WOKE UP THIS morning with a headache and dry mouth. And then I read Ira Wagman's article about the Shaw deal for Canwest & media concentration.
And now I don't feel so bad anymore, because I imagine a pinata is supposed to be dry & anticipating getting bashed around like that would give anyone a headache:
Is anything missing here? What about Canadian audiences, those most affected by all of this? They only enter the debate in the crudest of terms, usually as being in desperate need of protection from too much American culture. The cost of that protection is greater concentration and, it now appears, less influence over policy decisions.
What is interesting about the Shaw-Canwest deal, like those that preceded it, is how little audiences are being considered. Since many Canadians use a range of digital devices for their media consumption, the policy debate has to shift away from questions about protection and fears of cultural annexation towards questions about ensuring access to a wide swath of digital life.
But doing this would mean revisiting the principles on which the system is built. Revisiting Canada’s Broadcasting Act, last amended in 1991, might be the best place to begin that discussion.
WELL TO ANYONE who is on the email blast list of the Canadian networks, this is a welcome -- and kind of strange sight. CTV & Global have traditionally got into the habit of sending out press releases crowing about how so-and-so program beat so-and-so program. What's weird, of course, is that most of the time they're crowing about shows that they had absolutely no hand in making. Kind of like if, say, you sent out a bragging press release taking credit for Avatar cause you rented on DVD & everybody in the family enjoyed it. Credit for the rental, yes...but anything more...ah....no.
But last night, two Canadian made comedies went head to head. Now, the CBC show, 18 to Life, has sagged a bit since a fairly strong premiere. And CTV is still high off everybody (and I mean everybody) watching their Olympic coverage for two weeks... but still, it makes for a much more satisfying presser:
CTV’s HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR Debut
with 1.9 Million Viewers Each
- Two new homegrown comedies win timeslots against HOUSE and THE BACHELOR -
– Inaugural CTV.ca live online chats a great success with almost 700 comments submitted –
- HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR latest to join CTV’s online line-up at CTV.ca -
Toronto, ON (March 2, 2010) – CTV’s newest homegrown comedies, HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR, premiered to 1.9 million viewers each last night, becoming the most-watched premieres of any scripted Canadian series this season. The two new series won the 8 - 9 p.m. ET timeslot against both HOUSE (Global/FOX, 1.3 million) and the season finale of THE BACHELOR (City/ABC, 1.3 million, 8-9 p.m.). Head-to-head, HICCUPS delivered 240% more viewers than 18 TO LIFE (CBC; 558,000) at 8 p.m. ET, while DAN FOR MAYOR delivered 374% more viewers than LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE (CBC; 404,000) at 8:30 p.m. ET.
HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR delivered a big lead-in to their counterparts in CTV’s Monday night comedy block, with both TWO AND A HALF MEN and BIG BANG THEORY winning the night with 2.3 million viewers each at 9 and 9:30 p.m. ET.
Now, leave the spin for the spinners. But there's a couple of things that bear pointing out here. The first is that the fact that both had the same rating - 1.9 million, means that Dan for Mayor retained Hiccups' audience, and the audience for Hiccups stayed through the whole show. That's very, very good.
The big-name U.S. shows that followed the block only drew 20% higher than the homegrown comedies. Shades of the days when Corner Gas would draw the same -- or more -- as the U.S. imports that preceded or followed them.
And perhaps more importantly, let's leave corporate peeing matches aside altogether and look at the real picture.
Almost two million five hundred thousand Canadians chose to watch Canadian-produced comedies on the TV last night, in the eight o clock hour. If you look at that in terms of Canada's population, that's about 10% of the people who speak English as a first language. 1 in 10.
So that would be equivalent to about 30 million people watching comedy at 8pm in the USA.
One in ten.
Explain to me now how Canadians don't want to watch Canadian TV?
So there you go -- Entertainment shows, Q, Dead Tree Journalists, Canwest Papers, CP, CBC Radio --whoever's listening...I dare ONE OF YOU to get that story out there.
Anybody.
Because six months from now we're going to have license hearings at the CRTC and the same old people are going to traipse up there and talk about how Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows.
It sounds to me like that's just not the case. They tune in with hope, wanting to be entertained. Wanting the chance to see something funny, and different, that's also theirs.
As I wrote yesterday, Sasha is a brilliant actor -- exactly the type of Actor Jim Henshaw talks about here; the type we could be nurturing & seeing succeed in popular Canadian shows before they decide to go south to the USA. Sasha was the lead in my mini, Across The River To Motor City, and he nailed it. Sasha had no choice but to go down to the USA. He hit a wall here, the same wall that so many Canadian actors hit. Ironically, he's now getting noticed for his solid and compelling work in Caprica -- which shoots in Vancouver. He had to go to L.A. to find work in his own country.
That would be insanity in any other business. Here? That's par for the course. I know two writers right now trying to get U.S. work because they know if they do -- even if they're only down there for a year or two -- they'll be able to march back to Canada and get a show easy.
I would have loved to have used Sasha in a few other things before he left. He probably would have gone to the USA anyway. I understand ambition, and think everyone should follow their dreams. But it should be a choice. We shouldn't make our performers Okies trying to follow the dustbowl (snow covered?) trail to greater glory.
Among the many plagues of Canadian series television -- of which the worst is, I still believe, poor management of talent above & below the line, & a lack of will & talent to see a story through to its best iteration -- there is this persistent regard for the consistently disproved idea that somehow, what we need is to import Americans.
There are entire production companies in Canada that believe this to be true. They're working the WGC to try to get American Showrunners in under the wire...and they're like Michel Roy at Telefilm, musing about attracting American talent to make movies more saleable. Like the idiots who preach the utterly discredited mantra of supply side economics -- they've been proven wrong time and time again. (Ask anyone from the Wild West Dentist Tax Credit Days how well that worked. Even The Shat doesn't remember the movies he did here, I'm guessing.)
But WHY are they wrong? And what other alternative exists?
