Hold Your Nose and Pass The Smelling Salts

I'VE MANAGED TO pull up sick in the last forty-eight hours, just as we get into the meat of storybreaking. Bleah.

Of course, at least some of that queasiness should be reserved for the subject that never goes away and never gets better: the whingeing and moaning over Canadian TV.

Ten years since broadcasters were allowed to re-define "priority programming" to include crappy magazine shows nobody gives a shit about. Ten painful years trying to make inroads with creative dramas and comedies. Some successes. Some failures. But a drop in the bucket to the big tent show: Broadcasters vs. Cablers.

The latter are making all the money. The former are mad. Both, in their time, have complained about homegrown programming not "being competitive" in the midst of their very, very much-protected industries.

In the sideshow this week, Jim Henshaw comes out in an entertaining post for Team Shaw. I tend to feel more like one of his commenters, who compares consumers' role in this little fight as being Poland caught between Germany and the Soviet Union in WWII.

Except, of course, the Poles actually had a sense of their own culture.

Ooh. Low blow. I know. Cranky. I'm in a hotel for night nine. Gimme a break.

The display at the CRTC has been weird, with Cable co's offering interesting speculation about how to re-align the industry, as the conventional broadcasters continue their single-minded pursuit of Carriage Fees. Or, As Henshaw puts it,

Despite ample opportunities offered by Commission Chair Konrad von Finckenstein for input on how the broken conventional model of television could be fixed, Fecan offered nothing but “give us more money”.

Seemingly unable to articulate how that money could be spent, be it on local news or maybe even drama, to bring back both audience and advertisers, he raised the same question a lot of people have been asking about auto industry bailouts -- “If nobody’s buying the product, how does keeping the company afloat a while longer solve that problem?”

Even when von Finckenstein mentioned that it’s been a downhill slope for “ten years”, Fecan couldn’t come up with one idea on what might change things.

Anybody remember what happened ten years ago? 1999? The year the nets won a reprieve from doing expensive dramas in favor of cheaper to produce and mostly unwatchable pap?

And throwing more money at this guy, just like the CRTC did back then, is going to make it all better. Uh-huh.

So Jim Shaw made what he knew was a winning bet, and immediately further pissed on Fecan’s parade by stating that his Kenora station (another small market outfit) had managed to end up $200,000 in the black last year.

Huh?

You mean local TV can make money?

How come the CTV affiliated Globe & Mail never mentioned that? Is there some odd reason Canwest’s National and Financial Posts both missed it as well? Whatever could cause such a journalistic lapse?

Jim says $200,000 isn’t a lot of money. Maybe not to him. But it’s more than GM or Chrysler made last year. And suddenly a lot of people who pay Cable bills or work at the CRTC have begun wondering just how well those other stations could be doing if they weren’t saddled with a schedule of lame celebrity magazine shows and derivative reality offerings their viewers can already get elsewhere.

If you choose to read beyond Jim, please give a moment to consider that today is yet another wonderful Canwest D (for 'Debt') day. What will happen? You got me.

Meanwhile, on the public side, sometimes the CBC's Richard Stursberg is a tough guy to like. He can be high-handed. I'm not the guy's publicist. ( I also sure as hell wouldn't want his job.)

And though I know it's easy to point at me at this point as a guy who's worked on CBC shows now and for the past two seasons and declare me biased -- I don't deny it -- I wonder how someone could read this little article Stursberg wrote for the Star and not have a little pause. It articulates a point of view that makes quite a bit of sense, in context.

The CBC is the only television service in the country devoted specifically to Canadian programming. Our 8 p.m.-11 p.m. prime-time schedule is entirely Canadian; those of our competitors are overwhelmingly American. If this does not make us "distinctive," what would?

Ah, say our critics, we're not "distinctive" because CBC shows are made within the same narrative and format conventions as many U.S. television shows. They argue that the Canadian privates could make these shows.

Maybe. But they don't. CBC spends more on Canadian drama and comedy than all the privates combined.

But, say the critics, it's not "high quality" and a public broadcaster needs to focus on quality, not popularity.

Here is the root of the matter. Some people believe there is a mutually exclusive choice to be made between popularity and excellence. If a show is successful, it must necessarily be coarse or vulgar. For some, in fact, television itself is an unworthy medium.

This is patronizing, disrespectful and untrue. They are the views of those who haven't paid attention lately to shows like Little Mosque on the Prairie, which has been inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in New York and sold to more than 60 countries around the world. Or Being Erica, cheered by critics here and abroad. Or other programs that Canadians love to watch, like The Tudors, The Border, Heartland, Rick Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Dragon's Den and The Week the Women Went.

In Lausanne this year, The Rose D'Or Awards are devoting an entire day to celebrating the CBC.

When the pundits describe what they want on TV, it's more "high brow," more "educational" and more "mandate." They want it to be a university lecture, a ballet, or a treatise on world hunger. While television can sometimes portray these, it is none of those but rather much more: the greatest popular art form in the world.

Every serious public broadcaster, including CBC, aspires to make great national television.

The BBC is packed with wonderful, popular soap operas, sitcoms, reality shows, game shows, police procedurals and comedies. They are all relentlessly British and relentlessly focused on attracting audiences. The BBC makes no apologies. It celebrates television for what it is.

In English Canada, it's sometimes argued that we've fallen away from CBC's Golden Age in the 1970s and 1980s. Not true. A typical prime time from 1982 was mostly American shows of little cultural distinction: Mork & Mindy, WKRP in Cincinnati, Dallas or Joanie Loves Chachi.

Our Golden Age, arguably, is now. Our prime time is Canadian. It's also attracting more Canadians than Global, CITY, the A Channels or the E Channels. For the first time in history in English Canada, a Canadian schedule is beating an American one.

Yes, CBC is a rorschach test for everybody in the industry. No matter who you are, you tend to project your own concerns, biases, and needs onto it. Still, the defense that Stursberg makes needed to be said. And he said it pretty well.

Speaking of saying it pretty well, from the truth to power department, if you can tear yourself away from the "local TV is dying" kabuki sideshow going on at the CRTC, save a little energy to cheer on Team WGC as they present on Thursday -- along with Canadian showrunner Cal Coons. (Murdoch Mysteries.)

Michel Arpin may look on that presentation as the bleating of a self interested group. You may look at it a little differently. I certainly do. I think Thursday we'll get to see the only people at this whole hearing speaking out for a greater choice for consumers, and a greater voice for Canadians on the airwaves we all supposedly own.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go. That ColdFX has to be somewhere.

Spinning Plates

EVERY DISCUSSION of "Hey, um, you think they know what they're doing on LOST?" seems to get queasier and queasier as the eps tick down. The NYTimes tackles the subject again, with Lindelof offering answers that might evince a few nods from anybody who's ever been in a writer's room, and puzzled head scratches from everybody else:

There’s so much organizational power, especially now. The less episodes there are, the more you have to go, like, “Oh my God, we have to do this. When are we going to do that?” We always get asked iterations of the same question which is, “Are you making it up as you go along?” It’s a very complicated question to answer, but ultimately, we have all the story but we don’t know what order we’re going to tell it in. So it’s like “Pulp Fiction.”

There was always an option in past seasons which was, “Let’s hold it for next year. I don’t think they’re ready for that,” or “That’ll have more emotional impact later.” And then there are also actor deals to contend with – what’s the stable of regulars you can maintain at any one time? Next year, I feel like for the first time we’ll have the entire box of crayons to color with, without having to worry about the mechanics. All our ducks are in a row.

