Dead Sticks Media, Meets Dead Tree Media

BILL HARRIS IN the Toronto Sun today articulates what I've been saying about the attitude toward the CBC for some time now:

A "gotcha" mentality has crept into most conversations about MVP, the cancelled CBC series that gets a crack on ABC tonight.

Can you imagine the hue and cry had CBC actually renewed the low-rated MVP? Wasted taxpayer money, and all that. At the very least, CBC would have been accused of brazenly trying to justify its expensive ad campaign.

Hey, we're pretty sure CBC didn't WANT MVP to fail, bad time slot notwithstanding. But the fact is, Canadians simply weren't watching it. Any network other than CBC might have received compliments for having the guts to pull the plug.

But often CBC is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't. Sometimes they put themselves in that position, but in this case, what were they supposed to do?

What happened next, of course, was that the writers-strike-impacted and programming-starved U.S. cable network known as SOAPnet (owned by ABC) purchased the rights to the first season of MVP.

Suddenly, the Canadian contingent that is obsessed with American approval started lauding MVP as some sort of lost gem that CBC failed to recognize, a combination of Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 and Grey's Anatomy and Brothers & Sisters, all rolled into one.

How could CBC have missed the brilliance of MVP? And that rhetoric got even louder when it was announced that ABC would give MVP a trial run tonight, following the primetime showing of the Daytime Emmy Awards.

Ultimately, we guess we'd make this observation: CBC did not reject MVP; Canadian viewers did

How could it be that the audience is always right, but the CBC is always wrong? If Canadians had thought MVP was good, they would have voted with their clickers.

As painful as it is to admit, there are a lot of people in TV who put self-interest in front of the public interest.

Wait a minute. Why are you all laughing?

Okay, I know, I know, give me a break, I was on set til 3am. Okay, yeah. Everybody in TV does that, I know. But here's where the right wing CBC hating, why are my tx dllrrrs goin to s'port yew gays n commies stuff isn't wrong --

-- we make product that is partially publicly funded. All of it. Whether it's for the CBC or the Private nets in Canada.

So accountability? It's important. It hasn't been to many of us up to now. Going forward, it has to be. Shows that do not draw do not deserve a second season. Shows that are deemed "promising" in numbers don't deserve to continue if that "promise" doesn't materialize. Ignore all the eejits who'll spin numbers they don't understand to feed their theories of why the entire CBC should be cratered. And for heaven's sake don't let the Internet rabble decide "what the numbers mean." In the end, all that sounds as silly as the duelling press releases touting shows that channels had no hand in developing.

We gotta shoulder up here. And part of that is letting go of the stupid "Gotcha CBC" game. We have more important things to do -- like lobbying the hell out of people to let us make shows that the audience want to see, and not 'Six Feet Under, but in a Law Firm. With Cops. Oh, and there's a Hospital too.'

Every screenwriter I know -- and that's starting to be a much longer list -- has a more interesting series idea in their pocket than is currently on a slate of a Canadian network.

Fixing that is the challenge. And the gotcha games don't get us there. Not by a long shot.

Ohh Yesss, Dahhhdy...Yehssss!

EDIT: Friend of the blog James points us to this preview of the Sunday NYTimes Magazine story -- all about Mad Men. Mmmmm.

Mike, Come Home. We Love You.

SO A COUPLE of commenters took me to task for linking to a bad U.S. review of MVP yesterday. I'll have more to say about that sometime down the line, but as somebody already pointed out below, that's nothing compared to the drubbing Mike Myers took in the Times today.

Mr. Myers, a writer and producer as well as the star, seems to have lost his touch. The movie’s takeaway catchphrase is “Mariska Hargitay,” which is used by the title character as a fake-Hindi spiritual greeting. This is almost hilarious the first 11 or so times he does it, but by the time Guru Pitka (Mr. Myers) says “Mariska Hargitay” to Ms. Hargitay herself, it’s somehow less amusing than it should be.

Which might sum up “The Love Guru” in its entirety but only at the risk of grievously understating the movie’s awfulness. A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious. The word “unfunny” surely applies to Mr. Myers’s obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, “The Love Guru” is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.

And this is, come to think of it, something of an achievement. What is the opposite of a belly laugh? An interesting question, in a way, and to hear lines like “I think I just made a happy wee-wee” or “I’m making diarrhea noises in my cup” or to watch apprentice gurus attack one another with urine-soaked mops is to grasp the answer. Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not opposed to infantile, regressive, scatological humor. Indeed, I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Or maybe a glutton. So it’s not that I object to the idea of, say, witnessing elephants copulate on the ice in the middle of a Stanley Cup hockey match, or seeing a dwarf sent flying over the same ice by the shock of defibrillator paddles. But it will never be enough simply to do such things. They must be done well.

The funniest thing I ever saw Mike Myers do wasn't Austin Powers or Wayne (alright, the original version of Wayne, done onstage at Second City in Toronto, with Dana Anderson, where Wayne tried to get his Girlfriend back at the CNE, was pretty damn funny.) Nope. Not a bit.

For that crown, there's little bits and pieces that only Torontonians will know. Back in University, poor, not a lot of money, in the late 1980's, there were two reliable and cheap sources of entertainment for me and my pack of Radio and TV compadres: you could go to a Kids in the Hall taping, or you could hit the Second City at the Old Firehall, and see the free after-show improv sets.

Now never mind the fact that I'm now working with Mark Wilson, one of the guys I saw on that stage with Myers -- which is awesome and weird -- but I also got a chance to see funny in the form of Mike Myers just filling time. He'd do a bit with the lights gone crazy, and him in this Wendy's-like pigtailed wig, and somebody would say, "And now, David Cronenberg's Anne of Green Gables." And Mike would come out in the wig and sing, "I'm Anne of Green Gables Yearrrrrrrrgggh." And he'd give the evil eye. And the house would come down. (the variation on this, which I did for years, "Sean Connery in Anne of Green Gables," where Mike would just come out and say, "I'm Anne of Green Gables yah bahstard."

So, too, his short bit of a Scotsman speaking French. Oh, you see that in print and you think, hey, yeah, that might be funny. But you have no fucking idea, chuckles. No idea.

There are other choices you could make for Myers' funniest. Maybe it was the kibitzing he'd do late night on CityLimits, the groundbreaking CityTV video show (back in the days when everything about CityTv was still groundbreaking. Sigh.)

I also fondly remember a stage show done with a guy named, I think, Neil Mullarkey (am I remembering that right?) -- who was a friend he lived with when he was in the UK. That show was funny and weird and off the wall.

So yeah, I kind of cringed a bit at the leadup to The Love Guru. And in all the pre-press, Myers' constant invocation of his deceased father seems to indicate that there's a wound there that hasn't healed, that he's hurting and that he's still got some stuff to work through.

But the guy is a fucking brilliant comic. And he made a huge movie in Toronto last summer that employed a lot of people. And the thing that was true on that Second City stage all those years ago still holds true: you don't change the culture and you don't come up with fearless, funny, and wonderful without risking the occasional whiff.

So whatever, Mike. If Pitka doesn't do it for you, I hope we don't have to wait six more years. You make me smile, and like Vienna, Toronto waits for you.

Merf?

