Double Secret Probation

...for BONES.

But that annoying conspiracy minded Squint has to go.

I find the whole "building an ensemble" thing interesting, since I'm in the midst of trying that dance right now. In the case of BONES, they have great chemistry between Booth/Boreanaz and Bones/Deschanel...and Michaela Conklin as the friend/confessor is great. But there's definitely one too many squint sidekicks.

If I wasn't already watching HOUSE this show might not survive the shake. But since I am, we'll see.

But she definitely needs to stop throwing people around.

Hero or Protagonist?

My good friend Alex over at Complications Ensue has got his knickers in a knot over my recommendation of PROFIT.

RENTED "PROFIT"


... starring Adrian Pasdar. Terrible pilot. I didn't like anyone. Didn't believe the main character, who was unconvincing as the too-arch or not-arch-enough villain. The ponderous v.o. didn't work for me. I don't care if main characters aren't likable, but I found him uncompelling.

Denis ... why do you like this show?

Oh, it's ON, beeyotch.

Okay, it's off ag'in.

I suspect that between Alex and and I this argument shall go on forever. It's happened about other projects, other films and series. I think it comes down to one simple question: do you need your protagonist to be a hero?

Alex (and, I should point out, my Mom... and lest you think I'm being ageist and backhanded here, also a woman whom I totally dig, who is about thirty years younger than me mater) does. I've noticed that whenever the hero strays too far into flirting with unlikabilty, a great portion of people out there can't take it. To a great portion of the population, unlikable lead characters are kind of like storytelling Ipecac.

The problem is that fifty-some odd years into the world of serial stories told for Television, a lot of us have gotten bored. Very bored. And as the level of cynicism continues to rise, a very real question starts to assert itself: is the tried and true hero, even the flawed hero, becoming quaint?

Profit is from 1996. That's almost 10 years old. When it played on FOX, the jury agreed most forcefully with Alex: the show got booted after four episodes.

What I (and people like me) loved about it was exactly what Alex hated: this guy wasn't a hero. But....but....there was something interesting about him. He was compelling, and you wanted to keep watching him. At least I did.

The decision moment in the Pilot for Profit is the Act One out. Seriously. If you are not hooked by that out, then turn it off. The show's not for you.

I think the giddy fun of Profit also had to do with its millieu. In its representation of the corporation as rapacious thing, well, it kind of neatly anticipated The Corporation. Seeing a shark swim among the sharks and be stymied by slightly better or luckier sharks...well, that was kind of cool to me.

And I think Pasdar's Jim Profit anticipated more complicated non-hero protagonists that followed him: Tony Soprano, Angel, (who...admit it, Alex, was always more interesting when he was Angelus) Nate Fisher, Vic Mackey...

These days, you can get an audience for a hero who is not strictly likable, so long as they are compelling.

But the catch is that you won't get everybody. You won't get Alex, unless you play some tricks.

Take an example of an unlikable hero/protagonist that predates Profit: Joel from Northern Exposure. Joel is a whiny little goof. He's extremely unlikable. So they make sure that the townspeople of Cicely, Alaska that surround him are so incredibly quirky and likable and iconoclastic, that it becomes kind of an ensemble show (and the stake becomes will they be able to transform him.) There's some weird stuff that you just accept in NX, like the 60 year old man with the 20 year old hottie, just because...well...execution, I guess. You know, that might not be the best example. Even after 15 years, I still am not sure why NX worked as well as it did.

In The Shield, you give Vic Mackey an autistic son. Does that sound crass? Really? Have you dealt with an autistic child? Have you seen the way Vic deals with his? As a patient, anguished father? There's more than what meets the eye. (The Shield also plays with you by giving you "good" characters who turn out to be...well...not so good underneath.)

Tony Soprano is anguished about his family. But he's still a self-absorbed sociopath. David Chase is so good that he plays the ultimate trick on you: in the season where Melfi is sexually assaulted, there's the therapy scene that follows it. All she has to do is tell Tony what happened to her, and you know that Tony will have the guy whacked. And you want her to do it. Take that, viewer!

If you don't play tricks, the drag you get on the audience from your Bonnie Tyler viewers (Cultural reference carbon dating alert: Tyler, Bonnie, "I Need A Hero" see: Soundtrack, Footloose) will eventually bring you to a a place where you have to make a choice.

Actually, scratch that. I think eventually you have to make that choice anyway, because no matter how many tricks you play, eventually the Bonnies are going to just not like the fact that so-and-so isn't softening the way they'd like. TV always softens characters. Seriously. Look at Carla on Cheers. By the end there she was baking muffins. George Jefferson helped little old ladies across the street. Movin On Up my fanny. And don't get me started on Charles Emerson Winchester III.