I think one of our biggest concerns is reaching the climax of the story too soon – you have to time it right, you have to walk that line between giving a steady supply of story and character pathos and mysteries being answered along the way, so that the audience doesn’t feel like it all comes in one big chunk. But then if you do it too soon, they kind of feel like, “I got everything that I cared about halfway through the season, so why am I still watching?” And it’s terrifying. Finally, we’re going to do it. There’s no excuses, we don’t get to say, “We didn’t get to end the show on our own terms. They kept us on the air three years longer than we wanted to be. Blah blah blah.” It’s like “Galactica,” you have to say, “Here it is, do you like it? I hope you like it.” There’s a lot of second-guessing going on. I think the show will end exactly as it began. There’ll be people who love it, there’ll be people who hate it. There’ll be people who’ll be confused by it, there’ll be people who love being confused. It’ll end on its own terms.

A Tale of Two Governments

WORKING ON A new series is always an amazing, upward learning curve. The first steps when you get in the room, and take that Bible that sold the show and try to figure out how to get it on its feet and translate that selling document to series; the back and forth as a new writing team tries to gel and find their way; the kludge-together let's start something here as production comes together, producers toil, and a creator tries to open up and shift that thinking from "let's make a pilot" to "let's make a series..." with enthusiasm and hope and tenacity and generosity of spirit intact...

It's all possibility at this point. And professionals who smile and try to conceal the excitement..."is this really going to happen?" "Are we really doing this?"

The exciting becomes transcendant when you find yourself in a place that's new and exciting to you. I felt this way when I first went to South Africa. I feel it again here in St. John's.

It happens in little ways, as you peel back and discover other elements of the culture that makes this rugged land and this beautiful city so very, very different. It happens when you drive winding roads and look out to sea and see your first Iceberg. It happens when your charismatic lead actor and Executive Producer reminds you that he's a first-generation Canadian; the son of people born into the separate nation of Newfoundland. It happens as you contemplate the hundred different little ways the culture here is different, yet undeniably alive. It makes you think, think of all the other places you've been in this great nation -- Alberta, where they never met a U.S. idea they didn't like, and where they hate the CBC like it's a religious rite. I think of the Calgarians I know who seem as surrounded as liberals in Austin, Texas. I think of Vancouver, aloof and a little smug about its beauty and wonder; as I stare now out the window at its easy equal. I think of winding stone streets in Vieux Montreal, the steps leading up to the Chateau in Quebec City. I think of the few days I spent up in Thunder Bay, another few in Halifax, the sunny times spent on Parliament Hill or wandering the Byward Market in Ottawa. I close my eyes and picture the ferry ride to Vancouver Island, lovely and still through the summer fog of morning. I recall my own teeming, shiny, stinky and occasionally humid Toronto, and how beautiful and majestic the Legislature looked at night the one time I visited Regina, and viewed the place where Medicare began. I think of this wonderful, different, vibrant country -- its parts seemingly ever at war or resentment with each other.

And as I prepare to help craft stories that show off one beautiful part the way it hasn't been shown before, all I can think of is what a gift Canadians miss by not being able to see stories told about all the funky, silly, crazy, wondrous, scary, nifty and puzzling people I've met in all these wonderful cities in this great and vast and puzzling land.

I think of how this short-sighted debate has been going on for some time. And I think about how little Canadians know of their own government. Little enough that they misunderstand the very process of parliamentary democracy itself. And I curse again the colonized culture that makes those lessons invisible. And then I realize: that's not strictly true. Ontarians don't know a lot. Albertans think they know, but honestly, I've looked -- it's a photocopy or an American ideal of the west. B.C. just hates Toronto. Right now I'm in a place that understands the value of its culture -- and just coincidentally it's a place where the culture has been ridiculed by the rest of Canada for a long time.

So it was today that this was read out in the legislature of the great Province of Newfoundland and Labrador:

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation recently approved its upcoming television season lineup, and confirmed that a one-hour father-son police drama, entitled Republic of Doyle, will be among the new shows featured next year.

Republic of Doyle is one of the biggest budget television series ever produced in Canada – and the 12 episodes commissioned to date will be filmed right here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for our film industry, and for film industry workers in this province. We recognized this when the producers approached us last year with a view to securing our financial support in making the television series a reality.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has committed $1.5 million in film equity funding to the project in Budget 2009 to ensure this province accrues the maximum benefits from this television production. The size of this production will also enable producers to avail of approximately $3 million through the Newfoundland and Labrador Film and Video Tax Credit.

Therefore, the direct commitment from the Provincial Government in Republic of Doyle is $4.5 million, with economic spin-off activities estimated to result in about $11.3 million in benefits to the local economy.

Contrast that with the fabulous recent efforts of our central, National government.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ottawa, these guys, and these guys and these guys continue to fight a battle over millions, where the only surety is that at some point they're going to complain about the need to throw breadcrumbs to support the very process I'm starting right now here in St. John's.

It's a pretty stomach-churning display. It's one of those times that I'm very glad to be very far away, where the sound of the sea drowns out the sound of money, and the local culture can be seen, felt, and heard all about you. It exists in Canada.

At least in parts of it, it does.

Leacock Prize!

CONGRATS TO Mark Leiren-Young, my colleague on Blood Ties, who just won the prestigious Stephen Leacock Prize for Humour Writing. That's right - with a 'u.'

Filmmaker, playwright and author Mark Leiren-Young's quirky book about his misadventures as a rookie reporter working in the B.C. interior has snagged the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

Organizers of the annual humour-writing prize announced Leiren-Young the award's 2009 winner for his book, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen: A Rookie Reporter in the Cariboo at the Stephen Leacock Memorial Museum in Orillia, Ont., on Thursday.

Leiren-Young's debut book is a memoir of his time as a young reporter in Williams Lake, B.C.

"Not only does the author recount his encounters with the police, loggers, the fire department, fellow workers and, yes, beauty contest aspirants for the local rodeo, but he tells his story with both humour and compassion. As his readers will find out, it is a wonderfully amusing story," organizers said in a statement.

The Vancouver-based writer is the first Leacock winner to receive the increased cash prize of $15,000 (raised from $10,000 earlier this year). He will receive the actual Leacock medal and his cheque at a gala near Orillia on June 13

Congrats Mark! Good writer news!

Writer on the Radio

YOU KNOW WHAT? It's great to be able to plug a Canadian writer on the radio who isn't ME!

Like most screenwriters, Tassie Cameron isn't a household name -- but her reach is growing day by day.  She's the leading voice in a new generation of screenwriters who upend the whole "gotta go to the U.S.A. to work on shows" conventional wisdom.  Besides her own ventures like Would Be Kings, and the adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride, Tassie spent a good part of last season doing a lot of the heavy lifting on Flashpoint. She also had a hand in the early going of her sister Amy's Wild Roses. That didn't end as happily for the show (which was recently dropped by CBC) but now Cameron's taking the reins on another Canadian cop show with a sale to a U.S. network (in this case, ABC.)  

And yes, in case your wondering, she does carry the flag for Canadian-ness. She's extremely nice and polite in person. So there.

Tassie talks to Jian on Q here. 

Touchdown Rock

TOMORROW IT STARTS.

By the bye, you can really feel that extra half hour :)

How'd the begfest at the CRTC trough go...?