WRAP ON 202.
OUTLINE FOR 204 out the door.
DRAFT tomorrow.

Man, this TV thing is a lot of fucking work.

Ye Gods.

MAN. DO I EVER approve this message:

The Latest on Bill C10

MATTER OF CONFIDENCE? ELECTION-WORTHY? Excerpted from today's Vancouver Sun: (click link for full article)

Senate proposes major changes to film tax bill

Amendments could trigger election if Tories deem them confidence motions

Tobin Dalrymple, Canwest News Service

Published: Thursday, June 19, 2008

On Wednesday, Liberal senators Francis Fox and Wilfred Moore announced amendments that would send the bill back to the House of Commons and, if accepted, would remove the heritage minister's control over who gets tax credits. They argued if the House does not accept the changes, the $5-billion Canadian film and television industry will crumble.

"We will not turn our backs on the people who have come to us and made suggestions," said Fox, who sits on the Senate committee on banking, trade and commerce that reviewed the bill and heard testimony from film industry witnesses, including writers, directors and actors, all of whom expressed outrage at the bill.

"All [the witnesses] agreed Bill C-10, in its current form, would have a devastating impact on the Canadian film industry," said Fox.

Critics of the bill say it has two major problems -- it is a form of government censorship and it poses a risk to the business model of film producers. Supporters remain unconvinced the bill would pose financial risks and say it is not censorship, but rather a good use of taxpayer money.

In reaction to the proposed amendments, the heritage minister and finance minister said opposition parties would have to wait and see if the amendments would be dealt with as confidence motions, said Verner's spokesman, Dominic Gosselin.

"We are looking forward to seeing the amendments," said Gosselin. "First we will see [them], after that we will take action on this."

Generally, the government considers only amendments on fiscal matters or "money bills" as confidence matters. In April, after speaking to the Senate committee, Flaherty said the bill should not be amended.

There are indications the Liberals would be willing to take down the minority government over the amendments. "I am supporting those amendments, the party supports those amendments," said Liberal critic Denis Coderre. "I don't have any problem, personally, to have an election on culture and what kind of Canada you want to live in."

Hold your shoes, kids. There's another couple yet to drop. Because if I read this right, then what I suspect is true. Since the proposals don't actually deal with anything to do with the money provisions of the bill, it doesn't need to be a confidence motion. The Tories will have to deem it so. Which means if they do, then indeed, voting this bill down would trigger an election.

How do the Tories expect to gain votes on an anti culture message? There's no more votes for them to get in the west, and this won't play the same in Quebec or B.C. where they could pick up some. Right now it's still a big game of chicken.With a whole industry in the middle, like that kid with his sleeve caught on the car, as it hurtles over a cliff in Rebel Without a Cause.

Man.

Owwwwch.

I KNOW I'M committing the Canadian sin that I usually rail against, (by noting any mention of Canada or anything Canadian in the big time U.S. media) but Gina Bellafante's review of MVP in the New York Times (the canceled CBC show starts a U.S. run on Soapnet this week) is at once, wondrously bitchy and liable to send the old Canadian-o pique meter into the red, seeing as everyone's still all raw after that Hockey Night In Canada theme thing:

Within the first few minutes of “MVP,” a new drama — and I use that term as one might call “Big Momma’s House” a film — a young woman barely out of her teens is straddling a guy upstairs during a party at her parents’ Disney World castle of a house, and making royal demands: “You work for me now. Take your pants off.”

More trousers tumble, going forward: off the hips of a practically mute underwear model as well as a coke-addicted hobby pornographer, who secretly shoots his one-night stands from the vantage point of what appears to be a stuffed-donkey cam. He’s not a Democrat; he’s Canadian, and a hockey player. When he picks up a new conquest at his team captain’s funeral, he labels the tape of their lascivious efforts at mourning “Funeral Chick.” “MVP,” which begins Thursday on SoapNet, is itself a Canadian import, and it forces us to ask: Really, what has Nafta wrought?

Yowch. Slamming NAFTA and comparing a show to Big Momma's House? Methinks someone's liable to wake up with some softwood lumber in their bed someday soon.

Or maybe cod.

Don Cherry?

Nah. Cod's funnier.

Linkslutting John August: Puzzle Farter

TWENTY-TWO PAGES OF Outline today. Sweet Jesus.

Is it any wonder that this great post by John August makes me laugh like a drain? Puzzle Farter, indeed.

From the Depths of Outline Hell

RIGHT NOW, WE'RE shooting Day 7 of 8 of Episode 202 of THE BORDER. I'd love to be on set at ICS right now, and I may well make it there tonight. But for now I'm desperately trying to pound out the revised, revised, revised outline for my next ep. So here's my one-line craft advice for the aspiring:

Unless you can be fast, and I mean FAST, fast -- don't bother. You want to really be a value to a story department? Hone your skills in such a way that you can a) structure a story well and quickly. b) revise it even more quickly. c) write the outline in 48 hours d) in a pinch, write a solid first draft in a week.

If you can do that, and do that consistently, you may just be employable.

(at left: James McGowan (Mike Kessler) and Sofia Milos (Bianca LaGarda) strike a pose for the paparazzi in the land of the 70 dollar cocktail.)

Things are going pretty well at The Border. Our stars got to walk the Red Carpet at the Monte Carlo TV Festival last week. We didn't win Best TV drama, but hey, it was nice to be nominated. (I think the winner was some show about forensic people. You know, those guys in Lab Coats that do the icky stuff with bullets and spatters and stuff? Sounds deadly boring to me. Whose lame idea was it to make a show about that?)

But the best news is some really hot, super duper, incredible, fun news about next season that I can't talk about yet.


Ooh, it's so good. Oh man, I wanna tell you.

But I can't. No. Nope. I can't.

But it's good.

Oh yes it is.

A hint?

You want a hint?

I shouldn't.

I can't.

Mmm...

Well ...

Let's just say we'll be getting some hits from some other kinds of fans next year.

Yes. I did just do that. Heh heh.

(If you want to catch up on Season 1 of The Border, we're reairing through the summer Monday nights at 9pm on CBC)

For now, I leave you with Sofia walking and working it in red. Rowwr!

The Last Time the Sitcom Died

FOR A MEDIUM that's almost sixty years old now, Television has a perilously short view of its own history. Historical trends come and go, and nobody blinks, and nobody digs any deeper.

One of the big bugbears I've had for a while is that there's no shortage of ponderous people who want to declare the sitcom dead. Even those who are still greenlighting comedy want to call them "Half hour comedies" or something, like the word "sitcom" is covered in anthrax. And then they say stupid things like "do we have to be so jokey?"

So jokey?

You wish, son.

Anyway, the dumbest thing about the trend has always been the utter failure of most of these people to contextualize the last time the sitcom was dead. It's around the time that a little show called The Cosby Show came along and blew that conventional wisdom. Now, thanks to Earl Pomerantz (whose blog I will greedily devour if I ever get a free second) by way of Jaime Weinman, you can return to those thrilling days of yesteryear -- and the reaction to the Cosby pilot presentation:

in particular, he talks about the impact of the most famous moment in the presentation (which of course was incorporated into the full pilot:

Accepting people for who they are. A bedrock liberal principle. The studio audience is clearly conditioned to respond sympathetically. If you listen to the soundtrack, you can hear them starting to applaud Theo’s unequivocal plea for acceptance.

