Guest Post: Careful What You Wish For

TODAY'S GUEST POST comes courtesy of the inimitable Daegan Fryklind, Vancouver-based scribe of J-POD and Robson Arms fame. It's another great writer's life post. Oh, and Daegan's right, BTW. She is cute.

* * *

TIME WAS, WE WERE in a certain bar in Toronto, and I’d reached that point on a series. That point comes somewhere between episodes seven and eight -- the bloom is off the development rose, the machine is in full swing, and there are still sixish episodes to be broken. And you think: we’ve squeezed the lemon so hard to get to this point, how are we going to come up with anything other than pulp for the remainder. At that point, you take solace in the crafty table. You start to stack the iPod with “go get ‘em” music. You rally your inner troops. And then sometimes, when the façade fails, you find yourself sitting around a table in a certain bar with a klatch of Toronto writers, and you might declare something like: “oh god, I just want to get knocked up.”

Sidebar: A friend once told me this story -- he was walking home late one night in a hookerish part of Vancouver (careful -- I know what you’re thinking and yes, there are non-hookerish parts of my fine city) and was nearly struck down by a slow-driving John. It was his “I’m walking here” moment, though immediately afterward he realized if he’d just let the John hit him, he could have settled out of court, or even right there on the sidewalk, for a cool grand.

Thing is, sometimes you’re in it so deep you’re desperate for some way out. When you’re a gun for hire, you likey the writing, you needs the money, you takes the risk: there’s no guarantee you’re going to end up on the dream story department. And then you hit that point of the season and find yourself wanting to get knocked up or wishing you’d have just shut your mouth and continued into the path of moving traffic.

This is not the fault of the show. Honestly, you’ll want to blame the show. You’ll want to seethe and wish painful cancellation on the show. But friends, the problem isn’t the show.

What’s going on is a lack of balance. I’ll admit it -- I’ve done two series now where my balance was all outta whack, where evenings were spent on set (because a writer HAS to be there at all times, right?!) and where weekends were spent either sleeping or writing or sleepwriting or standing under a showerhead. And always, wishing for the show to be done.

I’m on the flip-side of that now. Show’s done. Work’s tight. I have all the time in the world for the things I missed when working. I went to Maui. I learned how to snorkel. I opened my eyes underwater for the first time and what I saw amazed me. I learned how to golf. I started trail running. I have more time for friends and family. Along the way, I believe I’ve smelt a rose or two. And it’s been great, but you know what’s next. The coffee shop + the declaration of “oh god, I just want a looming production deadline” = careful what you wish for.

Well, okay, I’m not knocked up so there’s that, and really, we all know writers who went to full-term on a series, so it’s not like that’s an out. But I gotta say, work and “real life” usually went together like this:

there were two sets of footprints in the sand, and then when there was only one set, it was because work shiv’d “real life” and left it back there to bleed out.

So I’ll admit that I haven’t mastered balance yet, but I’ve worked with people who have so I know it’s possible -- showrunners who manage to oversee 13 episodes and also have time to exercise in the mornings before call, get to the Gulf Islands or Muskoka on weekends with their families, see movies in the theatre (rather than internet rips watched in bed at 3 in the morning during anxiety attacks). There are people who do this. They have amazing families. They are steadfast showrunners. They are what FOX NEWS promises to be but isn’t: fair and balanced.

Those of you who are in the throes of pre-prep, or being cacked out the tail end of production will probably shake your head and say “oh Fryklind, you’re so cute with your West Coast flakey mumbo jumbo.” And you’re right. I am cute. But I also know that there’s a way to do this in which you maintain both sides, in which you come out the other end of five or seven months and don’t feel like you need to get your “real life” back, because it has run alongside of production the whole time.

That’s not something we should wish for. It’s something we should strive for. Otherwise we become the lemons reduced to pulp.

Hugs!

daegan

Guest Post: Banff 2009: For those left behind…

THIS GUEST POST comes courtesy of Playwright and TV writer Mike McPhaden, who besides being a talented writer is a most excellent affable chap. Which makes the seething jealousy of this post all the more delicious. Like a chicken wing somehow dusted with bacon.

[Reader Advisory: The following post contains references of an Inside Baseball nature. The references could be medically harmful and are not necessarily healthy, safe, or suggested.]

* * *

We are the many, the not chosen.

Whether it’s because we’re too busy, too broke, or the Friday Night Lights spec in our Global Writers Apprentice application just didn’t reach John Callaghan-esque levels of raw humanity, the result is the same:

We are not going to Banff this year.

We will not see the mountain dawn. We will not breathe the mountain air. We will not walk the mountain sidewalks.

We will not enjoy the meditative calm of waiting twenty-five minutes to take a four-minute cab ride. Twice a day.

We will not listen eagerly as U.S. showrunners, brave-faced in these hard times, share their secrets for making a decent episode for only two million dollars.

We will not gape at the cavernous beauty of the Van Horne Delegate Lounge, wishing we’d been way, way more specific about where we’d meet our ten o’clock.

We will not get to make that little “meep” sound when someone casually spoils the finale of the series we’re secretly a season behind on.

We will not taste the delicious awkwardness of having Lunch With A Decision Maker, peopled by 1) a bleary-eyed exec, 2) a guy who’s annoyed he didn’t get a seat with an American decision maker, and 3) and actor in full costume, mumbling the lines to her “Sex and the City in the olden days” pitch.

We will not feel the sting of shame when we hear ourselves try too hard to sound worldly: “ABC? Which one?”

We will not savour the secret that our “big meeting” at 5:30 is actually a yummy nap and some Maury.

We will not gather every night at the St. James Gate, we will not breathe its beery air, we will not brag and glad-hand amid the clamour of obscure TV references. Mutey the Mailman. Robot Santa. After M.A.S.H.

We will not feel the heart clogging ache that only comes from eating Alberta Beef four meals a day, a sensation the locals call “aortal sex.”

We will not get the satisfaction of crashing the Oasis/Blueprint party by arriving late and telling security, "I'm Tecca's ride."

We will not drag our tired, partied-out bodies into Wednesday’s 9am session on “Maximizing Ancillary Revenue Streams,” but then again, neither will anyone in Banff.

No, we will be staying home. And when those who went return, with their stories of meals and deals in Beautiful Banff, where the mountains touch the sky and the streets were named by babies, what will we do?

We will lie, and say we missed them.

