The Corners You Know & The Corners You Show

A LITTLE LESS than two months ago, just before I left Toronto, I sat in a club in the west end and watched three Canadian TV writers pay tribute to a friend.  

This was at the WGC Screenwriting Awards, a fete that's known for having the fastest, no B.S. show on the block.  In fact, once upon a time (before my time) I have it on good authority that the "winners" used to be chosen by throwing a dart at a dart board. Or something like that.

Anyway, on this night, Malcolm MacRury (ZoS, and the upcoming Crash & Burn (formerly Lawyers, Guns & Money,) Peter Mohan, (Blood Ties, Mutant X, The Bridge) and Peter Mitchell (Cold Squad, Traders & too many other shows to count) stood up and feted David Cole with a rather unusual tribute: Two grand (which they raised themselves) that would go to one of the night's winners. It was meant to be "mad money" -- to be spent not on research, or on a computer -- but on something impractical or fun; something that made life better.

This was meant in tribute to Cole, a longtime Canadian TV scribe who died last year.  Famous for his sense of humor, Cole had a long and sometimes bumpy career.  Like a lot of us, he had his share of troubles, but everyone who knew him spoke of his laugh and his sense of humor as his most enduring quality.

I met Cole only briefly, toward the end of his life, when we worked together on an animated series. I freelanced a few episodes, and he story edited -- taking the brunt of the contradictory notes from three different international broadcasters. Such is the gig.

On one of those afternoons, Cole and I got talking about the other thing that we had in common.  I had replaced him on a show a couple of years before.  This show, a sci-fi drama that shot in South Africa, had had a famously tempestuous development history, which resulted in the departure of the entire first writing team.  As one of the replacements, I went on to see a bunch of craziness, and learn an awful lot. After freelancing for years, this had been my first steady gig.

That day, Cole and I swapped stories about the show -- I heard about the insanity that preceded my arrival, and caught him up a bit on what followed his departure.  We shared a bunch of good natured laughs about it all.

What I didn't tell him; what, in fact, I never told anybody up til now (and you'll keep it to yourself, won't you, gentle reader?) was that part of what had gotten me through that experience, and part of what shaped the way I framed and learned from that experience, was David Cole.

See, when I went to Cape Town, I didn't just take over Cole's job (though at a much lower level; I was green as hell,) I took over his flat.  

Amidst the flat owner's many books and sundries, there were a couple of things that Cole had left behind.  One of those things was a yellow legal pad.

The pad wasn't full; there were only about fifteen pages there.  A few were filled with an unfinished, unaddressed letter. It was personal;  I gave it a cursory glance and threw it away.  But next, there were a series of notes -- notes that detailed his growing frustration with the show and the process that would eventually cause him to leave.  These notes were hilarious, and scabrous, and though they didn't really reflect the show that I'd eventually help to shape and craft -- they did presage an experience I'd have on another show a couple years later.

The notes came from a place of a writer who was frustrated and at the end of his rope by being boxed in, let down, and punk'd about by a creative process that divorced the decision-making from the creative.  It was a series of jots that I never forgot. And it was my introduction to the way that Canadian TV of the time sometimes went wrong.

Because it was so hard to finance, the producers of Canadian fare wielded tremendous power. Unlike the U.S. system of TV, you didn't rise through the ranks of the writing department to assume control of the creative enterprise.  In in its simplest form, the person who filled out the forms and got the financing called the shots.  Many of these producers cut their teeth as line producers, often on U.S. service fare that shot in Canada.  And eventually they grew tired of this; constantly having to take orders from Americans. Couldn't they call the shots, finally? Couldn't they be the creative force?  

So came the rise of the Canadian "Creative Producer." 

Now, to be fair, some of these creative producers were creative and collaborative. But most of them weren't writers, and didn't have that skillset. So they hired writers. And, not to put too fine a point on roughly a jillion stories I've heard over the last few years -- but often, they abused them.  There was resentment, maybe, because they couldn't do what the writer could. There was entitlement, surely. They thought nothing of engaging a "word slave" whose job it was to take poorly ordered cocktail napkins and wild whims and "write them up," as if it was as easy and as dull an endeavour as cleaning out a closet. 