But just as the audience members are about to put their hands together…the doctor proclaims,

“Theo, that’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard!”

The audience members stopped dead in their tracks. And then, they went nuts!

I mean, the roof came off!

It’s like someone had opened a window, and a liberating truth had come rushing in. Theo wasn’t mentally challenged; he was lazy. And the doctor was calling him on it, accusing his son of being afraid to try, for fear that his brain would explode and come oozing out of his ear.

The audience was enraptured by the message of personal responsibility, refreshing only because it had been abandoned. Theo would do better. And so, not incidentally, would the sitcom.

The bottom line: One show. That's all it takes. One.

But it requires thinking outside the box. And not being concerned about the word, or being too jokey.

Pomerantz's original post is here. (But if you click the link above you get Weinman's usual excellent contextual commentary.)

Online Fans: Love Them. Fear Them. But Listen to Them?

THERE'S NOT A television writer alive who doesn't have exactly the same relationship with online fan forums that a white knuckle drunk has with the pub at the end of the street. Walking past without stopping in is the hardest thing to do. But you have to try.

Diane Kristine has a fascinating article up at Blogcritics that explores the ins and outs and whys of the problem. Based on sessions and interviews conducted while covering this year's Banff TV festival, the article shows the struggle that many top writers have with their online fans:

Martin Wood, currently executive producing and directing the upcoming science fiction show Sanctuary, reflected on the number of fansites and social networks his previous series, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, spawned. "You learn that the majority of your audience is not responding on those things," he warned in our interview. "So a relatively small number of people are being very loud about what they want. If you respond to it the way you think you should, it's not necessarily the best thing for the show."

House writer David Hoselton echoed those comments during his festival session on the craft of writing in response to an audience member question. "(House creator) David Shore doesn't care about what people say on the Internet. He doesn't want to hear it; he doesn't want to know about it. He doesn't want to pander to that audience, whatever it is. The idea is that out of an audience of 20 million, I don't know what that represents, half a million or something like that? He wants nothing to do with it."

However, Hoselton confessed he has to browse forum comments the day after his own episodes air, sifting through the "three pages on Chase's pants" to find the insightful ones... until he has to back away when they turn into online fights. Still, "there are these incredibly intelligent, observant people who catch every mistake you could possibly make," he laughed.

Essentially, the problem (and the thing that these vocal, frontline fans never understand) is that it all comes down to math. The online fans are definitely the core -- and they peruse and react far more strongly than the rest of the fanbase. And like any self-reflecting echo chamber, they come to believe that their opinions are the opinions of the majority. They tend to think they are the fans. But the truth is that on a successful show, the fans writing and snarking and dissecting each episode or "misstep" is, at most, about half a percent to one percent of the total audience. And that one percent is often out of step with the tastes of the bigger group -- who actually keep the series on the air.

This can set up an impossible dynamic of disappointment and a potential minefield for writers and creators to thread. On the one hand, anyone who thinks that much about your show is someone you want to venerate and respect. You have to appreciate them.

The problem is that in the fans' minds, the way to "appreciate" them is often expressed as, "why don't they listen to what we want?" And that can quickly metasticize into "they don't respect their true fans."

It's a no win. Which is why so many writers feel that the only way to deal with it -- is not to deal with it - to not engage at all. If you can resist, that is.

Hart Hanson puts the contrast in sharp relief:

"Do we listen to the fans? Oh, no," Hanson said adamantly during the audience Q&A portion of his Master Class. Besides, given the outcry over the finale, "Right now, if we listened to them, I'd have to quit."

He even tells his actors not to look at message boards. "They're really mean about every one of our actors. The ones who have an axe to grind will write and the ones who love them won't. Our Internet presence is fairly negative. But we don't care about that, because they're all watching."

"No, we don't listen to them," Hanson reiterated. "And they're really vociferous and passionate and we are very, very glad they're there."

Diane's full ariticle (with more quotes from Hanson, Alan Poul from Six Feet Under and Entourage's Doug Ellin, can be read here.)

Writer on the Set?

MAYBE I'VE COME a ways since the last time I wrote about being the writer on the set. But I've found that the experience that I blogged about last year has evolved into something a whole lot more complicated.

Not that it's not contentious. Our guest poster from yesterday argues the "set sit" is a waste of time, and an insult to the Director. Ken Girotti has blogged a couple of times recently about the difficulty of fulfilling the full potential of what you're asked to do as a Director when you're being "babysat." He reiterated it here in a comment yesterday.

you're right when you say that by obliging a director to have somebody look over his or her shoulder (and that's my charitable version) not only might make a director feel like they've got a babysitter, but I just don't think a director will stretch as much. If every time one wants to do something outside the box one has to look back and ask, "'zat okay with you?" how the hell can anybody be spontaneous?

I think decisions about how a show gets shot should be made in prep. I think decisions about how a producer controls a director are implicit in who the producer hires to direct. Anything else is either self-conscious or just paranoid.

Well, all I can say is that there are a couple of thorny issues here, but they really all come down to one thing:

Respect.

A writer who feels that a Director does not have sufficient respect for the essential beats of the story is going to be prickly if they step on set. They're going to look for any opportunity to prove their thesis that just like hundreds before them, genius is being ignored by a Director looking to fill out his feature reel.

I've been in those meetings in prep and they're not pretty.

On the other hand, the nightmare spectre of a Director who feels an invisible hand on their shoulder at every shot is clearly not in the best interests of anybody, either.

I'm still tuning an on-set persona. It's new for me. I'm lucky that I get to watch some real pros, like David Barlow, negotiate the relationship ahead of me. What I've settled into is the thought that as a writer-producer on set, it's your job to be enthusiastic and say 'great take' when it is a great take, and be there to just generally help the Director do what it is he needs to do. And 99.7 percent of the time, that means...doing absofuckinglutelynothing.

Ken and the others are right -- in prep, ideally, that situation is reversed. The Director, in contemplating how they're going to realize the scene, should be willing to bring their best ideas, but really to listen when the writer is talking about the essential story points that need to come out. I've been in many a meeting where that simply wasn't the case -- where the Director's desire to visualize runs counter to what you need for the script. And not to be pissy about it, in about the eight or nine specific cases I can remember, I was right in the end. The Director's visuals didn't paper over the fact that they didn't nail the beat that needed to be nailed.

There are all sorts of levels of professionalism coming to play in this industry, especially in Canada, where you can have a Director who might have worked for seven U.S. shows and shot 23 tv movies being ridden by a writer who's nine months out of the CFC. Or, the situation can easily be reversed. Boy (or girl) Wunderkind blows past the 20 years of experience in front of them in the guise of the writer/producer.

Being a child of TV, and having had basically all my social interactions more or less influenced if not directly lifted from the medium, I tend to default to the world of the old cop cliche. I think in the pre-production process, if you're the Writer, you should be the Primary. The Director is interpreting your story -- and you probably have a better idea of how that story fits into a whole than he or she does.

Which isn't to say that you should be precious. You protect the key and the form of your story, if not the exact shape of it. That warehouse may need to be a library, and you need to consider how maybe that might happen. Your foot chase might be better to the Director as a slow tail in a car. And in that case, the question you need to ask yourself is, "does it really change anything?"