Well, they're wrong because the assumption is that somehow that burnished American talent will guarantee hits. This is the same talent pool that fails 90% of the time with every pilot season. Because that's the failure rate. Fullstop.
Time and time again what we've proven, in fact, was that we could attract 'talent,' yes.... but it's not 'A' talent. Just like CBS and NBC will always treat those shows they paid $400 000 an ep for a s filler, talent will always try to get a gig down south first.
So you don't get A lister actors, or Directors, or Writers coming up. You get hacks. Not all the time (People relocate for love, for lifestyle all the time, for instance...) but most of the time. The pool of people who could actually make a difference to your bottom line or foreign sales is low...and don't kid yourself, Americans know who all those people are, too.
Chances are, if they're here, you bought mutton dressed as lamb. Which is fine. But it's not going to save you, and it shouldn't be funded like a 10/10 Canadian production.
A lot of people - me included - made easy fun at the whole "Own The Podium" thing -- and then a little nation of 33 million people won the most Gold Medals at any winter games, ever. Is there a lesson there? I sure think there is. Does anyone have the balls or the stones or the courage to see it, learn it, and live it?
Moving on to the other mutton in the system. You may ask yourself why you never read an article or heard about Sasha Roiz until he took on the role of Sexy Sam Adama. The answer for that would be easy. The fire of promotion in this nation is fed by bellows that only choke out red white and blue smoke.
Let me be less obscure -- and remind you how it works in other countries. In other countries, they don't buy and show and shovel onto the air any American piece of shit show that only runs three episodes. Nope. There are no bus ads or billboards for the horribly lame comedy that's gone in a fortnight. They wait til CSI becomes, well, CSI, before they sign on. There's a bit of quality control there...gotta make sure those Desperate Housewives aren't all just a bunch of slags before you get into bed with them, so to speak.
Because they import only the best, the actual working, interesting, worthy shows from the USA, there's a whole lot more space on the air for homegrown shows, and ink to maybe write about homegrown Sasha Roiz's before they go to the USA. And because of that, Casting Directors actually work hard to find those people, rather than just offer up the same 20 "approved" faces. And as a result, the actors -- who may choose to stay, or choose to leave, can do so, confident in the fact that the structure of their industry has given them options.
The UK has only twice the number of households as Canada. But they spend eight times as much on locally produced dramas and comedies. Think about that.
There's much that can't be changed in our system -- at least not easily -- and a lot of it really is wrapped up in this notion that there is no premium for success since the model really is based on re-broadcasting American creativity. Even standard TV rules of marketing, like, oh, I don't know, if you lose more than 50 percent of your lead in show, you get the chop -- don't seem to apply.
But it strikes me that there could be one tiny little fix that might help you hear more about the Sasha Roiz's before the Bill Brioux's and Andrew Ryan's and Alison Cunninghams et al write their annual "Canadian faces on American TV" article...
...and that's a bit of culling. The Marriage Ref debuted Sunday to so-so ratings and terrible reviews. Doesn't look like much of a winner, even with Seinfeld there. What kind of recognition factor would we have if shows like that got the Canadian TV treatment? You get your cursory preview article, and then if you stink up the joint, you don't get promo'd anymore. At all. Pull the ads, pull the promo. Maybe then you've got a few inches to give to the ingenue or the young writer coming up.
A couple of years ago, on a panel at the Banff TV Festival, I got journos to reluctantly admit that the Entertainment Weekly practice of returning to shows they'd reviewed earlier in the season to see if they'd gotten better -- to offer, in other words, a second kick at the can, was a good idea. Bill Brioux even did this recently with the CBC show 18 to Life. There should be more of it.
Washed up, past it, American talent will neversaveus. It just won't. But the lesson of Vancouver is that gold is all around.
But to find the Gold you have to work for it. Journos, Writers, Casting, Prodcos...we all have to work for it.
I know it sounds hard -- but really, how's what you've been doing going for you? Lot of new Newspaper Jobs out there, huh? What have you got to lose, then?
What do any of us have to lose? Or more importantly, if our strategy up til now is trying to win by desperately trying not to lose...then can we admit that's been a total failure?
Get prospecting. Look for the Gold. Don't wait for the Americans to find it and then run slavishly to someone to get the interview about how excited they are that they just got U.S. citizenship.
No matter what happens, Rachel McAdams will always be the the young ingenue in the first season of Slings & Arrows. People will be seeing her in that role for years. They did it. They found her.
Gold is all around you.
And Sasha, I'll grab that coffee with you anytime.
HEY THERE. For five years I've pretty much written what I thought about Canadian TV, and you've read it for free. And that's cool. I take shit from the interested & the crazy, and know of at least two jobs I lost because I spoke my mind, and that's cool too. I think honest self-reflection is needed to be a better creator, and honesty in general is desperately needed in this community.
People have been telling me for months with my traffic I should go to Google Adsense. I have been resistant to this. I don't like it. But you'll notice that I've added a Donate through Paypal button up there to the right.
The idea is this. If you read something here that you think helps you, that you find interesting or inspiring or informing or whatever, click that button, and throw me a Grande Americano, or a couple of songs off of Itunes or something. I don't expect much.
And hey, if you're one of those radical non-tippers, that's coo too. See, that's why I don't like the ads. I'll take the radical soft-heartedness by people like me who buy people drinks regularly. And the rest of yas can go on about your day without having to read that weird old tip about how to reduce belly fat in your eyelids, or whatever.
AND 18 TO LIFE also returns with a new episode, tonight at 8pm on CBC TV. Tonight's ep co-written by Canadian Comedy Writer/Ambassador to the World at Large Rob Sheridan.
I have to mention this, because if I don't, he'll whinge at me like a little girl. With a severe adenoid problem.
Perhaps you could PVR Hiccups? There's a lamb.
(I have to say that there's a part of me that is happy that two homegrown comedies go head to head on two broadcast networks. With a few other changes, and a bit of a different torque, that might almost be considered a sign of a healthy industry. I said almost. Still too many of these for that to be strictly true: "*".)
