Reprint: Take a Good Look at My Face(book)

THIS IS ANOTHER of my "whither, whither" posts. Still, you know, something.

Originally Published 02/03/09

THE TENDENCY FOR social media to explode exponentially is well-documented. MySpacegave way to Facebook and now it's Twitter that's having the adolescent growth spurt. I remember that I joined Facebook, about two years ago, in a flurry of media and TV/Film types rushing to do the same. It quickly became a different way to procrastinate and check in, and a generally harmless to enjoyable social tool.

But like the internet, it's also a place where an idea, or a 'meme' can spread pretty quickly. It all depends if it catches on or not.

For the longest time, I've seen a "25 Random Things About Me" meme bouncing about. A few people I knew attempted it, but it was just another clickable way to spend your Facebooktime.

Then a couple of my writer friends did it, and something sort of changed. By the time I did mine, on the weekend, the meme had reached its tipping point.

Now understand, this may only involve a dozen or fifteen people I know, tops. But it's interesting nonetheless because most of them are engaged in the creative fields. So there are intersecting mindsets and approaches.

What strikes me as most interesting is that, given a chance, most writer types will use their "25 Things" to try and articulate the bare bones of some sort of governing philosophy. Now that's something that you just don't generally do. Not in that way, I mean. Not unless you're given to writing manifestos. And let's face it, after the third or fourth one, the only person reading those is that guy working for the NSA. And sadly, he's just skimming for key words.

No, we writers are socialized and prompted to inject that kind of energy into our work. So to see it writ large is kind of like seeing the subtext become text. It's a little thrilling and a lot surprising. I feel like I've learned more about some of my good friends in the last forty-eight hours, than I have in the whole time I've known them.

Writers, most of us anyway, also always know they're writing for an audience. So decoding that layer is tricky, too. There are things that people (myself included) wrote in their lists that clearly reflects not a "world as I see it," but a "me as I'd like you to see me," agenda. There are things that are written from perspectives where you have a counter view, of events or even the basic facts -- but the last thing in the world to do is challenge those items. It would be like wading through someone's cerebellum and kicking the parts of the personality you don't agree with. Brr.

For some, this might seem silly and solipsistic. Just another cry for attention from a group of narcissists who demand too much already.

But there's something else going on in those lists. I've found the details of lives both profound and mundane. Plus beauty, inspiration, undeniable truth, and the unmistakable, comforting tendrils of the common humanity that connects us all.

That's the thing, I guess. You can try to post 25 random things about yourself. But that randomness shatters the moment someone recognizes themselves in you. And I can't help but think that our lives are made better by that.

If you'd like to comment on this post, please click through to the original post.

Reprint: Special Pleading and the World of Canuck TV

YOU KNOW, when it comes to Canadian TV in crisis, it really is the ongoing debate that never ends. I reprint this one because, sadly, it would be nice for people to gird themselves a bit for the next few weeks -- and prepare once more for the foolishness. As I write this intro, I'm coming from a WGC council meeting where we've heard about the regulatory climate over the next few months. The big issue is -- wait for it -- another CRTC hearing.

I know, I know, one wishes to die -- but this one is the big one. A broadcasting policy review. The first since 1999. This is the make or break one for creatives in the industry. A similar hearing in 1999 changed the rules on TV and killed Canadian drama series overnight. In fact, everything the Writers Guild said would happen at that 1999 hearing basically came true.

So if you're thinking about sitting on your hands, and you draw a paycheque from your creative labours, my advice to you is this: quit your special pleading. And suit up.

***

originally published 3/23/09

THERE'S A FALLACY of argumentation that's known as "special pleading." It's a tricky one, and it takes many forms, but the basic definition of special pleading comes down to this:

A presentation of an argument that emphasizes only a favorable or single aspect of the question at issue.

"Special Pleading" is often offered up as a way to try to deflect or change the subject, rather than rationally or coldly examine the issue at hand with logic and a full examination of the facts. As a tactic, it's as old as the hills. But there's something about our age that, far as I can tell, has lead to the spreading of Special Pleading like kudzu.

First, you remove the control rods. For all the faults of contemporary journalism, the way it's supposed to have gone for the last few decades is that you don't take sides. You try to maintain neutrality and present both sides.

That sort of fell by the wayside in the last few years, as the rise of talk radio, and the internet, too, made it OK to retreat into eddies and cul-de-sacs where only one view was ever expressed. When people talk about the death of civility in politics, I think a lot of the time what they're reacting to is the rise in the unchallenged tactic of special pleading.

Sometimes special pleading takes the form of trying to frame the argument in such a way that refutation is impossible, or meets such an impossible standard of proof that there's no way back.

"You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists," is an example of this kind of thinking. Now, simple logic should tell you that there's a whole lot of daylight between these two extremes, but when a top government official maintains that this statement is so, the premise of the argument is so extreme that, if enough people accept it, it becomes a powerful disincentive to explore or challenge the premise. Similarly, "if you don't support the war in Iraq, you are against the troops." This is classic special pleading. There is no burden of proof with which you could refute that argument to someone who believes it.

Part of the reason why "Special Pleading" arguments are so hard to crack, and people who believe them so hard to reach, is because of the built in walls that deliberately shut out any of the avenues of logical debate. If someone says, "You can't judge cops' behavior in the course of their duties unless you've been a cop, because you don't know what it's like," there's no way to counter that argument.

Of course, the problem with arguments that rely on Special Pleading is that their very insularity almost guarantee that there can be no fresh thinking or data, or news, or reality that permeate and change that thinking.