If not, you go for it. Or you come up with something better together.

But here's why, ultimately, I believe that the writer on the set can be a good thing, so long as your presence is conducted with respect for the reality that now, that person in the centre chair, and not you -- is the primary:

Because TV is won and lost on the smallest, most intimate o f things.

A few years ago on Charlie Jade, I crafted this scene where I wanted it to be about what two characters who had spent the night together weren't saying to each other. The culmination of this scene, where the woman realizes what a huge mistake she's made, and the realization that the guy is pulling away is accomplished not by saying that, but by the simple fact of taking the breakfast she made for him and throwing it away. That action was supposed to signify, to show, not tell -- what was going on in her head.

When the sequence was shot, instead of throwing the plate away, it was simply placed on a sideboard. The Director blocked the scene but missed the point. And because that piece was missing, the scene was talky and not sharp, because the exclamation point was missing. If I'd known the action wasn't going to be performed, I would have written the scene completely differently.

If I'd been on that set when it was shot -- that could have been avoided. The writing department on that show might have spent a little less time scrambling to try and rewrite later episodes to explain emotional beats that were missing from earlier shows because the Director didn't shoot them.

Comedy provides another important Canadian example. Many Canadian-shot comedies suffer from being overly broad, and not blocked in a way that the joke or humor is sold. There's an ankle deep roomful of scripts out there that read funny but that weren't executed right, and so wind up being forgettable and bad. Comedic successes in recent years: Trailer Park Boys, Corner Gas, all have the writers on set. Recently, I saw a show that was quite excellent that will be coming out later this year. The comedy was subtle, and the tone worked. And when I found out there was always a writer on set, I asked if they had to step in. And the answer was compelling: "only when it got too broad."

For my part, over the last week, I'd like to think that my contributions on set have been small but meaningful. In one case, an actor changed a line. Now, I'm not precious about words here and there. It's only when the line gets way off the beam that I generally get concerned. But there are cases where a little change can have big implications for a character, and maybe only a writer will catch just how big.

The example? A character comes back from dealing with a difficult person who might be a target for assassination. The line as scripted is,

"I wanted to take a shot at him myself."

The line as delivered?

"I almost took a shot at him myself."

Do you see the difference there? If you do, you're probably a writer. If you think they're interchangeable, you're probably not. No matter.

That's where I turn to continuity and ask for a more precise reading of the line. Because those two things are not the same for that character. And you have to protect that.

In another case, a guest actor in a comic role did a couple of adlibs at the end of the scene -- as actors are wont to do. One was funny. The others weren't. I steered them toward the funny adlib. The result? On the coverage, the Director was able to come up with a corresponding shot that focuses the line and provides a funny visual tag to the scene. So the adlib fed the creative, and pushed the Director to a response that improved everything.

That's something that wouldn't have happened unless I was there, listening.

Listening, and trying to support the Director. Because that's the other part of it. Sometimes when things are going behind and a scene needs to be dropped, the best thing a Director can hear is, "if you drop this scene we can adjust this and we're not going to miss it." Because the Director's already trying to keep all his coverage in mind and making sure that what he gets will cut. If you can take the burden of one scene away when he's under the gun, then it also takes the stress of maybe truncating or dropping a scene that might be key. Scenes get dropped. It happens. When you can say, "this won't hurt," I'd hope, at least, that that might offer a bit of peace of mind to the Director. Especially if it's a shoe leather scene and it gives more time for him to make something meaty out of another scene.

Most of the time, if you're smart, and you have that respect, your time as writer on the set is going to involve you doing a whole lot of nothing. But when things need to be jogged around, you're there. The actors do try to stay on script more when you're watching, I find. In my head, I honestly believe that your role is not to second guess the Director. It's to be a resource.

You wrote your script. It's done. A day when they've got to get through 11 2/8 pages is no time to be precious about your words.

And what you see sometimes might not be what was in your head. I've seen that in the last week too. But almost universally - in the end what the Director came up with was more interesting that how I conceived it. You allow for that, and you've learned something.

Then again, someone who hires a professional writer probably should be asking clarifying questions instead of giving specific cuts or orders for how a scene should go.

It really does all come down to respect. At all levels. When you have that, you let people bring their A'Game. And then the writer on set has to be simply a neutral thing. In the end I'll throw it back to Ken, who said:

To be honest I don't actually mind having the writer on the set; but that often depends on who the writer actually is, or who they think they are, if you get my meaning.

Oh, I get it. More each day. It's a lesson that I hope a lot of writers learn without having to learn it the hard way. Because otherwise, our guest poster's right. It's no different than

"having a network executive standing over your shoulder and looking at the screen as you try to write a script."

Which would most definitely suck.

Greatest. Acceptance Speech. Ever.

YEAH. I WATCHED THE TONYS. SO?



You want heart and class and sheer awesomeness? Check out Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer and lyricist for In The Heights, winner of the 2008 Tony Award for Best Original Score.

Of Sharks and Cylons (Warning: BSG S4, Ep 10 SPOILER)

WELL, THEY CERTAINLY rolled the hard six.

The last Battlestar Galactica episode until 2009 didn't disappoint when it came to big reveals of moving the story forward.

This is a show that's always worked best when it was dealing with big emotions, and the season 4 halfway point certainly didn't stint on that score, either. (As any BSG fan undoubtedly knows, ten more episodes will follow sometime next year.)

What fans have gotten used to from this show at its key moments, is the big game-changer. Season One ended with Adama being shot by Boomer, the Cylon sleeper on Galactica. Season Two had a halfway point showdown between Adama and Commander Cain on the Pegasus. Season two jumped us ahead a year in the story, with New Caprica being overrun by the Cylons, and a feckless President Baltar surrendering.

And of course, Season Three gave us the revelation of four of the final five, and the confirmation that there is, indeed, something otherworldly about the music of Bob Dylan.

After teasing in the opening credits this season that "one will be revealed," the BSG writers pulled their usual trick -- they zigged instead of zagged.

Instead of that last Cylon, they gave us Earth. Ahead of schedule. That is, at least, ahead of the schedule that everyone thought they were following. Most people, me included, assumed that they would find Earth and be done with the show. That would be the ending.

But around about the end of Season 3 I stopped thinking that. Because dramatically, the continued drift of "all this has happened before and all this will happen again," started to make me think that they were going to pull exactly the trick they pulled Friday night.

I'm not so smart, here. There's no plaudits in guessing right. It was simply the logical outgrowth of their storytelling style. Finding Earth in a nascent, early state or in a modern state with us here would be -- ick. The tough, no nonsense, thematic drift of this story made the post-apocalypitc, radioactive Earth they found almost a foregone conclusion.

Sure, there are questions. We still have no reference points -- is this our future? Is it the past? The wrecked city skyline they pored over at the ending did definitely look like New York from the Jersey side. (Which is terrifying in and of itself. An advanced civilization finally comes to Earth and the first place they find is...brrrrr....New Jersey.) But it certainly wasn't definitive.

There are people who insist they saw some sort of Iron Cross, maybe like those two beams that they found in the ruins of the WTC -- but I didn't see that, if it was there.