More often than not, this resulted in a terrible disconnect. Writers that did well did so because they were "easy to work with" and not "good." Writers who were good, and who fought for a creative vision, were tagged as difficult, and became stressed out and miserable because they weren't having a good time writing, and found themselves having to take marching orders from people who didn't understand story, the process, or even how to talk to writers.

And hanging over it all was the peculiar Canadian siren song, that others would repeat almost constantly: "if you were really any good, why don't you go to the United States?"

Over the last few years, there's been a hard, long process of trying to make the case of the need for the person with the "Creative Vision" to be the writer; and for that writer to have access to the decision-making, the levers of power and also, too, the networks. The gatekeepers. The people who gave notes.  In the past, the idea was to keep the writer as far away from that as possible here.  

But for better or worse, many people started to realize that the "word slaves" approach wasn't the right one.  More frequent story rooms, showrunners -- writers who could execute a creative vision needed to have the space to do that, or the shows would forever suck.

Every gain in this area has been hard won. And not to sound like a broken record, but the shows that have been our greatest successes, whether you measure that by critical or ratings success -- Slings & Arrows, Corner Gas, Durham County, DaVinci's Inquest, Intelligence -- have come from having empowered writers.

There's been pushback along the way, of course.  It's very popular these days to pair with new or inexperienced writers,  the thought being that they're less likely to be "difficult" (ie: to know how to, or even think of pushing for a certain creative vision.)  A lot of times this backfires, because all it means is that you have writers who don't have the experience to fix something, and producers who value their control more highly than quality execution.)

I've said this before, and I'll say it again here.  Writers are no picnic.  We can be prickly and needy. We have huge egos, (not actor-sized, but still) and can sometimes spend a lot of time inside our heads. Anybody who's married or dating a writer, I give you full props. It's not easy.

Because part of the job is to be very serious about what you do, even if the thing you're doing isn't very serious at all. I was fortunate enough to spend a little bit of time a couple days back with Kari Lizer, who's the Showrunner and Creator of The New Adventures of Old Christine. She was full of stories of her time on Will & Grace, and the ups and downs of her own show.  She was warm and open hearted, and talked of a lot of hurtful lessons learned only through fighting for it.   Ron Moore, too, who dazzled so many of us with his re-interpretation of Battlestar Galactica, told several stories that mainly pointed to the need to stick up for yourself, and maintain your creative integrity, even if that means walking away at the hardest possible time.

It's strange to think of things this way, but here goes: the process of making a Friday Night Lights, or The Wire, or The Shield, is exactly the same process that results in Being Erica.  It's just as much work to conceive of, break story for, and execute a little confection like Ugly Betty or Reaper or Cupid as it is to make The West Wing.  You have to commit to it. And that requires a singular level of attention, and craft, and vision.

Awhile back, on Karen Walton's inkcanada discussion board, there was a thread about Great Canadian Television characters.  Someone brought up the character of Olivia on Street Legal, a CBC legal drama that ran to critical derision and great ratings in the late 80's, early 90's.  Olivia was a character who was nowhere on Canadian TV (arguably not really on American TV at the time, either) -- a tough, unapologetic, empowered working woman who wasn't afraid to use her looks or any advantage to get what she wanted -- but could just as easily get it another way.  Street Legal was fun, but it was by no means a great show. Yet that indelible character (which put Cynthia Dale on the Canadian showbiz map) shook up the show, knocked it on its ass, and made it memorable. It was great hearing comments in the thread from one of the people who'd brought that character to life; (David Cole had a hand in that, too) how she reflected in some ways the women they saw around them (these were all young lions, then) but didn't see on TV.  

It's through swapping these stories, stories of how stuff goes down, how it comes to be, that TV writers learn their true craft.  It's part of the reason I write this blog; it's the reason why people like me and Karen Walton, and many others try so hard to get writers together; to forge a community.

That's the framing with which I approached the entry I wrote over the weekend, where I took exception at a Canadian producer's comments on finding writers for Flashpoint.