...nah, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

You In The Picture

IF YOU LIVE in Ottawa, Sudbury, or Thunder Bay, Ontario, Quebec City, Corner Brook, NFLD, Victoria, Prince George or Prince Rupert B.C., or Edmonton or Calgary, Alberta, you might be hearing me on CBC Radio tomorrow morning talking about the upcoming CRTC hearings into Private TV license renewals.

All that, as well as the Heritage Committee's ongoing look into the "crisis in Canadian TV" is stuff that may get short shrift from me here, as I prepare for my new job and life. Nice to see the Heritage Committee get caught in a Synechdoche loop this week, though. Seems they've bought into the idea that this "local crisis" is separate, and not part and parcel of a much larger fight about obligations, and the fact that 0ne of the most protected businesses in the country doesn't feel it should have any. Where have you gone, Charlie Angus? An industry raises its beleaguered eyes to you, while the millionaires say, "look over here at local! Look! Look! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Give us fee for carriage!" Ugh.

Anyway, there's plenty of other places to get the full skinny on what's really going on right now, as one group of millionaires (The Broadcasters) square off against another group of millionaires (The Cable Co's.)

Right now, the person who matters least in this equation is you, the consumer, TV audience member or cable subscriber. However you wish to describe yourself, whether you wish to remain the person who matters least in this equation is entirely up to you.

Blue Skies, Smling at Me...

BILL BRIOUX talked to me, as well as esteemed writer/bloggers JIm Henshaw, John Rogers and Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan about recession-era TV, and how it's affecting what you see on the Box:

As Denis McGrath, a former writer for CBC's The Border sees it, it is all about networks feeling our pain and not wanting to be behind the curve. "We've got to do something to acknowledge what people are going through," he sees them saying, "because there is a danger of being out of step with what people want to see."

McGrath is about to take his own step toward the light. He leaves this week for Newfoundland, where he will run the writing room on The Republic of Doyle, an upcoming CBC private-eye drama he describes as retro and fun. But even darker shows like AMCs' Emmy-winning Breaking Bad – a show about a dying school teacher (Bryan Cranston) so desperate to provide for his family he turns to selling drugs – have had to adjust to the new economic reality.

"Reality does impact, and you can't help but pay attention to what's going on in the newspapers every day," says Breaking Bad creator/producer Vince Gilligan. He sees his show as being about "a good man who makes a very bad decision" and then "the cascade of consequences, the domino effect from that decision." It is an extreme example of what a lot of people are dealing with today.

Suddenly, CEOs and bankers are the new bad guys on TV. The Canadian-born creator of the American cable drama Leverage, John Rogers, says the recession probably helped his show get a second season because many of his stories focus on people going after corporate criminals. McGrath found it interesting that the creators of the midseason ABC comedy Better Off Ted had tapped into a growing cynicism and mistrust about the corporate world. "It has finally sunk in that these guys have wrecked our economy," says McGrath.

There is word leaking out from Friday Night Lights that job-loss storylines will be on the agenda next season. "It's certainly on producer's and writer's minds and that means those kind of stories will be on the table in the coming weeks," says veteran Canadian TV screenwriter Jim Henshaw (BeastMaster).

"The only thing the networks want to see right now are what the networks are calling `Blue Sky Shows,'" says McGrath, who has heard through his agent and writer friends in L.A. that "Happy stuff` is all the rage. "All those Criminal Minds, CSIs, dark, crime procedurals are in real trouble.

"When the real news is all doom and gloom, the dive to comedy and escapism is almost a reflex."

And Then There's Maude.

SLOW CLAP for Bea Arthur, Ladies and Gentlemen. A full on, groundbreaking comedy broad if ever there was one. She'll be missed.

EDIT: A proper tribute from Salon's Rebecca Traister:

There are lots of reasons to take a moment this weekend to mark the passing of Bea Arthur, who died on Saturday at age 86 in her home in Los Angeles. The most obvious was that she was talented and hilarious, and that if you are over the age of 30 in this country, there's a good chance that she made you laugh on a semi-regular basis at some point in your life.

But it's also important to remember that before "Dollhouse," before "Sex and the City," there was "Maude." The "All in the Family" spin-off, which ran from 1972 to 1978, starred Arthur as Maude Findlay, the Democratic-voting, women's liberation-supporting, four times married cousin of Edith Bunker. The program, created by television visionary Norman Lear, made the news early in its run for featuring prime time's first abortion, in a two-part episode that aired two months before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal across the country.

Seven years after "Maude," Arthur starred in "The Golden Girls" as Dorothy Zbornak, the divorced retiree who shared a home in Florida with three other women, including her aged mother. It's remarkable to think, given how young, glossy and pneumatic network television has become, that less than 20 years ago, the airwaves were given over to four older women who talked about sex and ex-husbands and ate cheesecake.

Just Me?

OR IS THIS ALL STARTING to sound like the first Act or so of Romeo & Juliet?


"Do you bite your thumb at me sir?"
"I bite my thumb, sir."


Seriously. Nothing better than one set of millionaires arguing with another set of millionaires, while the rest of us worry about the scraps. Go to sleep in Canada, Wake up in Verona town.

How'd that story end again?

Riggggght.

Anybody know if Paladeau has a daughter? And is there some young Asper out there somewhere? Anybody? Can we get a couple kids together?

Nothing? What about the goddamn Friar? Work with me here.



This whole shoddy toy CanTvbiz needs a Mercutio right quick. Course, they'd probably stab him long before he started jawing about Queen Mab.

Right. I need a nap.

Oops is Right.

OH MAN I wish I had even a second's worth of time to pay attention to this. But I don't. Doesn't mean y'all can't enjoy it.



Shep Smith, you are a magnificent Bastard. See, sometimes even the Righties see through the Fog of....Fog.

Curious

WITH THE CAR industry in such trouble, and Banks & Financial institutions on the ropes, does that drive Big Pharma to the top of the advertisers list?

And if so, is that going to affect the kinds of shows we see?

Will older-skewing not be poison?

Will the advertising market have about as many side effects as most of those advertised drugs?

Just wondering out loud here -- I have zero data and I don't really know.

Any ad buyers or account types wanna weigh in?

Copper's a Shopper

FREEZE, EH? might enter the lexicon, it seems. COPPER, a GlobalTV pickup just got snapped up for a run on ABC. It's described loosely "Grey's Anatomy meets a cop show." It's the third cop series produced in Canada to be picked up in the USA, after FLASHPOINT and THE BRIDGE, which started shooting in Toronto last week for a summer start on CBS.

That Tassie Cameron magic continues. Congrats. More deets at Tv-eh? and Brioux's pad.

So, yeah, I did call the "Flashpoint's a fluke, there will be no stampede" disastrously wrong, so take this with a huge grain of salt...but I gotta say I've got a baaaaaad feeling that we're about one or two more Canadian-on-U.S. nets shows away from a Yankee backlash. TV: Our next softwood lumber?

Brrrrr.

CBC TeeVee & Me: Down East Edition

SOMEBODY, I'M NOT sure who, once pointed out that CBC has four distinct programming seasons: Summer, Fall, Winter and Hockey.

Well, CBC today announced the highlights of the big two of those seasons: Fall and Winter.

Besides returning shows like Little Mosque on the Prairie, The Border, Being Erica, Heartland, The Tudors, Dragon's Den, The Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Canada's public broadcaster will be adding a figure-skating based reality series, and a spelling-bee like reality show. Also new is venerable CBC favourite Ron James, in an eponymously named sketch comedy show.