It's clear that next year we're in for more of how do the Humans and the Cylons work together, what happened, and of course, who is that final damn Cylon.

Online, you can find people who are insisting maybe it's not Earth -- the usual denial...the people who last year said that maybe the four weren't the four.

No, what's interesting to me about the ending on Friday was that it was as once, supremely logical, and also kind of left me a bit colder than other endings on the show. I recognize that because the level of storytelling is so high, whatever theory I have about where they're going will probably be wrong -- but the playout of that is somehow less satisfying to me right now.

It leads me to believe, or to think, maybe there's some sort of corollary theory to Jumping The Shark.

Jumping The Shark, as everyone with the possible exception of some isolated types in Borneo know, is the precise moment where a show starts to suck.

But for a show like BSG, where they do their best to throw curves, eventually wears to a point where you can sense that thing coming, as I did -- just because that's their thing. It's like going to an M. Night film. The guy always has a twist, so at a certain point, even if the twist doesn't suck, it's still not really going to do it for you because you get jaded. "Here it comes. Ooh. The twist." And it doesn't impress you even if it's good. Familiarity breeds -- well, if not contempt, then at least...complacency? I don't know.

It's a riff on that most plaintive of musical questions, "What have you done for me lately?"

It's a maddening, weird, and odd thing for a TV writer to consider. Because what it means, what it says about human nature, at least as far as I read it, is that the very thing that attracts you to the story in the first place is the thing that you will tire of first. Like those "cute quirks" that you wound up loathing about your Ex.

It happened with LOST. The wacky island mysteries were great in Season One, but by Season Three it was, "okay, enough already with the goddamn smoke monster and the polar bear."

You loved X-Files because of the Scully-sceptic, Mulder-believer dynamic. Yet that was the thing that had worn thin and threadbare by Season 3.

In many ways, I think it's just one of those unsolvable, structural problems of series TV. Maybe the British approach of shorter runs does make more artistic sense, for exactly that reason. Or maybe you need to hold back a game-changing reframe and know you're going there right from the beginning.

This is the cousin of the problem of the "will they or won't they" couple. You know they will -- it's just, well, when they do, then what?

This season, House's replacement of the ducklings strikes me as a nick-of-time kluge to try and head off this unnamed, shark-jumping cousin phenom at the pass. It kind of worked, but for how long? 1 season? 2?

I'm not saying I won't totally be there for BSG next year. I'm not even saying that I won't be excited and surprised by the show when it returns. What I am saying is that in past years, my reaction to the mindbender was "Wow!" and this time it was "Yup."

And as a writer trying to contemplate creating ongoing series, and how to craft an engine that endures for multiple seasons, THAT is the shit that keeps you up at night.

That, and the thought of landing in New Jersey, I mean.

Guest Post: Writer on Set! Writer on Set!

The following is a guest post. The writer is a top industry writer/producer, who's worked in Canadian TV for over two decades.

I'VE ESSENTIALLY TAKEN a break from showrunning for the last three years – partially by design and partially because no one will fucking hire me (which is not really a good example of “intelligent design’). Recently I have returned to active duty – it is not showrunning by any stretch (so don’t credit or blame for anything you see) but I’ve been on a show.

Now in the three years I have been away there have been some changes to the way shows are “run” in Canada – the most striking of these is that you can’t walk onto a set without tripping over a writer – and you end up doing that ‘cause they just get in the way. We are awkward people and putting us on set is usually a recipe for disaster or, at the very least, collisions with grips and gaffers and the like.

Even the current name for this activity “set sit” is derogatory as it suggests we need to have some writer on set all the time so that the kids don’t misbehave – well sometimes the kids should be allowed to misbehave. Any writer who’s spent time with me knows I encourage it in their scripts if only so the network “pull back” doesn’t de-nut the thing completely.

Now lets get this straight – I was born and bred a writer (a small stud farm somewhere in County Antrim) and I respect writers more than any other people in the business but, jesus fuck, it is getting a little out of hand. This new development -- writers spending the entire day on set, or attending all the casting sessions etc, etc is just sullying our good names.

We are becoming no better than network executives and, in my less than humble opinion, it has to stop. What we are doing to directors is the equivalent of having a network executive standing over your shoulder and looking at the screen as you try to write a script. On some level it comes down to a matter or respect -- I hate being a typist for some wrong headed network person – won’t do it (hmmm maybe that’s the answer to the ‘no one will hire me’ thingee) and I don’t expect the director to just be a cipher on set. Just as we lose interest when our stories are dictated to us, they lose interest when their authority and creativity in undercut by some clown wearing cans whispering to the continuity girl after every take.

This is the position we are putting our directors under. Every decision they make, every chance they take, every attempt at improvisation or improvement now has to be vetted by a writer (who under normal circumstance would likely be willing to go along for the ride) who sits in a chair scared that if someone on the stage actually attempts to do something interesting with the material they are going to have to “answer to” the network. This is not true across the board – but I’ve certainly seen it in action on more than a few sets.

Being a director is a scary thing – I’ve had the pleasure of doing it a number of times and I know (even of a set that I essentially own) that the amount of second guessing that goes on throughout the shoot (despite the bravado of some) is enormous. We have no idea if we are doing the right thing, the actors have no idea if they are doing the right thing but we are trying to create something that “lifts the material” off the page –I know I have done it innumerable times and often I’m the one who has written the material that I and trying to save.

Given that the Canuck TV world is now moving to six day shoots for an hour of TV you got to give the “traffic cops” some leeway because simple logistical truth means that all the precious beats or moments that you write into a script will not be covered. They just won’t. And having someone tap you on the back to tell you you are running out of time or saying “well what I meant was…” (that’s what pre-production is for) – in the middle of yet another back against the wall day – is not helpful.

Why Canada's Proposed Copyright Bill is Complete and Utter Balls

I KNOW. I KNOW. It seems like every week and a half I'm asking you to write your MP about something or other. But cases like Bill C-10 might be important to me, and of a more tangential importance to you. The piece of legislation -- and I use that word loosely -- that Jim Prentice introduced quietly last week is NOT a Made In Canada approach. It is NOT "an attempt to finally go after illegal downloaders," as it was framed in articles in the major press -- which, not so coincidentally, are owned by some of the big corporations with interests in promoting the bill. This bill is nothing short of a giant step backward for Canada and Canadians in the digital realm.

It would make me, and most people --- I'm gonna hit a moving target here -- under say, 45, criminals.

It would strangle and eliminate the nascent, flourishing kinds of user-generated content and online discussions that are driving the YouTube revolution.

It would severely restrict your ability to use content that YOU HAVE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR in the way you want -- including some very reasonable uses that you'd never think of as being "wrong" or "illegal."

The bill, Bill C-61, is nothing short of a complete anti-consumer measure, written, bought, and paid for by big media corporations.

In terms of provenance, it resembles the disastrous DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States, which just about everyone short of the dying record labels and the RIAA have admitted is a deeply flawed law.

Except, it's actually worse.

The concept of "fair comment" has never really existed in Canada. You can't make fun of a copyrighted image for satirical intent, as you can in the United States, because of the way the 1st Amendment has been interpreted. In Canada, your freedom to express yourself is already greatly restricted. Under this law, all "fair dealing" will be eliminated.