When you stay true to your vision, as Alan Ball did with Six Feet Under, you are going to have a wave...nay, a deluge, of people complaining "why are they being so mean?" The brilliance of Nate Fisher was that he was never nice. He was merely charming. But he was compelling. He was a protagonist. Not a hero. And not, aggresively at times, likable.

Either you're on board with that, or you're not.

And it's a fine line, I'll admit. I loved Seinfeld, hated the Seinfeld finale -- which made the point that the characters were unlikable. Don't like Curb Your Enthusiasm much. Sometimes these things are a Fielder's Choice.

Anyway, I still recommend Profit for those who like an audacious concept. It's dated, the computer graphics are ridiculous, and there's a lot in it that's flawed. But not Jim Profit.

Jim Profit's my Daddy. Jim Profit is The Man.

Does the Darkness of the Ha-ha end tonight?

Rob Salem is a writer for the Toronto Star.
One of the reasons why he's so effective a TV writer is because he's a certified TV Geek.

Don't get me wrong. I like the classics. I love my Tom Shales and I still miss the L.A. Times' Howard Rosenberg, and I do dig the great Bill Carter, but you really should check out...

this.

Rob Salem's thesis, having seen some of the new season's sitcoms, is that...um...they don't suck.

Well, Entourage has gotten better this year. Everyone's crowing about Kitchen Confidential, Arrested survived (for now) and My Name Is Earl has real buzz.

Could it be true? Oh mama, say it's so. Say there'll be laughin' and gigglin' and all will be well! Say it's true, mama! Oh Mama, does anyone ever really appreciate the sitcom while it's alive?

Sorry. Channeling a bit of Thornton Wilder there.

There's a lot of journos out there who've written a lot of "the sitcom is dead!" articles that might have to walk some of those opinions back.

But then again, they won't. After all, they didn't back in the 80's, when they wrote all those same articles. You know, the last time the sitcom was dead. Before some dude named Cosby decided he wanted in.

Say it with me kids,

"Everything is cyclical."

Let me know what y'all think of the new shows in comments. Looking to see if people feel the love for How I Met Your Mother, Kitchen Confidential, the one with Stockard And Winkler that has the bland title I can't remember, the new season of Arrested, and (tomorrow) My Name is Earl.

Jason Lee has powers.

Somebody Owes Lloyd Braun a Muffin Basket

Exhibit A on my "network executives are not necessarily evil" list: Lloyd Braun. You think he clapped heartily last night as ABC and a bunch o'producers collected some hardware for best drama for LOST?

Did he feel vindicated for getting fired from ABC?

Did he just sit there and say, "Yahoo!" (That's one of them little in-jokes, like.)

I have heard some indications that there are some CanNetwork types reading this little blog occasionally. So there it is: there's the gauntlet. Do you have the guts to be Lloyd Braun?

Lost. Seinfeld. The Office. Sopranos. Six Feet. All of these shows wouldn't have happened without a network executive agitating for them in full-throated voice. If you stop chasing the easy and the derivative, you may indeed expose your heiney. Or you may be Lloyd "I came up with the idea for %@#$#ing LOST" Braun.*

In other news, I'm pleased that probably the best ep of the astonishingly good freshman season of HOUSE got recoginzed for the writing award for Drama, and that those evil, scary, preternatural comedy shamans of the The Daily Show took home some hardware, too.


Good Emmys for writing, despite the Academny trying to shuffle the writers to the back of the bus.

Not that I was watching the show, of course. I was playing poker.

I am a writer, after all.

* NB - it doesn't even have to be your idea. It just has to be a project you actually, truly, honest to Dog think is original and worthy! Dare to not develop crap!

Oh. I think some actors won something, too. Full list of Emmy winners here.

Nyah Nyah Nyah, LOST haters!

Another stellar article in today's NYTimes. I have been fighting the cynicism of many of my fellow traveller writer friends in saying that I think the guys at LOST have learned from Twin Peaks and X Files, that they are aware of the problem inherent in stringing the people along. The answer I've gotten most often is, "Don't be ridiculous. They're making it up as they go along."

Well, which is it? Seat of the pants or a well-thought plan?

Bit of both, rilly.

(registration required.)

The Hearts of Men

A few years ago in the Toronto area, there was a particularly grisly and sordid series of murders. Paul Bernardo was a rapist. He and his girlfriend (later, wife) Karla Holmolka, kidnapped and tortured several girls. There was a publication ban over the proceedings, there were videotapes, which fed the public fascination with the case. Karla made a sweetheart deal with the Crown and only got 12 years. She was recently released. The whole thing was recently made into a movie called "Deadly." Deadly (which I won't link to, but you can find it) was supposed to open the Montreal World Film Fest but was pulled after pressure from the corporate sponsors.

