Never, Never

Strange breakdown yesterday that's continued today. Just hit a wall of fatigue and distraction that would not be denied. Part of the problem of being freelance is that you always feel like you should be working, and part of the problem with living alone is that there's nothing to stop you from doing that -- not until you smack up against your own wrung-out grey matter.

So instead it's coffee and a bit of Dylan and Johnny Cash and reading in the Times of the many sins of Judith Miller. (I wonder if Karl Rove is sweating yet.)

It was also a chance to recharge the creative batteries. A little more of John Doyle's book, and a few movies. I finally watched the DVD of Marty's Dylan biopic, No Direction Home, and it was as good as I expected. One quote from Dylan that just left me on the floor:

"You can't be wise and in love."

Then last night I finally saw Finding Neverland. Kate Winslet, of course, is right there in Mary Louise Parker and Geena Davis territory, but the great Scot Kelly MacDonald as Peter Pan was a bonus.

I don't know how I missed this movie; it's the one that I intended to see last year and never got to. The number one question any writer ever gets from relatives, friends, kids, and others is "where do your ideas come from?" To me it's always been a troubling and upsetting question -- having to answer it is kind of like wanting not to speak the name of God, or having to stand still while someone take a picture that steals your soul.

Well, watch Finding Neverland. That's my answer from now on. A lovely film.

Story Literacy & The Shrinking Memory

There's an excellent post today on mystery writer James Lincoln Warren's site about Story Literacy. Go read it. I'll wait.

Hey. Welcome back.

One of my mentors, (my first boss out of Uni, actually) was fond of saying that he thought that the idea of taking undergrad journalism studies was ridiculous, because you were so much better off actually doing a general degree in something else. If you could write, you could learn the journalism. But there comes a certain point where you can't distill knowledge and insight if you don't possess any yourself.

I took Radio & Television Arts as an undergrad, and for the most part, I've never regretted it. Okay, I did waste ten years whoring myself in low-rent infotainment, but nobody's perfect, and I did get to interview P.J. O'Rourke, Peter Gabriel, and Ted Turner along the way. What I missed, though, was the value of a real grounding in the canon.

I make a vow to try and catch up every once in a while, but the victories are few and far between. I'm proud of my Mark Twain phase, and hell, Great Expectations was better than I thought it would be - but there's never enough time to really read and absorb -- not when you're hustling as a freelancer.

What I do have, though, is the benefit of about sixteen years of crushing Catholic dogma. And, unlike some RC's I know, I figured if I was going to dutifully go to the classes, maybe I'd read the Bible now and again, too.

I'm consistently amazed by the number of times I talk to younger writers, (and by that, I mean anyone my age and younger,) and find that they don't know the basic myths, have no knowledge of the Poetics or Greek Drama. Never mind Brush Up Your Shakespeare: there's lots that just haven't read him.

It extends to movies too. Warren talks specifically about Film Noir. I've had that conversation, too. Then there's the comedy writers who have never seen The Marx Brothers, Keaton and Chaplin, or Preston Sturges. Or Drama writers that have never studied Alan Bennet or Dennis Potter or Harold Pinter or Edward Albee or Capra or Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller or Dalton Trumbo or Capote or Paddy Chayefsky or Billy Wilder.

I've met young turks who want to write half hour comedies who don't know who James L. Brooks is. "No, wait," they'll say, and my teeth will grind cause I know what's coming... "didn't he write for the Simpsons?"

This is turning into an old fogey post from someone who's not actually old enough to make one, but bear with me a second here, cause I'm getting to the point.

I started teaching part-time at the same University I attended when I was 25 years old. That means I've been seeing a parade of 20 year olds come through for more than a decade. And what I've found, unmistakably, in that time, is that the cultural memory has shrunk.

Time was, if you were 20, you'd know about stuff that happened long before you were born. You'd recognize who a singer was. If you heard a cover song, you'd eventually find out who did the original and feel a momentary burst of embarrassment that you didn't know that someone had been there before.

This, at least for my generation, was a natural outgrowth of something that we kind of always resented: always being in the shadow of the #%#%@ baby boomers.

Because of the baby boomers, for whom no degree of self-congratulation or self-absorption was ever too great, I think I was thirty before I ever read or saw something where a character was exactly my age...a story that was aimed squarely at me. I don't know if that had anything to do with why I knew who Jack Paar or Steve Allen was, why I got Uncle Miltie jokes or knew that Orson Welles had been the Shadow... but I know that it made my own explorations and creative efforts richer. In fact, it probably caused me to go back further. The crushing orthodoxy imposed by having to know the boomer cultural narrative meant that I went back further: that's how I discovered flappers and Jelly Roll Morton, and Sinatra and Cole Porter.

I've seen a lot of students over the last few years, when they try to sell themselves, say, "I know pop culture." As if that was something to be lauded; as if that wasn't the bare baseline these days.

Effectively, in my experience, I've found the cultural memory of a 20 year old today doesn't stretch much past about 1996. 1996 was "back-in-the-day." You can't make a literary, cultural, or other reference that pre-dates that time, and have any confidence that it'll land.

Unlike when I was growing up, today's newly minted adults (all of them budding screenwriters, or at least so-I-imagine,) have been culturally targeted and catered to all their life. The machine slices them ever thinner, trying to satisfy them by giving them exactly what they want.

Which is great, until you sit your ass down in the chair and actually try to say something.

The Internet is a crazy and amazing thing. It still surprises me that if I hear a snatch of a lyric of a song I haven't heard before, that I can Google it and know who sings it in a minute; not spend weeks hoping to catch an announcer telling me who's singing it on the radio. It stuns me that I can be writing something and wonder if it's a cliche, and Google that line and get 8000 hits and know for sure. I'm floored that I can run across a word or a name when I'm reading something and -- never mind have to write it down and look it up on my next trip to the library -- I can click, type, smack, boom, know it within ten seconds without leaving my chair.

We live in an age when it has never been easier to satisfy your curiousity and thirst for knowlege; and yet lots of you don't seem to be curious any more.

Well...not good enough.

If you haven't read your Bible, read it. Don't assume that reference was from Star Trek. It's easy enough to find out where it really came from. When you're working on a story, Google the particulars, ideas of plot, time, setting -- see what can you learn?