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE recipients of Genie Awards Nominations (These are the Canadian Film Awards, the Equivalent of the tv Geminis) The full list of nominations & trailers for all 5 nominated "Best Pictures" can be found here:
But as for the writing awards...
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY / MEILLEUR SCÉNARIO
ATOM EGOYAN – Adoration
ÉMILE GAUDREAULT, IAN LAUZON – De père en flic / Father and Guns
CHARLES OFFICER, INGRID VENINGER – NURSE.FIGHTER.BOY
JACQUES DAVIDTS – Polytechnique
DAVID BEZMOZGIS – Victoria Day
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY / MEILLEURE ADAPTATION
MARIE-HÉLÈNE COUSINEAU, SUSAN AVINGAQ, MADELINE PIUJUQ IVALU – Before Tomorrow
KARI SKOGLAND – Fifty Dead Men Walking
TONY BURGESS – Pontypool
I have to say, just as a bystander (I don't work in film much) I think that the WGC Awards came up with a more interesting list of nominees. Although it's nice to see PONTYPOOL get some love (that screenplay wasn't eligible for a WGC Award b/c Tony Burgess is not a member.)
Canada tried on a lot of hats these last two weeks. In many ways, the most surprising ones were the most familiar.
I didn't expect to howl.
The opening ceremonies had been so typical. From the unfortunate imagery of the flaccid column, to the inability to pick one torch bearer, to whatever Wayne Gretsky was doing in that truck, the whole thing seemed rather...mild. Even the parts that split people artistically -- the slam poet, for instance...didn't provoke enough response to catch any kind of fire. No, it was an empty, mild show. And the best you could probably say about it was some stray American commentator who thought Canada's moniker of "First Nations" was the best descriptor of indigenous peoples she'd ever heard.
But around the time the giant beavers rolled out last night in the closing ceremonies, I found tears rolling down my cheeks. And not the lame, emo, sad kind. The Vegas-y gusto with which Michael Bublé sold "The Maple Leaf Forever" while rolling out every single trinket, token, or indicator of cheesy Canadian identity announced, "we're done with this, and think it's unbearably cheesy, even if you don't." It was a tremendous break from the past. It didn't ask permission -- and no, it didn't even say 'sorry.'
There were aftershocks from certain quarters, to be sure...nervous Tweets wondering what the world was thinking of all this, some saying it was a giant in joke and that was bad, some utterly failing to get that in joke -- which was bad too.
What seemed to have been forgotten around the edges was the last fifteen days. Where a different, vibrant, modern, urban Canada was shown to the world. If that didn't change minds or perceptions, then fuck it. Nothing in a closing ceremony could.
And that's okay.
See, it's the 'okay' that's actually the impressive part.
Canada -- and when I say Canada here, I mean English Canada -- French Canada is, as always, another story ... has suffered from its lingering provincial status for too long.
You see it every time an American show mentions Canada and it makes news here. You see it in the "how do you like_______" parroted to every celebrity as they pass through a Canadian city. You see it in the terrible, sad thirst for validation -- not from each other, no -- but from an American cultural gatekeeper whose default switch is always going to be indifference.
The Canada that's locked in a co-dependent relationship with a partner that doesn't even know there's a competition has to die if we're ever going to stride forward as a culture -- a culture who recognizes & celebrates our differences, rather than uses them as cudgels to batter one another.
A Canadian show that gets recognized as good at home, first -- not because Americans have picked it up. That's one measure. We've had a couple of those -- most notably Corner Gas & Trailer Park Boys. We need more.
We need to recognize our actors before they go south and find fame and succour there. So no, JamesMcGowan shouldn't show up on the fucking 24. You know what? One of the proudest moments I've had in this business was helping to cast an actor named Sasha Roiz in Across The River to Motor City, the miniseries I co-created. Sasha's an intense, smoldering screen presence currently heating up Caprica -- and getting noticed for that. I helped give him a lead role, so when all the press start to swoon over Caprica or his next U.S. role, I can say, "where were ya? you're late."
We need to turn away from the gravity of political debates happening down south if they obscure our own. The fact that the Americans continue to screw up health care does not abrogate our responsibility to fix our (mostly superior) single-payer system. And NFLD Premier Danny Williams should not be a prism to debate both sides of that just because he went south for care. That in itself is a detail, not a rallying flag. Look at the system, and fix it. Don't get distracted by the American optics.
We have cultural industry examples that do just fine, that have shaken loose their provinciality. How interesting that as people grumbled over the choices of pop acts to close the night last night, most could generate a much deeper, hipper, more eclectic list of possible performers. That, my friends, comes directly out of a rigorous system of content protectionism enacted in the 60's and 1970's. That is why today that industry -- even with all the troubles in the music business -- is mature, with bands and performers who we celebrate at home without particularly caring if the USA likes them or not.
I'm lucky enough to be an immigrant to this nation, from the USA. Though I love the country of my birth and the country of my youth equally, I am forever amazed by the irony that so often, it's my American voice that gets drafted in defence of Canadian thinking and culture.
My friend Howard Bernstein told me a wonderful story from his youth when I worked for him, sigh, back in mine. Seems like a lot of people of his generation, he took some time to do the longhair backpack through Europe. And when the people got together and said where they were from, people would say the City and country. Sometimes with pride, sometimes as an afterthought. Then you'd get to the guys who'd say through their thick borough honks, "I'm from the City."
The City, of course, was New York City. They didn't feel the need to explain that. Didn't even occur to them.
While I don't think Canada is ever going to get to that place, and while I think we will continue to fight our own, inner parochialisms, Newfoundlanders who cringe every time a CODCO cast member turns up on a certain detective show, who want to celebrate said show simply for how well it makes the city look, or who, conversely, can't abide the tourist ads because they reinforce stereotypes -- I'm looking at you; And Quebecois who still fight with the tongue troopers, toi aussi... I think last night was an exorcism of sorts.