Well, today in the Globe & Mail, freshly returned soccer cum TV scribe John Doyle takes exception to my comments, and rushes to the producer's defence.

That's all well and good.  Doyle's a fine writer.  I was singing his praises not two nights ago in Banff, at the St. James Gate pub, as a guy who got the value of making the cultural case for a homegrown industry.  The guy I was talking to grimaced.  No fan of the Doyle was he, but I grudgingly got him to admit in the end that the man was right more often than wrong.

But the thing is, being "right" has an awful lot to do with where you shine the spotlight, and how you choose to frame the discussion.  I know there are producers in Canada who probably hate my guts because of the way I write on this blog sometimes, and I know there are others who're just fine with me, because they, like me, think the quality of the product is the most important thing.  And who define quality the same way I do:  not "HBO" necessarily, but the best execution of whatever the thing is supposed to be) Creative relationships are hard to maintain at the best of times.  But there are many Producers and Writers who are close; who work well together even here.

Doyle chooses to shine his spotlight one way; categorizing the Banff TV festival as an example of the lofty writers with pretensions all getting together. So far as I know, the last time that Doyle and I were at the Fest, it was two years ago. There was indeed a contingent of Canadian TV writers there, which at the time was actually unusual.  See, Banff has, in the past, been that wonderfully Canadian creation: a place where everybody (being network types, sales people, producers) talks creativity, while the creative people are nowhere to be seen. 

I'm not going to say that producing isn't a creative act. I've learned otherwise, through the wise counsel (and example) of several good producers. But Doyle's spotlight fails to illuminate the -- let's call it infiltration of Banff -- as part of the long fight to get TV writers in this country above the level of the word slave.

That's fine.  Everybody's allowed their contradictions.  Doyle points to Flashpoint as a critical success because it's commercial.   Yet his haranguing of the last show I worked on, The Border, has verged on the operatic; and that's a show that I always described as "a good cheeseburger" to anybody who asked.  He's also poked Being Erica quite a few times for being light and airy.

Doyle is not above playing his favorites, whether they be certain writers or certain shows.  Any longtime reader will know of his great admiration of Chris Haddock, or Mike Clattenburg of the Trailer Park Boys.  People at CBC are convinced he's out to get them.  Others have intimated darkly about some connection to CTV Globemedia influencing his reviews.  And to every single one of those people I say:  don't be an idiot.  Tom Shales might have been one of the best TV critics that ever wrote a word, and his prickliness makes Doyle look like a piker. 

If I wanted to, I could easily cherry pick certain examples from my own experiences and make Doyle's case for the majority of Canadian TV writers being full of themselves and pretentious.   

I've gotten angry emails over a blog entry where I contrasted a couple of shows.

I've had people send me emails talking about "we" when, far as I could tell, they were referring only to themselves.  

I've had people quote their New York Times reviews at me to refute something I wrote.

I had a crazy person rant at me for fifteen minutes a few months ago because I was somehow responsible for counselling, or promoting the death of art on TV. Or something like that.  I'm not sure.  I have a witness, though. 

I even have had the experience of the full-0f-themselves writer who took a mild joke I made about screenwriters in general, and used it to stir up trouble for me with some professional colleagues. It happens. 

But I choose to see these incidents, and others like them, as not representative of the whole of the experience, and the attitude, of the Canadian TV scribe.  There's plenty more stuff I could say on the subject, but that's all Inside Baseball, and despite what some people think, there's a whole heckuva lot that I *don't* talk about here.

Nope. No.  In the end, I choose to look into the corners I know, and show the spirit of what caused those three friends to get up and give away two grand to some other writer in tribute, because they know how hard it's been, and how hard it will continue to be, to maintain a sunny disposition and sense of humour in the face of the challenges of creation in this country.  A little mad money helps.  And so does a little community. That's the corner I choose to show.

My friend Mark (who co-created Flashpoint) came to Banff this year to do a panel talk on that show's success with an exec from CBS and his wife (and co-creator) Stephanie Morgenstern. He said before the panel, "Sometimes it's nice to come out and get a little pat on the head."