Now, as is my cant (and by dint, I would say, of the current historical moment) the examples I use above come mostly from the left or liberal side of the political spectrum. But I don't mean to suggest that arguments of special pleading are the exclusive province of the right. I find myself frustrated with people I agree with politically all the time, when I hear them utilizing arguments that amount to Special Pleading. If I can't immediately conjure up lefty arguments of special pleading, maybe it's because they fit so nicely into one of the political right's other fave argument tactics of the last few years, the "appeal to authority." But that's getting off on another horse...

The basic rule that's violated in argumentation by special pleading is this principle in philosophy: if you claim a distinction, there should be a relevant and substantive basis for making that distinction. It should be verifiable. When something is not verifiable, because "access to the truth" is claimed by one group, or you ignore any evidence that doesn't support your claim, the way forward is nearly impossible.

So, for instance, claiming that any criticism of Israel's actions in the Palestinian Territories or Gaza comes from a place of anti-semitism -- should be something that is verifiable. If you can't verify it, then besides being slanderous, it's a form of special pleading.

Special Pleading is ripe now for all sorts of reasons -- one of the big ones being the fact that the internet tends to flatten out facts and truth. At first glance, it may be difficult to tell whether someone's making sense, or is some sort of loon.

I think everybody in the Canadian broadcasting firmament should keep special pleading in mind this week. We're going to be entering a very interesting time.

We have a Conservative Heritage Minister, James Moore, who is very much of the opinion that the CBC should be forced to compete more, and should "live within its means." He doesn't think that it should compete with the Private Networks for advertising or for programming.

There's plenty of people who agree with him, both Inside the CBC and out. They will make all sorts of arguments that the CBC has lost its way, is now chasing ratings, betraying its foundations by not having a service that plays classical music, etc. This ignores the fact that a few short years ago the main argument used against CBC Television was that no one was watching. Now ratings are up, but it's still not good enough.

A full examination of the CBC 's mandate and what would need be done to rationalize it for the 21st century would probably be healthy. In fact, there's been plenty of those studies made in the past. Most of them have been ignored by governments of the day because they usually seem to suggest that the CBC is being asked to do too much with too little. No one wants to take on the politically difficult task of whittling down that mandate, and nobody wants to own up to funding it at a level where it can accomplish everything you're asking it to do.

When you see huge articles about the layoffs at CBC this week -- for they are coming -- I want you to ask yourself if you're hearing all sides of the argument, or if there's a bit of special pleading going on.

The other fascinating thing that's going on in the cultural sector is that the Private Networks, Global and CTV, are agitating heavily for relief from their obligations, blaming the economy and a broken business model. The Heritage Minister has indicated that he's amenable to these arguments. How will that relief come? Carriage fees? Direct investment? I have no idea. But when the news comes down, you owe it to yourself to see if you're getting the full picture of what is going on.

Canadians pay 34 dollars a year for the CBC. Free market types use a type of "special pleading" when they talk about how the CBC has all these advantages and doesn't "compete" like the private networks do. But what does that actually mean? After all, Kirstine Leyfield, the CBC Executive, unearthed a fairly interesting Nordcity study in an op ed she published in the National Post this weekend.

So the CBC competes with private broadcasters. But what is a private broadcaster in Canada anyway?

Nordicity, an independent firm specializing in broadcasting, valued the federal regulations that provide private broadcasters with the right to substitute U.S. content at between $270-million and $330-million. Other provincial and federal government subsidies such as tax credits and the Canadian Television Fund add another $165-million in cash support to the privates. Canada, in short, has a heavily subsidized media industry in which private companies compete for public money, and the CBC, in turn, competes for advertising dollars.

When viewed in that light, suddenly the framing of the argument changes. James Moore is talking about offering relief to the private broadcasters -- who already receive substantial public investment. By what token, then, can he entertain that notion, but slam shut the very same considerations for the CBC? Special Pleading.

Here's another case of Special Pleading at work, broadcasting style: and this one hits a bit closer to home. I've mentioned a few times lately that the level of flak I've gotten has risen. Along with the flak there's been plenty of contradictory statements made. I've been told by people that I can't stop blogging because too many people read what I read and nobody else says what I say. I've also been told by people that they could never do what I do. We've seen anonymous letters go around in the last week about the Canada Media Fund that are extremely alarmist, and based in no fact whatsoever. Yet producers won't speak up. ACTRA speaks up, God love'em, they always do, and not always wisely, but what I hear everywhere I go is that somehow what I do, nobody else could do because they have too much to lose.

This is the very essence of Special Pleading at work. Cause I'm going to tell you this right now: I aint special. I read about what's going on in the industry. I talk to people. I say things on this blog and sometimes I have to walk 'em back. I'm also, essentially, a self-employed freelancer. So you would think that if anybody had something to lose by sticking a head up and saying something about the industry, it's me.

And yet....my phone still rings. I'm getting jobs. I'm busy. I'm not a pariah.

Now, either that means I must be the most talented sonofabitch who ever lived and worked in Canada, or the whole idea that you can't speak up and add your voice to the debate in this industry is a bunch of bullshit. A copout. An appeal to special pleading.

I'm gonna pull the pin out here. I am not the most talented sonofabitch who ever lived and worked in Canada. In fact, I dare say that I've ate and drank and spent time with several people I think are way more talented than me in the last five days alone.

On Friday night, a group of writers gathered together, and one of the people in the group had a very heartfelt thing to say. He told me that it wasn't that he was scared to say something -- it was that he felt overwhelmed. He didn't know what it was possible for him to do.