Making the old skeletons dance might make you uneasy -- that's kind of why it's fun -- but I think it really does reflect a new attitude I see among younger people in this great country. The cringing is less, as is the navel-gazing. They are citizens of a fluid, globalized, instant communication world. And they want to say what they want to say -- without seeing if it's gonna play in N.Y. or L.A. first.
Woe betide the old media dinosaur that doesn't recognize that. If you've got ancient style provincial thinkers assigning & writing your culture pieces, it is time to clean house. The calcified forces wanting to drag CBC back to some imagined idyllic Anne Murray-driven 1970's -- off with their heads! You know what? I hope some of those thinkers show up writing for the New York Times really soon -- cause honestly, if that's what we've got to offer here, I'm more than willing to let my subscriptions lapse. I'm probably too young to be reading a newspaper, anyway.
Navel gazing didn't get us the Highway of Heroes or the Arcade Fire or the Kids in the Hall. It won't get us more good music, and it won't get us fine Canadian literature, or a more vibrant theatre scene. Til the hate of Toronto & the jokes about Vancouver become comfortable old moccasins and not flashpoints for culture debates, we're not there yet.
But of all people, Michael Bublé rocking a past-it, "officially unhip" and quaintly controversial song like The Maple Leaf Forever as Moose & Beaver flew through the air might have shook the icicles loose.
Welcome to your new Canada. Now shutup and create something -- and don't look south for validation. Look to the guy beside you, or the girl next to him.
AS A WRAPPED-UP partisan, I think it's best to keep my powder dry on the subject that Bill Brioux writes about today, save two small comments: I enjoyed the two seasons I did on THE BORDER and am proud of the work I did there. I got to work with some of the best writers & directors in the Canadian industry -- and I've never seen a harder working crew.
But it's this sentence in the article that gets to me most:
The series did showcase a strong cast, with James McGowan emerging as a strong series lead. Hopefully we'll see him flanking Jack Bauer soon.
Normally I have a lot of time for Brioux. But it's sentences and sentiments like that that really make me think, "why the fuck do we even bother?"
Take the shingle, close the shop, leave the mob to their teary-beer ad populism & red painted maple leaves, shuffle off to Silverlake, & when you hit down there tell every newspaper wanting to work "the Canadian angle" to go stick it in their five-hole.
So wrong.
I think it's the "hopefully" that really seals it.
EVERY ONCE IN a while, something occurs to me to write about and I think I've just thought it up and then just before I write the entry I realize, "oh waitaminit...I think I actually read that somewhere." It happens.
But sometimes you wrack your brain and you can't come up with whether you've come up with this, or someone else has. And this is such a case. I think this is my own idea, I'm about 90% sure it is -- but there's a nagging part of me that wonders if I read it on a blog somewhere, or in an article or something.
I'm aware that this is the start of the long slow slide that ends with me not being able to remember the word for can opener. I'm thrilled by that, yes, thanks for asking.
Okay. Here's the theory. I started thinking this in earnest when I was humbled completely late last year, or early this one by Jersey Shore, and how absolutely I enjoyed it. It was a hard and shaky lesson after years of turning up my nose at The Hills and other shows of that MTV ilk. But besides stupidity & violence, what the Shore had going for it was a clear, taut, easy-to-understand concept.
I'm doing a lot of development right now, and it is incredibly hard work. Creating a world that provides possible springboards for lots of stories, and offers good characters, an interesting franchise, natural story possibilities and relatibility is tough. So how do you know if you're there?
This isn't perfect; it's shorthand, but here goes. I call this The Snooki Principle.
Could it be a reality show? How would THAT show be constructed?
That's it.
Often when you try to explain your pitch you get led down weird blind alleys. But when you think of the shows that are really strong in their franchises, the truth is, you can translate them to the world of unscripted with very little alteration.
To wit:
Desperate Housewives spawned the Real Housewives of... The O.C. gave us The Hills...
Right now they're casting about for a real life Will & Grace.
Modern Family could be a doc series tomorrow. So could The Office. (Those are easier, of course, because of the form.)
But look at the number of shows that have done the unscripted version of CSI.
Sons of Anarchy would be a great reality show -- and was, when Hunter Thompson did the book 3 decades ago and nearly got himself killed.
In terms of British shows, they have the comedy/caper show Hustle, and The Real Hustle.
Skins could be ported to reality easy-peasy.
And in our own backyard, I'm sure you could find a real life Trailer Park Boys if you went looking. Flashpoint, you might be able to do that too, though you'd probably have to shoot for a long time to get that many juicy stories. Slings & Arrows would work easily.
This obviously works less well for anything genre based. It's not that Being Erica isn't a decent show, it just would be...uh...hard to find its real-world analogue.
On the other hand, look at The Wire, and then find the SundanceChannel'sBrick City, about Newark. Voila. There you go.
This is primarily a visualization exercise. One of the gifts reality has given us is that they tend to have sharp characters, clearly defined conflicts, and -- wonder of wonders -- they are very, very, very story driven.
If your original series is feeling a little loogey to you, take a moment and visualize it as the spectacular success it is meant to be, and then imagine how they'd translate it to the reality realm.
If you get hung up, or can't figure out how it would play, chances are there's something at the heart of it that just isn't quite there yet.
And if you don't solve that thing, you'll wind up in Celebrity Rehab with Tom Sizemore, or people will be doing an Intervention with you. Right before they throw you to the Ice Road Truckers.
Christmas is coming a little early for Heartland, which this week began production on a two-hour MOW in Calgary.
Known, for now, as A Heartland Christmas, the special has series director Dean Bennett working from a script by writer/exec producer Heather Conkie. The story sees the family's holiday interrupted after an avalanche traps a herd of horses in the wilderness. It stars regular cast members Amber Marshall, Michelle Morgan, Shaun Johnston, Graham Wardle and Chris Potter, with guest stars Nicholas Campbell (The Englishman's Boy) and Hélène Joy (Durham County).
