guaranteed, or even particularly likely, to become big mainstream hits, and if the network takes a hit on one or both of them because of the need to charge more money to advertisers (which they may not be willing to pay for a “cult”-y show), it may sour them on the idea of reduced commercial time. Which would be too bad, because it’s high on my list of things that could save TV.

I'm with Weinman on how commercial creep has damaged network TV. I think the 21 minute half hour is the single greatest thing that's destroyed sitcoms. The need to jam the story into that short a time has meant that all human moments have been shaved off, leading to a situation where the half hour looks even more artificial than it otherwise is.

I've also decided that in my relatively short career, where I've seen the move from the four act hour (or four act + tease, what some people called five act) to actual five acts with long first acts (w/o teasers) and even six acts, that that format simply doesn't work as well, for a slightly technical reasons.

It's not my form, but I was once taught that the MOW -- a format that's all but disappeared from network TV -- was usually written in 7 acts. At least one of the nets in Canada used a 9 act structure. All that seems daunting, but let's remember that Act here is just a unit that connotes length between commercials. In the old 7 act MOW structure, you would have a long, long first act, much like you do sometimes now with the 5 act tv shows -- the idea was that you got at least 12 to as many as 18 minutes of story before cutting to commercial so that you hooked everyone in and they didn't have a chance to tune out.

The problem with the "long first act" in hourlong drama is that it frontloads so much action into that first act that it's hard to not make the rest of the episode seem unbalanced. There are tricks people use to combat this -- the J.J. Abrahms trick was to start at the ending. You set up the peril of the main character and then flash back to 72 hours earlier -- which has the advantage of establishing two timelines -- a very different thing than having to jam too much of your storytelling into the first Act.

What I've found with the move to five and six acts is a certain inevitability in having to accept things that a true craftsperson might not have stood for in earlier days. By necessity, you generally have to settle for one act being shorter than the others... but what goes in that act? You don't want to have an act without hitting all your various plots, so sometimes that means shoehorning a scene in there that would organically probably better go elsewhere -- but the math won't let you do it.

I also find that at five, six acts and 42 minutes, you have to settle for more shorthand than you might otherwise be comfortable with. That shorthand can take many forms, all of them slightly poison pill-y:

• An Act Out or Act Curtain that simply isn't up to snuff (ie: you go out 'soft' -- on a character beat that you might not otherwise go out on, rather than go out on a real twist or revelation of new information, which is always the preferred method.)
• A "convenience" or "coincidence" that eagle eyed people might drub as lazy storytelling, but really is a function of the fact that you only have one scene to do something that really should take two or three scenes. (This could also mean making a thematic point/counterpoint between two plots way more overt than you'd otherwise like, again, because you don't have the room to make the point more subtly.)
• Living with nightmare expo. It's hard to hide the pipe when you've got to open in three minutes. I've definitely done my best to conceal some setup handwaving that could have been handled more cleverly if only there was more time, more time, more time...

The really great - and hilarious - thing about this change for FOX is that one of the beneficiaries of the experiment is Joss Whedon. When we last saw Whedon, he was being deeply screwed over on Firefly by -- wait for it -- FOX! (Fox was also the studio that rich off the Buffy DVDs)

Joss got out of series TV before the big ugly transition to five and six act... and as Jill Golick points out in a couple of her posts on Dollhouse -- Whedon has, in fact, always made the most of pure four-act structure. In fact, his scripts for all his shows show you exactly what an elegant thing four act storytelling structure can be. As Golick puts it:

With only three act breaks to worry about, Whedon doesn’t have to force the drama up into unnatural cliffhanging pre-commercial moments. He gets into the story quickly and rolls it in out in four virtually equal-length segments.

By eliminating the short final scene or tag, Whedon can play out the real story right to the end, weaving together the final beats of the story with the final emotional moments, rather than playing them in separate scenes. This works really well for arced series like this one will be, where a single story is parsed out over the duration of the series.

There's a reason why his stuff inspires such diehard admiration, both from fanboys/girls (who may not geek out on the structure but grok the superior form of the storytelling) and scribes (who see how meticulous the story construction actually is.)

So, separate and apart from the interesting economics of this decision, Joss actually has a chance here to reclaim some of cable's coolness factor -- and if Dollhouse is a hit and more shows go back to four act, and 48 or 50 minutes, I will be the first one to line up and give all the Hosannahs to Whedon.

First he benefits from the birth of the weblet, then the calculus of DVD sales, now this. Either he's got St. Ann (Patron Saint of TV, don'tcha know) tied up in the basement, or being a nice guy does actually pay off in this business.

I'll take either one. Hope it works.