What is "fair dealing?" Well, that's a great question, and I'm going to point you to a bunch of sources that explain this better than I do.

But first, let's speak to context, and spin. More than twenty years ago, the same companies that essentially wrote this bill opposed at every step of the way behaviors that you now know as commonplace. Before the internet, before digital files were a possibility, back in the day when the only way you could get music other than buy it was to borrow it from the library, or from a friend, and tape it, or to tape it off the radio -- the same companies opposed that. They opposed the introduction of VCR's. (The new bill makes it illegal to copy something off a PVR to hard media.) The stuff over "perfect digital files" and how they're different etc, etc, is just the latest iteration of an tactic that has always opted to promote a vision where you had very few rights, and they essentially told you what you could do and what you couldn't do.

The difference is that once upon a time copyright law sought to strike a balance between consumers and copyright holders. The DMCA, and the Canadian Copyright Law, its bastard Frankenstein offspring, completely toss that out.

I am someone with a vested interest in having a cogent, logical, and defensible copyright law -- because I make money entirely from the production of intellectual property. That's my only product. The problem with this law (well, there are so many, but the one that trumps all others) is that it's so badly conceived that it's going to result in two simultaneous things:

It will result in harassment of normal consumers who are not doing anything wrong (not the "pirates" talked about in the press.)

Finally, it will criminalize so many behaviors that it will actually have the opposite effect of its intent: it will be a law without credibility that does not recognize the reality of our digital age -- and it will hasten a movement to ignore ALL forms of copyright. If the law is not respected, people will not follow it. You'll wind up turning people against the very concept of copyright, and down the road that has some very serious consequences for us all.

Cory Doctorow explains some of this in this video from Open Source Cinema:



Now, who should you read? First and foremost, Michael Geist. Here's why this bill betrays you, and all of us:

Because in a country whose Supreme Court of Canada has emphasized the importance of balance between creators rights and user rights, the Canadian DMCA eviscerates user rights in the digital environment by virtually eliminating fair dealing. Under this bill, the right to copy for the purposes of research, private study, criticism, and news reporting virtually disappears if the underlying content is digitally locked.

Because in a country that prioritizes privacy, the Canadian DMCA will render it virtually impossible to protect against the invasion of privacy by digital media companies. The bill includes an exemption for those that circumvent digital locks to protect their privacy, yet renders the tools needed to circumvent illegal. In other words, the bill gives Canadians the right to protect their privacy but prohibits the tools needed to do so.

Because in a country that values consumer rights, the Canadian DMCA means that consumers no longer control their own personal property. That CD or DVD or e-book or cellphone you just bought? The bill says you now have the right to engage in “private use copying” but not if it contains digital locks.

Because the Conservative Party of Canada promised to Stand Up for Canada, yet the Canadian DMCA is quite clearly U.S.-inspired legislation, the result of intense pressure from U.S. officials and lobby groups.

Because the government pledged to table treaties for House of Commons debate before introducing implementing legislation and failed to do so. Claims that this legislation does not ratify the treaties violates the spirit of that commitment.

Because the Canadian DMCA was introduced without consulting consumer groups, education groups, civil society groups, or the Canadian public.

In this post, Geist outlines the actions you should take today. The Tories have promised the Americans that they will ram this bill through by the end of the summer. Don't let that happen.

My sense is that the government still doesn't quite get it. The usual suspects generated the expected supportive press releases, yet simmering online are thousands of Canadians who are angry and who vote. There remains much work to be done - there will be opportunities for people in Calgary to meet Industry Minister Jim Prentice at his Calgary Stampede breakfast on July 5th, for residents of Guelph to make their voice heard in the fall by-election, and for Canadians across the country to participate in offline protests this fall. In the meantime (once again):

1. Write to your MP, the Industry Minister, the Canadian Heritage Minister, and the Prime Minister. If you send an email, be sure to print it out and drop a copy in the mail (no stamp is needed - c/o House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A0A6). If you are looking for a sample letter, visit Copyright for Canadians.
2. Take 30 minutes from your summer, to meet directly with your MP. From late June through much of the summer, your MP will be back in your local community attending local events and making themselves available to meet with constituents. Give them a call and ask for a meeting. Every MP in the country should return to Ottawa in the fall having heard from their constituents on this issue.
3. If you are not a member of the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, join. If you are, consider joining or starting a local chapter and be sure to educate your friends and colleagues about the issue and starting working through the list of 30 things you can do.

I hate to get all generational on your ass, but this is just one more case where you see the problems that come from the old and out of touch being in charge. It's long past time for a generational change in Government. We're seven years into the 21st century. The Tories have had plenty of time to get up to speed on the issues that are really at play in the new frontier. They can't make the bridge. Neither can most of the U.S. Senators who voted for the DMCA.

Well, to quote a grizzled guy who kind of got it then and surely gets it now: the old world is rapidly fading. So get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand.

CBC's Search Engine is all over this, as well. And do check out faircopyright.ca. That site makes a great point (among many) that on its own should get your outrage going. This bill actually is trying to take away rights that were affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. That's right. U.S. Media corporations' interests, for this government, trump the Supreme Court. It's a scandalous, naked betrayal. Laura Murray's full article on the Lies of Bill C-61 is a must read, but here's the fair dealing excerpt:

This Bill suffocates fair dealing and flies in the face of Supreme Court rulings of recent years. Remember “once an authorized copy of a work is sold to a member of the public, it is generally for the purchaser, not the author, to determine what happens to it?” Remember “the fair dealing exception is… a user’s right”? The Bill handcuffs user rights CCH and its sister cases urged us to cherish. Or rather, it lets us practice those rights via videocassette. I hope somebody out there still has a working VCR.

The thing about this, of course, is to not believe the line that's sold that somehow going in this direction is "the only way." This is complete balls. In Europe, there is a far more enlightened approach to protecting creator rights, and balancing the consumers' rights with the rights of copyright holders. The Writers Guild of Canada was pushing for this to be included in the bill, but, again, the Government chose to favor the backroom boys.

From a WGC Press Release:

The WGC has been working behind the scenes on this issue, meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Industry and representatives from Heritage to express our concerns about copyright and our interest in an approach that balances the desires of creators to see their work widely disseminated with the right to be fairly compensated for that dissemination.

We advocated that a system of levies – such as those in use in many European countries – be introduced that would address the points of access for potential infringement of copyrighted material. Such levies are collected by international organizations who in turn distribute monies to the established “authors.” The Canadian Screenwriters Collection Society (CSCS) was created in 1999 to collect those funds from international partners (other than the U.S., where no such provisions exist) and to distribute them to Canadian Screenwriters whose copyrighted material has been has been distributed internationally. We were disappointed that such levies did not form part of the government’s proposed legislation tabled yesterday.

So that's it. It's a bad law that will further erode respect for intellectual property in the age group that understands it the least: the under 25's who don't remember a time before the Internet made it easy to get stuff, to remix it, and repurpose and re-edit whatever you wanted.

We lose them, we lose everything.

This is a desperate mess of a bill. Stop it.

Vent Spleen, or Be Keen: Your Shot at the DTOS Soapbox

LATER TODAY, here in Sticksville, we'll be putting up a guest post on the subject of writers: should they be on set, or not? It's a good read and a worthy and provocative perspective.