I think from the beginning this case has had elements of human tragedy wrapped in uncomfortable tendrils of state censorship. There's no doubt that the case fascinates and horrifies Canadians still.

I've been thinking about that case a lot this week, and people and the press's psychological reactions to it. Not on its own, and certainly not because of the movie, but because of the hint of violence that's touched my world, ever so slightly.

A Toronto-based actor (who I knew only vaguely) shot his girlfriend on Monday. He killed himself in a park Tuesday. These are the facts.

This actor was an affable, gregarious chap. He posted frequently and voluminously to some message boards I've frequented on and off. He was a relentless self-promoter, and in that strange, internet-y way, he had lots of people out there who thought he was kind of the bee's knees. I didn't always think that his style was the best way to promote his career or projects. I might have even written that at some point. I have a vague memory of him slagging me for it. I mention it only because I don't want anyone to think that I'm writing this to...I don't know...speak ill of the dead or something. In any case: the last thing I read of this actor was a play he did here in T.O. for which he got good notices. I was glad to read of that.

I say all this, all the above, as prologue to this: what we do in the wake of tragedies like this, what people naturally do, is distance themselves. They start looking for the otherness of the person. It happened with Paul and Karla -- everyone talked of how they were monsters. The word monster gets bandied about a lot in the wake of things like this. In Columbine, they focused on the parents. The intimation was what did you do wrong to create your monster children? It's going to happen on the message boards where this actor posted: people, struggling to make sense of it, will inevitably start pointing out the otherness of the person. People will look for clues, proof, sift the past all to construct the alternate narrative that minimizes the common humanity of the subject, and maximizes the elements that could have taken them so horribly astray.

I started doing this myself yesterday, while enjoying a quiet drink with friends. I mentioned that I always thought there was something off about this chap. My friends agreed. It's natural.

But as writers, we can't do that. EVER. The monster in the closet is, and must always be, US. To deny people who do bad things their humanity is perfectly understandable from the perspective of self-preservation, and making sense of the universe. But it does nothing to further either the psychological understanding of our shared humanity or the truth that we try to pursue through the creation of fictional, dramatic worlds.

There is evil in each of us. It is our shared heritage, as much as whatever nobility we carry. And as much as we want to say that people who do bad things are not us, could never be us, as writers we must be bolder. We must look into the abyss and realize that the abyss stares back at us - forever unblinking, with no easy answers, and no way to marginalize, spit out, or deny the humanity of people who do bad things.

I remember seeing him do Shakespeare in the Park years ago. He was good. The words came trippingly off the tongue.

May he rest in peace. May we all.

Throw the Devil Horns, Biatch.

I'm so disappointed in myself.

Last night I broke a three or four year old trend that had served me well.

I saw a film at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I know, I know. I feel dirty.

Now in my defence, it was a Midnight Madness screening. And I was right around the corner, since I'd just taught my class at Ryerson University. And I had worked on the film, so I kind of had to.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a little documentary with a great conceit. The central character, Sam Dunn, is an anthropologist. Professionally, he's spent time investigating differing cultures. But he's also a die hard headbanger, so now he's going to set off and explore a culture that he's a part of, and one that evokes a lot of strong reactions from a lot of people.

I was brought in about a year and a half ago now to punch up or rework some of the application documents they were doing for their funding submissions.

Then I went to South Africa and did Charlie Jade.

When I got back, they got in touch with me again and had me in a few times to help them shape their narration and storytelling. I did not write it; they did. But I made suggestions about phrases to use that could pump up the drama, and how script could support and smooth the flow of their narrative. It was a great fit for me, since it was more or less a combination of what I used to do, and what I do now.

Well, the film turned out great. They did a really good job. It's funny, it's wise, it's provocative in parts; it doesn't shy away from what's controversial in Metal, but it also does a touching job of showing what the culture means to the tribe, and why they're drawn to it. I'm not qualified to say if it amounts to good anthropology, but it's great filmmaking and worthy pop culture exploration. They've been rewarded for their efforts: the film will be released theatrically both here in Canada, in the USA, and the UK.

But sitting there, last night, in the audience, there was a lot going through my head. Maybe it's because I've seen the film so many times at this point, but here's what I found myself thinking about:

The Need to Commit

As I said, I managed to go 8000 miles away and work on another show for five months in between my consulting gigs on this show. But the three producers, Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy Wise slogged through for over a year to get this made. Sometimes when I talk to new writers; sometimes when I think about my own career, even, it's easy to forget that the process of getting something you're proud of made can be all-consuming. It has to be all consuming, and it cannot happen quick. Show me a guy who says he can write a bulletproof spec in two weeks and I'll show you a liar. Perseverance really does take a long time and there are no shortcuts.