Well, I think that's a fair proposition. It's so easy to feel helpless, and like you can't do anything. I know what that's like.

The next few weeks are going to be crucial for the direction of the industry. So what can you do, you yourself, without any power?

You can read the coverage. You can be that reality check and make sure that both sides of the argument are getting told. If they're not, you can write a letter to the editor. (#1 thing you can do.)

In your groups of friends and relatives, when you hear the cant about how the CBC should live within its means, and how the private broadcasters need relief -- you can speak up and ask people to examine their feelings about that. What do they really mean? What assumptions do they make? What do they get from the CBC? What do they get from the private networks? What does each cost them? What does each give back? Make sure all sides are represented and discussed. If the broadcasters are offered relief, what should they be required to give back? And do we accept their assurances that this is an unmitigated disaster at face value? Once you give up something, it's very difficult to get it back. Don't allow the arguments to descend to Special Pleading. You have a right to question whether these companies deserve relief. Broadcasting is a public trust. That's the way it's supposed to be, anyway. (#2 thing you can do.)

Pay attention to the Heritage Committee, who will be holding hearings on changes to the TV landscape in a few weeks. This is the process that got the odious provisions of Bill C10 stripped out last year. There is power in the process. Write a letter. Keep informed. Do not leave it to someone else to do. (#3 thing you can do.)

You can forge a relationship with your constituency office, and your MP. Sooner or later there is going to be an election. And culture will be just as unlikely an issue this time as it was last time. Introduce yourself as a constituent and a taxpayer. Get them thinking of you as a worker, as a taxpayer, and not as that boogeyman living high off the hog on the government dime, going to galas. (#4 thing you can do.)

If that little voice of yours has been silent for this time, up til now, then I'm afraid to tell you that you have now lost that luxury. The changes that are going down now are real, they are systemic, they are major, and they will decide whether you have a job within five years. All the special pleading you've done up to now to justify not raising your voice? It's over.

It really is now...or it's never. And then all that safety-silence will have bought you out of the industry, anyhoo. Welcome to the endgame, cutlets.

Treading Water, or Farrah to go Before I Sleep.

THERE'S A LOT to say, a lot to write about, and zero time to do it. That's because I'm about five full working days from shooting a new series. I'd love to say that I could work up a post on the weekend. But that's probably not going to happen.

In the interim over the next week there'll be a few reruns (It is summer, after all.) I'll be back when I can lift my head out of the foxhole.

In the meantime, I can't muster anything to say about the MJ craziness; but my friend Jim Henshaw has the best eulogy of Farrah Fawcett you're probably going to read anywhere.

Now as ever, it's all about the context, innit?

Medium Close Up

WAY, WAY TOO many years ago to count now, a very eccentric woman who worked as the head of the current affairs department at a network I'd worked at the previous summer offered me my first full time job. She paired me with a newly hired Executive Producer who'd worked at just about every network in Canada. He'd been the Senior Producer at The Journal, the Executive Producer of Canada AM, and the News Director at Global, and local CBC Toronto News -- among other places.

It proved, for me, to be a very fortuitous pairing.

Howard Bernstein was my first mentor out of University. He taught me most of what I know about telling a story visually, and story producing -- which gave me my first career in the business. But way more than that, Howard was the guy that first taught me, before I knew how important a concept it would be in later scriptwriting -- that the "best idea wins." He'd encourage debate in story meetings. He believed in constructive argument -- of challenging to get the right answer. In not being lazy, and pushing further -- as far as you needed to.

He also taught me a lot about the management of people. It was he who modeled, and espoused, a philosophy that I've tried to follow to this day; a philosophy that I've seen observed more in the breach than the embrace over the last two decades.

Howard's management style was simple and elegant: he believed you carefully vetted, hired the right people, let them have the space to do their best, and if they went off track -- then and only then would you reel them in. Howard inspired people to do better by giving them the space to try and, occasionally, to fail.

We worked together on a number of programs in my time at that network. He also recognized talent -- besides me, a guy who came on as a summer student would go on to work with him many times through the years. It was all par for the course for Howard, who joked that he had hired and fired just about everybody in Toronto broadcasting at some point or another.

Years later, when I made the transition to writing full time, it was a series that Howard was producing on the Toronto Zoo -- Zoo Diaries, it was called, that kept me afloat with a steady cheque while I took the mad leap into screenwriting. So he managed to launch, in a way, not one of my careers, but two.

Years before, at that small station, one of the shows I worked for him on was a media criticism show called Medium Close Up. It only went one season, but it tried to really grapple with ideas in the media from a newsy, insider perspective.

I remember well how Howard and I and Rich, who was working full time with us by then, would lament, in between discussions about Seinfeld and Murphy Brown -- lament that there was a really great media criticism column out there, waiting to be written...but you could never do it while you were still in the business.

Well, Howard's retired now. And he's gone back to Medium Close Up.

If you want the straight dope from a news perspective, this is a guy who knows where all the bodies are buried. And finally, now, he's willing to dish.

Go visit and welcome him to the blogosphere. Another Canadian willing to speak up. Still (sadly) a too-rare breed.

Let Me Get This Straight...

A GARBAGE STRIKE and a liquor store strike at the same time.

Yeah. Uh. Screw you guys, I'll be on the Rock.

Hey-Oh No.

OH, WELL, NERTS.

Now if somebody shows up at your door with a big cheque, it's probably just going to be another variation of the Nigerian scam.