You start pulling a million viewers or more, stay steady, really service your audience and lo and behold -- you get yourself a smart little brand-extension where you can add a few guest stars -- and maybe even get a shiny DVD to market.
Honestly, isn't that better than whining that the internal politics of the CBC are doing this or that, or that you got poor promotion? Or this, or that, or the other thing? Do the good work. Do the hard work. Collect the reward.
Seems so simple.
Congrats to Heather Conkie and everybody involved.
I'VE GIVEN CTV stick in the past for burying mention of their shows on their websites, and for the poor use they've made of their online rights to the Daily Show. So it's important to go with the other side of the story when you see it.
Just went to their site looking for some Olympic info, and the first thing that came up were a couple of big bold banners for two of the Canadian shows they have premiering next week. Dan For Mayor came up too, eventually, in the same rotation as LOST and Desperate Housewives and the Olympic Coverage.
ONE OF THE THINGS I worry about (among soooo many) is what the proliferation of blogs & books & software & contests have done to the modern wannabe screenwriter.
Forgive me for a "back in the day" thing -- especially since my BITD isn't that far in the past. But I was fortunate enough to start writing longhand and in the age of the typewriter (which did shape your attitude toward words differently; they felt more permanent when erasing them was so...difficult) and certainly in the age before the rise of the Screenwriting blog. I daresay that my friend Alex's was the first writing blog I ever read, a month or two before I found John August.
I looked for a bit of validation on the contest front at the beginning of my career; we all do. But most of them are scams or wastes of time -- at best, diversions, at worst, closed harbors designed to trap you into venerating your own self-regard & masturbatory tendencies.
And with very, very few exceptions, I think screenwriting books suffer the same problems.
What feeds good writing is reading. And finishingbad scripts, and maybe exposing your slightly less-bad scripts. I did this in theatre before I started making money writing for TV. I still believe, honestly, that one of the main reasons why I stopped writing plays was that I had too much respect for the people who were really good at that form. I remain an avid reader of plays, always.
In any case, it always comes back to the same three things: 1) writers finish stuff, 2) they know that it's okay to fail and 3) they do not motivate themselves exclusively through dollar signs.
All of that tenacity was kind of hinted at in the before-time, when it was harder to find info or interviews with screenwriters; where to most people writing a screenwriter & getting a response would be roughly akin to getting a personal response from Rocky the Squirrel or Elmer Fudd.
There's a certain cohort today -- and this always shocks me -- who want to be spoonfed to the extent that they think a writer should answer any question they email them in a timely fashion -- even if, you know, that question is answered in lots of places on the blog that supposedly sparked the person to write to that writer in the first place.
I mean, if you can't read, how can one expect you to have the stamina to live through 1) and 2)?
So it's with a bit of mixed emotion that I recommend a fascinating collection of advice on writing I've pored through in five mintue increments over the last couple of days.
It started from a few Twitter links, which led me to a Salon article by Lauren Miller. Miller was riffing off a special at Guardian Unlimited, celebrating Elmore Leonard's 10 rules for writing fiction. (And is there any more hilarious evocation of the perils of the modern proctrastophere than that last sentence?)
Anyway, the Guardian approached a bunch of Fiction writers, including Richard Ford, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Neil Gaiman & others for their own lists. And though they're mostly talking about writing novels, I actually think the once-removed status of the advice makes it just as trenchant for screenwriters.
Here are a few random pieces from some of the different lists:
6 Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.
4 Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.
8 Don't wish ill on your colleagues.
6 Don't drink and write at the same time.
5 Don't wait for inspiration. Discipline is the key.
6 Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.
5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
7 No one has ever achieved consistency as a screenwriter.
4 Defend your work. Organisations, institutions and individuals will often think they know best about your work – especially if they are paying you. When you genuinely believe their decisions would damage your work – walk away. Run away. The money doesn't matter that much.
5 You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.
5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6 Take no notice of anyone you don't respect.
7 If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.
Of course, the craft wonk in me marvels and wonders at the possible significance at the fact that most of the advice I find most compelling, each writer has chosen to place in the middle of their lists. (Second act problems, maybe?)
But I also encourage readers to take a long look for some unexpected insight at Laura Miller's list at Salon.com. There's one entry that particularly caught my eye:
3. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, atmosphere/setting. Of course all these elements are interlinked, and in the best fiction they all contribute to and enhance each other. But if you were to eliminate these elements, starting at the end of the list and moving toward the beginning, you could still end up with a novel that lots of people wanted to read; the average mass-market thriller is nothing but story. If you sacrifice these elements starting from the beginning of the list, you will instead wind up with a sliver of arty experimentation that, if you're very, very good, a handful of other people might someday read and admire. There's honor in that, but it's daft to write something with the deliberate intention of denying readers what they love and want and then to be heartbroken when they aren't interested. If you want to engage with more than a tiny coterie, take storytelling seriously; if you think that's incompatible with art, you are in the wrong line of work.
I think this is one of those elemental truths of writing. But what struck me most about this -- and longtime readers of the blog, you can probably see this coming -- is how often in a development meeting at Canadian networks or production companies, you have to deal with notes that work the back end of the list. You get a lot of talk from Telefilm or this Exec or that about Character, an awful lot about theme, and what you're "saying," and very, very, very little about story. And so often, we get highly celebrated Canadian films or TV shows where the story comes last. Coincidentally, story is the hardest thing for non-writers to talk intelligently about -- because it relies heaviest on the boring part of writing: the craft.
The funny thing about good writing about writing? Every once in a while, there's a break in the clouds of solipsism and you get to see the plain laid out starkly before you.
AFTER SEEING THE one spot CTV has for Hiccups & Dan For Mayor about a million times now during Olympics coverage (even though they're still being stingy with it) one is still struck by how hamfisted TV promotion is in this country, and how much we're held back by that.
Here you have record audiences set to promote your two new properties. You're building off a franchise that people loved, "Corner Gas."