Canadian TV In The NY Times

MY FRIEND MARK ELLIS is delightfully quoted in a mostly spot-on article about the trends in Canadian TV from an American perspective. The article, by Canadian freelancer Katrina Onstad, talks to people involved with Copper, The Bridge, and Flashpoint.

I say "mostly" spot on because of one quote in the article from one of the Executive Producers of Flashpoint, Anne Marie La Traverse:

“There’s a snobbery about commercial shows here, among writers particularly,” Ms. La Traverse said. “Everyone dreams of doing a dark HBO series. There’s a resistance.”

“It took us a while to find writers who embraced this shape,” she added, “and wanted to be accessible, relatable, heroic, emotional, all the choices we really wanted to make.”

This is frankly, bullshit. And because the rest of the article is so on, a perspective like that can be particularly damaging.

I don't mean to impugn Ms La Traverse, and perhaps that may be her experience. But it's not been mine. Every writer I know with chops has stories of frustration, borne out of meetings with Canadian network execs who all spoke rapturously about Six Feet Under (or to update the reference to today, Mad Men) but who wanted shows just like that that drew Network-tv sized audiences.

Are there snobby writers? Sure there are. But they're a vast minority, and in my experience they seem to be the ones who've been schooled more in the trenches of Canadian film, where that outsider, anti-commercial streak is a hallmark (and I leave value judgements about that being good or bad out of it for the purposes of this discussion.)

The writers I know, both people like me who are mid career, new people I know starting out, and veterans who I learn from every time I speak to them, all speak in terms of TV as a medium that they love. They know the shows -- all of them -- and understand instinctively the difference between a concept with limited commercial appeal (a "cable" kind of show) and a broad concept that could play to a network sized audience. If we've not been able to pursue those goals before now, it's because we've been pushed by producers and networks who wanted to make something "deeper" or "more important" than American shows, while being not-really-too-cognizant of what made those shows so appealing and successful.

If the success of Flashpoint means that's off the table, that's great. But I don't think it necessarily is. Recent shows that have debuted, say, in the last while have showed that the understanding of what makes TV tick and the desire to make fare that's "important" rather than entertaining is alive and well.

I think Katrina did a great job with her article as an overview of where Canadian TV is now. But I think, perhaps, some people need to update their Canadian writer rolodex, as well.

Making Oxycontin Abuse Safe for All: Nurse Jackie

AN HOUR AND A HALF to Halifax. Five and a half more to Banff. Screens are out on Air Canada. They run out of newspapers instantly, and the hot sandwiches sell out by Row 3. This is an airline in serious kaka. Yet the only thing that makes Flight 185 bearable is the kickass cabin crew. That's the 2nd time I've noticed that lately on Air Canada. While they quibble over pensions and how they screw their employees, that traditional malaise you've seen with the Air Canada crew seems much, much improved. I don't know why. They're taking the brunt of a bad situation every day with every flight. Seriously, if not for the crew today's flight would have been Lord of the Flies.

Along with the uncomfortable job of reviewing scripts and making notes with a laptop wedged at the chin, (ah, reclining seats + six foot four, you're awesome) I got to take a little break to watch a preview screener from TMN of the new Showtime series Nurse Jackie, which premieres this weekend on TMN/Movie Central in Canada and Showtime in the USA. (Check that: actually it's Monday June 8th.)

Most of the buzz and reviews on this show deservedly focus on the wonderful Edie Falco, who actually does do the impossible and make you forget Carmela Soprano. The show is witty and dark, and raw about how things really work in the world, and how messy people can be even when they're trying to do good. There's a peculiar thread of Catholic kind of humor running through this one that of course I appreciate. (The NY Hospital Jackie toils at is All Saints.) "Make me good, God" Jackie intones at the end of episode one. "But not yet."

What strikes me about Falco in this show, besides the brave, unflattering and practical short haircut, is how sexy she is. I know others felt differently, but I never found Carmela sexy. Not even when Furio was mooning at her. But the contradictions and the fire and the passion lurking in Falco's performance -- she has the thing that I wish Canadian series would discover more -- sometimes all you have to do is light and let the eyes say everything -- is just...wow.

Hot.

And fun. And great. Sadly, I know about three writers who are going to be depressed by this show because it's an idea that just needed to be done...and this is it. This is the world weary, nurse on the edge, circling the drain show that's been needed forever. Great (but not particularly original) idea meets wonderful execution, meets superlative TV performer.

The show's attitude toward forgiveness, and the way it deals with addiction, is so out of the realm of TV too. I read somewhere I believe that both the (female) writer/producer/creators are in recovery. It smacks of when David Milch used to talk with affection about Andy Sipowicz: "he got clean before I did." This is that kind of show, too.

Hooray for Summer and the return of the quality cable show. Nurse Jackie is a prescription everybody needs. And stat.

Yeah, I made the prescription joke. EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS ON A PLANE. You don't like it, %@# me.

Banffed Again

AS YOU READ this, I'm in the air. At least, God, I hope so.

I'm on my way to Banff for the TV festival, and participation in the Canwest Showrunner Training Program. I can't promise that I'll have a whole lot of coverage up -- the sessions of the training program are screens-down-in-camera-just-between-us-chickens sorts of things, and my schedule is so packed that I won't have a lot of free blogging time.

Oh, yeah, and there's that little more than full time job that I still have to do while I'm there, too.

I get to do a rewrite on my eight hour St. John's to Calgary flight. Should be fun.

Anyway, if you see me in Banff, come say hi. I'll be the tree with glasses and a hat.

The CRTC Punts...Again.

THERE ARE SOME days when the fix isn't even the issue. It's the kabuki theatre that precedes it that gets your goat.

Let's recap:

In 1999 the CRTC was convinced by the Broadcasters to relax the definition of "priority programming" to include shows other than those expensive dramas. The Broadcasters said it would provide them with "flexibility." The creative unions like the WGC argued that it would kill Canadian Drama on TV.

The CRTC did what the broadcasters wanted and relaxed the rules. Drama and Comedy on Canadian TV was halved within a year, and declined further. Artists struggled over the next decade to gain back a toehold on the airwaves that the CRTC were supposed to be protecting for Canadians.

In that decade, consolidation in the Canadian broadcast industry went unchecked, and local station groups largely disappeared as stations were swallowed up by huge media companies. The CRTC did nothing about it.