End days, People.

TV host, celebrity pitchman Ed McMahon dies at 86

Satan's Minion

MMM. THAT OTHER DENNIS sure is a wack job.

And now you can see why.

I got scooped down here in the comments, but the Canadian Film Centre's new Webseries MY PAL SATAN goes live today.

I've seen all six episodes, and trust me when I say that it starts out tame and takes the train to crazy town. Good to see Rachel Wilson

though, since I'll soon be working with her out in Newfoundland on Republic of Doyle. It takes a certain kind of freshness to play straight (wo)man to the embodiment of the bringer of tears, the Prince of Lies, and the Master of Disaster.

No, not Apollo Creed, Dicksmack.

Creator Dennis Heaton has said the web series, which is the first of its kind for the CFC, is an apology to everything he ever did in his twenties.

Or something like that. When Heaton talks I just kind of get sleepy. Then I wake up two hours, covered in lipstick and rose petals, pants round my ankles, a splitting headache and a sore ear.

A sore ear. What do you with the ear, you monster?

Heaton likes trolling the absurd in old horror tropes, having previously given us the Zombie-Pet comedy FIDO, and having staffed on J-Pod.

(Doug Coupland has nice words for Monsieur Heaton on the Satan site...the guy's obviously a fan.)

The combination of affability and old sitcom tropes and truly...odd... obsessions makes for a scatalogical stew that deconstructs both TV, the "friend/roommate" sitcom, and pretty much the nature of TV itself.

Is there a model here? Who the hell knows? Everybody's taking a flyer.

But I can't say I wouldn't watch SATAN at 12:45 am on TV, around about the time you go looking for Cheetos and think about ordering a pizza...if you know what I mean.

C'mon, Keys to the VIP has a following. And that's basically a postcard to date rape.

Go take a look and check out the twice-weekly episodes yourself. There'll be new ones up every Monday and Thursday until July 9th.

Throb...Throb...Throb

DAEGAN FRYKLIND is a lovely Vancouver based writer who did a memorable guest post for DTOS a couple weeks back. And she just celebrated a birthday, too.

She also likes to send stories like this to me. I believe that she does this for no other reason than to taunt that vein in my neck.

If it pops, Fryklind, no poncho will save you from the spatter.

Guest Post: Why Fanfiction Doesn't (Always) Suck

TODAY'S GUEST POST is from up and coming, recently minted CFC alumnus and screenwriter Elize Morgan, and comprises her insights gleaned from the NextMedia conference in Banff. You can follow Elize's blog here.

***

See, there's this thing out there about how fanfiction (or “fic” to those in the know) is an absolute perversion of the artist's original, pure creation.

There's even been some smack talk on the internet about how fic writers just write what people want to see, not what's good to story, but I'm here to say that's all crap. Hooey if one might.

That maybe, even, that fic writers have a place in our industry.

And before the gasps of outrage over what might be seen as the crazed lack of control that will spiral into a crazy world where anarchy is prevalent and the Conservatives decrease funding to the CBC (...wait), allow me to throw out a few of the ideas some of those very smart folk at NextMedia were mentioning: that there's a collective audience out there for shows that sometimes get lost, and that audience wants to play along.

Especially if your show is 20 plus seasons long. Because in that case, you might as well ask your fans to get involved. This is a collaborative medium anyway, not a sandbox of one. Sandboxes of one get really boring, and, legal issues aside (this is fair use in the US staring at you in the face) it's free marketing.

Now we're not talking following what fan forums are asking for in the story lines to a tee, from Martin Wood's interview here:

You learn that the majority of your audience is not responding on those things. So a relatively small number of people are being very loud about what they want. If you respond to it the way you think you should, it's not necessarily the best thing for the show.

No, this is part of the art of marketing. By asking the fans to come on board you extend that extra little bit to your 0.02 per cent audience that want a little bit more anyway. They just want to be involved that extra titch, and that can lend itself to creating a hugely collaborative online space that extends the TV show itself.

After all, if we're collaborating on seasons after creators leave, why not. If they're going to do it anyway – because they can, and let's face it, they will – then let's make it work for that free marketing space it can work out to be.

And that marketing space – the contests and contexts that can be created with a participatory audience are almost expected at this point. Kid shows and animation demand the interactive before the show pitch even begins, and that audience is ageing up quick and unlikely to demand less from their prime time viewing.

Fan fiction doesn't need to be the elephant in the room – fans are willing to take it down a notch to make it “safe”, and the point is, at the end of the day, is that it's already being done.

Gary Carter – CCO of FMX and COO of FremantleMedia - controller of so many properties it's depressing to think of – mentioned a fic contest they did, to drum up some support for their soap. And it's here that they realized that the audiences are not only willing to play along, but they want to do it.

Fans are not your grandma's basement dwellers anymore. They do grand gestures to save TV shows, send sunflower seeds to get noticed, and generally raise a ruckus. Why not include them in the interactive pitch?

And, at the heart of this, it isn't just about TV anymore – Mike Kasprow from Trapeze said it best at NextMedia:

It's not about the control of the story elements, [but] about being part of the dialogue.

And that, is the end game of all things like TV. Although most of the stats from NextMedia showed that actually kids are still watching TV the conventional way, thank you very much (North American stats from Youthography - and that TV isn't dead. But – and it's a big but – those kids spend more time on a lot of the websites than they do on the shows themselves.

And if your audience feel that they're part of the dialogue – like the fan fiction contest FremantleMedia ran for their soap Neighbours, to other long form contests, it means that not only does fan fiction really not suck, it's a part of the culture online anyway.