To some of you, this may seem, like, obvious. But trust me, I read a lot of newbie scripts every year.

It's not obvious.

If you're not curious, I don't know how you can be a writer. I simply don't know.

"It's Not a Too-mah...or Beneath The Planet of the Fans

I am fighting a lordy-loo headache today. Not grape or malt related, mind you. I think this is actually one of them meteoro...um...meteroil...weather things.

The split-focus splitter. Always a harbinger of a good work day. Let's take stock:

Bible on Project#1 is in. So that's something.
Specs read as favors 2 & 3 are done.
Student work in email box: count's up to 8 right now, but it wouldn't be fair to attack that without a fresh-head.
Let's see, that leaves Notes for Project#2 which I'm waiting for feedback on.
Second script pitch for Project#2 that I can't get too far on until the two Advil blues hit and do their sweet little relief dance.
Project#3 is awaiting story editor notes so I can go to script on it. No movement there.
Project#4 won't be up for another couple of weeks -- but it is going to be a few days in a Room -- so that's something to look forward to.

Mmm. Maybe I'll dive into the delighful new book I got at the book launch last night:

John Doyle's A Great Feast of Light (Get it here) is a memoir about growing up in Ireland when TV arrived in the 1960's. Doyle is currently the Television Writer for The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper (or as it's referred to outside Toronto, "Toronto's National Newspaper.")

There was a short excerpt in the Globe last weekend and it was funny and bracing and wondrous and the kind of sharp, puckish writing I expect from Doyle. But nope...those letters just swim on the page before me. I'm really screwed.

The only thing to do is procrastinate.

So let's go with that: in fact, let's give over to a special guest blogger. This is one of the charming rogues who hangs out on Television Without Pity. He's reacting to my recent posts, "Why The Room is Like Vegas" and "When Fans Attack."

Take it away, Guest Blogger...I'm going to go find a hot cloth for my forehead.

Putting my own two cents in, this McGrath boob sounds like he's trying to suck up to Abrams, maybe in hopes of getting a job on Lost. I'm sorry, but if said boob thought the hatch cliffhanger was good, when the show should have ended with Walt's kidnapping, then he's just another hack, to a long line of hack writers in the entertainment industry.

I also think there's a problem when the show's writers are making it up as they go along when it comes to a show like Lost. They're supposedly dropping hints to give you clues to the final solution and if they don't even know what that solution is, then the odds of them ever coming up with a satisfying answer to all these red herrings their dropping is pretty close to nil.

I'm someone who has watched hack writers like McGrath on daytime TV destroy the genre with their crappy writing and he sounds just like another hack who thinks his shit doesn't stink and every ridiculous thing he writes is pure gold that no one should dare question or criticize.

You know, it's find if Abrams and Lindeof want to make up some hyperfiction where they make it up as it goes along for their own entertainment, but when they start put it out to viewers, they should know where the story is going and how they plan to resolve it.

Wow. Thanks, Guest Blogger.

For those of you marking your scorecards at home, that's two boobs and four hacks.

I had no idea that my brilliant plan to vaunt from the depths of backwater Toronto to the writer's room on a show that draws over 20 million viewers a week was so utterly transparent. I mean, if it was that obvious, then I'm sure JJ Abrahms will see right through it when he spends his customary nine hours a day reading blog entries and snarky tv message boards. Damnit! If not for this headache, I'd go back to my plan B:

The hatch-shaped pie.

After all...everybody loves pie. Way more than they love Raymond, anyway.

In fact, there's a funny Toronto writer named Matt Watts who's been cooling his heels waiting for the CBC Strike to end. He's got his own very funny blog. He's practically obsessed with pie.

Why? Because Pie Works.

Anyway, if you had the kind of boring, apple pie parents I did, they probably also fed you that canard growing up about how you learn something new every day. I still try to convince myself that's true. Some days it's truer than others. Amidst the blood currently pounding behind my left eye I can say this, without a doubt-- here's the new thing I learned today:

Apparently, daytime tv has been destroyed by writers -- which seems to indicate that once upon a time, daytime tv was good. Daytime TV. Who knew?

As awesome as it is to post snark-hate levelled at you, and as much as I love it when people completely illustrate my points for me (seriously, our guest blogger above neatly shows the truth of the two posts the TWOPers fulminate over most) I also, to be fair and balanced, share this, from a writer friend I know and fear:

Have i ever told you i can't read your blog because i enjoy it too much? Sorry. Reading your blog is like sitting beside the cutest boy in class - I forget what I'm supposed to be doing. Your blog's too hot for me. Sorry.

Never mind the Advil. I'm taking a shower.

Doyle, you'll have to wait.

When Fans Attack!

Uh oh.

Wond'rin over the whole spike-in-the-hit-counter thing, and I see that My "Why the Room is Like Vegas" post has now been linked on Television Without Pity.

I love TWOP -- from the early days when it was still Mighty Big TV. It's the internet messageboard equivalent of the Second Cup steps at Church & Wellesley.

Yes, that's a Toronto reference. Deal with it. Like we love hearing about the Southland all the time.

The Second Cup steps at Church & Wellesley is the place in Toronto's Gay Village where people congregate and hang out and say the bitchiest things imaginable. About everything.

TWOP commentary wrapups are usually very entertaining. If you've read 'em, you know. If you haven't, you should go check'em out.

Where things get weird is, of course, the message boards. This board, famously, is where Aaron Sorkin used to confab with West Wing fans, til it got out of hand and he beat a hasty retreat, using the whole traumatic affair as a springboard for a funny and churlish West Wing subplot. Ah, those were the days.

Anyway, predictably, there's outrage over the post. Let's dip into some:

No offense to whoever wrote that article, but I think it's crap. It boiled down to the idea that viewers shouldn't criticize the sensitive writers because we just don't understand what it's like. We don't get what they go through, man. We should just appreciate the fact that anything is developing on the show at all, and overlook how ridiculous it is.

Mmm. Tasty.

If it is industry standard for writers to not be skilled enough at writing to get from Point A to Point Z in a way that is truly earned, then the writers need to suck it up and try harder. It's not our job as viewers to lower our standards.