A few months ago the CRTC floated the idea of requiring broadcasters to spend one dollar on Canadian programming for every dollar they spent on American programming. They chose not to implement this idea though. And they rubberstamped license renewals for a year.

Earlier this year there were a whole bunch of new media hearings to decide if the CRTC was going to regulate NOT the internet -- which was widely and soundly misreported -- but if it was going to regulate broadcasting activities on the Net, which included things like what the broadcasters do to stream on their websites. Since this is effectively the same thing they do in old media, the Creative Guilds argued that maybe, just maybe, the meagre protections of access and availability of CanCon could be extended to that medium. There were also Pie-in-the-sky musings like some sort of levy on cable co's to maybe support the creation of works by Canadians.

Today, the CRTC declined to do anything at all, again.

Meanwhile, channels that were supposed to be History channels don't show History. In fact, specialty channels increasingly just show the same reruns their parent companies shovel on their other networks.

The CRTC releases decisions and says things like, "the unions failed to make their case," when anyone watching the relevant hearing saw a desultory questioning of the guilds about issues that had little to do with their own presentations. It's one thing to go through the motions. It's another thing to not even really do a good job of that before declining to act.

The CRTC is supposed to protect the airwaves for you. Now, apparently local TV can only be saved if you pay more to the people who let it slide. Wonder if the CRTC will do its customary thing -- which is, you know, nothing. Nothing much at all.

You're welcome, Canada. Aren't you glad you've got the CRTC watching out for you?

And lest we forget what a great job serving Canadians the broadcasters are currently doing in new media, let's take a look at a Tale of Two Daily Show Sites.

Lay of the Newfoundland and The Creepy Kid Shuffle

I KNOW THAT lately there's been a lot of guest posts and small vamping, but them's the breaks when you're trying to stickhandle a new show, and you've set yourself the ambitious bar of trying to have six scripts in some form by first day of principal. It becomes kind of all-consuming.

I've just gotten my 2nd crack at a script draft; outlines are proceeding...we've rebroken a great story and another fun one last week in a room that continues to gel quite nicely. We may even, heavens to Betsy, issue a draft labeled "PRODUCTION WHITE" by the end of the week.

And Mighty Mike Clattenburg hasn't even blown into town yet.

In the room, there's been the usual story room brand of filth, terrible impressions of Family Guy characters; in-jokes, disquisitions on slang, Newfoundland History, the meaning of yawning, the relative merits of male and female genitalia, scratching, full on re-enactments of the scene from Beverly Hills Cop when Eddie Murphy hangs off the Eighteen Wheeler, almonds, YouTube, and did I mention the filth?

Oh yes, and since, as we know, it's high on the list of all writers concerns, I am happy to report that lunch has lately taken a turn for both the healthy, and the delicious.

Our temp offices are in an old, Seventh-Day Adventist School in Rabbittown. There's something vaguely creepy about the place. A forlorn sort of Blair Witch Feel. I locked up one night because I stayed late.

I was in a groove and still writing, and by the time I left it was dark and on the way out I nearly pooed from the fear. No joke.

It's like there in the darkness were the souls of a thousand little kids all waiting for The Catcher in the Rye or something.

But at least the story room has an espresso machine. That's right, bitches. With a frothing system.

Hey there Little Mosque and Erica....JEALOUS?

Oooh, woo Flashpoint, with your long hours and vague promises of CBS returns next year -- do YOU have a frothing system? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say 'no.'

[Note to Flashpoint: the above was a joke. I know some of you are very sensitive flowers. Joke.]

Seriously though, I KNOW you don't have a frothing system. Take your 35mm and big fake guns and stunt budget and helicopter shots; we have cappucino in the story room, playa! That's right. Damn!

Now if only we had offices.

Once we move, Sahib. Once we move.

Oh look at that. It's my inner voice. So calm, so ethereal. Offering such wise counsel.

Don't built it up too much.

What will it be like in the promised land, Sahib?

Oh, Children, the frothing system is only the beginning.

Good to know. Until the move, then, I guess I either have to learn to never work past dark, or learn to shut the door in order to block out the willie-giving spirits.

Seriously, if I see anything that looks even vaguely like the kid from Village of the Damned, I'm outta here.

Last one out, take the froth. Leave the cannoli.

Hold Me Closer Tiny Feschuk

OKAY, YES, I'VE said it before, but Scott Feschuk writes for a real dead tree publication. And he says it so dreamily...

Simulcasting: It’s like coming up with your own ideas, but without actually having to do that

One ritual I look forward to every year is the triumphant return from Hollywood of the Canadian television executives, hauling across their mighty shoulders the spoils of the Comedy and Drama Hunt.

It takes a special kind of hubris to tout one’s enduring achievement in television programming when one’s enduring achievement in television programming is flying to California, pointing politely and saying, “That one, please.”

But every year, without fail, the best part of the Hunt is the breathless manner in which TV executives describe their accomplishments.

The president of “creative, content and channels” at CTV said yesterday that the network has “remained focused on creativity.” To be specific, it remains focused on American creativity – either airing it directly or copying it in format (Canadian Idol, So You Think You Can Dance Canada and – in what must surely be in development by now – a Cold Case Canada devoted to finding out where Ben Mulroney disappeared to). Trends come and go, but in Canada getting bizarrely jazzed about rebroadcasting some other country’s shows never goes out of style.

Dixon Pushes Brooker

OH, YOU'RE A TV writer are you?

You watching Charlie Brooker? Yes yes. You admire the hell out of Dead Set? You've seen most of Screenwipe, even if you're not in the UK?

No?

Tsk Tsk.

Today, Dixon's got the hookup to a long, long special (first broadcast in December 2008) that is just some of the UK's top TV writers talking about what it's like to do the job. Russel T. Davies from Doctor Who, Paul Abbot from State of Play and Shameless, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain from Peep Show, Graham Linehan from The IT Crowd and Father Ted, Tony Jordan (Eastenders, Life on Mars.)

There. He's just killed an hour for you. But if you want to find out how to break in, what your personality's like, and how real TV writers feel about writing, well....there it is.

Thoughts From a Reader

TODAY'S GUEST POST comes to us courtesy of Karen Hill, who's currently in the room and writing for the new season of Little Mosque on the Prairie. She is wise.