All Dem Rambling Boys of Pleasure

IN J.D.'s COLUMN today, he revealed he was off for a month's vacation to work on his soccer book. Well, with all the silliness here of late, it behooves a fellow writer who spends a lot of time typing that particular surname these days to up and say: have a good one, Doyle. And get those pages into yer publisher.

If it's anything like your TV book, she'll be a great cracking read when she's done.

East Side Writers Mafia.

Increase the Peace.

So How's It Going?

GREAT, GREAT. Why do you ask?

Linkslutting Alex's Chat With Ronald D. Moore

ALEX EPSTEIN does the Lord's work with his revealing and thoughtful interview with Ronald D. Moore, the TV genius behind Battlestar Galactica and a man with hair so lustrous it almost eclipsed the Rocky Mountains. Just a taste spoon, then you can go get the rest from Alex...

CS: Are there any aspects of the way you structured the mythos of Battlestar that you might have done differently with hindsight?

RM: We wouldn't have had Boxy. The intent was that you had Boomer and you had Tyrol and Boxy as a sort of nuclear family going into the series. We tried to work him into episodes, but the character wasn't organic to our show. He was an idea that started and then stopped. We weren't even invested enough in him to kill him -- it seemed gratuitous just to kill him. Even for me.

We weren't going to deal with the fact that Boomer's a Cylon for a long time. We'd have these three forming a family. When I was writing "Water," the second episode, I said, "And she starts realizing she's a Cylon."

If we'd know that, we probably would have set her up differently in the miniseries.

We wouldn’t have thought certain things about the series that turned out not to be true. For example we intended to go to other ships in the fleet. We were going to go out to the fleet -- to the hospital ship, the prison ship, we were going to track a serial killer through the fleet. That was part of the sales pitch for the series. It's not just claustrophobic aboard this aircraft carrier and Colonial One.

That turned out not to be practical. The prison ship with Tom Zarek destroyed our budget. It was so far over pattern we had to make major cuts in the next five episode. So we realized we had to put all the action aboard Galactica and Colonial One. The series pivoted at that point and became very much about the characters on those two ships. And that meant that stories had to be about the overall story arc. Had we been able to go find stories on the other ships, maybe we could have gone another season or two. You would have had more shows not about the mythos. Instead we had to put the key cast in the heart of the action all the time, and that meant you had to go to the main story.

So we wouldn't have gone to the prison ship so early, to start that language of going to other ships.

We probably would have yanked Lee out of the flight suit sooner. Laura Roslin didn't really have anyone to complement her in the political world. It would have been good and useful to have him in conflict with her; we could have told stories more easily.

CS: Do you feel the DVD market has changed how writers write TV?

RM: It’s changed the audience consumes TV. And it’s probably given writers like myself a sense of “they’ll watch it on the DVD, that's where it will live forever. That's the real version." So when the cut comes in twenty minutes over, I'm thinking, "I've got to cut this thing down, but the real episode will be on DVD.

Doyle Saws Off The Branch Behind HIm

WHAT A TERRIBLE muddle it must be to have to write a column every single day. (I excuse myself from this, because I think we've come to see that I do a lot of handwaving when I'm really busy, and also because most of what I post here are sloppy and overlong first drafts. "I didn't have the time to write it short." Is the order of the day.)

Doyle flogs the dessicated bones of the horse that popped out when he defended Flashpoint's Anne Marie La Traverse in a column that pilloried Canadian TV writers for being snobs.

Just so we get the context straight -- What La Traverse said was this:

“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.”

Doyle agreed with the statement. His column was titled "Canadian TV writers take themselves too seriously"; with the subhead "The door to the U.S. market is open - time to lose the snobbery."

Now we all know why fine print is used. In ads, it's your out clause. It's so you can promise something juicy and impossible and then claw it back. So it was in Doyle's column. A few well-placed words suggesting that he was only talking about a "few" writers. But LaTraverse wasn't talking about "a few" writers. The clear implication of her quote was that there were so many snobby, HBO-show wanting writers working in Canada, that it was incredibly difficult to find writers who would "fit" on Flashpoint.

This is hogwash. And Doyle rushing to defend the statement simply demonstrates that he doesn't really understand the labour and creative issues involved. Which is fine. He's a columnist, not a reporter. But when you've got the bully pulpit, you have to think about these things.

Flashpoint has some fine writers working on it. Two of the finest have been at it almost the shortest amount of time: the show's creators, Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern, who have surely had the thrown into the fire, experience building ride of a lifetime over the last couple of years.

But when it comes to the other writers, the issue was never about being able to find writers with talent -- whatever La Traverse says. The issue was finding writers who wouldn't be a threat, or a problem, or a challenge to the non-writing Executive Producers of Flashpoint.

As the most successful program in the country, Flashpoint asked for -- and got -- meetings with any A-list Canadian TV writer they wanted. This was not -- was never -- a resource/scarcity issue -- and to suggest otherwise clicks into a bad chain of history that Canadian TV writers have spent a long, long time working against.

For context on this chain of events, check out Jim Henshaw's excellent posting Mexicans in Sweaters. A brief excerpt:

Our writers gained confidence and experience, realizing they were just as good as (and maybe sometimes even a little better than) the writers who had dominated their trade in the past. And that confidence grew all through the 1980’s and 1990’s. Right up until 1999, when some political bagman blessed with a plumb post on the CRTC decided Canadian drama wasn’t that essential after all.