"Lower our standards?" This is the point where I usually point out something like "American Idol is the top rated show on TV." Oh, and Yes Dear is in season 5. And JAG ran for, what, 19 years?

I know it's not the easiest thing in the world to write good TV, but that doesn't mean it's the writers' perogative to crap out a half-assed story and then feel all wounded when we notice. Saying we don't understand the business just makes the writers seem elitist on top of being lazy and/or untalented.[/RANT]

Wow. I mean...wow. "Crap out a half-assed story?" That's like...harsh.

Now, besides the fact that there's an excellent use of the word "perogative," this fan-screed is really informative. And it amply demonstrates several of the truths of why aspiring TV writers have to let go of the fan inside, before you can hope to move on to the heavy lifting.

1) No matter how well things start out, you will always be accused of being elitist.

It's amazing how fast it happens. Sure, writers are kind of, as a group, smartypantsers. But the real imbalance here comes from the fact that everyone thinks they can write. Really. We all tell stories, we all like to think that we're creative, and we all have things happen to us along the way. It's been my experience, in the years I've been teaching, that generally people way overestimate the effects of inspiration, and way underestimate the realities of craft. Someone who is motivated to write about a show like LOST on a message board is motivated entirely by passion; if you are a writer on LOST, you can be motivated partially by passion, sure...but it better be mostly professionalism and craft that motivates you, or...uh...no one will sit with you at lunch and you'll probably be known as Scooter, or the weird girl. If you are writing a spec script, you better be approaching it from a professional eye, not from a fan-place. Because if you do the former, you may have a shot of acing the template. If you do the latter, you're writing....shudder....fan fiction.

2) Ownership breeds resentment

Ideally, you want a fan to really invest in your show, your characters, and your world. That gets tricky after a while, because eventually, you're going to do something or go somewhere the fan doesn't like and they're going to hate you. And it's not nice, cute, "Oh, I hate Summer cause she tried to steal my boyfriend" hate. It's "you promised me we'd be together forever and now I'm going to burn your house down," hate. The very thing that makes fans loyal to a show makes them, sometimes, a little crazy. They hate that you can decide where it goes and they can't. In psychology, it's exactly like the effect where you help somebody out, and they grow to resent you for it. You can't defend yourself against this; they will always think they know better. And they don't -- see...shudder...fanfic.

3) They don't think like you do, and they don't want what you want.

Or, at least...they shouldn't. You know how every fan in the world (maybe that's too much..okay, say 95% of them) always want the hot girl and the hot boy to get together? Well, if you're a pro, you know that your job is to avoid this as long as humanly possible. Because happy couples do not conflict make. And conflict is your job. And once you get HG and HB (or HG and HG; HB and HB, whatever) together, you've blown your money shot. Bigtime.

Your task is to give them what they didn't think they wanted, but what they grow to understand they needed. This is especially true in shows with an element of mystery to them, like LOST. You have to answer some questions. But there's all these people out there who have their own theories and expectations freighted into the world and you are not going to be able to please any of them. I mean, there are still people out there who really want the island to be purgatory. You have to be bold enough to know that you are going to piss some people off when you go in a certain direction. That's fine -- so long as you keep coming up with cool stuff that gets them coming back.

A fan-run show would be...well...I dare say, it wouldn't be very good. Because the choices fans make are emotional choices, not choices grounded in dramatic necessity. There are still LOST fans out there pissed that they killed off Boone. Whereas if you were a writer, once you saw the flashback episode where Boone slept with his sort-of-sister you'd say, "oh Boy, your plot is SO OVER." Ian Somerhalder, great actor -- but that character? I now know everything I need to know about you. It's time for you to go.

Have you ever seen those testing things they use where you hold the dial and move it across the screen to say when you like something and when you hate it? I think those things are cool for something like a political speech. But they're worse than useless for drama. Because especially for an ongoing series, the journey is way more important than how the viewer feels at any one moment. You think that M*A*S*H audiences LOVED it when Henry Blake died and Radar came in and told everyone in the O.R.? Hell no. But it's one of the greatest moments in TV history. If you're going to be bold, be bold. But understand that you're going to have some people screaming at you along the way.

All the more reason to keep any spats en famille. No one needs to see Mommy and Daddy fight.

4) The Internet is for Porn

Heh heh. Sorry, I don't mean that. It's just my favorite song from Avenue Q, which everyone really needs to see.

What the internet IS for, at least when it comes to TV, is cranks. Just like you don't want a TV show where everyone agrees all the time, a message board for a certain TV show will always be fueled by people trying to out-do each other with their reasons for why the last episode totally sucked hard. Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons, people: worrrrsssst epppppisssoddde evvvverrrr. I have to admit, even when I troll through boards myself, I flit right over the "wasn't that awesomes?" and linger ghoulishly over the train wreck posts. Remember, please, that even today, the people who are going to go post on a message board, some three hundred word screed about the last episode of LOST is NOT a representative viewer. They may be your core -- but they're not your full audience. And anyway, a VAST majority of them will continue to watch week after week so that they can come back and tell you how much the show sucks.(I call this the Howard Stern principle: as seen in his movie Private Parts, they found when the ratings came in in the early days that the people who hated him listened longer than the people who loved him. I admit, this is also the only reason why I ever know what Bill O'Reilly is saying.) Through this cycle, some fans derive self esteem. Good for them. It has nothing to do with you. Get over yourself. Once it gets broadcast, it really does belong to them.

In any case -- these reasons, and a lot of others, are why if you are looking to really get in this game, you need to learn to disconnect the fanboy brain. It is not your friend, and it will not help you get where you want to go. That's why I recommend when someone's writing a spec, to NEVER spec your favorite show.

And it's also why, I hope to Dog that when/if (see how optimistic that is? time was I was a if/when man) I get one of my shows into production, that I will have the strength to limit my contact with the fans.

Not because they're not the single most important thing any show has going for it. But because you can't let them poison your experience of the world you've created. Just as you should not poison theirs. What does it matter if the symbolism you created in your show meant something different to someone else? So long as they're not willfully or crazily misinterpreting it (ie: "They're in purgatory!") let it ride. Allow them their ownership, and preserve your sanity, by maintaining the Chinese Wall between you.