As for January?

Two new shows will premiere during the winter: 18 to Life, a domestic comedy about a couple who marry at 18, and Republic of Doyle, a one-hour, St. John's-set dramatic comedy about a dysfunctional father-son private investigator team.

I've been waiting for this official announcement to hit, cause now I can finally confirm the scuttlebutt that's been floating about for the last little bit. I'm very happy to be able to say that I've signed on to run the writing room on Republic of Doyle.

This is the project I blogged briefly about back in February, when I went out for a working weekend in St. John's.

Sometimes when a series gears up after a pilot there's an initial trepidation. Will it work as a series? Is it sustainable? I don't feel any of that going into Republic of Doyle. Allan Hawco, one of the show's creators and its lead actor, is a young actor who's already an old hand at the business. He's got smarts, passion for miles, and a clear, infectious sense of the show he wants to see -- and how he wants to see his city presented. It's a show that's pure entertainment, that's going to feel fresh and fun -- and it's going to be a love letter to St. John's to boot.

Even before I went to Newfoundland, from the very first meeting I had with Hawco and his producing partners John Vatcher and Rob Blackie, at an extremely generic Jack Astor's in downtown Toronto, my spidey sense said that these guys were kindred -- all looking to do a show that's work worth doing, and worth having a lot of fun doing it. Then Hawco and I sealed some kind of mojo-devil magic at one of the craziest nights I have EVER had at The Paddock.

Once I met Perry Chafe, Hawco's writing partner, and jawed a bit more with Malcolm MacRury, who helped them write the pilot, and we got down to breaking story, I started getting really excited. Anticipating a new show is kind of like falling in love that way.

So there it is. I've drunk the KoolAid. Harrrd. Next week I'm on a plane to St. John's, and hopefully, touch wood, all goes well, I'll be there most of 2009, doing the thing I love, and helping other people to do the thing they love. It's a good life, I think.

That's going to mean changes and evolutions not just for my life, but for this blog. No, in case you were wondering, I shall not miss being at the centre of the universe (note to the rest of the country: nobody in Toronto EVER actually thinks of the city this way.) I won't miss being far from the networks, or from the gossip. I won't miss the occasional sniff of toxic weirdness that seems to have crept out a lot more in the last month or two. But I will miss all my wonderful friends, and the streets I know so well. I'll have to sneak back for a weekend now and again. (As well, I'm working with the WGC to figure out the ways I can continue to discharge my Councillor duties.)

Your life prepares you for things in funny ways. I've been in this place before -- poised to go somewhere utterly new to write a chapter of a new adventure. For years now, I've harboured a kind of fascination for Newfoundland, that didn't just begin and end with The Shipping News. No, I've found myself drawn to myth like The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, the modern day movement of Michael Winter's This All Happened, the Iambics of Newfoundland...I've had a strange running series of books on my bedside table.

But to be so far away and so head-down-and-working means that, oh, say....CRTC...yeah, I hate to say it, but I can't see writing much of that up for the moment. Good thing you've got the WGC blasts and Kelly Lynne Ashton's Twitters and La Walton's ink reportage to fall back on.

I'm going to say right now that blogging's liable to be light for the foreseeable future. I've got to, first, do a thousand things to be ready to get out of Dodge, and second, immerse myself into getting stories into the pipeline. It's going to be more than all-consuming.

I can't say that there won't be craft dispatches along the way, maybe along the line of the kinds of things I wrote when I was working on the first season of the ex-show...but at the same time, I'm a big believer that the first impression you get of a show should be of the work itself. So you're not going to hear a lot about Republic of Doyle. Nope. Not til you see it in January 2010.

This is a chance to re-order certain attentions and patterns in my life, too. This blog hasn't been as fun for me to do for a while now. Maybe I'll have a chance to rediscover what was fun about doing it with a change of scene. To fill the gaps this summer, I'm going to be trying to wrangle other Canadian writers to take up a Dead Things Residency for a week at a time.

A bold experiment, I guess. See if it works.

In the meantime, I hope you'll all continue to come back here when there's something new, and that you'll continue to try and find the creative spark and courage in your own lives. Little Darling, I feel the ice is slowly melting. And over the last months, it really has seemed like years since it's been clear.

But now, here comes the sun -- and there's something new, and shiny, and wonderful to play with -- and new kids in the sandbox to dream with, too.

Can't. Hardly. Wait.

Well, Wasn't That a Party?

SO THAT'S IT then. Another year gone. Seems like yesterday that I was up on the stage accepting my WGC Screenwriting Award, but my God, that was about five scripts, two shows, seven outlines, two and a half development deals, and a whole frickin' YEAR ago. Man. Hurtling. Toward. The End.

You can read a full listing of the worthy winners of the 2009 WGC Screenwriting Awards here, but I just wanted to call attention to two of the winners.

Mark Farrell accepted the Showrunner Award with his usual self-effacing charm and grace. Kevin White, in his intro, told of a Writers Guild Award show years ago where Farrell told him to send in some samples.

Kevin's a friend, and I remember that time, and hearing about how he sent two, three sets of samples, not knowing if it would get him anywhere. But Farrell gave him a shot, and brought him up, later bringing him over to Gas. Kevin would go on to become the third and last Corner Gas Showrunner.

Funnily enough, before I ever knew Mark, it was the example and the experience Kevin went through that finally convinced me to take a chance and try to break into writing myself.

Last Friday night, a group of writers gathered in Toronto got into a conversation about the two modes of working in this business. The first mode is secretive; it is not generous -- it hoards information like it's gold. It's sink or swim, and views other writers merely as competitors -- obstacles to be bested and overcome. This makes for a Darwinian vibe, where fear and the dark stuff rules. It doesn't take a lot to make writers twitchy -- but this mode feeds that in spades.

Then there's Mark Farrell's way. Farrell has brought people up on Gas, on 22, on Made in Canada -- he's encouraged and trained people, shared his knowledge and expertise. He's the embodiment of the other side of the coin -- the second mode we talked about Friday night. It's the way that I've experienced thanks to modeling by some great peeps like Peter Mohan, Jim Henshaw, David Barlow and a bunch of others. It's a mode that encourages sharing of ideas, that delights in the success of your peers -- even the ones that you're nominally in competition with; it's approaching criticism with a generosity of spirit. It's embracing that we have a responsibility to help people out and up, to train people in such a way that debate and synthesis trumps dysfunction in the writing room or meeting. It's about embracing the better angels of our nature as artists. It's embodying the spirit of Best Idea Wins.

Mark Farrell, and his winning staff for 22 Minutes shows how that works again. During the acceptance speech, Head Writer Jennifer Whalen had some hilarious thank you's -- like Stephane Dion "You were like punching milk," and the snuggie. She also thanked the CBC for "putting us on between shows you like."

Seriously, 22 Minutes was funnier this season than it's been in years, and with that staff it's easy to see why. Whatever Farrell does when he's not watching golf in his office -- it works.

Sometimes the right way really is the right way.

Everything I wrote above could equally be applied to Karen Walton, winner of the Writer's Block Award for service to the industry. Walton (Ginger Snaps, The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, and the upcoming adaptation of Pornographer's Poem!) is the den mother and head cheerleader for a group of 800 (and growing) group of "writers and their sketchy friends" called ink canada. Through her work with ink, encouraging meet-ups and the work of newbie industry "inkterns," Walton is laying the groundwork for a community that now knows not to apologize for itself, that knows when to be angry about something, when to speak out and up, and when to just do the right thing. And she does all this while having six or seven screenplays on the go. People ask me when I sleep, and I don't always have a clear answer -- but I know that when I do, it's usually at a time when Walton's still Twittering.