Many of our good writers left. Others stayed, believing their credits and experience could help recover what had been lost.

And those that stayed and those who graduated into the craft from all the new film schools all struggled against a growing tide that valued the ability to fill out government forms over the ability to conceive and create drama.

Many worked really hard at creating shows that were different and good and definitively Canadian. Shows like “Intelligence” and “Corner Gas” and “Trailer Park Boys” and “Flashpoint”. Television series any writer in this country would be proud to call their own or have had a hand in writing.

But along the way, they saw their efforts compromised and countered by others who felt they knew what was better for Canadian broadcasting. No matter how many times the Writers’ representatives would appear before broadcasting commissions and no matter how many times their predictions on the negative outcomes of changing regulations would come true, they were marginalized and ignored and berated.

And like a lot of peoples who feel marginalized and abused, those writers began to become the “Uppity Ice Niggers”; the ones who weren’t going to just shut up and do what they were told when they instinctively knew there were ways to make something better.

It’s as if the same myths perpetrated to keep waves of immigrant communities from becoming empowered are now being used against writers...Nobody calls Canadian writers “Mexicans in Sweaters” anymore. Now we’re “complainers” or we’re “difficult” or we’re “snobs”. Like the creeds and nationalities and races before us, it’s easier for some to snigger that somebody thinks they’re Hemingway or Shakespeare or Frank McCourt than to figure out if they, perhaps, just might be.

It’s always easier to be arrogantly dismissive than to engage those who don’t share your world view as possible equals.

I’ve run shows and hired writers in a half dozen countries over the last 25 years. Hundreds of writers. And unlike some of our current successes, many of the shows I ran were pure, unadulterated crap. ‘Cleavage and Dinosaurs’ as I’m wont to describe the formula.

But even if the shows I was working on demanded vivid decapitations, misogyny or ridiculous leaps of logic, I’ve never had a single writer turn me down because they thought they were better than the show.

By the way. I'm not trying to take anything away from the tremendous achievement of the Executive Producers of Flashpoint. They got the show on CBS. They got the show on 35 MM, and they continue to guide the show. It's an enviable position and a remarkable achievement.

So then, to today's Doyle. A bit of a ramble, really. He starts out talking about Bloomsday, and next, does the dodge/feint where he says he was only joking, and it's amazing how riled up we all got. To prove this, he quotes the WGC President's Letter to the Editor. That, the two comments the original column got, and a few random Tweets appears to me to be the sum total of the "outrage" Doyle says he generated and was responding to. I think my own response was in the spirit of what he said he was doing -- joking -- but you know, I guess you have to define your enemy to sell papers.

It's in the end that Doyle takes a hard right turn by suggesting that the real problem is that Canadian writers don't want the shows we make to sell to the USA. This is based on the evidence of...uh....well, as near as I can figure it, it's twisted out from the WGC's letter to the editor, where La Doyle suggests that said letter said something it really didn't.

Doyle concludes by reminding Canadian TV writers of something that most of us know only too well: Canadians don't care about our problems.

Well. No Shit, sherlock.

Nor should they. Everyone has bigger fish to fry.

Unless it involves big stars and their movings, the arcana of the behind-the-scenes in showbiz rarely leaps from the trades to the regular papers in L.A. So it is here, to an even greater extent. 99.9 percent of what you ever read on this blog or in Playback should be of no consequence to anybody not in the business. I started writing this because I felt that Canadian writers of TV could be more of a community, not to draw attention to our plight in the rest of the country. Lord knows, people got troubles enough.

Is it churlish at this point to point out that, um, I'm not the one who cleared the leap from insider blog to mention in Toronto's National Newspaper? Mmm.

Well, fine then. I don't think most of you are snobs. And unlike Uncle Will, I'm not particularly interested in hearing the names of those who are. I'm OK, you're OK, Doyle's OK.

I guess we all just bump along merrily until the next time Doyle manages to cadge a column out of something I write here. Til then, go about your business, citizens!

If You Cannot Love This

YOU ARE A DEAD THING made of stone, not sticks.

Alex Essays Ron Moore From Banff

THINGS ARE ABOUT to get pretty hairy for me at work. Second Draft due, and the first flurry of big prep meetings, so I don't imagine I'll be able to do too much blogging this week. So in the meantime, I'll vamp.

Here's a wonderful entry -- my friend and colleague Alex Epstein transcribed a lot of the Ronald Moore Masterclass at Banff.

Moore had covered a lot of the same ground in the session he did with the Showrunners earlier in the day, but I can't write that up as the session was screens down. Still, Alex gives you a lot of the flavour for what this extremely open, affable, and transparent creator has to say about his process.

Not That You Should Care, But...

I'VE MANAGED TO say it to his face last week in Banff, so I may as well say it here. I had the great pleasure of reading Andrew Wreggit's script for THE DEALERSHIP a few weeks back. This is a pilot that recently shot in Toronto, featuring William Devane and BSG's Tricia Helfer.

The pilot was for Showcase, part of the troubled Canwest family. Canwest has a bit of a hot hand right now -- with great material being the hallmark of potential series Shattered, and Lawyers, Guns & Money (now retitled Crash & Burn - a title that's a little dear to my heart)

But Wreggit's Dealership script was the best hour I've read this year. I liked it way more than HUNG, the "hot" HBO upcoming show, and more than most of the U.S. pilots this year, besides.

Hope it gets a chance to shine soon.

True. True.