So alright...I can understand doing a generic with them both that says, "Hey, you liked these guys when they were on CG and now they're in two new shows." But that's an awful lot to pack into a :30. So you'd think they'd also give each show its own :30 and mix it up a bit... oh, I don't know, maybe even tease out a few longer clips so that you get a sense of what the shows might be about? But nope.
So now -- best case scenario -- you'll have a slightly confused populace who isn't really sure whether there are two shows or one. And then when they turn in Hiccups, they're liable to be confused that Butt is only in a supporting role -- because they haven't been set up that Nancy Robertson is the star of the show.
Is that deliberate on CTV's part? I don't know. Even if it is, setting up expectations like that gives the show freight off the top that's just unfair.
When you tune in the pre-promos for any of the U.S. network shows in the summer, or even over Christmas for the mid-season shows, they are things of beauty.
Even sometimes when they take a run at trying to raise your awareness about an underperforming show, they're great. Over Christmas, NBC pushed "Mercy" so hard, and with such engaging and kind of sexy promos, they actually made me want to check it out again, after dismissing it as not my thing back in late October.
The thing that kills me is that since CTV swallowed the assets of CHUM, I know that they happen to have some of the most passionate, talented, and committed promo producers in the country. I know because I worked with these guys. And I know that for the past few years, they've been Ferraris asked to keep to school-zone speeds.
The talent's there. It's the will that's weak.
So it's left to the shows to try and promote themselves. Brent Butt's taken to Twitter, and Dan For Mayor has little videos up on YouTube, like this one:
Oh well. Maybe things will get better when CTV unloads that used podium. They really should have rented that thing. I think the whole podium market's in a big bubble now. I really do.
THE WRITERS GUILD OF CANADA released their list of the finalists for the WGC Screenwriting Awards this morning. The finalist scripts were judged by a jury of peers, and now move into the final round of judging.
The big story here, I guess, is the unusual fact that four out of five of the half-hour nominations went to the same series, LESS THAN KIND.
This is the news that I was trying to allude to on Friday without breaking the embargo. That's just a tremendous achievement. It's also nice to see CORNER GAS get a nomination for its final season.
I find the noms for the 1 hour category equally interesting. A bit of genre, some western, cop drama, and a couple of superior entries from the criminally underrated ZoS series. It's an eclectic group, to be sure, but all the scripts are extremely high-quality and should make for a competitive category.
In the Feature Film category, too, there's some new blood, not the old same-olds, and that signals to me that no matter how dire the state of Canadian English Language film is said to be, there are fresh voices plying the trade. Stasis is not the problem.
People have written in the last little while that the WGA Awards in the USA are often a better barometer of the "best pictures of the year" than the Oscars. If you look at the ten scripts honored for Best Original and Adapted Screenplay this year, that's certainly true. They're a great group of movies and really do reflect an intelligent mix of the well-crafted & the popular.
I think the WGC also embraces this tradition. Last few years, the Geminis have had some wobbly and out-there nominations & oversights - and I'm not just talking about the complete lack of nominations for Corner Gas in its final season. Having done both in the past, I think there is a flaw in the Gemini process where the juries & especially the jury chair has an inordinate amount of power in choosing the nominees. This reduces the chance of their being any consistency in the yardstick from year to year, which undermines the legitimacy of the process. I'm not against nominating or recognizing little-seen shows that nobody has heard of -- in fact, I'm way in favour of it. But the last few years there's been an unfortunate tendency to play to a very small tent; the opposite problem of the Emmys.
By seeking out a wider peer review, the WGC process actually winds up being more fair.
What's nice, and what gives me a little bit of hope -- is that in the one-hour category, which I'm most famliar with, since that's mostly what I've written -- I know of very moving, funny, or just plain great scripts that didn't make the cut. That's the true test of talent ... there's actually a bit of bench strength.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. YMMV.
Animation
Grossology "New Recruits." Written by Richard Clark
Total Drama Action "Crouching Courtney, Hidden Owen." Written by Alex Ganetakos
League of Super Evil “Glory Hog." Written by Philippe Ivanusic-Vallee and Davila LeBlanc
Total Drama Action "The Sand Witch Project." Written by Shelley Scarrow
Preschool and Childrens
Max and Ruby "Max Says Goodbye." Written by Kate Barris
Max and Ruby "Ruby's Good Neighbor Report." Written by Shelley Hoffman & Robert Pincombe
Zigby "Zigby's Collection." Written by Louise Moon
Documentary
Malls R Us (Feature Version). Written by Helene Klodawsky
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet - 40 Years of One Night Stands. Narration Written by Robert Lower
A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony. Narration Written by Donald McWilliams
Episodic half-hour
Less Than Kind "The Daters." Written by Garry Campbell
Less Than Kind "Fun." Written by Jenn Engels
Less Than Kind "Happy Birthday Sheldon." Written by Marvin Kaye & Chris Sheasgreen
Less Than Kind "Careers Day." Written by Mark McKinney
Corner Gas "Shirt Disturber." Written by Kevin White & Norm Hiscock
MOW & Mini-Series
The Summit. Written by John Krizanc
Paradise City: Degrassi Goes Hollywood. Story by Vera Santamaria, Matt Huether, Sara Snow / Teleplay by Vera Santamaria, Matt Huether, Sarah Glinski, Sara Snow
Guns(part 1 and 2). Written by Sudz Sutherland & Jennifer Holness
Feature Film
High Life. Written by Lee MacDougall
A Shine of Rainbows. Written by Vic Sarin & Catherine Spear and Dennis Foon
The Trotsky. Written by Jacob Tierney
Love and Savagery. Written by Des Walsh
Crackie. Written by Sherry White
Episodic one hour