* * *

When I was first breaking into the business, I thought the best way to get a lay of the screenwriting land was to become a reader. I evaluated scripts for a broadcaster, a production company and a distributor. The distributor gave me two movie passes for every feature film script I read and reported on. The broadcaster paid me $150 per proposal or script. The production company paid me $100 per script. The money was terrible for the amount of effort I put into each reader’s report but a big advantage I did enjoy was developing relationships with decision makers who could later a) read my scripts; b) put my name on lists for writing jobs. Herewith a few thoughts based on that work.

Use screenwriting software.

The mark of the amateur was a script that was written in Times-Roman and utilized some weird Word macro. If you wanted to be treated like a professional, act like one, which means conforming to industry standards. Courier. 12 pt. Final Draft or Screenwriter.

Don’t submit a first draft.

Of the 100 scripts and/or proposals I read, at least 50 per cent came in before they were ready to be read by someone a writer/producer was hoping to get money from. They were usually poorly structured, boasted inadequate character development and relied on lazy dialogue riddled with clichés. They felt like first drafts that were based on sloppy outlines. These scripts earned a rating of Pass.

Do not submit an unoriginal script.

I cannot tell you how many times I read a script that featured a 20-something guy who lived in squalor and/or his parent’s basement. He would have a McJob, a detached tone masquerading as hip irony and an obsession with the sarcastic, unattainable bitch goddess who shared his interest in video games, comic books and skateboards. Somehow, despite his loserdom, he always managed to bed said goddess. Boring. And, again, Pass.

Submit a tight draft.

The first thing I’d do when I got a pile of scripts was find the shortest one. I’d flip to the final page and note how long it was. If it was 140 pages, I’d leave it to the last because I knew the odds were high that I’d be wading through some bloated morass. I was never proved wrong. If a script was 100 pages or less, that would instantly go to the top of the pile. If it was 90 pages, I’d be one pretty effing happy reader. That said, I read every page of every script and painstakingly typed up summaries for the executives. I figured that if someone had gone to the trouble of writing a script, the least I could do was give it serious consideration. The writers had had the courage to face the blank page and then submit the work so I owed them respect as a fellow member of the writing tribe.

Don’t be afraid to end up in the slush pile.

If you have a good script and an original idea, even if you don’t have fancy contacts to get you in the door, submit. Yes, you may end up in the slush pile. Yes, it may take a while for you to get a response. But if it’s good, there are executives dying to find something that holds promise so they can put it into development.

I always wanted to be the reader who found some little gem and brought it to the attention of the big bosses. I was dying to discover some unheard voice and champion it. Sadly, it didn’t happen as often as I would have liked. Dare to be awesome. Don’t be cynical. And give yourself a goal of becoming excellent rather than snagging a big bag of money. If you study your craft and really work at becoming a better writer, the money and the opportunities will follow.

***

I can't stress how important that last point is. I probably don't make it often enough here. I'm as cynical as hell, but trying to get better. Being excellent, or trying to be, is better for both your craft and your self esteem in the end. We all think we're hacks at some point. Don't forget to make the counter case.

Thanks Karen. Now, back to the massive rewrite. Gaaaah.

Heracy.

FURTHER TO THE BELOW.

You want "unprecedented?"

Take this.

LONDON -- The head of the U.K.'s most popular web, BBC1, has ruled out showing more U.S. acquisitions.

Jay Hunt, who took over as controller of BBC1 around a year ago, will instead continue to invest the bulk of her drama budget in locally produced fare such as "Doctor Who" and high concept hits like "Life on Mars."

At present, BBC1 screens the Glenn Close legal skein "Damages," recently singled out for praise by the corporation's chairman Michael Lyons, in a late-night slot.

Under Hunt's leadership, this policy of pushing U.S. fare to the margins of the schedules looks certain to continue.

Hunt told the Broadcasting Press Guild: "It is very unlikely that we will show U.S. series in peak time (primetime). It is nice to have 'Damages' in the mix. The show is hugely valued by a very small audience but it is a very small audience.

"Part of what the Charter (the BBC's constitution) commits us to is to find the best of world television and showcase it but my main job in drama is to spearhead real innovation and creativity in original British production.

Listener

OH YEAH. The Listener premieres tonight. It's about a telepathic paramedic. It got pretty good ratings when it premiered overseas a few months ago.

Alex Strachan liked it well enough. The Chicago Sun Times didn't.

It employed a whole bunch-o-writers, that's for sure.

Premieres tonight on CTV at 9. Two back to back eps on NBC tomorrow at 9 & 10. Judge for yourself.

UPDATE: um, I mean tonight, being Wednesday, and tomorrow being Thursday.

Gas Bears Fruit on CTV

FROM CTV'S SCHEDULE ANNOUNCEMENT:

CTV also confirmed today the first projects on its production slate for
the 2010/11 season, including two, new, 13-part comedy series. Created,
executive produced and written by the incomparable CORNER GAS creator and star
Brent Butt, HICCUPS stars CORNER GAS' Nancy Robertson as a children's author
with anger issues and Butt as her hapless "life coach". DAN FOR MAYOR, from
three of Canada's most respected comedy writers and producers, Mark Farrell,
Paul Mather and Kevin White, stars CORNER GAS alumnus Fred Ewanuick as a
30-something bartender who runs for mayor of his hometown.

The two new series join additional CTV Original Series entering new
production cycles, including DEGRASSI: THE NEXT GENERATION, FLASHPOINT, and
SPECTACLE: ELVIS COSTELLO WITH... CTV also announced today that it will
premiere a new two-hour TV movie event, PARADISE CITY: DEGRASSI GOES TO
HOLLYWOOD, this September.

Great news for comedy fans, and Corner Gas fans. TWO shows from that top creative team. It'll be interesting to track the differences between Butt's genial-styled Vancouver-set laffer (starring his wife,) and the behind-the-scenes "three generations of CG showrunners" effort of Dan For Mayor, starring Fred Ewaniuck, who played Hank on Gas.

Congrats to Butt & his Co, as well as Paul Mather, Kevin White and Mark Farrell.

Gotta admit, comparably, it does seem like CTV has a lot of originals in the hopper.

Rogers Takes "Unprecedented" Pride in The Ignoble

FROM CITY TV's fall release:

Citytv Unveils Its Fall 2009 - 2010 Line Up

Citytv is pleased to announce a bold new schedule featuring some of the most anticipated and buzzed about scripted comedy, drama and reality series of the season.