WHOOPS. WITH BANFF and work and all I completely forgot that TRUE BLOOD returns tonight at 9pm ET on HBO CANADA (HBO in the USA) I've managed to see the first episode, and it's great. Drops you right back into the fun -- with a little more backstory on Michelle Forbes' creepy "too good to be true" character. Oh sure, I miss Jason's trippy vamp-bleeding GF -- who wouldn't...but there are still compensatory surprises in store.

So You Think You Can Dance With A U.S. Network?

A COMMENTER ON the post below, where Paul Gross outlines the potential downside to the rush-to-gold Canadian-American deal to get your show financed, asked the following:

i'm confused about Gross's comment, 'what if it isn't successful?'

doesn't that just mean the show will crash and burn? but how would that be different if there was no US network involved? that is, if the show was made w/o US involvement, and strictly with Cdn $ and wasn't successful, wouldn't it still crash and burn? am i missing something?

Yeah, but it's more than a fair question. Thanks for asking it.

Because there is no "studio system" in Canada like there is in the USA, programs are much harder to finance, even with money coming from programs like the CTF.

In the USA, a studio puts up most of the money, with a license fee from the Network not quite covering the cost of making the show. (You can find figures on all this elsewhere.) The Studio is betting that the show will be a hit, and will run for years and then they'll make big cake.

In Canada, independent production companies have to raise the cost of doing the shows themselves. They generally do this by getting a license fee from the networks, which don't even come close to covering the cost. Say it's around 30%. Then they get the CTF money. That CTF money can get you pretty close to your budget nut, say 70% or 80%. But it's that last 20 to 30 percent that's the hardest to raise. You can raise some of it by taking advantage of tax credits -- but tax credits don't come until the end, so you have to get a bank loan to float the cost in the meantime -- which has become a lot harder with the credit tightening of the last year following the Wall Street collapse. You can raise it through private investment, your own investment (most producers don't do this) or you can pre-sell a few of the foreign territories. That's dicey, because it's cutting into your revenue stream for the future just to get the show made. But what are you going to do?

Gross' point is that when you're making up that structure, and you take the U.S. money from a CBS or an NBC, you're handing over a lot of power for not a lot of investment. It's a great deal for them -- they get a cheap product. But they care about the product probably commeasurate to what they put into it. And like it or not, you're getting a partner who will demand a lot for that investment. They'll want to be able to influence the creative -- even when everybody agrees that they won't, they do. They will probably downplay how much, since the CTF is, in effect, public money. But don't kid yourself.

Now if you gamble right and use the money well, it can payoff. That investment in Flashpoint allowed the show to shoot on 35 MM, which looks gorgeous, and go with all those helicopter shots of Toronto. It looks big. Good gamble.

But it's not always a good gamble. And then you're locked into a look, or a budget level, that you'll never be able to make the show at again. So if the U.S. partner pulls out, you're effectively dead.

When you're putting a show together, there's all sorts of ways you could go. It's possible that in making that last 10 or 20% of the show's budget, if you don't take the U.S. budget and inflate everything, you retain more in creative control, and can craft a show that might be able to sell overseas and in other territories, and you may even be able to finance it that way for a few seasons and hit your syndication number, so that you can make money on the show.

Nobody who only puts 10% into your budget should have the power to wield the gun to your head that can kill the show. But effectively, that "U.S. network carrot," is universally seen to be such an important thing right now, that it hands the keys to the minority investor. To the U.S. network, it's a small risk. To the Canadian producer/production company, it's everything. There's a big imbalance there.

If your budget level was 1.2 million an ep, say, that you could raise. But if that U.S. investment means you're now going to be spending 1.8 or 1.9 million an ep, then that money's gone, well, now you've got a whole bunch of creative decisions predicated on that budget level. You might be able to trim a couple of hundred thousand off and still maintain a look or a feel of the show that allows you to continue. It could be difficult, but you could do it. The U.S. investment, and the creative choices that go with it, would probably make that impossible. You're putting all your eggs in that basket. To you, it's everything. It's your eggs. But to them, they have a whole lot of other crap they're gonna pile in that cart. They could crush your eggs and never even notice.

Now, it's quite possible -- since the last part of the financing is the hardest piece to put together -- that you wouldn't have made that last 10% or 20% without the U.S. investment. In which case, you're right, losing the U.S. investment just puts you where you would have been anyway. But if you could have made the show another way, and sold, say, to a U.S. network or cable channel afterward, then you might have just traded 13 episodes for what could have been 39, or 60, or 80.

That's what Gross was talking about.

Paul Gross Says What You Can't

THE CALGARY HERALD, of all places, came up with a very trenchant quote from Paul Gross on the current vogue of Canadian-made shows now (or soon-to-be) exporting to the USA, in Eric Volmer's article from the Banff TV Festival.

Context here: Gross, being as he is the bankable 800 lb. Gorilla of Canadian production, (He's soon to be seen in Eastwick, a U.S. network show, and his production shingle, Whizbang Films, is healthy with lots in the hopper) gets to say the things about the downside of this arrangement that many producers (and writers, and various others) don't have the guts to say:

Actor and producer Paul Gross, whose show Due South was among the first Canadian-made shows to win a prime-time time slot on a major U. S. network after it was picked up by CBS, says the Canadian industry should be careful about making this a model for their future, suggesting there is a danger of our industry becoming an "assembly branch plant" for the U. S. networks.