Read Jill Golick's tribute to Walton here.

Oh, and there was also Andrew Wreggitt, who won for writing Mayerthorpe, and who squeezed off the best killer line of the night, about the lamentable slow death of miniseries and MOW's -- "I feel like I shot the last buffalo."

These are the people, and the spirit, that we celebrated last night.

These awards take a long time to pull together...the group will start working on the 2010 Awards in September. So thanks to our wonderful Awards Chair Jill Golick, as well as the rest of the Awards committee, but especially the staff at the Guild who work so hard to bring the event -- especially Genevieve Stainton, Tannis Stewart, and David Kinahan

Other than that, I'll treasure the memories of being able to hang out a bit with Will Dixon -- in the flesh! It was fun to see my ex-show comrade Sarah Dodd, producer with the mostest Caroline Godin, Exec Producer and Documentarian Peter Raymont, fellow CHUM refugee "Mad" John Callaghan, Doug Taylor and the Montreal contingent, blogger friends Jill and Alex, my friends Mark and Stephanie, tan and back from Mexico, but still wearing the "oh shit we're in the middle of production on Flashpoint" face that I know too well. There were also plenty of former students who now run companies and make payrolls, and a few friendly faces like Alex House and her charming pater Bill, Border Producer Brian Dennis, agents Glenn Cockburn, Andrea Glenn, Tina Horwitz, Jenny Hollyer and the effervescent Elana Trainoff. Christin Simms pointed out in a speech after winning for Best Childrens, that she'd only been writing professionally for three years. A nice, embrace the dream moment.

I'm not even going to talk about Shelley Eriksen and Karen Hill. I just can't. Cause then I'll have to say something about Walton's dress. And... nope. Moving on.

The emotional highlight of the tight and sharp show -- host Geri Hall & her co-writer Kyle Tingley outdid themselves with a wicked and funny script -- was Malcolm MacRury, Mohan, and Pete Mitchell's tribute to the late David Cole -- $2000 to one of the nominees in memory of the late, great writer that was to be spent not on computers, or research, but some sort of adventure. I'm sure somewhere, David Cole was smiling. After being drawn from the hat, winner Duncan MacKenzie certainly seemed to be into the spirit of the moment.

I had a couple of fine old conversations with the two winners of our Dead Things WGC Contest... Cathleen M. had a funny take on wearing the "sponsor" button that she posted on Ink Canada:

A funny thing happened at the Canadian Screenwriting Awards. While everyone was feting the best of the best scribes, a subplot was unfolding. It was about writer branding and awareness.

First I should explain I attended the awards under the esteemed banner of ‘Dead Things on Sticks’, Denis had run a writing contest and the lucky winner received entry to the Screenwriting Awards. That’s why I found myself at the front desk of Maro’s where a woman gave me a lanyard card denoted ‘Dead Things on Sticks’ and remarked, “You’re a sponsor.” I smiled and accepted my ID.

Between there and the coat check I felt I would be an unworthy fraud to wear a sponsor card. So I put it in my purse. It was a short time later, after saying hello to Denis, I realized, ‘This guy did what any smart businessperson would do. He ran a contest. A contest promotes the brand and the winner becomes, in a way, a further promotional opportunity.’ With this shift of thinking, I wore the card. That’s when things got interesting.

First, the card turned out to be a terrific icebreaker. (Note to everyone who mistook me for Denis; Ok, we were separated at birth but I’m the shy one.) I was also reminded (and this is no surprise) everyone – with the exception of one person – knew and had read “Dead Things on Sticks”. By the way, that one person who didn’t know the blog should now know it because I wrote down the url for him – after I dusted off his back to remove the rubble he’d accumulated from living under a rock ;)

...my experience as DTOS 'ambassador for a day' showed how creating a public vehicle creates awareness. In this business, people struggle long and hard to get their name known. With self-promotional vehicles like blogs, pages, and websites, you don’t need permission from press release gatekeepers. You can create awareness for yourself and your work.

Aw Shucks. Meanwhile, Amanda T tracked me down and earnestly asked the evergreen "Go south or stay here?" question. I surprised myself by not immediately saying, "Go! Leave!" Course, Amanda also has mad editing skills. Sounds like somebody has some D.I.Y. projects in their future...

...And that newfound "make a go of it here" optimism might have been bolstered a bit by a short and sweet convo with New writer Linsey Stewart -- who just scored the first gig in the story department of Being Erica.

It can happen, with the right attitude, with the right people backing you, and with the right spirit at work. The spirit that was in the room last night.

We're a small community, and we have to be tenacious, always, against the many forces that seem aligned against us in our quest to actually make films and TV shows in Canada. But sometimes, when you look out over the crowd and see the smiles, and speak to the right people -- you can feel the unlikeliest of hopeful feelings.

And that's the flame we all have to nurture.

Even you, Sheridan.

Writers Beware

FIRST OF ALL, to anyone who's attending the WGC Screenwriting Awards tonight, be advised that they are NOT in the same place they've been the last two years -- Brant House, just off King Street near Spadina in Toronto. No no no. That venue was too small, you see.

Tonight's shindig is at a lovely place in Toronto's burgeoning film & tv-friendly 'hood Liberty Village. It's called Maro.

The shindig gets underway at 7:30 p.m. And yes, there will be tickets at the door. Geri Hall hosts the almost-inconceivably deliciously short show at 8:30 p.m.

If you get a chance at the event, take a moment to shake the hand of Maureen Parker. Maureen's celebrating 20 years fighting for writers in this country, in a long line from union steward to Executive Director of the WGC. It's hard to think of where we'd be as a group without Maureen's strategic planning, tireless efforts and endless patience. As many people admitted at a wonderful dinner in her honour last night, "let's face it, writers are no picnic."

Along the way, Parker has become one of the most trusted and passionate advocates for creative artists in this country. If you draw a paycheque from a Canadian-produced series, or film -- especially if you're a writer -- you owe her a big debt of thanks.

And she's got a great laugh too.

See you tonight. If you're at the awards, and see me, come up and say 'hi.' And 'bye,' I guess...though we're getting ahead of ourselves there...plenty of time for that later...

Intelligence and the Raconteur Quote

INTELLIGENCE is coming out on DVD from Acorn media. The justly-adored CBC series was canceled after the end of its second season due to low ratings. Anybody who really got into the story of Jimmy Reardon can't understand why the show was only drawing 250 000 viewers near the end.

Except, of course, for the fact that when you compare that 250 000 viewers on CBC to a show like Rescue Me, which gets 3, 4 million viewers on cable in the USA, you see that with Canada's 1/10th population, that kind of number is probably what you should expect a challenging, literate show like Intelligence to get.

Yet another reason why it would be wonderful, as the WGC pointed out recently, if government finally confronted the CBC's mandate in the Broadcasting Act. There are a million different constituencies arguing about what CBC should be, what it shouldn't be, what it should do and what it shouldn't. The very same people who excoriate CBC for canning Intelligence would be ripping it a new one if the show was currently finishing up Season 3 with 200 000 viewers. It's all so depressing.

So, a show gone too soon seems destined to suffer the fate of many others -- a discovery and raving on DVD. Tv Eh? Points us to a current RAVE for the DVD set in the New York Times.