"Citytv's line up this Fall is unprecedented with over 16 hours of US network simulcasts in prime time," commented Malcolm Dunlop, Executive Vice President, Programming, Rogers Media Television.

Well, Thank heavens for that! Hear that, viewers? Unprecedented! Meaning "exactly the same as available on another channel!"

In my book, the only thing unprecedented Citytv's done lately is this. And sadly, with the CRTC's record of rolling over for broadcasters, even that's not so unprecedented.

I was less than three months into this blog when I first wrote about the weird, prideful disconnect from Canadian programmers who thought that by buying shows, they were doing something great.

Four more years gone. Then, broadcasters were making money hand over fist and needed their CanCon obligations reduced. Now, the sky is falling, so they need their CanCon obligations reduced. Rogers talks out of one side of its mouth as a rich cabler, and out of the other side of its mouth as a broadcaster, and nobody calls them on anything. Well, except John Doyle, (and thank God for that) and the rotating passel of bloggers.

Unprecedented.

It's tough not to be dark about it. But I'm not. Because at a certain point, the behavior's so shameful that you just have to reframe, and come out of the cower stance.

So. Here it is. Right now I'm trying to stickhandle six scripts for a new show. I've written one, am rewriting another trying to get it down for production. Outlines are in play. Writers are breaking story. Character arcs, discussions of tone and what the audience will see and feel; all of this, all of it is WAY HARDER than sitting in a dark room and writing a cheque for someone else's creativity.

It's nobler work. It's harder work. We have nothing to apologize for. And if Daddy CRTC doesn't realize that, well, screw it. Do it for the craft. Do it for yourself.

That's what I tell my team, anyway.

Guest blog: By My Pal Satan, Dennis Heaton

I CAN THINK of no better or worthy guest blogger than my nomengrumpenfuhrer, DENNIS HEATON. In the Canadian TV business, he is the heat. I am merely the sauce. [That pitch is copyrighted so don't even try.] The rarely photographed, extremely paranoid, xenophobic polyatheist Heaton emerged from his germ-free, high security compound, where he's currently finishing his latest project, the worthily evil webseries, My Pal Satan, to file this report exclusively for y'all.

***

[At right: this incredibly rare dagerotype shows Canadian Producer, horror enthusiast, Screenwriter (Fido, Blood Ties, jPOD) and pork products marketer Dennis Heaton, moments before his assasination at the hands of noted unfunny comic anarchist Leno Czolgsoz, at the Banff TV Festival in 1872. The MY PAL SATAN creator's last words, reportedly, were, "Oh, there is no way I'm going to pay for the drycleaning with this shit." Photo courtesy Archives of the Ziggurat/Hellmouth society of Travisville, B.C.]

I am not Denis McGrath.

This happens to me a lot when I'm at some kind of film event (either a WGC party or somewhere else I've managed to sneak into). I'll either be introduced or introduce myself to someone... "hi, I'm Dennis Heaton."

And they'll look at me and, with a sniff of disdain, say "oh, yes -- the one with the blog."

They always manage to spit out the word "blog," as if it's a red tide oyster they've had the misfortune of consuming. More like blorrrrrg. or blaaahhhhhggggg.

To which, I always smile politely and say "no... you're thinking of the other Denis. Denis McGrath." And then I go into great lengths to explain how I am not Denis McGrath. How I live in Vancouver and he lives in Toronto. How we've worked on a show together (Blood Ties), so maybe that's where their confusion is coming from, and then I usually drink my beverage as quickly as possible, feign the need to go to the bar or bathroom and then leave.

Oh, I can understand the confusion. Sometimes, I can even empathize with it. I mean, we're both named Den(n)is, we're both writers, and we both consume vast quantities of bourbon. Sometimes in the same room.

But still, it's annoying. On several levels. And those are:

1) I am not Denis McGrath.

Don't get me wrong. I love the guy. Think he's fabulous. Have impure thoughts from time to time, but -- once more for the cheap seats -- I am not him. If I could be any other Den(n)is instead of the one that I am, I'd be him.

Okay that's a lie -- my first choice would be Dennis Quaid or maybe Hopper -- or Rodman if I'm feeling particularly zesty -- but McGrath is in the top ten.

2) What the is your problem with his blog anyway?

Whenever this mistaken identity thing happens, it is without fail that the person making this mistake obviously has some kind of issue with Denis' writing. It's got to do with the way they say "oh yes, the one with the blaaaahhhhhhhhhhgggggggggggggg" like they're trying to remove a hairball.

It's a blog, folks. It's one man's opinion. It's less than a "manifesto," but more than a "grocery list." Granted, most of the time I happen to agree with that opinion, but if I don't -- and more importantly, if you don't -- post a comment. Because...

3) I don't care what you think about his blog.

This is the other thing that happens. I tell the person that I'm not the Den(n)is they're thinking of, and they then go "oh..." and nine times out of ten continue to tell me what their problem is with Denis, his blog, and free speech in general.

This is when I swill back my drink, lie about my tiny Irish bladder and bolt.

Because -- and I can't stress this enough, either -- I don't care what you think. I'm not his assistant. I'm not going to pass your opinion onto him for you. We don't have a strange psychic link that allows him to hear whatever people say to me about him. We're not part of some secret order of Den(n)i who gather in underground caverns and plot the takeover of the world. You got a problem with what Denis is writing? Take it up with him (see comment 2 for suggestions how).

Actually, I kind of lied again. I will pass on your opinion about Denis' blog to him, but I'll also make fun of you -- especially if you're wearing a hat.

So, in conclusion...

Denis McGrath writes this blog.

I am not Denis McGrath.

I am Dennis Heaton (note the second N).

Thank you.

PS -- if you've confused me for Denis but love his blog, please note that I do take credit for it. (Sorry, McG... I gotta get those free drinks whenever I can).

PPS -- I'm not Dennis Foon either.

Next week: Why I am not the "other" Dennis.

Nice Doggie & Cactus D.

RIGHT NOW, the mental picture of myself I carry forth with me is that of a Black Lab swimming along, swimming, head barely above water. Not happy about it, not sad, just pushing forward with a certain, well, doggedness.

I don't know where I've conjured that image from. Might have been a stray news report, or a film, or a story I heard -- just some random image burned on the back of the retina; photographic detritus from an oversaturated age.