Get Outside Your Wheelhouse

I am NOT a metalhead. I came of age in the era of Pop and Glam Metal, and I thought everything south of Van Halen was just patently ridiculous. So going into this project, I wondered "how the hell?" and "why the hell?" am I going to do this?

Well that's exactly the impulse that should always get you to sign on for a project. Shake your junk up. The fact is, I can now have a passable, cursory discussion about the Norwegian Black Metal scene. How %@#%^ cool is that? Storytelling is storytelling, and even though I was advising in an area where I didn't really know the facts, I did know about storytelling. And that made the difference. But more importantly, in an era when you only ever have to read the news that agrees with you, consume the music you like, TIVO shows you find interesting and absorb nothing else: well, that's great for the great mass of consum...sorry...society. But it's not good for us. Shake your junk up.

TIFF Still Sucks

It was bittersweet seeing the film in the Ryerson Theatre. Onceuponatime, the hoity-toity Toronto International Film Festival was the far less pretentious Festival of Festivals. When I was a University student, they'd have galas at the Ryerson Theatre, and if you volunteered for a few hours you got a pass. Tuesdays I had a class at 8 am and a class at 6. Oh, and I lived in the burbs so I wasn't going home.

That added up to a lot of passes. I got to see Roger & Me and a bunch of other films and it was perfect and magic.

Now, not so much.

Ah well. Tonight's the Metal Party. There will be Jager. I intend to...Give'r.



Random celebrity factoid: Sharon Osbourne was a total knob to the filmmakers, blocking them at every turn. They properly snickered her name last night. If you see her out there in the world, give her the special one-fingered devil horn for me.

Haikus to the Gods of First Draft TV Pilot Scripts

Oh mighty Teaser
Kickoff to the whole story
Happy you are done

First Act yer a bitch
You bully with your many
needs and shortcomings

Dreaming of Act Two
Will I ever get to you
Never at this rate

What's on Jon Stewart
No no I must not succumb
Time for Cereal.

Even More Disturbing.

I know, I know, if you read this at all, you're already reading Josh Friedman. But just in case, for whatever insane reason, you're reading me before him today. Stop. Go to his site. Read today's entry, "The Joy of Specs." I am doing the toe-curl happy dance in front of my computer now.

BTW, if you come back after reading it and have any suggestions as to how working writers can cure themselves of the whole doomed trying-to-date-an ACTRESS thing, I really, really, really could use it. Seriously. Voodoo, Santeria, anything short of 'Ludes. I'll listen.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Gonna, Walk Around Tuesdays On FOX

I've always liked David Boreanaz. I'm glad he has another series that can shoot exteriors in the day. That must be a nice change for him. Unless they shot Day for Night a lot on Angel. But that's neither here nor there.

So, onto BONES, Fox's attempt to cross pollinate some character development into the CSI genre. I found the pilot solid and workmanlike, if not really too inspired. Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel do well in their roles. There's very snappy dialogue.

But on the whole I thought the first act was great, and then it settled down into a plot that was way more conventional than I would have liked.

You can see why they paired this with HOUSE. Same irascible kind of lead character. The problem with that is whenever they have an irascible female lead character, she's always, I don't know, leaving out saucers of milk for kittens by episode four.

I mean, Samantha from Sex & The City was a right bitch when that show started. It was bracing. By the end she was about as threatening as that cougar you met down at 2.99 shooters night at Stuckey's on the interstate. And don't even get me started on what they did to Murphy Brown.

In the end, I will give this the rule of three... I try to give any new show I watch at least three eps to find its feet - which is a lot more than some networks do. But BONES has got a lot to overcome to make a permanent dent in my viewing schedule. Now I know nobody asked, nor should they, but having already worked one show where the brief was to come on in and do triage on a sickly show, I kind of like to think that way to keep the engines humming. So my prescription for BONES would be:

Let people in.

I hate being outside that CSI stuff. HOUSE does a very good job of keeping you up to date with what's going on. BONES keeps you at a distance.

Prune the ensemble

Leads are good, but there's like one-too-many Scooby gang characters around Deschanel. The assistant is forgettable, the female researcher is fabulous (though, to be fair, they did introduce her with her flashing an inattentive airline dude: great intro) and both Boreanaz and Deschanel have forgettable boss characters.

(It's also telling that I'm calling the characters by the actors' names. When you can't remember the characters names, that should tell you something.)

Get Weird

It's FOX. I want less JAG, Navy NCIS more Jump Street or X-Files.

I do, however, want this show to succeed brilliantly and run five years since the creator is a very nice formerly Canadian fellow named Hart Hanson, who once toiled on a show up here called Traders, and who years ago saw the genius of the Piven in a short series called Cupid.