I should say, formally, that I'm always delighted to receive and consider guest submissions here. It's of no consequence to me if the audience for some inside baseball talk about the challenges of making TV in Canada is something that has a big audience, or a small one. The bottom line is that I know that there is an audience -- and that that primary audience is people who live, and work, and toil in the business here. The conversation that goes on here is important to me, as it increases my understanding of the business I work in. I've met and formed friendships and stimulating working relationships with people because of this blog. And I hear, here and there, that it's provided a good bit of context and food for thought for others too. That's probably more than I'd dreamed of when I started it. But all the more reason to make sure that the tentative conversation that began a few years ago doesn't just...stop.

I have an ambitious slate of work for the next month or so, and I'm also going to be trying to settle into my new role as a member of the Writers Guild of Canada Council -- so the blog's starting to look a bit like those Woody and the cowboy dolls in Toy Story 2.

So I'm formally inviting any and all industry insiders to submit a guest post on any subject that's TV related. It can be your take on lazy storytelling tropes, your pet beef on some aspect of how the world works. It can be a day in the life of a Key Grip. It could be tales from the Makeup Table. It might be Deep Throat Confessions of a Telefilm Reader, What really happens inside an ACTRA meeting, or why a taping of the Air Farce is better than watching a show. It can be what you learned on set. It could be a treatise on supply and demand and how that relates to the Editor shortage in Toronto, or it could be why you hate the Film Centre (or Praxis, or the NSI, or whatever.) It could even be true tales of the CRTC (but please, if I'm gonna run that there better be nudity.) In short, there's a big old industry out there, and Playback seems determined to just keep reprinting press releases. So if you'd like to submit a guest post, that sheds light on some dark corner of what you do, I would be more than happy to consider it.

My rules for guest posts are three, and only three. 1) You can publish it anonymously or with attribution, but you must submit it to me under your own identity. I promise to maintain your anonymity here, but I have to know who you are 2) If I publish your submission, I reserve the right to reply or comment on it later. I will not comment within the body of your post. 3) I reserve the right to reject any post, or edit it if I feel there are elements in it that are libelous. Because, hey, it's my name on the shingle, buttercup.

Other than that, stir some shit up. Rattle some cages. Vent Spleen, baby. We all could use a bit more of that in Canada. In return you get glory and a shot at five-figures of readers a week. That's right. Woo hoo!

Stop lurking. Get typing.

Othello on CBC

I WISH I had more time to give this a longer review, but sadly that's not in the cards.

This Sunday night on CBC Television, there's an opportunity to see a really nifty two hour condensed version of Othello.

As described by CBC's cutline:

Hot-blooded lust and murder come to the CBC Television on Sunday, June 15, at 9 p.m., when the two-hour theatrical television adaptation of Othello: The Tragedy Of The Moor, based on William Shakespeare's Othello, raises this riveting drama of love and betrayal to new levels as a psychological thriller. At the heart of the story is: Othello (Carlo Rota), a noble Moor and general; Desdemona (Christine Horne), his loving wife; Cassio (Graham Abbey), his loyal lieutenant; and Iago (Matthew Deslippe), his ensign.

The show features three fine actors I've had the good fortune to work with: Matthew Deslippe (who rocked the villain part in Across The River To Motor City) as Iago and Graham Abbey and Nazneen Contractor from The Border stepping back into Stratford-era tights, too.

The idea of something like this -- putting CBC stars in a classical staged production, is interesting too -- a savvy way to extend that CBC star brand. These are the faces of the CBC, and it doesn't hurt to have them on the channel doing something else, too.

Unlike when, say, the same four actors show up in every Canadian show, the distance of costumes and tights and Shakespearean language bumps the curiosity factor high enough that, you know what? It really works.

If you were a fan of some of the BBC RSC filmed Shakespeares from the 1970s, then you'll appreciate the territory here. It's shot in studio, and you're definitely watching a filmed play (apparently they shot up to 16 pages a day) but the show doesn't look cheap -- in fact, it's a pretty good template for how to make something lower budget work. It's amazing how well they've pulled it off.

Rota is wonderful, and Deslippe is a very powerful Iago. What the hell happened to Matthew in his youth I will never know. He's a sinister dude on screen, that much I'll tell you.

Again, I wish I had the cogent powers to say more -- but my own pale scribblings come first, I'm afraid. So I'll just say, give this a gander and you may be surprised.

Alack, as Will S. Would say. Or is that fie?

Anyway, check it out,

The Other Side

ONE OF THE things that never occurred to me before is that the very things that lead one to become a good television writer might also help once you move up and start being a writer-producer.

I was a producer for years - but on the documentary/factual side. So for the last few years, after I made the switch to full time writer (Or as I put it when I'm in my cups, once I went from sitting through interviews thinking, "shutup" to actually making things up,) I focused on the words and the skillset.

You know what helps when you're imagining scenes and dialogue: empathy, being able to read people a bit, an observer's touch, the ability to relate to people with different challenges and histories than you -- well, all that stuff helps in producing, too.

I will never be the type of producer who can instantly figure out how much this costs versus how much that costs -- or at least I think I won't...but I'm starting to enjoy the ability to watch the Director work, to try and be there if they ever need anything answered or clarified, or if they just need a second opinion on something they want to try. It might only happen twice a day, but if it does happen, then you were valuable being there.

I also find that the more I'm on set, the more my affection for the hardworking crew and the actors grows. This probably won't come as news to people like Henshaw or Dixon...but it's another facet to the experience that I'm enjoying.

What it comes down to though, for me, is this -- the skillset that helps you in being an intuitive writer is the essential thing that helps you, eventually, to be the showrunner. I used to think that showrunner was such a fearsome and scary job, but it's not. Yes, it's a lot of responsibility. But the most important parts go back to that skillset you've already been honing. And that personal, people-management stuff is way harder than the rest of it. There are GREAT nonwriting producers out there -- it doesn't mean they're not creative. But I think the control rod that helps most good showrunners from being unbearable egomaniacs is probably that the writing process itself is so very, very humbling. When your governor is, first and foremost, how can this be the best it can be? I think you probably get into a lot less trouble than if you're approaching it from an ego-gratification factor: enjoying the power.

For there is no power in producing, really producing, I find. Not when you can so easily be humbled by the weather, or sickness, or a crew injury or bad luck or a pedestrian passing at the wrong time, or the dog not hitting his mark.

If you open yourself up to the other people who want to make the show better, you always wind up with ideas, fresher approaches and moments of fancy that never occurred to you. So the opener I scripted as a walk and chase becomes something with a car and a motorcycle, and the university setting becomes a colorful grafitti alley -- and you get none of that if you don't open up the iron fist a bit and let someone else try to give you the best they've got, too.

I've thought in the back of my mind that somewhere down that crazy river, I'd like to Direct. But it's when I watch people like Michael DeCarlo (who I'm currently working with, and who also Directed Across The River To Motor City) or Phil Earnshaw (who's prepping our next Border ep) or Andy Mikita or David Winning or James Dunnison or any number of other Directors I've observed, that I think about moving those goalposts a little further down the field. That skillset is very different. For now, I'm happy to listen to great TV Directors like Ken Girotti talk about what they go through.