Nothing in our culture gets to be mysterious anymore. Let's fix that. I firmly believe that our biggest duty is to get viewers to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Unless that man is Joss Whedon. Joss can do whatever the hell he wants. (Although in my secret heart of hearts, I hope he writes a movie for Geena Davis.)

Worshipping Moloch and Jeter and A.Rod...

A showrunner friend of mine, when I told him I was watching my beloved Yankees recently, said, "You may as well worship Moloch."

Maybe so.

But that game tonight was some heap fun.

Tomorrow is Canadian Thanksgiving. Happy Columbus Day, to all of you Yankees, unless it's officially been renamed 500 years of Oppression Day. I hope not. That's a downer of a title. Canadian Thanksgiving is much like the American Holiday, only they don't celebrate it much in Quebec, Grandma doesn't get drunk and your younger brother doesn't come out at dessert.

I hope to let loose with a review of the DVD of Buffalo Bill soon. Will it stand up to my 20 year old memories? And how will I deal with seeing a 25 year old Geena Davis again? Did you know she was in Mensa?

Will the Yankees defeat the Angels?

Will I be able to slip away from the Thanksgiving Dinner I'm attending tomorrow to see what's doin in Cali?

All this and more, still to be answered.

Thank you, Moloch.

Al Gores the "Marketplace of Ideas."

I love TV. I love democracy.

Uh oh.

I would love for Current TV to work. I really hope it does. But if you want to know why I'm a writer of entertainment and not a journalist anymore, go read this.

And don't complain it's too long.

Read it.

Never smote a note

I don't know what that means. I just wanted something that would look good in orange.

Anyway, I really miss the blog "Why Television Sucks." It was so bracing, and true, and I like the way that it showed clearly how...insane...writers really can be. (This is also why Josh Friedman is so crazy-brilliant.)

One of the best posts she made was about giving notes to people -- how she would spend time reading people's scripts and really think on notes how to make it better, only to find half the time that the person on the other end really wanted to hear how brilliant they were, or, um...maybe a line suggestion or two. This pissed her off bigtime, since, you know, actually reading something and giving notes takes time, and thought, and having it blown off makes you want to kill them, and then yourself for having wasted your time.

Being able to take a note is an art in itself. You will go through the five stages of grief, immediately. No one likes to be criticized. It does not feel good.

The difference is that if you're a real, honest-to-good writer, notes (at least in TV) will help you if you have the courage to listen to them.

Do you not understand the note? Ask and probe further. Sometimes someone doesn't really know what's wrong -- sometimes they might mis-identify the problem. Your job is to find out what's making them bump and to come up with a solution. This does not always involve doing exactly what they say. Though sometimes it does. There's a story about Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney, when a writer was giving him guff, saying "do I have to take the monster out of the bag?" Then he mimes taking something out of a bag and says, very quietly, "we're paying for it." Then he puts the monster back in the bag.

Um. Yes sir. Three bags full, sir.

I say all this because yesterday I had a long notes call about one of the projects I'm currently developing. This is a series that I wrote as a spec three years ago. I've done many, many drafts on it. And written the bible, and the network and prodco have been very enthusiastic and supportive of the project.

So yesterday the notes came on the pilot. They weren't killer, but they were major. There is going to have to be a major rewrite, especially in the last two acts.

And you want to know a secret?

They were right.

I am a dumb monkey.

The amazing thing is that you can be smart, and you can pour your heart and soul into a script, and in the end...well...it's a long road before you get to the end.

Yes, things can be overdeveloped.

No, not every note you get is going to be golden or even comprehensible.

But for the most part, my experience is that smart people with a genuine interest in doing good work are going to give you notes that you can execute. And dealing with those notes generally strengthens your final product.

Now that doesn't mean that you're not going to bitch about notes. But what bothers me when I talk to a lot of (Canadian) TV writers, there seems to be a general ornery-ness about being given any notes at all.

I really think that's the main thing that separates the pros and the soon-to-be-pros from the wannabes and will-never-be's -- it's one thing to have confidence in your ability...quite another to have overconfidence in your infallibility.

If you're that attached to your art, and your artistic temperament, then you should probably be writing your novel, or manifesto, or, you know...uh...fingerpainting or something.

Completely unrelated point: Kanye West's new CD is the shizzle. And I don't use the snoop-speak lightly.

Dear Geena Davis,

You are still very, very, very hot.

Maybe it's the aura of worldshaking power.

I do vaguely recall confessing at 3:30 in the morning, that weird Wednesday in November 2000, that I had a small thing for Hillary Clinton.

Some men are intimidated by powerful women.

I just want to be Kyle Secor.

Why "The Room" is like Vegas...

So there was a little tempest in a teapot in writerville last weekend.

The details are readily available elsewhere, so I won't belabor them. The short version is that in comments in a nationally-available magazine, one of the writers from the first season of LOST, a writer who's no longer with the show, made what seemed to be disparaging comments about the LOST writers, comments that were easily interpretable as "these guys have no idea what's going to happen on the show."

Lots of nettie explosions later, there was a response by one of the guy's colleagues, and a current LOST writer. It was a good post...it illuminated a lot of the process of working on LOST, with tantalizing glimpses into the specifics of story breaking of some of the first season's episodes.

And by Monday, said writer had taken it down, saying that the issues raised by the article and his response were better dealt with in private.

Which, in case you're paying attention, is a pretty nifty admission of the thing that makes writers' rooms work: what happens there, stays there.

The writer's room, by definition, has to be a place of trust. When you're working on a show, you're going to probably spend more time in that room with the people in that room than you will with loved ones and family. You are going to say a lot of stupid things, some outrageous things. You're going to disagree and bang your head against the wall and eat pretzels and potato chips and probably drink way more Diet Coke than is healthy.

It's a difficult and sensitive process when you're in the middle of it -- and almost incomprehensible if you're on the outside.

The LOST spat, and another incident that was brewing in H'wood over the last year (a lawsuit where a writer's assistant on Friends sued for sexual harassment over some stuff that was said in the writer's room) pulls back the lid a bit on an area of television writing that, I feel, can't and shouldn't take much scrutiny.