As for HOUSE, pretty good premiere, but someone needs to declare a moratorium of end-of-episode montages set to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah. I mean, The OC did it twice, for Godsake. And I think I've seen it in at least four other series. One of them might have been the Rufus version they used in Shrek. Whatever. It's done. Find another weeper. I suggest David Gray or James Blunt.

Thanks, Mr. K.

Okay: so here it is. A thousand years ago, when I was still a journalist, I was interviewing an author. Doesn't matter who, but this was a writer I admired greatly. While the tape was changing, I peppered him with questions for my own interests' sake: "how did you make the leap to professional writer?" and things like that.

He smiled for a bit and nailed me with a glance. He saw what I was asking without me even asking it. He laughed and said,

"getting sick of the treadmill?"

And I smiled, too. He caught me out. This was certainly the first time any of my interview subjects had showed the slightest interest in the guy asking the questions. He paused for a second, like he was weighing saying something, and then he said,

"You'll get there. If you really, really want to write, you'll find a way to do it, and you'll find a way to make money doing it."

"Okay, I've got speed."

That's the cameraman telling me that he's ready to keep going; to resume the interview. So the last part of what the author said was the first thing I saw when I screened the tape back to cut my story together.

His face changed for a second there. Just a wisp of darkness crossed, and then was gone, as he settled back into interview mode. And before I got off my next question, he said,

"Just don't expect it to solve all your problems. At a certain point, you're still in the corner at the party, staring out at people; bewildered, munching dead things on sticks."

So. Now you know.

Four years later

Really? It's really only been four years?
I remember talking to my Dad and having to break it to him that the first tower had fallen. He'd watched CNN for awhile, but stopped "because they kept saying the same things, and no one knew anything." He hadn't made the connection that we had relatives in there. (They got out.)

Four years?
Really?

How can so much have happened since then?
How can we possibly have this guy as President for another three years?

Where's a good TIME CUT TO: when you need it?

The Joys of Overwork

The difference between professional writers and dabblers is actually pretty simple. And it's usually revealed in a variation on one particular conversation:

"How'd you do writing today?"
"Oh I didn't do much."
"Why not?"
"I just wasn't feeling it"
-or-
"Inspiration wasn't cutting it"

I think I've probably said this before but: inspiration never strikes. When you've got a job to do you have to sit your ass down in the chair and just start. Some days it starts to flow, and some days it doesn't. Nevertheless, you still have to put in the time. This is called "fighting the good fight." It has everything to do with craft and discipline, and very little to do with artistic inspiration.

However, at times when things are going poorly, sometimes it helps to have an embarrassment of projects.

Right now I'm working on two things. One is an incredibly hard, challenging, genre-busting pilot. The other is a rewrite of a series that's fun, and easier to define.

In those times when the brain starts to bleed from all the thinkin' on one, it's nice to be able to switch to the other.

It would be nicer to sit on a patio and sip a Corona with Lemon, but you know, freelancers can't be choosers.

Reunion

Another new show, on Fox. It's on probation with me.
I love mystery kind of shows and I love narratives that trace people over longer periods of time. But it looks to me like we're not going to get a lot of what's fun about that sort of stuff -- jumping back and forth from future to past; using the juxtapositions of how people change as dramatic fodder to push the story along.

A lot of actors I like doing uninspired work. I think it's very lucky it follows The O.C. I might keep watching for the next couple of episodes, but something about this show just left me very uninspired.

How 24 Changed Everything

No...it's not the "dink. dink. dink. dink." digital clock that almost single-handedly makes digital displays cool again.

And it's not the whole "real time" fooferal, either. That's a gimmick, like David Caruso's naked butt launching NYPD Blue or The Harlem Globetrotters visiting Gilligan's Island. (Ah, Gilligan. Sigh.)

What 24 did is popularize a brand-new, ultimately excellent way to get writers off the hook.

OnceUponATime, TV writers suffered from what I like to call "Star Trek Syndrome." They would end their seasons with cliffhangers.

Ending your series on a cliffhanger just seems like such a good idea. Get people coming back for more...leave them with maximum excitement built up...(that is, unless your show isn't coming back. Then cliffhangers suck.)

The problem with a cliffhanger is that when you're working, working, working along in a season, you build everything to that cliffhanger. You're exhausted when you finally put that cliffhanger to bed. Stick a fork in me I'm done exhausted.

So you go away on hiatus. And then you come back, two months later or however long it is, and you have to pick up the threads and deal with that cliffhanger. And that sucks. Because the cliffhanger belongs to last year's show. Having to deal with last year's show is like being expected to take your little brother's girlfriend to the dance. It may be the best dance ever, but you're never, ever gonna get any.