Stargate Universe "Time." Written by Robert C. Cooper
Flashpoint "One Wrong Move." Written by Mark Ellis & Stephanie Morgenstern & James Hurst
ZOS: Zone of Separation "Bred in the Bone." Written by John Krizanc
Cra$h & Burn "Trust." Written by Jackie May
Murdoch Mysteries "Mild Mild West." Written by Derek Schreyer
ZOS: Zone of Separation "Shallow Graves." Written by Jason Sherman
Radio Drama
Afghanada "Episode 65." Written by Alex Levine
Afghanada "Episode 61." Written by Barbara Samuels
Short Subject
Being Erica I "Webisodes." Written by Jessie Gabe
My Pal Satan "Cheaters Never Perspire." Written by Dennis Heaton
How People Got Fire. Written by Daniel Janke
Variety
This Hour Has 22 Minutes XVII “Episode 6.” Head Writer: Ed Macdonald / Written by Mark Critch, Gavin Crawford, Kyle Tingley, Albert Howell, Dean Jenkinson, Joanne O'Sullivan, Tara Doyle, Erik Van Wyck, Mike Allison, Joey Case
This Hour Has 22 Minutes XVII “Episode 8.” Head Writer: Ed Macdonald / Written by Mark Critch, Kyle Tingley, Albert Howell, Shaun Majumder, Dean Jenkinson, Geri Hall, Joanne O'Sullivan, Tara Doyle, Erik Van Wyck, Mike Allison, Stephen Patterson
The Ron James Show “Episode 7.” Written by Ron James, Garry Campbell, Brian Hartt, Mark De Angelis, Chris Finn, David MacKenzie, Paul Pogue, Gary Pearson, Jennifer Whalen
Rick Mercer ReportVI “Episode 17.” Written by Rick Mercer, Irwin Barker, Greg Eckler, Chris Finn, Paul Mather, Tim Steeves
Youth
How to Be Indie "How to Be a Mehta." Written by Anita Kapila
The Latest Buzz "The Wonderful World of Buzz Issue." Written by Brent Piaskoski
Family Biz "Breakaway." Written by Sheila Prescott
The Latest Buzz "The Comeback Issue." Written by Darrin Rose
How to Be Indie "How to Strike a Balance." Written by Vera Santamaria
Winners of the 2010 WGC Screenwriting Awards will be announced on Monday, April 19, 2010, at Maro in Liberty Village, Toronto. Ticket information coming soon.
IT'S A PUB in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood on a weekday night, and the table's swapping stories of the 2nd, newly charmed season of LESS THAN KIND. (2nd Season premieres tonight, 8:30 p.m., HBO Canada, also available on Demand. And you can watch the 1st show online here.)
It's me, Showrunner Mark McKinney, and Creators Marvin Kaye & Chris Sheasgreen.
I have a lot of time for LTK, and not just because it's funny, well made, and now comes with a Cinderella-rebirth story attached.
And it's not cause I beat my friend Marvin's ass at the poker table on Superbowl Sunday. Seriously. Like a redheaded stepchild. He left before the game was over a broken, chastened man. (Full disclosure: when the show was first in development, I did a brief round of story editing on it. This was before McKinney's involvment)
Nope. LESS THAN KIND is, at almost every level, a shining example of what can happen when everything goes right in the Canadian system. Which is to say, as McKinney puts it, "We got lucky. Crazy lucky."
Let's stack up that luck looking backward. LTK2 was supposed to be an orphaned show. The original broadcaster, Rogers-owned CityTv -- canceled the show before the 2nd season even aired.
"The people at City were great," says Kaye. "They ordered the show, they liked it, they were really supportive of it and let us make the show we wanted to make, and they picked up a second season even before the first went to air."
But when the show did go to air, the problems started. Sandwiched after seasons-old reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and plagued by City's chronic bad promotion of homegrown fare, it floundered in a Monday night timeslot, and was subject to technical gaffes galore. Shows aired in the wrong aspect ratio, out of order, with the music & effects track mixed higher than the vocals -- and then the show went away suddenly when City needed to simulcast TheBachelor for an extra half hour. It was a Canadian TV horrorshow tale.
Those few people who saw the show in its first season saw something that was, in many ways, the anti-Corner Gas. Centred around the Winnipeg Blecher family, the show chronicles the coming of age of teenage son Sheldon. Sheldon's sensitive, overweight, and adamantly refuses to learn how to drive. (His father owns a Driving School.) Sheldon desperately wants out of his crazy family, which includes a pyromaniac mother, his overbearing father, and newly-bounced back older brother -- a washed up actor who's still trading off minor fame from his seminal role in Thunder Bay, O.P.P.
You don't often see families like the Blechers on Canadian TV. They're as dysfunctional as Roseanne Connor's brood -- and the eps have just about the same mix of the outrageous & the heartfelt as the best of the high-water mark of Roseanne's career. The mordant wit of LTK, and its loopy, confident Canadianness is signalled straight from the start, with the theme song -- The Weakerthans' "One Great City," (whose chorus builds to the immortal refrain, 'I Hate Winnipeg.')
So if nobody saw it, how could it be called lucky? Well, take your pick. Maury Chaykin as the father. Newcomer Jesse Camacho as the son. Wendel Meldrum, an actor who's actually believable -- and heartbreaking -- as Sam Blecher's wife. "We found her through L.A.," says McKinney, who tapped the casting director he'd worked with as part of his season long stint on Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60. But they also found local Winnipeg actors -- some of them with very little experience (including the standout Brooke Palsson as Miriam) who turned in hilarious, gifted, piquant and vibrant performances.
But on this night over Chicken Wings, the luck they're talking about is the move to HBO Canada. As McKinney relates the story, they had shot the entire 2nd season, and were busy posting when the notes started to come in from City. They were odd notes. They seemed to strike at the heart of the comedy, watering it down. Eventually, the truth came out. Over the course of the year, Rogers strategy toward Citytv changed. They wanted to go for a more family friendly audience -- but LTK was a harder edged, unsentimental show.
What happened next wasn't supposed to happen. Thanks to a friendly exec at HBO Canada, (who'd been involved with the show initially at Rogers) a deal was struck between the cable net and City to take over the show. The cut scenes were restored, leading to tonight's premiere. Even McKinney admits that the show was always really a cable show at heart. And now it's come home.