But reading that review, the other thing struck me was that Chris Haddock, the Exec Producer and Creator of Intelligence, has absolutely mastered the kind of muscular, grabby quote that encapsulates his series. When we're selling, you've gotta have a way to push that series in a sentence. Look how Haddock does that with Intelligence:

“I believe that everything can be understood through the lens of a dope deal.”

Man. That is a killer quote.

FYI, by praising Intelligence here I am in no way suggesting that it was the first show that was good that maybe got canceled before its time in the history of Canadian TV. Nor am I suggesting that Haddock is the only guy to ever come up with a good quote to sell his Canadian series. Okay? Everybody happy? Nice.

Random Twitter Slang

YES, THE 140 character message changes everything. Twitter clearly is the most important invention in the history of the world and will reshape the continents as we know it. (is that enough new media hyperbole? Yes? Good.)

Completely randomly, here is my favorite new twittery/texty affirmation:

Tease coz luv.

C'mon. How can you not like that. I bet if you got that tattooed on your ass it wouldn't even hurt.

H/T to Inky

CFCL.A.

ANYONE GOING to the Jewison CFC fete in L.A. today that wants to drop me a line about the event and what transpired, I'm more than happy to pass it along, all anonymous-like.

Interesting on the heels of this news. From the Hollywood Reporter:

TORONTO -- NBC Universal is getting into business with Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Center in to find the next, best TV concept from the Great White North.

The NBC Uni content creator program, to launch in the fall in Toronto, will see Jewison's film and TV school sort through innovative ideas from Canadian TV producers, presenting the best of the lot for possible development.

"We welcome this promising opportunity to work with the CFC to open new horizons for our Canadian partners and create viable original content," said Angela Bromstad, president of primetime entertainment at NBC and Universal Media Studios.

NBC Uni executives said the studio will cast a wide net initially for half-hour and hourlong scripted and unscripted programming from Canadian producers. Eventually, the partnership could encompass ideas for feature films.

Seriously. Why?

I KNOW I'M hardly the first to say it, but seriously. Seriously, dudes.

Why all the hating?

WGC Screenwriting Awards Tickets Going Fast

THE EVENT IS this Monday, April 20th. Online sales are available at the WGC Site til Sunday, midnight (if it doesn't sell out first.) Any remaining tickets, if there are any, will be at the Door at Maro on Monday -- but the price jump is steep -- 75 at the door for members, 100 for non-members. You should take advantage of the in-advance pricing while you can.

The Voice of Skins

HEY, HERE'S A nifty little blog interview of Skins co-creator Jamie Brittain (he created the show with his Dad) by Arestia Dehmassi .

(I've never heard of this portal/site anevibe. Looks neat. Anybody have more info?)

The nice thing about the interview, conducted over MSN, apparently -- very Skins... is she focuses on the writing:

Dehmassi: When you were writing the 3rd series did you plan to make it a little different than the past series?

Brittain: It's more of an episode to episode thing than a series thing in my opinion. Each writer is pretty much allowed to write whatever they want, and that means that the tone can swing quite violently between episodes, which I think is essentially a good thing; you never quite know what you're getting with an episode of Skins. However, we always want to tell a different story each year, and in the telling of that story we employ a variety of different styles, which means that each series is, yes, different.

Dehmassi: Can you tell us a little about the writing process, from how you choose the writers to how you all work together?

Brittain: We generally employ playwrights as writers, who we find all over the place in London's huge theatre scene. They tend to be emerging talents, having had one or two professional productions of their stuff, or a couple of radio plays, which are numerous and very popular in theUK. That method means we often find ourselves with young writers who have never written for television before, but are full of ideas and are not jaded by years of working in what can often be a thankless industry. We also use writers from our contributors, who are young people brought in to help us out. After a couple of years in the writers’ room, they're pretty well trained, and, with a bit of help, have produced some of the best episodes we've ever done.

In terms of how we work together, we all just sit in a big room a couple of times a week and argue for a few hours. It takes a long time, but eventually we come up with the goods.

We're all mates as well, so we support and help each other loads.

Dunno how I feel about that Americanized Skins, though. What's the point? They'll never allow it to be as in your face and edgy as the British version. The Americanized Skins was called The O.C. or 90210, right? I mean, if they can't make a show as edgy as Degrassi for heaven's sake, what hope do they have of pulling off Skins?

Also, if you want to follow Jamie Brittain on Twitter, his handle is belchingdevil.

H/T to Floppy for the link

Grumbles and the Cassandra Factor

PSST. I'LL TELL you something for free.

When it comes to the unadorned, unvarnished, unspun truth about the broken, teeny, cereal-box toy that is the homegrown Canadian TeeVee biz, talk to the writers.

It's not hard to see why. See, Networks get to have lots of lobbying sessions. The Cablers hobnob with their friends in the Government. Directors and Actors and Producers can all hope that even if CanCon goes away entirely, they may pick up scraps from U.S. or foreign service productions that film here.

The writers fight because we have none of those assurances. There is no service work for writers. Time and experience has shown that if they can trade away the Canadian writer's involvement, they will. When the rules changed in 1999, and the nets started being able to count magazine shows as priority programming? Canadian dramas dropped from about 12 or 13 to 2 within a year or two. Some of those crews scrambled onto other shows. Actors might have found less work overall, but there were still auditions. Directors got by on service work. The writers took the full hit...many got bum-rushed out of the biz altogether. Others entered the long darkness as the Canary in the Coalmine of the coming drought in production -- a drought that only really hit the service sector a few years later.

We've spent a long, long decade trying to build back from that disastrous rule change. And now here we are. Again. New decade. Same Sky falling.

In Greek myth, Cassandra was the prophet who was cursed to speak the truth and never be believed. Writers have a bit of Cassandra in them; always have. That makes us scrappy. At least it should.

I was disappointed to hear that the piece I wrote in the Star the other day generated a few grumbles. Not because of the grumbles, you see. I love grumbles. I embrace grumbles with an open heart and a basso-rumble of my own. A good Grumble can generate a discussion, and a discussion can lead to new synthesis. Synthesis is good. It's how ideas are honed, theories developed...it's how things get better.

But, you see, except for one exception, none of these grumbles came to me. And that's the Canadian way too. When somebody has a problem, nobody talks directly to each other. Oh no, no, heavens no. That wouldn't be passive aggressive.

So people get to nurse their grumbles, but not share them. No chance for synthesis. No new ideas. No way to move forward. Sigh.

Anyway, thank the stars that the Writers Guild of Canada is NOT a passive aggressive organization. They go out there, time and time again, and say the things that need to be said to the committees and the commissions. And they release clear eyed statements like the one below. That's why I'm proud to be a member, and proud to do the Guild's work.

Read this, and remember -- this is an industrial issue as much as a cultural one. There are people inside all of these networks, executives, etc, that want to have a couple of homegrown hits. Why wouldn't you want that? You know that Canwest would love to have their own Corner Gas. They did a bunch of pilots recently -- some that I've read, that you know what? Some of these give Global a shot at that very thing. Say what you will, but damn, Global's actually developed some great stuff lately.

But all that seems so out of reach when you're forced to play the game.

And remember, even if it does affect your livelihood, it is a game, Cassandra.

Does this release make you grumble a bit? It should, man. It should.