Maybe the writing staff's different. Maybe the chemistry's changed. Maybe you went base jumping in Santiago in the hiatus and your whole universe has changed, and now you have to deal with this damn thing that came from last year before you get to go on and do all the cool stuff.

So, try as you might, and as much as everybody thought, "hey, coming up with the ending of this will be NO problem" last season when they pitched it, you get into the groove of doing that "resolve the cliffhanger" episode and...

...um...

...ah...

Oh SHIT. What the #@$% do we do?

See, because you didn't think that far ahead, Mr. Smartypants. You just got your characters into a scrape, or an impossible, show-killing situation. (Or in the worst, darkest, nastiest version of the story, a writer who subsequently left the show and chose not to return this season (read: money) got your characters into it, and left no damn roadmap on how to get out. Now you've got to clean up all his McD's wrappers and stray gum and hair and condoms and trash bags and barettes and lipsticks and parking meter slips and get them all out of the front seat before you can take the shiny new car for a drive.

So the conclusion of the cliffhanger inevitably sucks.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Star Trek Syndrome.

Star Trek: The Next Generation NOTORIOUSLY had these season enders that were AWESOME (see: Borg, or the one with Data's head buried in the past) and then they came back, and zip, boom, zippity doo dah, wrap it up in the suckiest way possible.

Lest you think I'm geeking out totally here, The West Wing did the same thing when Aaron Sorkin (praise be his name) took the last chopper out in Season 4, leaving John Goodman as the President, and the Bartlets crying in the chapel.

But 24 made all that go away.

At that end of the first season, when they killed Teri Bauer, (spoiler monkeys: save the angry email...it's been five years. Catch. Up.) everyone went, "ooh...that's gonna make for a weird season opener."

And then they jumped ahead in time. And everyone bought it. And the Hallelujah chorus started.

If you can jump ahead in time, you can shuffle the deck anyway you want. Was your hero addicted to heroin? Not any more. Were they married? Not necessarily.

And imagine this:

Never again will we have to see a show where the youngest kid ages from 2 to 9 over the summer.

The notion that you can pick up the story 18 months, two years, three years later is a terribly exciting idea. No more three month hiatuses where you have to create the moment afterward, or even the idea that you can only start the story like the summer just passed. (Which is as far as people generally went before.)

Alias jumped on the idea when things got silly. The Sopranos, and Six Feet both used it, to tremendous, story-improving advantage. I think it's one of the most exciting tools that series' writers have.

The whole time working on Charlie Jade, we had lots of discussions of how much time had elapsed in "story time" over the season. We went back and forth about it.

Any series, over the course of the run, is going to pick up baggage -- subplots that don't work out, actors you would love to get rid of, situations that seem wobbly, the sheer fatigue of trying to come up with one more story in the same configuration.

24 gave us a gift. How much time do you need? Take it.

When the Sopranos starts its new season next year, two years will have elapsed in both the real world and in Tony's world. I can't wait to see the changes that brings.

Thank you, 24. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Difference

"The Canadian Television Industry," I have often opined to my much-beleaguered friends, "is not really an industry so much as a toy."

It's tough living next door to the cultural equivalent of Wal Mart. Then you have those gallic cutups next door in Quebec, with their comfy language barrier, making all manner of hoo-hah and fun with their own healthy star system and hit shows.

Americans, you owe yourself a trip to Montreal, just to see a star system and celeb machine right there, right under your nose, that you've never, ever heard of. It's like the days before soundscan when the music industry hadn't yet realized that hip hop was the biggest musical form in the USA, and people were still paying attention, oh, I don't know...to Tim McGraw's hat or something.

Anyway, in Toronto, in what we on the hustings call "English Canada," the path to television and to creativity is at best, fraught, and at worst, suicide-inducing.

The number of hour long dramas on Canadian TV has precipitously declined in the last few years, and it's been the subject of much hand-wringing among Can Culture types. When Alliance Atlantis, who were the biggest production company around, got completely out of production a few years back (deciding to make bones running specialty channels and cashing CSI checks) their CEO left this rose in the middle of the room:

"I think," he said, "That Canadian production has suffered a permanent downturn."

Wow. Thanks for playing, we thought. Enjoy all that Canadian taxpayer money you scooped up over the years. That reminded me (as most things do) of a trenchant Simpsons moment, where Marge asked Homer, "Did you have to salt the earth behind you?" Homer laughed and said, "Yes."