So then, to Girotti's take on Notes: from the Director's POV:

Yesterday I was in New York to meet with some people about a US Network show now going into its third season. I knew before 15 minutes of the meeting had elapsed that were I to work on this show NOTES would be my only way of staking a claim to the mantle of director...as opposed to say, "School Crossing Guard." I won't name names but the show's title is a derivative of the name, Elizabeth (another one who's last name was Rubble appeared in a TV series years ago) in concert with the fact that she is perceived to be less than attractive.

In the meeting I was told how they do things. Script the night before day one of prep. Concept meeting first up. Casting meeting second up. Costume meeting third (because the show has a fashion element), then scout locations. The list of how they do things was long, and was largely a blur until I heard the words, "Shot List!" From that moment forward I was rendered blind.

"We demand a shot list from all of our directors because that's the way... WE. DO. THINGS. HERE." Fuh-uck!

Before you crawl up my arse and accuse me of being lazy because I don't do shot lists hear me out. I ALWAYS do a shot list. ALWAYS. But my shot lists are mine. They're my shots. I share them with the cinematographer and the AD. If there's a stunt or effects sequence I do a storyboard and I share that with everyone. The trouble with making a shot list public is A) you get held to them...wiggle room begone! and B) I live in fear that the actors will see them (they have) and that they'll feel like they're somehow hemmed in.

So I keep my shot lists to myself and to the people essential to helping me realize them.

Demanding a shot list of a director who's private about them is about as close to penile endoscopy as you can get without inserting a foreign object into the human body. I should mention that this violation won't be nearly as painful for directors of the School Crossing Guard variety. Shot lists are like international environmental agreements. Everybody wants them but once they're out there everybody wants to change them. Fuck that noise!

The short excerpt does not do the full post justice.

And just because this is a writing blog and I like to circle back, panda-style, let me just say, take out "shotlist" and replace it with "bible" and you're back to talking about writers in Canadian television.

Oh snap, see what I did there?

Okay, back to set. Or outline. Or...man....where do I have to be right now?

A Survey of the Progress of My Latest Adventure in Episodic Television, as reflected entirely in Facebook Status Messages (In Reverse Order)

June 13

Denis is kinda tired. 10:54 am

Denis is finished his outline but can't vouch that it's in English. But hey, 1:30 pm call! 2:07 am

June 12

Denis is heading down to an empty mall. Man he hopes there are no zombies. 11:44 pm

Denis isn't going to miss those two scenes at all.9:50pm

Denis is caught between the desire to write scenes that explore heartfelt and real human emotion and making shit blow up.6:01pm

Denis is holed up in a hotel room at the Royal York while they relight. Which ep am I writing again?4:09pm

Denis is really milking the sexual tension. In his script. Sadly, in life that particular teat is dry. Or is that too much info for a status update?1:08pm

Denis is really milking the sexual tension.9:27am

Denis holds his breath waiting for the squib hits.1:16am

Denis is still on set, with a terrible thirst.12:47am

June 11

Denis will be pretty thirsty by midnight, I'm telling you.8:33pm

Denis has his eye on the tiger.5:04pm

Denis is kind of looking forward to the fricken tiger, man.12:45am

June 10

Denis doesn't remember writing in all of this homoerotic subtext.1:43pm

And Now Your Latest Outrage

LET'S RECAP. The dark scourge of the unitary executive and Darth Cheney finally is on the wane. So now Canada has a government that's behind the times, playing by the Karl Rove handbook six years later.

Okay.

And hey, you know, the music industry, so forward looking that despite years of grumbling from its consumers, decided that the only possible response to the digital environment was to sue people ---

--and then get angry when Steve Jobs came up with another way...

Well, sure, buttercup. That's keen. Let's get ourselves a new copyright act!

But...

Let's make sure it's the same bullshit, crippled, fucked up bill that Canadians overwhelmingly rejected months ago! Why not! Hey, kids, this isn't a shit sandwich! It's a shit baguette!

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians will be allowed to copy legally acquired music to their iPods and computers but would be banned from getting around any digital locks that companies might apply, under new legislation introduced in Parliament on Thursday.

The bill, introduced by Industry Minister Jim Prentice, would continue to exempt Internet service providers from liability for copyright violations by their subscribers, requiring them only to pass on notices of violations rather than to take down offending material as required in the United States.

It would also allow consumers to record television and radio programs for playing back at a later time, a practice known as time-shifting, but would prohibit people from keeping them indefinitely in a personal library of recordings.

In drafting the new legislation, the government said it faced the delicate task of balancing the rights of content creators with the realities and needs of everyday life in a digital world, and also realizing the difficulty of policing possible personal infringements.

Prentice said of the issue: "It touches each and every one of us, and it is no surprise to find so many different points of view with respect to copyright."

One online group, Fair Copyright for Canada, was set up on Facebook in advance of the new bill to protest against the government's copyright plans and has 40,000 members.

Its creator, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, focused on provisions under which it would be illegal to break digital locks.

"Prentice hands consumers a series of attention-grabbing new 'private rights' but then proceeds to take them away in the digital environment," he wrote. "All these rights force consumers to read the fine print -- you can shift a song or a television show, but once it's locked down, your rights disappear and your potential liability skyrockets."

Geist is the only guy you should be reading on this. Geist, Geist, Geist.

You want some forward-thinking, you know, 21st fucking century perspective? How about this:

In his book "The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism," British author Matt Mason points out the allegations of piracy are as old as technology itself, adding it's actually a sign of innovation, not thievery.

"Some of America's greatest innovators were thought of as pirates," he writes. "When Thomas Edison invented the phonographic record player, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work and destroy the live music business, until a system was established so everyone could be paid royalties."

Edison, he points out, went on to invent filmmaking and demanded licensing fees from anyone making movies with his technology. This led to the creation of a band of filmmaking pirates, including William Fox - the founder of 20th Century Fox - who headed to the wild frontier of Hollywood in the early 1900s to become the movie moguls of their day.

Piracy is not going away, Saade said, adding that the television industry can adapt to rapidly changing viewing habits if it avoids making the colossal mistakes made by the music industry.

"What you have to do is make sure that you are ahead of the curve - making your content available at any time, at any place, for anyone who wants it, and you don't put so many restrictions in that you go the way of the music industry, which was basically criminalizing its own audience," he said.

Instead, networks and broadcasters have to give technologically savvy viewers what they want.

"So what you do in the digital space is ensure that if you want to see one of our shows, we're going to give you an extremely high-quality version of that show," he said.

"You may have to sacrifice about 30 seconds of commercials here and there, certainly not the kind of commercials you'd see on broadcast, but if you want to watch it on your iPod, if you want to watch it on your cellphone, your computer - we've got to make it available. That's the only way we can get ahead of pirating."

I swear to God, following the copyright strategy of THE MUSIC INDUSTRY in 2008 reminds me of nothing less than my Grade 9 Business Teacher, who said with great gravity, "no matter what happens, you're always going to need to know punch cards."

Join us. Join us, here in the new, up to date world. It's shiny. Come on!
Jesus, will somebody up there in Ottawa please remove their head from their brown flower? Like, for five seconds?

And for now, gentlemen, ladies, start your letters...