I'm back in Toronto for the weekend for the wedding of a good friend, after a weird week of work on The Rock. I spiked a 103 degree fever last weekend, burned through and churned out a 2 day draft of the new show that I was pretty happy with. Then the b'y's took a "Newfoundland Pass" and I was even more happy with it. We have a voice. As the others details stutter and start and move forward and back, we have a voice, and that's tremendously exciting to me.

Coming up is an even busier week, and a shift toward the practicals of how do you actually make these scripts? We have eight days an episode, and as one of our other Writers, the inimitable BadLady, says, "I have never had eight days in my life." Yet shoving scenes and characters and locations into a box -- well, it's a challenge, y'know. It certainly is.

But I'm up for it.

I'm up for a lot, it seems, these days. Nothing like the feeling of positive work to lift spirits. I've got a big crush on everybody I'm working with now, shaggy and still-kickin-the-tires as we all are.

Even though the storm clouds for the Canadian industry have rarely been darker, there are the people who continue to inspire. And hard work seems to pay off, eventually. I think.

Paul Gross is playing the Devil on U.S. TV this fall. Come on. How can you not enjoy the thought of that?

And I've gotten an email from a sometime correspondent about making that hardest of hard choices: choosing to leap and hope the writing work will appear rather than take the safe job where the learning curve is flat. That may not stack up on the courage meter with fighting cancer or patrolling Afghanistan, but it's gutsy nonetheless.

I've read Canadian pilots in the last month or so that are as good as any U.S. ones I've seen in the last few years. I've started to see a change in reporting, where the ghetto of not talking about the Canadian shows in the same article as the U.S. shows has started to break down. I've seen good worthy shows and news like the fact that Murdoch Mysteries has been sold to PBS in the USA -- which is a perfect place for it.

And I came home to my empty, still condo last night to find Norman has grown marvellous much.

Norman is my cactus. I got him for my office at the beginning of the 2nd season of the Ex-show. I dream of having a dog, but I live alone and keep weird hours (in many different cities) so for now, that's impractical. Norman the cactus is, in fact, the only living thing that depends on me. Okay, sure, you can leave him for four weeks without water, but look, look how he thrives. I mean, pretty soon I'm going to have to get him a bigger mug to sit in.

Okay, scratch all the positivity above. I'm waxing rhapsodic about a cactus. My life is fucking sad.

Psych.

Sorry haters. Norman is my other metaphor of the moment. Improbable -- a desert plant thrives in an empty condo in Toronto as the keeper of all that condo's stuff toils in Canada's most easterly point to make TeeVee that some people will run down no matter how good it winds up being. And yet I say, fuck'em. The dog keeps swimming, snout just above the waterline. Throw rocks if you want. He's not stopping. Norman lives, he thrives. And yes he's just a cactus and you should be able to commit to more than that to have a well-rounded life, but the cactus is a start. Like me, it has sharpness that'll prick you if you're not careful. But look at the top, that delicate little curve. There it is. You know what that is? It's the simplest thing in the world, the very objective correlative of optimism. Look at Norman; he's reaching for the sun.

And Fuckya if you can't get on board for that.

Guest Post @KDubb: A Letter To the TV Peeps from the big S side of the Screenwriting Ledger

Greetings TV peeps.

I too have answered the call to lighten the load for the chronically industrious & utterly irreplaceable Mr. McGrath. As is often the case whenever I show up outside of some a clearly labeled fiction, I'll be reprising my role as Grateful Guest. Which brings me to today's entertainment: me, revisiting television writing.

Now, I have been on many amazing occasions a grateful guest in television writing. But I'm trained and make my living as a screenwriter, meaning I mostly write feature films. Filmmakers still call TV writers um, TV writers. Emphasis on the TV, and you are never just 'writers'. Writers refer, in film, to literary authors. Anyway, the delineations are historic, practical though no longer prejudicial. It began with the birth of the television form, which film writing pre-dates by about half a century. Screenwriting was invented largely to act as creative comptrollers for studios' production expenses in the face of a then new brand of rebel storytellers we now call, film directors. Thus film writers see themselves as easily distinguishable from TV writers. The screenwriters' job was and is to make certain insanely expensive/expansive one-off visions dramatically cogent and affordable to execute, ideally franchise-able and, these days, ultimately irresistible to several generations more comfortable on their own sofas, watching whatever's on TV.

In that way, I compete with TV writers. Who, understandably, don't think much about competing with me. Which is interesting only when you think of the decades of hallmark television series that came courtesy of frustrated screenwriters like James L. Brookes, David Chase, Shonda Rhimes, David Lynch, Alan Ball et et et al.

TV writers think film writers are fools, but I suspect most TV writers only ever meet under-employed screenwriters. Despite the paltry minimum rates in Canada, a very small percentage of screenwriters get paid rather handsomely, and since production is a distant dream, we also set our own hours and schedules - which lets us control our time-money-bullshit ratios. Some even do better than most successful show runners (here), largely by also working in the States and overseas' markets. Well, better until you amortize the fees over the years in development it takes never to - in the end, in most cases, for a million reasons - never make the bloody films.

In film, development is big business: production is the nice-if-you-can-get-it part. That's the tax for your day to day freedom, and to be drinking in glam international locales with your red carpet crowd while the poor TV writers slave away in some bunker, trying not to strangle one another for months on end. You get to pick which horse you wanna never see a finish line with, but not why. And while no one else works on any film profitably until the screenwriter has executed her work to a case-by-case standard of excellence, there are no guarantees anywhere - at any level and in any market - that an excellent script will be made into a film of any kind. It usually just gets you the next job. We screenwriters are rarely accorded the privileges or even illusions of authorship. The first buck is won on our work & reputations. But the next buck stops no where near us.

And I'm cool with that. It's kinda like being a staff writer of one. You run your own room, all the strangling is self-induced, the product of your labor is all subject to a kind of happenstance similar in its reliability, I imagine, to accurately predicting the weather… with binoculars… from the moon.