Point is, that kind of wheely-dealing rarely happens in Canada.
The luck doesn't stop there. In fact, the funny thing about the luck of LTK, is that so much of it is actually not luck at all -- it's simply the best case scenario of the way things are supposed to work -- but rarely do.
The show was based on an autobiographical play by co-creator Kaye. Kaye and Sheasgreen went through the National Screen Institute's training program with the property. They found a network exec who was passionate about the show. They hooked up with a production company, Breakthrough, whose development and producer staff let the show be what it wanted to be. They brought on Mark McKinney, who brought his perfectionism and two decades of comedy experience to running the creative. McKinney & the creators worked together well, with mutual respect both for the material & each other.
In fact, another way you can see the "luck" of Less Than Kind at work is with the free and generous praise McKinney, Kaye and Sheasgreen pile on everyone involved. Maury was fantastic...the production designer created a flooded basement that worked miracles this season...the writing room was stacked with greats like Garry Campbell and toward the end of the season, when they suddenly had to rewrite some scripts, Rob Sheridan. "Rob saved our ass" says McKinney. From the music, to the crew, to Directors like Kelly Makin, there's plenty of credit to go around.
McKinney marvels at a 2nd season scene of Sheldon's first kiss -- that had the whole crew practically in tears. The show might have had to shoot in -50 Winnipeg winter weather, but in many other ways, it seems like a charmed production.
"We were also men alone," says McKinney, explaining the degree to which scripts were worked and reworked. Long separation from families (All three have children, & Sheasgreen & Kaye's wives both had babies during the shoot) may have made for long nights, but it certainly meant that settling for "good enough", wasn't.
It shows.
The 2nd season opens with Sam in the hospital, close to death, picking up where Season 1 left off. It features a very funny guest shot by McKinney's fellow Kid in the Hall, Dave Foley.
Less Than Kind's charmed rebirth on HBO Canada may have a few more chapters to it, still. The show's about to get some recognition (more I can't really say because of an embargo; I'll correct this sentence to be less cryptic next week.) and they're currently breaking stories for a possible third season. Though it hasn't been greenlit yet, all three are optimistic.
And after the ride this show's had, they probably have every reason to be. Interestingly enough for students of the comedy form, too, this year the LTK writers room is a real anomaly in scripted comedy -- there's a majority of women -- including writer/director Adriana Maggs (fresh from screening Grown Up Movie Star at Sundance,) Morwyn Brebner (the upcoming Copper), Jenn Engels (who returns from season 1) and story coordinator Kim Coghill. That's a lot of estrogen, and a chance to bring new energy & focus to the lives of the bold Blechers.
Less Than Kind airs Fridays on HBO Canada.
An earlier version of this story contained an error. Bruce McDonald directed episodes of LTK. Incorrect info appeared earlier.
WE NOW INTERRUPT this Olympic blog break to bring news that Gordon Lightfoot is d...er, that I'll be yakking about the Olympics on several CBC Radio morning shows tomorrow.
You should hear me pop up sometime in your morning show if you live in the following cities: Ottawa (where I am right now) around 6:20 a.m., followed by Thunder Bay, Cape Breton, Moncton, N.B., Corner Brook, NFLD, Winnipeg, parts of Ontario that get Ontario A.M., Edmonton and Prince George/Prince Rupert.
Freelance TV critic Bill Brioux (who's got an interesting article here on those PPM ratings) will be doing other markets -- then later we have to meet under the clock in Union Station, play back the tapes, and whoever was more awesome gets to pants the other while Nikkiwhatshername sings O Canada and Stephen Colbert points and laughs and calls us a couple of iceholes.
Well. Not really. But that would be cool.
First day of the Prime Time conference in Ottawa was alternately depressing and interesting, but there'll be time to talk on that later.
Also, LESS THAN KIND, the fabulous comedy that finds a new home on TMN / Movie Central, bows tomorrow night -- look for it. I've seen the first few eps and they're wonderful. I'll hopefully get a piece up about it when I'm on the train back to Toronto. But we'll see. And that, as they say, is it.
I'M AT A critical point in an outline right now, and I seem to have lost a bit of enthusiasm for this -- as well as a bit of good nature. I wrote and trashed three posts over the weekend because I thought them rather curmudgeonly. They read like something you'd expect from a dyspeptic crank, without reflecting the passion for good TV that maximizes the talents of a vibrant and unique country & a peculiar yet ever-changing culture.
That, and the leaks you hear from this quarter & that -- unhappy bitching, silly bitching, complaints by wannabes and neverweres & petty recriminations from people who judge but do not read have me feeling a bit -- off. And determined not to join in on those particularly petty reindeer games.
With that bit of weekend #fail also came a tiny flicker of joy -- reading the work of a good friend, who's searching for her light & her centre in something. Sharing thoughts on that -- on the work of those I love who do -- who chance, who write -- seems more important to me now than this.
And, I've also bitten the bullet and decided that next-phasing my career means making the trek to Ottawa for the Canadian Film & Television Producers Association Prime Time Conference.
I've got a meeting later today talking about online storytelling, and the whole conference has sessions on the same thing, and I guess I just think it's time Jill Golick wasn't the only one giving it the old "how do I monetize this?" try. So before I run to that meeting and my train, I just wanted to wish you all a good games. I'll be playing Network during this time & taking a bit of a head break -- even as I work to fill it from other quarters. That's the life of the freelancer, is it not?
So, I might pop back to give a bit of virtual ink to the great folk over at Less Than Kind, coming Feb 21 -- but otherwise I think I'm gonna marshall my energies elsewhere for a week or so, and see how it goes.
Go Canada. Go Lindsey Vonn. (Rowr!) See you after the 28th.
THE RULES ARE very simple. Take a drink every time CTV promotes one of its upcoming homegrown shows (Dan For Mayor, The Bridge, Flashpoint, Hiccups) during an Olympic commercial break.
It's fun, and the best part is, you can still drive home at the end of the night!