"The difficulty with the Canadian companies that are engaging in these is that if it's not a hit, then what do you do?" says Gross. "You suddenly have this big fallout of the financing of the show. It's a dangerous model to pursue exclusively. And it's completely outside of your control. You might be putting in the lion's share of the money, but you do not control the fate of the production. But it's extraordinarily attractive. You get big exposure in a way you can't generate out of Canada alone. It certainly helps with foreign sales to have ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox behind it. But it does bring some handcuffs that aren't all that attractive, creatively and for broadcasters."

On Mops and Pails and Snarls and Multitudes

OH DEAR. I really tried taking the high road yesterday with my response to Doyle's writer on writer violence in yesterday's Mop & Pail. (WoW Violence; I can see a couple of my friends shaking their heads and saying, "first world problem...") But seeing as my Guild's President, Rebecca Schechter weighs in in a letter to the editor today, maybe we should print that:

John Doyle returned from Buenos Aires in the spirit of a soccer hooligan, taking a swipe at the biggest fans of Canadian television: Canadian TV writers (TV Writers - Study The Leamington Big Tomato - Review, June 11). Mr. Doyle cuts a wide swath for sins of snobbery he admits apply only "to a few."

I've never met anyone interested in making TV that no one wants to watch. Mr. Doyle knows this - he was in that airless CRTC room last year when the Writers Guild of Canada and four screenwriters fought against the proposal to split the Canadian Television Fund into commercial and cultural streams. It was Canadian TV writers who argued that the two can't be separated.

What we should be worried about isn't snobbish Canadian writers, it's a push with the new funding model - in which U.S. networks bulk up their prime-time skeds with programs bought cheaply in Canada - to spend CTF money on stories written for generic Anytown-USA productions. The CTF is a limited fund and meant to support stories written by Canadians aimed at Canadians. "Canadian and commercial" are as synonymous as "American and commercial," and every Canadian screenwriter knows it.

Hoo boy, though -- knowing that Doyle is a card-carrying Irishman, and how much my ancestral people love taking the piss, a tea leaf read of MisterJohnDoyle's Twittering reveals himself may just be in this game for the sport of it:

Currently v. amused by defensive, kneejerk snarling from TV writers. At least they're not stabbing each other with their pencils todayabout 17 hours ago from web

Which is weird, since I thought I was kind of conciliatory to his Doyleness yesterday. And the column he wrote only had like, oh, two comments. So, what's this snarling he's talking about?

Maybe he IS just funning. Hmm. In that spirit of puckishness, it's probably not wise to try and refute the trickster meself. I'll need someone far more credible. Someone he'll respect and listen to. Where could I find such a beast? Ah. Wait. I know.

What I'm wondering is this: Where are the Canadian cultural warriors ready, willing and able to articulate why we need Canadian-made television?...Perhaps those who actually make Canadian TV are cowering in fear. Perhaps they are afraid of the cable companies. If so, they should be ashamed of themselves. Soon, it will be too late and the question will be this: Who speaks for the dead?

John Doyle, Globe & Mail, Feb 15, 2007.

So. Um. Fight for what's right and stand up for yourself... Just don't criticize the producer of a CTV Globemedia property when she says something dumb to the New York Times. Got it. I wonder if there's any other rules I should know?

You know, on further reflection, maybe it's not a sense of puckishness at work here. Maybe it's just fatigue. You know how sometimes you come back from vacation tired instead of refreshed? Maybe he's just tired. After all, Doyle has a history of coming back to the job grumpy. Maybe that's why Canadian writers complaining about lack of promotion and stuff make him so... what? What's that?

While I was away - I came back grumpy, obviously - an issue blew up. Chris Haddock, creator of Da Vinci's Inquest and Intelligence, complained - during an interview with a reporter - about CBC's lack of promotion for Intelligence. He had a point. In a response, a CBC spokeschappy took this condescending view: "We have not yet made a decision as to whether we'll continue with the show; when we do, Chris will be the first to know...Spokeschappy also tut-tutted about Haddock's "attempts to negotiate through the media his relationship with the CBC."

Worse, the normally sensible Denis McGrath, a TV screenwriter of some note, tut-tutted in his blog, "I'm with the CBC on one thing on this: This is not something that should be playing out in the media."

What utter nonsense. The Canadian TV racket suffers from enough don't-quote-me wussiness as it is. There is so much fear of angering some self-aggrandizing TV exec that hardly anyone speaks the truth, out loud, to the press... Another TV writer going all meek and mousy on the subject is disheartening. I really hate that.

John Doyle, Globe & Mail, December 18, 2007.

So...uh... If you speak out and defend Chris Haddock, you're golden. If you defend writers in general, you're...um...wait. I'm starting to lose the plot on this. You know what? Maybe the problem is something else entirely. Maybe the problem is that, well, we're all just a little too...Canadian...

It's part of the national character, I think. We're not abusive, as American complainers sometimes are. And we don't believe in organizing a mass-action complaint, as Americans do. We get indignant. Then the person receiving the complaint gets really indignant in response.

John Doyle, Globe & Mail, Nov 25, 2003

See, people? The cycle of writer on writer violence continues, all because we're locked into being Canadian. Well, I for one will have none of it. I love you, John Doyle. All of yous. The soccer partisan and the TV theorist and the industry defender and the TV Racket nose tweaker.

As I used to say every time one of Doyle's escalating slams of The Border wafted through the story department... "Did he mention the show? And get the time right? Then we're good."

Last night I said on Facebook "not taking the bait." Yet here we are. He's a wily and provocative one, that Doyle. I guess in the end, maybe we both should fall back on a better writer than both of us:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself.

I am large, I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself.

Oh, snap.