Canadian private broadcasters are currently bending the ears of government in hope for a bailout package of taxpayer dollars. With the recent release of figures from Canwest Global’s last quarter, the Writers Guild of Canada urges the government of Canada to approach any talk of broadcaster bailout with extreme skepticism. These are still profitable businesses.

The broadcasting arm of Canwest Global turned in an operating profit of $32 million (a 60 percent increase from a year earlier). In fact, the broadcasting operations’ most recent revenue of $234 million matched the same quarter a year earlier. Canwest’s conventional TV ad revenue was down 4%, but this was offset with 4% growth in specialty-channel advertising and a 5% increase in subscriber revenue. It seems when Canwest reports to its shareholders, it’s an integrated business – but when they talk to government it’s all about the hardships of over-the-air.

Though comparable figures for CTV are unavailable, its dominance of the Canadian market would suggest that things should be even brighter on their side of the industry.

“How can the broadcasters ask for a taxpayer bailout when broadcasting remains profitable?” asks Maureen Parker, Executive Director, Writers Guild of Canada. “The creative community has been living in a recessionary economy for the last ten years as broadcasters have year by year spent less on quality Canadian programming and more and more to buy U.S. shows. There was no bailout for screenwriters, actors, producers and directors.”

Parker added, “Broadcasters also have the audacity to request relief in the form of reductions in Canadian content expenditure and exhibition requirements. So after many years of enjoying stable profits and the support of public policy, these newly integrated businesses are petitioning for relief from the very thing that should give them purpose: providing Canadian programming to Canadian audiences. The answer should be a resounding ‘NO.’”

With Canwest’s recent quarter as an example, we have clear evidence that the Canadian broadcasting business remains profitable. Canwest’s problems relate to debt (about $4.1 billion) from business decisions made in recent years, including the $3.2 billion newspaper acquisition which still accounts for a large share of its debt burden. The company reported a net loss of $1.44 billion in its latest quarter, including a $1.19 billion writedown of assets, mostly in its newspaper operations. Do broadcasters deserve ‘relief’ for failures in other areas of their businesses? Should Canadian taxpayers and television viewers be asked to pay the price for this?

The WGC says ‘no’ to a broadcaster bailout, and ‘no’ to asking Canadians to give up Canadian programming.

Right on. Now. Are you going to grumble a bit? Or are you going to swallow those grumbles and let the WGC play Cassandra out there on its own?

Up to you.

My Daily Process: Amanda T

AMANDA T. scored her free DTOS WGC Screenwriting Awards ticket by being drawn at random from all of the entries...but that's not to say I don't like it a bunch, cause I do. And can I just say, driving a polar bear in the Santa Claus parade sounds pretty rad.

6:00am- Rise for a job as a float painter with the Santa Claus Parade- circa 2005. Some days are wonderful- like the day I get to steer a tractor trailer sized polar bear for 20 seconds, but mostly I paper mache and become one of those people commuters assign a 3 metre radius. On the upshot, my two-hour commute from the Beaches to an industrial park allows me time to write while peeling the glue off my flesh in a Zen-like fashion.

7:00am- Rise for a job doing data entry in the fraud department of a major bank- circa 2006. Learn life lessons like why you should NEVER use INTERAC in a gas station. I don’t care how badly you want a Powerade with your gas purchase, you’re better off affixing your debit card to your back with scotch tape along with a giant iron-on of your pin number.

8:00am- Leave for Film and TV production classes at Humber circa 2002-2005. I can’t write on the bus because I’m locked in a Kama Sutra pose with the driver and 106 other people. Thanks to the 191, if I had a child during this period it would require several paternity tests.

9:00am- Watch Maury.** Only applicable when sick/post invasive procedures. The screaming is a soothing balm.

9:00am-6:00pm- Variable between 2006 and 2009. Incredibly variable. Reception. House painting. Gift wrapping. Video editing. (I needed smelling salts for my diploma after landing a real-live industry contract that pays in real dollars and not 'portfolio' dollars. Sadly landlords do not accept portfolio dollars, but media grads everywhere are daydreaming of new legislation.)

LUNCH- Time to write- regardless of my job. In coffee shops, food courts, the giant turtle rock in Yorkville- it becomes my time to be myself. Along the way I write some shorts, sketches and spec ideas while simultaneously avoiding painfully awkward conversations about working out, salads, which salads to eat before working out, GO trains and the 401.

6:00pm- Quitting time, or for a period in 2006, starting time. 80 horse races until 3am in a dark windowless room with six exhausted souls. I begin to imagine skylights...the smell of fresh cut grass...the sweet caress of vitamin D...ponies leaping magesti-...no not ponies anything but ponies... Bengal tigers. Yes Bengal tigers. Bengal tigers fighting over the unrequited love of a velvety gray pony. DAMMIT.

7:00pm- A dinner that ranges from homemade sweet potato soup and bruschetta when I'm feeling fancy, to a hot dog in a bowl during a particularly stressful deadline. I should have washed a plate. The bowl makes me feel cheap and dirty.

8:00pm- Flip open my notebook. This isn't my beautiful notebook. This isn't my beautiful stick man drawing with a nonsensical quote that I don't remember writing... "his hand bursts into fingers of fire"? This seems gothier than usual. A livejournal level of gothy.

9:00pm- Cast a wistful gaze at the 1st season of Maude that I've borrowed. I've got so much writing to do...

10:00pm- Decide that the secret to Maude's power is in her flowing knee-length vests. Google image search ahoy!!!

11:00pm- Adorn my love doodle of Norman Lear with Sandylion stickers. Oh man if he was a vampire, I'd totally-

12:00am- Adrienne Barbeau felt objectified during the show's run?? I just thought she was well dressed, sassy and proud! Does this mean future generations will look back on Britney Spears as a glamorous sexpot? That the "fallen" women of today become the box sets of tomorrow? I need Fuzzy Peaches.

1:00am- I realize this is not a classic essay. My aversion to hamburger paragraphs led me to pursue film school over university in the first place. Well that and the allure of 30 people in my class as opposed to 400.

1:15am- I do not want to get up in a few hours. I am angry. In a best-case scenario equation: anger + desperation x job instability= creativity. I've never had the chance to get comfortable because every single day job I've ever had has been a contract. As a result, I've never stopped trying. A friend once advised me that a little bit of hunger is good. Too much can make you give up, but too little can lead to complacency. As I get to the point where people I know are going back to school for other professions, I realize he's right and start typing. I write because it's what I love to do. I write because I feel guilty if I don't. Most importantly, I write because I have a strict "one horrific student debt at a time" policy.

2amish- BEDTIME (regardless of my morning schedule). I'm sorry Mom. I'm sorry 34th Yahoo-published study on sleep-deprivation ranking 2nd only to genocide in the number of deaths it causes...

You're welcome Zantac.

And The Winnah of the WGC Screenwriting Awards Ticket Giveaway Is...

CATHLEEN M., who dazzles and delights with her treatise on a secret weapon in a writer meeting... sometimes process must give way for moments of blind luck...

MEETINGS AND PROPER UNDERWEAR

When I was a wisp of a girl I found, in my grandmother’s bookcase, a worn little paperback with a title that went something like, ‘Proper Attire for the Career Girl’. It was a terse guide to the conventional dress and good grooming for your typical secretary of the 1950’s. I opened it to a black and white drawing of a prim lady with a flipped up hair-do and a high collared blouse. Paragraphs warned of the career killing perils of chipped fingernails and unpolished shoes. Then there was the chapter on undergarments. I winced at the illustrations of stocky forms entombed in torso length girdles and harness-like bras. The chapter expounded on the arsenal of underwear that would not betray its wearer with bulges or panty lines. I, in my grass stained jeans, wind tossed mane, and bare feet, wondered at these horrors. I relegated that book to a back shelf, never to give it another thought until …

The Monday morning meeting.