Bottom line: It's been pretty depressing up here for the last few years. Canadian Networks exist on a sliding scale as to how much they really are committed to developing Canadian drama and comedy. All, save the CBC, really make their money by snapping up rights to U.S. programming. (Though the CBC isn't making much money doing anything right about now.) But lo, there have been signs of life, as of late. First came Trailer Park Boys. It shows on BBC America down in the USA, and it's so Canadian, it's almost...freaky. It's full of swearin' and dope smoking and stupidity. I saw the first episode and hated it. Two years later I watched three in a row and became completely obsessed with the show. I'm not the only one. Ivan Reitman signed on to Exec Produce a movie. Give'r. That show is made by Showcase, which is a Canadian specialty channel who does commission and develop interesting original stuff. (Showcase is owned by the aforementioned Alliance Atlantis: see how complicated it gets?) Anyway, after Showcase there came a little show called Corner Gas on the CTV Network. That show regularly pulls in 1.5 million viewers a week -- that's in a country of 30 million - so basically, if it was a U.S. sitcom, it'd be the equivalent of pulling in 30 million viewers. I think a U.S. Network would pretty much worship Baal to pull in 30 million for a sitcom right about now. Anyway, once Corner Gas took off, one of the biggest excuses that the networks had: "Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows," kind of went away. And that broke the ice a bit.

All that is preamble to this. The difference between a meeting in L.A. and a meeting in T.O. is the attitude. In L.A., there's relentless positivity. After all, you might be the next hot thing! You may make someone a ton of money! What if it's not me?! Who do I have to kill to make sure it's me! You leave a meeting thinking that your penis is bigger, you weigh about 30 lbs less and you have the rugged good looks of the early Paul Newman.

In Toronto, often, the meeting is an excrutiatingly long dissertation of why you could never, ever do that. And what a problem it might be. And....BLAM!

I'm sorry, that was the sound of the flap of skin at the back of my head flying off with the force of the bullet.

That's why I'm pleased as plucky punch to say, that I have had meetings lately with people on a couple of projects that were just...great. Positive. People who are enthusiastic about material. Who want things to be good! Who want to make television that's full of quality just like me! Yayyy! Yayyyyy! In Canada! Could it be that this toy has some new, shiny batteries? My fingers are crossed.

And I never cross my fingers.

In The Tall Weeds Today...

On three different things, so not much to write about -- later on this week I hope to cover how 24 changed the hour long series forever...(and it's not the way you think.)

Also, the Toronto International Film Festival starts tomorrow.

Here's my prediction: for the fifth straight year, I will see zero films.
In fact, if I remember right, the last film I saw at TIFF, which used to be puckishly called the "Festival of Festivals" was SHINE. Yes. I will see no films.

But Lawdy Miss Clawdy, there will be Vodka and Dead Things On Sticks.

L8er,

On Dreck, On Spec...

Yay!

I got my first piece of hate mail of the "How dare you tell people not to write Entourage" variety. I'm so psyched by this because my days at the network tell me that for every negative letter you get, that's at least ten (or was it a hundred? Um..thousand?) people who want to boil the skin off your body, stitch you up into some grotesque fleshy covering and wear you as a man-suit.

That being said. I think it's perfectly legitimate to write an episode of any series you want. What's not acceptable - at ALL - is to not know your shit cold.

Let me present my bonafides to you first, because this might seem a little nasty without saying this upfront. I've taught a screenwriting course (Yes, it is true, we actually do grow on trees.) at a University in Toronto for about ten years. A little longer now, actually. This means two things:

-I am getting to be a very old bastard. (Approaching 40, don'tcha know)
-I have read, oh, say, about 900 spec scripts.

Now, most of these were in the "baby writer's first spec script" category. And most of them kind of sucked. There are no more great, undiscovered writers out there than there are great basketball players or great pro-golfers. The likely analogy is that there are a lot of girls and boys out there like Chris "Moneymaker" -- the guy who played poker online and played and won the World Series of Poker a few years ago. Or maybe that doesn't apply at all. Maybe, just for a moment, I wanted to write about poker. I am weak. So sue me.

Every year, though, I get one or two excellent first scripts from people who could really make a go of it as tv writers. Many of them have. Before you ask, yes, there are several of them who are waaaaaaayyyyy more successful than me. And they are younger. And for this they must die.

No. Focus. Right. More often than not, what sets the good apart from the bad? Besides the obvious, like, uh, the writing?

How cold they have the material.

This is important. Pro writers, before they start a show, do their research. A lot of people writing a spec script, because you're not getting paid, want to jump right into the writing part. It's a perfectly understandable impulse.

But it, like the liberal and regular use of crack cocaine, heroin, or crystal meth, can get you killed.

If you write a CSI, you cannot fake the forensics.
If you write a WEST WING, you must know how American government works. (Or more likely, the fantasy, "we're through the looking glass" version of how it should work.)
If you write ENTOURAGE, you have got to know Hollywood.
If you write HOUSE, your medical mysteries have to be true medical mysteries. You can't get back at the ex-wife by calling some deadly malady "Trudy's Syndrome."