Which may be what tends to make me…. miss television. For all its predisposition to communal hysteria via the rumor mill, its poorly-lit communal work spaces and its pandering to marketer-set morays, its infuriating habit of favoring expositional dialogue over true dramatic action, its slavish devotion to cheesy convention, its perpetual, temporal (yes they are) industrial-sized crises, its self-serving apathy regarding modern-day audience models, its shameful befuddlement by new tech and its fear of interactivity, its sad co-dependence on selling diapers and stain removers to stay alive…

When the TV writers sit down to get after it, it means something is getting done on a reasonable schedule closely related to an understandable goal. Most times it gets done very, very well. It gets produced and distributed via some not-so-dumb pipe or another to guest in millions of privately-owned devices all over the place. Good, bad, or ugly - there is no writing for its own sake. There is no squinting down from orbit watching the fog of complications du jour blot out your distant memory of your last contact with the fellow Earthlings, so far away. No! Instead we open on a sketchy-looking warehouse in some god-forsaken subdivision. Taped on the only marked door is a rarest of all rarities - a jewel in the rough, a holy grail, -- for we screenwriters --: it reads, Production Office. And somewhere above that, the title of the show you just wrote. And somewhere beyond that, the gift of executing a vision, soon to be shared - is already up and racing to air.

Fools are no where in that picture. My writing cousins are quite right.

Slash? Not so fast...

IF YOU'RE NOT reading Lee Goldberg's blog, you should be. Goldberg's got a great perspective on both the international and American business.

Today he passes along an interesting follow up to the news that's breaking now about the international response to the L.A. screenings.

International broadcasters are "slashing" buys, with the U.K. taking the biggest dip.

Yet amidst the fooferal up here about spending on U.S. shows, and with the networks saying the Sky is falling, reports now say their spending was off by only 5% over last year.

I'm with Will. Gee. Is there something that we're missing here?

Maybe it's behind the CRTC's big black marker.

Fulford on the Life and Death of a TV Series

I SOMETIMES READ Robert Fulford and think he's a little past it, but this column on the life (and death) of a TV series has a lot of wisdom (and laugh out loud funny) from a keen observer of the medium. Also, he gets full on Canadian points for using trenchant Canadian examples right alongside the U.S. examples. (Read the full article for those.) That deserves an extra 'huzzah.'

Most episodic shows tell two stories simultaneously. One deals with fictional characters. The other is the narrative's slow evolution under the pressure of desperate producers and harried writers.

The second story demonstrates that the history of a TV series, like the history of a nation or an art movement, falls into four periods - primitive, classic, baroque and decadent.

In the primitive stage the audience is unconvinced that the show will matter and the people producing it aren't so sure, either. When Flashpoint went on the air last summer, it spent far too much time explaining itself... It's now well into the classic period, confident about what it's doing and how to do it.

To see the baroque sensibility on TV, consider the extensive ornamentation built into House, the most popular U.S. scripted series last season. The parallels with Sherlock Holmes are a clear example...

The decadent era begins when writers lose interest in their themes and try to maintain audiences by concocting steadily more outlandish storylines. One of the attorneys in the law firm of McKenzie, Brackman on the program L.A. Law (1986-1994) was a divorce specialist famous for seducing his clients and all other available females. A scriptwriter had him fall through a ceiling in the office while shagging his secretary. Amusing, but it turned comedy into farce and drained reality from the character - as Happy Days did in 1977 when Fonzie rode water skis over a Seaworld shark, making "jump the shark" a term for a program reduced to terminal silliness. (In 1997 a website, jumptheshark.com, began chronicling self-destructive TV shows.

As a program's fourth or fifth season ends, alert viewers often notice that a frantic quality invades the scripts. Writers are running short on ideas just when they're trying to squeeze another season out of a somewhat worn concept. They reach for increasingly dubious themes and put the main characters in deeper and deeper jeopardy.

As a slightly-outsider, viewer perspective, of course, Fulford misses the full on sturm and drang terror that results from most series that never get out of that primitive phase, and the fact that as a series goes on, it's often one person either way that can forestall or speed up the descent into baroque and decadent.

And it's wonderful to talk in terms of years. But there are series (ones that he might have even mentioned) that are still primitive places fighting for every inch of beach when all looks fine-o on the screen-o. Such is the faerie business we toil in. It's nice to think of the writers either sparking or indulging themselves, but the collaborative nature of TV means that the whole village has a hand in it.

Oh, and not to tell tales out of school, but we all can recall, I believe, one or two series that started straight at the baroque phase and never, ever, ever looked back...

Tomorrow: A guest post! Aren't you lucky!!!

Alexi's Glee

NOW I'M GOING to guess that most of you who read hear also haunt Alex's Complications Ensue site, for his bites o'crafty goodness. But just in case you're perverse or something, or, like, Canadian TV is really your thing and your only thing (to which I say, see your doctor and get that drained, boy.) Alex has got a great, rollicking discussion going on the GLEE pilot and why he felt it was "off." I went with it, but after reading Alex's post (and some of the equally right on comments) I have a different view.

But aint noone taking away my dream of Lea Michele. I saw her in Spring Awakening, yo. Our love is pure.


PS: And while you're there -- one of Alex's endearing traits is a "show me'ism" that makes it hard for him to accept something as true unless he's seen it himself. (Honestly, these closet scientist types.) One of the old arguments he and I have had is about the "high school caste system" which he thinks only exists in TV and movies because he didn't really experience it himself in high school. So if you do weigh in, you might want to offer gentle observation on that front, as well. All for the greater good, peeps. All for the greater good.

Localized Pain, Nobody's Gain

WELL, THE LOCAL forecast here over the weekend was a 103 fever, lots of the shakes, an inability to swallow, night sweats, the poundies and the stumblies. I love you, St. John's, but I suspect you may be trying to kill me.

Luckily, this gave way today to a glorious torrent of work. On Saturday morning when I first thought, "I think I need to lie down" I had 12 pages. Now, I'm halfway through the script and seem to be able to hold down something other than saltines.

Now, it would give me great pleasure to be able to say that my condition was exacerbated by the great SaveLocal tv sham-o-rama this weekend, but I wisely kept that off my TV -- my attention and energy being delirious enough.

But since today seems to be the Local TV day at my blogging brethren, (*ps: Will Dixon is a girl) I thought I would nip in and share a few of my thoughts about the phenomena in the here and now.

I've spent most of my life, and chose to spend most of my life, in large, large metropolitan centres. I used to say that anything less than a million people was a village. I have the ones I love, (New York, Toronto) the ones that I don't understand (Vancouver, Calgary, Seattle) and the ones that I think maybe I could love if I knew them a little better (Boston, Montreal, San Francisco.)

Part of being in a large city is not necessarily understanding what "local market" meant. Even going back to the 1970's when we had those wired converters that looked like Kleenex boxes, with the manual buttons you had to push for a channel -- state of the art at the time -- local just meant the same programs, sometimes at slightly different times.