Being inside a writer's room means hearing things, and saying things, that may be off color or not acceptable in other workplaces -- because the most important thing is breaking the story.

Being inside a writer's room means having to be savvy about group dynamics; if you're gregarious, you have to know when to back off. If you're reticent, you have to learn when to shout down. Because it's a tricky group dynamic, often times given the choice between hiring a superb but difficult writer, and a writer who's good but not superb, but better in the room, you will always go with the latter because it's better for the show.

In other words, if you have any hopes of writing on staff for a tv show, who you are as a person is at least as important as how you write.

The writer's room is a place of trust -- I know I've said that before, but it's so important that I'll say it again...and building that trust means giving into some important principles.

The most important is that what happens in the room stays in the room. You do not betray confidences. You don't go running to mom if someone says something that upsets you; you deal with it then and there.

Once an idea is out there, it belongs to the room. Many's the time that someone has said, "hey, did you come up with that line?" later -- sometimes even an Exec Producer with whom you could curry favor by saying yes, and I've answered "I really don't remember." If you want to really work well, you credit the room. The nice side of this is that when something screws up, you also blame the room. You don't hang out the episode writer to dry or the person who was story editing that episode, because you know who got what episode is largely logistical.

(You do screw freelancers. Sorry. Heh heh.)

Part of this is again, personal group dynamics. You don't want someone who keeps track and guards every idea that they come up with, or someone who never misses an opportunity to remind you that they came up with something. That sucks. But part of it is also necessity...because things move fast in the room. If you come up with an idea, and that sparks someone else to say one thing that makes you think about it differently, and oh yeah, didn't that other guy say that thing 20 minutes ago that we couldn't make work, but now that I think about it...

Okay, stop. Now...who came up with that idea?

Credit the room.

In order to be able to do that, you have to let go of a bit of your individual ego, and really, truly try to credit and form a group ego. If that gets betrayed in any way, the betrayal can seem personal and catastrophic. That's what the LOST spat was about.

If you want to understand the need for freedom and how people really need to cut loose in the room, see The Aristocrats. It's by no means a great movie, but I think by the end of it, you get a good look into how creative people work, and how important pushing the boundaries and being fearless is a part of that.

That's the inside stuff.

The outside explanation of why what happens in the room needs to stay there is this:

Fans will never get it, and the further they try to get it, the more poison is introduced into the process.

Writers crave approval. They do. It's a lonely job, and it's natural to want approval. But the more I do this, the more I think that professional writers need to insulate themselves from their fan base. It's not just the disasters that ensue when Simpsons or West Wing writers get into dustups with their online fans; it's that the internet's ability to disseminate any little nugget of info renders what would be a small, entre famille feud (Like the LOST spat) into a huge freaking deal that will never go away -- and is picked over obsessively by fanboys who will never understand what they're talking about because they have not and never will be in the room.

When a writer says to another writer about LOST, "they know where they're going," a writer with any experience knows what that means. It means that they have the basics of their mythology sketched out. They know what the major mysteries are and how they will resolve. But the individual details of how A goes to B -- well, the fact that they don't know that yet doesn't mean they don't know where they're going, it's the air that feeds the flame of the creative process.

To say that you have a show where you have every detail of every episode worked out over five years perfectly ahead of time -- well...uh...that's kind of going into Beautiful Mind schizophrenic territory. Of course you don't. Yes, I know that JMS had a five year plan for Babylon 5. But that five year plan was broad strokes, not every freaking detail...that's why he was able to adjust to things like cast departures.

But the problem is that to a fan, they look at TV like they look at a novel. It exists, and if "you're just making it up as you go along," then the moment something happens that they don't like, they ascribe it to desperation or "not having a plan."

In short...there's just no talking to these people.

Years ago, I remember reading how magicians were pissed at Penn & Teller because they revealed how tricks were done. I thought they were being prickly. Penn & Teller were just hilarious.

Well, I still think that, but now I also understand the objection. The focus should always be on the product, on the story. But the fan impulse (the root IS fanatic, after all) is always to know more, more, more details about the how.

But just because they want to know, doesn't mean you tell them. Even if it would make you feel good about yourself. Even if it would be fun. Because at the end of the day, even if you show them how the trick is done, they don't have the context to understand what they've seen.

Now, if there is a cone of silence around the process, that does make it difficult for aspiring writers. I know that. How do you get around that? Well, get yourself in position to actually talk to writers, however you can. And take classes on things like psychology and group dynamics. Learn about personality types. Understanding people is way more important for writers, than hearing the latest skank about what went on in the LOST writing room.

Most of all, stop thinking like a fan.

Train yourself out of it. There are shows that I watch and love, but I try always to approach it from a professional side: how would I have done that, or what are they going for there? NOT...how could they get X and Y together, etc, etc, etc.

Bushie and Harriet

Why anyone would ever be surprised that an oilman who never found oil would nominate as Supreme Court Justice, a woman who had never been a judge, is beyond me.

The real question, of course, should be: what experience does she have with Arabian horses?

I'm sure Harriet will do a heckuva job.

I only get to do this about once a month now, and it's only the third, so I know it's dicey, but:

DON'T BLAME ME. I DIDN'T VOTE FOR HIM.

And I voted from Florida, too.

CBC Plugged Back In

Late last night or early this morning, depending on your orientation, word came that there was a tentative deal between the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the union representing 5500 locked out employees. This ends a 50 day lockout where Canadians in many parts of the country were deprived of the national radio, television, and online services they have come to depend on.

The lockout exposed a number of truly fascinating fault lines that are likely to be studied for some time to come.

For Americans who don't understand the nature of the publicly-funded CBC, the glib answer would be to imagine a PBS with teeth. Only not really - CBC has plenty of commercial aspects to it, but part and parcel of its mandate is to reflect Canada to Canadians.