And it's true.  Mark and Steph have high powered agents with CAA now, and so have a little more than that head pat to help them through, but if there aren't always others to give that little pat, maybe it's up to us to give it to each other a little more.  That's the corner I choose to show. 

After four days in a mostly stuffy room, listening to speaker after speaker, a woman of my acquaintance (and fellow showrunner program participant) asked me last night at the Gate, "So are you going to Los Angeles?" And I shrugged.  Cause, man, all I know is that in five years, working in this job has taken me from Vancouver to St. John's to South Africa and back -- a crazy journey. So who knows, really?  I'd like to think that what we're fighting for here is the chance to play our craft as writers and not have to go to the USA. But maybe that's still a naive proposition. Still. That's the corner I choose to show.

Oh, and that guy who grimaced when I big-upped Doyle? You know how I got him to turn his opinion around?   I smiled and said, "come on, the guy's taken shots at me, too, and I'm still reading him."

And the guy smiled, nodded, and conceded the point. 

I'm pretty confident about the corners I know, and the corners I show -- to writer peeps and fellow travellers.  I loves me my cheeseburger shows and my lofty HBO shows. (And even my cheeseburger HBO shows...ahem True Blood ahem...)

I guess that's gotta be enough.

Shmanff

SO MUCH TO process here in the Canwest Showrunner Program at Banff.  Much good, much notso. We had a great day today with Rene Balcer, the showrunner for Law & Order.  The ep that I watched today, as well as a few others I've seen recently, were a bit revelatory for me because the show seemed different, and much fresher than I remembered.

Balcer filled in the blanks:  he came in with a mandate to "dirty the frame a bit" which means that they shoot in a looser, more naturalistic style -- which also has implications for lighting.

But there's also a big difference -- though subtle -- in the way they tell their stories. They spend way longer in the teaser, getting to know the people who wind up being the victims.  (HOUSE is probably the vanguard of this trend, still, it's an interesting and profound change to a format that we all probably think of as set in stone; not so...) I was also interested in how they eliminated a few scenes toward the end -- instead of catching a suspect, they cut straight to him in interrogation and merely talked about how he was caught.

Now a lot of the time that would maybe seem like a lame "Canadian style" dramatic compromise. But Balcer argued it was the right scene to cut first, since it's in the home stretch when the ending is in sight, and people are on a tack of figuring out, not needing to see the action. I thought that was a very different way to look at it.  

The pacing was also very different. Not your father's Law & Order.  

Also spent a great hour and change with The New Adventure of Old Christine's creator and showrunner Kari Lizer, who's as warm, funny, present and normal as you'd ever want from someone in this sometimes crazy business.  

Most of the 'wisdom imparted' in these sessions is in camera and off the record sort of stuff, but it was extemely heartening to see and hear workaday knowledge from two people who manage to maintain both their sense of joy and sense of humanity in the business. Inspiring.

Then it was the St. James' Gate after an extended Disco Nap, and various and sundry wonderfuls.  Good to catch up with Maureen Parker,  and KL Ashton, J.J. Johnson, Children's Producer Extraordinaire, making the jump to drama for us old kids; the mighty Will Pascoe, Mike Kiss of the golden voice, writer/performer and bon vivant (and brand new Jeans wearer) Tracy Dawson, Montreal writer Cynthia Knight and the Heroic Film Company's secret weapon Jennifer Morrisette. 

And I talked to a real live CRTC guy too...but that, my friends, was just between us girls.   Still, an interesting exchange of viewpoints and passions and concerns and perspectives...smart people in a room -- you can never go wrong.  Well. Sometimes with booze. But not tonight.

The trend at Banff this year?  Cheap.  Crackers and cheese at receptions.  The Banff Bag looks more like a recycled cat.  You can't find a coffee anywhere. And today, we were reduced to scarfing saltines at 4pm for some sustenance.   It's kind of like "Survivor" but without the challenges.

Oh and there were awards too. 

Tomorrow is a session with BSG's Ron Moore.  Must set my geek to "low."

For more Banff Insight, check out Will Dixon's post here.   

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.