Until I thought about it. I remember realizing that not everyone knew about Commander Tom and Rocketship 7, or people who'd get the jokes about Irv Weinstein. I remember hearing about Ghoulardi when I got a little older. I took the pomo step of seeing the three or four people who fed into Count Floyd on SCTV. And yeah, there was also the fishing shows I didn't watch, and Tiny Talent Time, a show that I think a neighbour of ours went on one time. And there was Party Game! and the Hilarious House of Frightenstein, the greatest local program ever produced anywhere and if you suggest otherwise I will come to your house and cut you.

As consolidation in the media industry happened, these reference points all slowly slid away. Some moved to the burgeoning world of cable. Yeah, it's cool that I remember Mike Myers on Citylimits, and Chuck the Security Guard and the all night movies (and the Saturday night Italian movie on Channel 47....boys, you know what I'm talking about.) But those times past, as technology and viewing habits changed. And then came Muchmusic, and HBO and TMN and TSN....

Except in an important way they never did change. I think of that line, and paraphrase, that we didn't leave local TV. Local TV left us.

McLuhan and Znaimer, the two guys I spent a lot of time in my 20's studying, both theorized that the future of programming was local. That the best TV was going to be the station that told you what happened to you, today.

I was lucky enough to work at one of those stations in the last years before they worked to dismantle it: Toronto's Citytv. Others have written better and longer essays about what made City unique and different, but I have to say that rather than being any one thing, it was everything. The fact that the promos were cut by promo guys in house, who wrote funny voiceovers for Mark Dailey to read. The fact that you could sneak funny and slightly off stuff onto the air at 3am. Many have reminisced about the great post midnight voiceover for Atlantic City, where Mark Dailey enthused to the night owls watching, "Don't go anywhere! Coming up next you get to see my boss get shot in the chest!" And indeed you did. Moses had a small part in that Louis Malle feature.

If you were in a hotel in Toronto and you flipped on the TV and saw City Tv, it made you want to get out and explore that city. My time exploring other cities, especially when I started working in TV and had cause to visit other affiliates, I found the local affiliates were parked in strip malls or far out industrial bunkers divorced from the city proper never made me feel that way.

But there were some notable cases where I stepped a little outside my personal zone and discovered just what "local media" meant to communities smaller than those cities I hailed from.

When I was at a somebody's cottage, and realized that the station that you got on the dock was the same station the kids parents had listened to when they were kids;

When I realized what a complete Oasis the university station was for my friends who lived in Austin, who had to deal every day with the fact that they were in a liberal bubble surrounded by harsh, hard R Republican Fundamentalism.

It's always the small groups that are threatened by the bigger groups for whom "local" is truly important. The bigger the picture you paint, the less likely it seems that it needs to include those little quirks or elements that define a small place, that make it what it is. Maybe you can leave the Red Apple off the list of landmarks where you're dealing with a footprint of 500 miles square. From there, maybe it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to have one entertainment report done from the studio in Toronto and farmed out to other communities. And maybe it's not that big a deal if "your" weatherman is standing in front of a green screen talking about how cold it is on St. Denis street right now, when really he's up in Don Mills, ON. Maybe there truly IS no party like a Scranton party! I mean, how would you know?

But yet here I am, in a place that's vibrant and different, and way, way, way below my usual comfort zone for number of people. St. John's may be the oldest City in North America. (it is, look it up.) But it's still only 112, 000 people or so.

Yet those people, and their ways of thinking, are just so different in so many very important ways. Like a lot of islanders, I think, they just go their own way. What a treat it would be to see that reflected on screen.

Except, um. You really can't. Not really.

There's a local station here called N.TV. Such are the times we live in that it bills itself as "Canada's Superstation" -- see, because the taste is for that, not for local. I was surprised, one of the nights when I was first here, to watch an entertainment report on that station from my hotel room. The whole report was about four to five minutes long -- filler length -- and it consisted entirely of a woman giving the weekend's US box office receipts for the top five grossing films. Then they'd cut to about a minute of each of the trailers. That's it. That's the entertainment report.

Such is the problem with local TV. It was simultaneously ignored, by stations getting gobbled up by huge conglomerates like CTV Global and CHUM and CRAIG that then gobbled up some more of each other til now we have the two of them, and one on the teeter. We were told that getting bigger was the better way to go. That it promoted synergy. That it was the future of broadcasting. That it was the great big shiny future.

It wasn't. It was a lie.

Meanwhile, those little stations that were trying to make a go of it were so cut and so decimated by cuts to their operating budgets that they couldn't train people anymore. They couldn't report. They couldn't cover their communities well. Maybe they'd struggle through their one newscast with pride, and maybe you'd even see a few people on that newscast who were proud local talents (I certainly see that here in St. John's.)

But the trend is also evident: this is dying. Last one out of local broadcasting, flip the switch. Oh, the HD switch? Now now. Don't even start about that. Seriously. Don't. (Canada's just not going to do that. Hey CRTC, Fuck you!)

Meanwhile, let's take the case of the CBC. I was out at a bar for happy hour a couple weeks back, and an arts report came on the CBC affiliate from one cultural opening or another, and of course everyone sat around and spoke up and clapped and pointed every time they recognized somebody. And I realized that this was really important to them. They liked seeing this because this was rare. This is not ETalk going to some crap book launch which happens every day in Toronto. This was here. It was them. It was the kind of thing that only the CBC could afford to cover. And it was way better than the number of times I wanted to find something coming from Newfoundland only to find the only station I could get was from Halifax. And suddenly I understood far better, the cries from those who were desperately trying to tell the CBC don't cut the regions....


...because the regions are the only thing CBC has left that make it different.

The real irony about Save Local TV is that the patient's already dead. We all let it happen. The viewers by not being active enough in protesting it. The city dwellers in being arrogant enough to assume our covered asses meant everyone's were covered. The media companies who did everything they could to centralize and swallow, and now, the CRTC, who let the whole thing happen by rubberstamping instead of acting in the best interest of Canadians.

So what we're seeing now is not so much the attempts to save the patient. Nope. What we're seeing now is a little juice being punched through the corpse to get it to dance, one last time, so that maybe they can ring one more morsel of gelt out of it. Unseemly.

It's a sad thing. And there are no good guys in any of it. And whatever happens, my friends, trust me on this one: nobody's getting saved.