So when you choose what to write, you can save yourself some time if you already have some knowledge there. That's why teen soaps are golden. Because unless you're one of the spore people, (And by the way, you #@%@#$% untrustworthy spore people, your tribute is late) everyone has been a teenager.

If I'm Mr. Hollywood guy and a read an item about something going on in L.A. and the barest detail is wrong, I'm gonna sniff and move on to the next script unless your material is just handed down from freaking Jehovah.

But you know, if Marisa is drinking a quart of tequila and macking on Summer, maybe not.

Ironic aside: Do NOT do an O.C. where Marisa macks on Summer. Please leave something to the sad, sad fanfic writers.

When I was writing specs, I chose WEST WING. This was at the end of WEST WING's first season. I did this for a very good reason: I am a freak for U.S. Politics. I also set my episode around the Library of Congress. Because I had been there, on a story, and had once interviewed the Librarian of Congress. See? Inside knowledge.

Once upon a time, I read a pretty good Sex In The City spec from a woman in my screenwriting class. She had the characters mostly right, and the story was inventive enough. The problem was, it hinged on a certain candy bar name that shared a name with one of the iconic characters on the show.

All the Americans are scratching their heads right now. Mr. Big.

Do you see the problem?

Mr. Big (the candy bar version) is not found in the USA. And is CERTAINLY not found anywhere within the five boroughs, never mind Manhattan.

Know it, or research it. There is no other option. Half baking your script is like half baking a pie. And who wants some bastard half-pie? It'll probably just curdle the ice cream and make a big goopy mess.

You want some Hollywood playa reading a big goopy mess?

I think not.

Entourage as a spec

It's inevitable, really. The show's got a certain cachet this season. It has definitely gotten better with the injection of a lot of top-tier writers into the room.

I think all the "It's the male Sex In The City" comparisons are still a little premature, and they have got to find something to do to un-one-note Drama, but the inevitable ascendancy of Turtle cannot be stopped and cannot be denied.

But that doesn't make it a good spec, far as I'm concerned, for a couple of big reasons:

-It's an HBO show

That makes the act outs a little softer or looser than when you actually have to go sell soap for two minutes.

-It's a show that's still trying to find itself

Most of the spec monkeys who are trying to write the perfect Entourage script will probably pore over the DVD's of the first season. They will do this at their peril. The show becomes more disciplined, and really a different show in the second season.

-It's an insider's world

If you are the assistant to some big powerful Hollywood type, then maybe you can come up with a window into the world that's fresh and new. But you'd have to have a pretty transcendent insight into the nature of male friendship working its mojo in your spec to overcome the third-hand "I read Variety" kind of spin you'd bring to the script -- even if you do live and work in L.A. (and if you don't, for the Love of God -- push away from the keyboard now -- unless you've spent lots of time in L.A. there's no way you can fake it. Ah, you know...without surgery.)

Aside number one: In the previous life as a journo-monkey, I was once on a film junket in L.A. and read the L.A. weekly, and counted five ads for doctors doing cosmetic vaginaplasty. This was the first time I ever knew such a thing existed. I was 28 years old. My chilhood ended that day.

-Entourage meanders.

And that might be its shaggy style (although what was with the "let's hug" Ari/Eric moment in the finale?) but people watching for writers who can craft a good story and write a good script are liable to be harder on you even for something that works in the show.

-L.A. Obsession: Enough Already.

I want you to think about this long and hard. I want you to imagine your Entourage spec. Visualize it. Can you see it? Good. I want you to imagine a pile now. Do you see the pile? Yes. Good. Your script is at the top of the pile. Excellent. Unfortunately, it's a pile of other Entourage scripts. So now some bastard who spends every waking moment immersed in minutae about the TV and Film industry has to read fifteen or thirty more scripts about people immersed in the minutae of the film industry. Oh Lord Love Nellie, yours had better not just be good. It better be Murder in the Frickin Cathedral good.

Just my gut, and your mileage may vary. But before you type TURTLE and go to town, think about your other options. I know, in half hour right now there aren't many. But I'm just not sure Entourage is the way to go. Remember, funny dialogue is only one part of it. And I'm not even convinced that when you're looking for new writers, that it's the most important part.

Podcasty TV Talky Goodness on KCRW

Okay. Let's get back to the dancing monkeys and the hey hey hey.

If you're looking for an insanely great resource for info on TV, click here.

The Treatment is an excellent show prouced by the great L.A. NPR station, KCRW. Hosted by Elvis Mitchell, it's podcast and downloadable. This week, the show interviews Jenji Kohan, Creator of WEEDS, which I've blogged about below.

Next week is the almost-preternaturally talented Hugh Laurie of HOUSE.

Click and listen.