The day had begun with me standing at my closet deliberating over ‘the look’. I was to meet with a coven of executives who were buying my television show. I anticipated the usual tug of war would ensue – me wanting more money and control of ancillary rights and they wanting everything for nothing.

I surveyed my wardrobe and weighed the pros and cons of the ‘financial-producer look’. I considered the risk of evoking a banker who is creatively challenged and wondered if I could soften it with accessories. Nah. I’d look like a real estate agent. Alternatively I could go for the ‘creative-producer look’ but not too creative lest they think I’m not business minded. I settled on a simple suit.

It so happened this particular Monday morning followed the weekend of the broken washing machine. I was reminded of this when I opened my underwear drawer.

Good God. All I had left were a couple of thongs and a strapless thing I had worn once under a cocktail dress. In my Sunday frenzy of hand washing my kid’s school clothes, I had neglected all else.

Walking into the meeting, I was determined to maintain a good impression. I made the professional gesture of standing to the side while my hosts found their seats around the boardroom table. Then I, not once turning my back, stepped to my seat. In truth, I did not want to have to explain the wedgie created by the thong that had gripped the back of my pantyhose and skirt and held it like some weird bunny tail. It conjured the memory of that little book with its sage advice on proper undergarments. Had it been written fifty years later, it might have cautioned on the dangers of wearing a thong beneath a business suit.

My most urgent concern was to liberate myself from the ersatz bunny tail. While the executives threw demands, I sat back in my chair in such a way to unlock the thong’s grip. The maneuver worked. For a moment, I basked in the calm of my freedom. That’s when my opponents exchanged furtive whispers, then turned to me and moderated their ultimatums. Had they read something into my composure?

As the meeting wore on, the executives slumped in their chairs and leaned on their elbows. I meanwhile, sat straight and poised. For my exemplary posture I could thank the strapless bra. The engineering that goes into a typical bra is truly astounding. There are more stress points than on the Montreal Olympic Stadium’s roof. Consider then, how a strapless number stays up. It’s a marvel that involves wires, a few shakes of pixie dust, and – most important - the ability to maintain one’s ribs at a slightly elevated position. It was that little rib trick that gave me the air of self-assurance.

The meeting ended with me getting a decent budget and keeping ancillary rights. I like to think it was my negotiating skills that won the day. However, I must also give credit to the little book that so repelled me on the subject of proper underwear, I was willing to throw caution to the wind and redefine the meaning of ‘dress for success’.

Congrats Cathleen, and a big 'Thank You' to everyone who entered. The I.D. and essay of our other ticket recipient will be revealed tomorrow.

And Lo, The Lion Shall Lie Down With The Lamb

AND MEN and women will finally be able to enjoy Jane Austen together.

For now, blessed now, there is... Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

From the Chicago Tribune review:

That this book turns out to be less gimmicky and brainless (no pun intended) and more a funny, skillfully executed parody is, I suspect, due largely to the fact that Grahame-Smith's version hews very close to the original material, in tone, syntax and plot. In fact, according to Grahame-Smith himself, a whopping 85 percent of the content is Austen's; her collaborator deftly inserted his zombie-flavored 15 percent at key junctures, including the ball at Netherfield (where Mr. Bingley and his family have recently come to stay), various quasi-romantic meetings between a dagger-wielding, zombie-dispatching Elizabeth and Darcy and, of course, the standoff between Elizabeth and the imperious Lady Catherine (recast here as a world-class Ninja. Naturally.). The result is an improbably seamless blend of 19th Century comedy of manners and feminist zombie butt-kicking.

Corner Gas takes a Victory Lap

SO TOMORROW NIGHT is the last episode ever of Corner Gas. Interesting timing, seeing as Brent Butt's little show resurrected the hopes of a generation of homegrown screenwriters.

I get to say as much in the Toronto Star today, in a rework of themes I first published here.:

Corner Gas was run like an American show. They set up a story room where writers broke stories and polished scripts, as a group. The star had input, but writers kept the tone consistent. Executive producers Virginia Thompson and David Storey engaged a showrunner – a senior writer whose creative vision trackedthe show through the process, as a production partner – not merely a peon.

This represented a sea change from the usual Canadian method, where non-writing producers and directors would routinely change and tinker with scripts so that by the time they were shot, they wound up looking like any other piece of art made by committee – drab and unfocused.

On Gas, the writers' work was respected, and that attracted the finest comedy writers in the country. The jokes were slightly absurd, sharp but never mean. The characters were pleasingly self-deprecating and not too full of themselves. Canadians recognized themselves in them.

At industry events, the anti-Corner Gas chatter soon faded to whispers, and stopped. It's hard to argue with success.

In the end, credit goes as much to its audience as to Brent Butt or CTV or the show's producers and writers. The audience found the show, stuck with it, and made it a hit. It may not have been the thing people were talking about in the ivory towers of Toronto – it has always done better outside of Canada's cities – but the rest of the country knew what they liked.

Now, Corner Gas is part of the national conversation. When people want to knock the CBC, they repeat the story that the public broadcaster passed on the show. (Not true.) It's held up as a successful export; an exemplar of Canadian values. The show's filming locale, Rouleau, Sask., has even become a minor tourist attraction.

The effect of Corner Gas writers on current comedy in Canada cannot be overstated. Canadian creators may still have to fight for their share of the airwaves. But now we have an example that proves that a homegrown hit is indeed possible.

My little piece is beside Rob Salem's fuller appreciation. In fact, tributes to Dog River have been flowing in in papers all over the country this weekend, which is entirely appropriate.

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that appended to every one of those stories is a small minded, typical internet troll whinge about tx dolllrrrrss and nobodylikesittttt and so on and so on -- the bane of the Canadian Cultural philistine, the boulder that we who toil in cultural industries have to roll up the hill every day. (They're also known as Albertans. Ah, just kidding. Not really. No really. But really not.)

No matter. That two year old post is still generating comments here on this site, I'm going to quote from another one I got just the other day. Take away the toxic politics behind any show's creation in Canada, and hear the words of somebody without a dog in the hunt -- a guy who stopped by from Akron, Ohio (that's prime new product testing country, folks!)

I'm a huge Corner Gas fan here in the states - after stumbling upon it on WGN America one late night.

Unfortunately, WGN appears not to be interested in airing the final season, so I've gotten the show "other ways". It appears that CTV has made a recent decision to allow streaming CG from its website outside of Canada, which is great.

Now, I know I'm a "Canadaphile" and even have a CBC Radio widget on my desktop (!), but whether the snobs admit to it or not...CG is a well-produced, well-written, well-crafted show. Brent Butt is a funny writer and comedian, the entire cast is talented as heck, and the show is on a par production-value wise with any show down here.

With no offense to the late Don Adams, CG is no clone of "Check It Out!", which we Americans got on cable a long time ago.

And anyone who would rather watch "According to Jim"...the mere thought makes me shudder.

You can like or not like Corner Gas. But it is not the same kind of sitcom claptrap we produce here in the States, and that your networks (such as CTV and Global) ship back to you in a closed feed.

Amen, and Sayonara Gas. You'll be missed.