(I'll try to keep this paragraph short so the interesting applicable-to-all stuff comes later.) That's not an easy thing to do. Though the CBC gets about a billion dollars a year from Canadian taxpayers, for that money it has to run two national television services in English and French, as well as two radio networks, also in English and French. It makes comedy, variety, current affairs and news shows, drama, and movies for tv out of that stipend. This is difficult to do in Canada because it's a nation of only 30 million people spread out in the 3rd (I think) largest national land mass on Earth. During the lockout, as all that programming disappeared, initially there were a lot of articles about how nobody noticed. Typically, that came from large media centres where there are many private broadcast choices. But for a large portion of the country, CBC is it. You're not going to get a lot of private broadcasting competition in Newfoundland or Nunavut. There just isn't a lot of money in it.

Okay, now here's the interestng -- really interesting -- lessons of the CBC lockout that should have implications for people with national broadcasters like the BBC, and we-who-create:

-From the moment the lockout started, there was an explosion of blogging that got the stories of the locked-out workers out. Eventually, that morphed into radio shows being done on campus stations, caravans going across the country reporting the unreported news in various Canadian outports, and even an online news site filled with robust reporting that the overwhelmed locked-in managers, running a skeleton service, simply couldn't match. It's the talent, stupid. That's the message that came through loud and clear. The PR war was decidedly won by the workers in this one. The managers seemed like they did not have a plan; their justifications for why they needed to be able to hire and fire contract workers at will seemed, as the weeks went on, just to be indicative of how poor their strategic planning was generally. Ugly whisperings that have been around for years: talking about how CBC was ridiculously over-managed -- has now leaked a bit into the public consciousness. And it looks like CBC Management will now be called before Canadian parliament to justify "what the hell were you thinking?" So one group responded nimbly to new technology and the narrowcasting landscape, one group flailed. Make note: creative people have to be open to change. The good news is that you're probably more open to change than the people you're likely to be dealing with.

There's more labor fun to come, I'm sure. I can't believe that the next big SAG or WGA fight isn't going to go to wall on the whole DVD royalty issue: it seems like everyone's electing radicals all of a sudden.

I'm just glad that the news will be back. Americans, you are pitifully ill-served by your news media. The major private network here, CTV, does a good job with news. But no one beats the CBC for informed and thorough news coverage, designed to shed light and not just heat.

And of course, Hockey's back. Canadians are a docile people -- but do not deny them hockey or sh*t starts to get weird fast.

Choices

Damnit. It's a gorgeous weekend in Toronto. Next week is Canadian Thanksgiving, already. This is the time of year where every day you could be on a patio is more precious. You don't waste beautiful days with temperatures above 25 degrees C in October. Not in Canada.

But where am I going to be Saturday and Sunday afternoon?

Inside watching the Yankees and the Sox bring it down to the wire.

Damnit.

Channel 4's UK LOST Promo

This you gotta see.

It doesn't end with schaedenfreude...

From the Globe & Mail, Canada's national Newspaper, comes a small list that should tickle the fancy of anyone who thinks we English speakers got the world covered with eloquence...

Words that have no equivalent in English:

katah-ara itai (Japanese) - Laughing so hard that one side of your abdomen hurts.

"Oh Jon Stewart-san, stop with your jokes and funny news parody, lest the kata-ara itai I'm feeling right now makes me hurl."

gigi rongak (Malay) - the space between the teeth.

(My mother has quite a pronounced gigi rongak. Seriously.I used to love to stare at it as a child.)

bakku-shan (Japanese) - a girl who appears attractive from behind but not from the front.

Hee hee hee hee No hee hee hee comment hee hee.

kummerspeck (German) - the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.

God, first schaedenfreude, now kummerspeck -- German rules.

Drachenfutter (German) - the peace offering made by guilty husbands to their wives.

Oh snap. Fritz, you're killing me here. I want to write a sitcom in German. Right now.

uitwaaien (Dutch) - walking in windy weather just for the fun of it

That's right up there with my favorite Dutch/Afrikaans word: lekker

koshatnik (Russian) - a dealer in stolen cats

(how did the Soviet Union ever fall?)

aviador (Spanish) - A government employee who only shows up on payday.

Whew. And me with only English and my pathetic high-school level French.

I'm depressed now.

To the Promo Dungeon with You!

Has anyone else noticed this?

One of the things that I hate most is the trend in movie trailers to reveal EVERY SINGLE TWIST IN THE MOVIE. The one that I can remember being most egregious was "What Lies Beneath" but it's a fairly standard practice now. The days of having a cool trailer that made you want to see the film, without giving it all away is kind of past.

The worst thing is all the data that these guys have that claims that actually works: that more of the audience today doesn't want to be surprised; they want to know exactly what they're getting. Sigh. Teenagers.

Anyway, the "next week" come-ons for most shows have always walked this line, too. Sometimes they use misdirection, editing the clip to make it seem like Marissa gets shot on the OC, for instance, or making it seem like the two people you want to get together actually get together, when really, they just have a smoldery look or it's a daydream or something.

I know people who deliberately don't watch these "next ons" because they got fed up being spoiled and/or misled. But I have some sympathy for the network on this: there's a lot of choices out there. They have to whatever they can to keep you coming back.

But FOX has, of late, started to seriously cross the line into movie trailer that reveals all territory.

Specifically: on promos for this week's PRISON BREAK, you saw a clip of Michael saving the Doctor from the infirmary by pulling her up into the ceiling.

There's only one problem. That wasn't in the episode.

If you tuned into FOX this week, the episode ended not with the Doctor (who for the sake of not knowing her character name, I'll call Dr. Hottiegovdaughter) being rescued. Nope, she's still in serious jeopardy. Then they show the "next week on" and the same clip of her being saved is in it.

So in other words, last week, they cut the promo with scenes from the next TWO episodes and made it seem like you would see this next week.

They did the same thing with Reunion: cut a promo for this week's show using a scene that doesn't appear until next week.

Now, if I'm one of the creatives on this show, this is not going to make me happy. Not only are you misleading your audience (and not in the fun way of re-editing the clips to make it seem like something different happnes...a technique that PRISON BREAK has used before to great effect.) but you're potentially spoiling story events not just one, but two episodes out.

Is FOX the only network guilty of this?

It's a bad trend. Down Promo Monkeys! Down!

Commander In Chief

So. Commander in Chief.

I loved The Contender. I think Rod Lurie is an amazing writer and director. I've loved Geena Davis in just about everything since Buffalo Bill. (In the interests of decorum in her new role as leader of the free world I won't wax too much on her performance in Tootsie, which might well have induced my passage into puberty.) Kyle Secor? Crazy Good. Donald Sutherland, some sort of scary shaman-actor.

I was the guy who ate up The West Wing like it was chocolate given to a POW who'd been held in a bamboo box for years. I loved WW because it seemed to finally, finally deal with the part of politics that I thought had to be the point, in the end. Call me a crazy idealist, but at some level, somebody had to believe what they were doing, didn't they?

Now the West Wing certainly isn't what it was. It's a show that has had an unexpected ninth inning rally, but no one really expects it to take the pennant. So if there's a guy who can carry that water, and give a political show that actually makes you think about stuff, then I believe Rod Lurie is that guy.

And I think he's off to a great start. Serioulsy. I'll be PVR'ing Commander in Chief. Not just for Geena Davis -- though -- well, I don't really want to talk about that too much anymore, a guy must have his secrets, but anyway --

The Pilot, though it didn't achieve anything near the lyricism of the West Wing pilot and certainly lacked the Godlike entrance of The Sheen...did have its charms, and little instructive things that make for good pilot shorthand.

-The Hillary Clinton jokes, "That didn't go over too well." I'm a great big fat Hillary Clinton fan, and I laughed at every one. Kyle Secor's suffering in those scenes as FLOTUS was sublime.

-The Conservative Daughter. Nice shorthand. It could have been a stunt, but the actress is good, and as an opposition in your house moment, I buy it fine. I also found the scene with the President's secretary rather moving.

-The fact that the dying President was portrayed as a decent man. Good...you've got to care about this guy to give the transition complexity.

-The fact that they name check Gore and Cheney. This isn't WestWingWorld. This is our s.

The Dittoheads will doubtless howl that Donald Sutherland is playing a standard heavy, once again proving the perils of literalism. You need a bad guy. Giving that role to Donald Sutherland is like digging up Babe Ruth and raising his zombie ass to make sure that weird sh*t that went down with the Bosox last year never happens again. They have called in a rainmaker, g. Testify.

But watching the show I can't help but think that Lurie has lost an opportunity off the top. And it's an opportunity that only a Democrat would blow.

We-who-are-American-and-watch-from-afar see y'all and your stuff a little differently up here. It's amusing in extremis that a little TV writer in our national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, a guy named John Doyle, every once in a while becomes Bill O'Reilly's whipping boy because he expresses amusement at the absolute toilet-trajectory that American political discourse has become. Inevitably, the fulsome O'Reilly talks about the Globe as a "liberal Canadian Newspaper," which pretty much makes any thinking person in Canada laugh so hard as to pretty much need oxygen.

American debate is so polarized and through the looking glass now that it's imbued with fantasy.

And the Democratic tinge on this fantasy is what I call, "the fantasy of the independent."

Mackenzie Allen, Geena Davis' character in Commander In Chief, was chosen for the Veep slot by a (presumably) conservative Republican because she was a woman, and an independent. So when he dies, and she doesn't resign, she becomes not just the first female President of the United States of America, but its first Independent President.

This is a Democratic fantasy that's cropped up before: they used the same trope on last year's so-much-early-promise- so-utterly-squandered WB drama Jack & Bobby. The future President in that show was a Republican who quit the party and ran, and won, as an independent.

And that's where they lose it a bit. Dems are dissatisfied with the polarization, they're dissatisfied with both parties, so they buy into this fantasy of a person who could be above all that.

I'm a big believer in a pox on both your houses, but here's the thing...

Republicans aren't.

Seriously. John Rogers, I think, wrote a great post at Kung Fu Monkey about Republicans. Specifically, where have they all gone? I mean, look at it, they control the three levers of government, yet spend all their time screaming over how they're still getting screwed in the cowed, non-existent liberal press. They spend like drunken sailors, refuse to make any fiscally responsible decisions (you know, the things that they're supposed to be good at) and concern themselves with all sorts of issues of individual liberty and choice (you know, the things that they're not supposed to care about.) The religious neocon takeover of the Republican party is so total, and so outsized, that if Lurie wanted to be really, really subversive, he didn't need to make Mackenzie Allen an independent.

He could have made her a Republican.

An honest-to-goodness, old-school, big tent, socially progressive but fiscally modest Republican. You can say that maybe that wouldn't have created enough conflict for the character, but you're wrong. As it is, the show will speak only to that battered West Wing refugee constituency. The Zombie Republicans (musssst.. ssssavvveee.... Sccchiiiavvvo...) that live in Washington now won't see an independent: they'll see a liberal media dupe.

Only Democrats dream of Independents that will save our democracy. The Republicans are either closing their eyes and thinking of England while the leaders of their party (the party, after all, that did free the slaves--remember that..) run roughshod over the constitution, their own principles, effective government, and pretty much everything except the extension of their own power -- for the second time in 30 years, by the way...wow...hope you REALLY enjoy that tax cut...

...any way, in the midst of all this, it would be quite interesting if the person up there talked not like a Hollywood liberal fantasy independent, but like an honest to goodness, used to be Republican. That would have been some heap interesting show.

But I guess it is television. Ah well.

Commander in Chief loses a couple of points for making the President's first crisis a real "women's issue," for the juice on the blouse, the little kids singing in French, and the petty stunt of turning off the telePrompTer...I mean, Donald Sutherland is evil...don't have him do party tricks...but overall, it's earned a conditional pass from me. For now.

The Room vs The Auteur vs The Proddie

Well, apparently one of the things four days sitting by a lake doesn't do is take away one's propensity for insomnia.

Plan B, then.

Alex over at Complications Ensue has recently interviewed UK writer Stephen Gallagher (Doctor Who, Eleventh Hour -- which is not to be confused with the late journo-Canuck series "The Eleventh Hour," no, this one has got that wag Patrick Stewart in it, lucky bastard) about the differences between the British system and the U.S. system.

It's worth a read (you have to search for the post, or scroll, because, um...my link to the right link-thing is...Okay, you've found me out, I'm link-challenged. I ride on the short link bus. I only get to play with the rounded link scissors. I hope you're happy now...) but the precie, if I can give one, is this:

UK system ---> Power to greenlight lies with powerful commissioning editors at ITV and BBC 1. Power to run show and get vision on air lies with non-writing Producers (who I'll henceforth call "Proddies" since I imagine that would cheese them right off) and writers are marginalized: they work alone, often do not have contact with other writers, and are generally treated more like screenwriters in the US system: ie, get to the back of the bus, you git.

US system ---> Power to greenlight lies with network heads. Many pilots are commissioned, few chosen to go to series. Power to run show and get vision on air lies with Executive Producer-level "showrunners" who come up through writing and apprentice on other shows, thereby learning the many and myriad tasks of production while retaining a writer's sense of how to craft a story. This is pretty much necessary since the whole system is geared to cranking out 100+ episodes for syndication. Writers work in teams, in story rooms, under the tutelage of the showrunner.

What's funny, sad, and interesting about Alex's conversation with Stephen, of course, is that here in Canada, we've mostly managed to take the worst of the British system and pair it with the worst of the American system.

Let me explain.

One of the things that people love most about British drama (and believe me, Canadians loooove their British Drama...just try to change the channel when Corrie St is on -- you'll lose your arm) is that they seem to be Auteur-driven.

I say "seem." Yes, you can see that Ricky Gervais had a hand in writing every episode of The Office -- 12 over 2 seasons, plus the specials. Steven Moffat writes Coupling (um, 8 episodes times 4 seasons, uh...wait, I got it...32) Jimmy McGovern did Cracker. Russel Davies did Queer as Folk, and so on.

Generally, what most people think of as "quality British drama" features short episode runs over a few years. There's a lot of people here in Canada who think that's just dandy, that that's the way you should do it, so you don't turn a show into a "machine" like the Americans do.

But if you look a little closer, that auteur-driven fantasy is just that. A fantasy. Because the reality is that the Producer-driven culture of the UK means that for a writer to make a decent living, they pretty much HAVE to write all the shows themselves. And they better hope they're simpatico with the Producer. (Or you could marry them, I suppose.) There are people, Gallagher included, who point out that the British system sometimes means that a series declines in quality faster than it should: that it can't sustain over three or four longer seasons because there's no fresh storytelling blood. And a Proddie can't fix it because no matter how good they may be at producing television, they don't actually know how to bloody write it now, do they?

Like in Canada, if a show gets commissioned in the UK, it pretty much makes it on the air. There aren't a lot of pilots made. Well, that's great. But what if you don't get it right out of the box? If you only have 6 or 8 episodes to find your show, and one guy's writing it and one Producer who doesn't write has to take the reins, and all the scripts are written before production starts, well...then what?

Indeed. I like the Brits because they can say things like "Indeed" and not sound twee. My Irish brethren can say other things and not sound twee. But they're pretty filthy and probably not fit for a family screenwriting blog like this one.

In the American system, by contrast, there is the miracle of "The Room."

I cannot say enough good things about "The Room."

The hardest part of writing TV is structure and story-breaking. You break the story, or the story breaks you. To be able to arc out a season with four or five very smart people is glorious. You catch mistakes before they become big, bad mistakes. You draw on differing areas of skill and expertise and experience. You get to talk about favorite old Simpsons episodes.

(Aside: Since every writer I'd ever met would eventually devolve to quoting Simpsons episodes, I once asked a couple of writers from the Simpsons what they talked about in their writing room. The guy looked very serious and answered, "The Rockford Files." True story. Factual? I leave that to you.)

I have read in large Canadian newspapers with writers who really should know better (and I've read this more than once) comparisons that suggest that a lot of American TV is bad because there are all these writers in the room, and it's kind of like how the Flintstones (the first movie, let's not even get started on the sequel) had 32 writers -- it just blands it out and makes it a mess. Inevitably, these articles throw their weight to the British side of the room -- shorter seasons mean less writers mean better stories mean better shows.

What this misses, of course, is the other, very, very, very important part of the American equation. The fail safe valve.

Daddy or Mommy is a writer.

The person whose hands every script passes through last is not a non-writing producer. They're a writer, a showrunner who knows the craft and the way of doing things because they came up as a writer, and apprenticed, and now know all aspects of the business.

When a show is very, very good: LOST, say, or DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES or even early WEST WING, the idea is that it *should* seem like a one man or one woman show. I have no doubt Aaron Sorkin did a lot of rewriting. And I'm sure that Marc Cherry runs a tight ship, and Alan Ball had something to say on every episode of SIX FEET.

But they were also smart enough to surround themselves with smart, smart writers and take advantage of the room. Even Joss Whedon needed Marti Noxon.

Which brings me to Canada. Oh, Canada.

Here we ping-pong back and forth. A season of 22 is usually out of reach economically. Some shows that are wildly successful, like DEGRASSI, come close. They generally aim for 13. Smaller specialties that commission may order 8 or 6 here and there. From the "don't get me started" file, the CBC, that wonderfully functional organization, has taken to ordering 6 packs of shows.

Now, the problem is that coming up with a series of 6 shows all around a set of characters is not really that less difficult than coming up with 13. 22 is way harder, but if you have that many, you'll be okay because the number of eps you get means you can hire more writers. Maybe even get a room up and running. Take advantage of economies of mind-scale. If you've got six -- you're pretty much going to be going for limited run, and you're going to try and hoard them, write as many scripts as you can yourself, since that's the only way you're going to make any money. Problem: no opportunity. Young writers don't get to apprentice, they don't learn the business, and the most insidious thing about the Canadian business: if you want to work you pretty much have to create your own show. (Which, by the way, is NOT A GREAT REASON TO CREATE YOUR OWN SHOW.)

I love TV. I've wanted to write TV for fifteen years. It's awesome that I'm doing it. Yay for me. I'm also currently developing my own shows. Now, this is...hard. This is hard, look at the time, I'm up doing this at 3am because I'm so freaked out and I'm a crazy person insomniac-hard. I'm working with great people on some of these shows. But in the back of my head, I think to myself, "how much easier would this be, if I could just staff on a few more shows first?" More experience, more chance to watch things in production and how they change, more chances to work in the room with kickass writers who'll show me new tricks...more chances to discover the ins and out of casting and post and the other 1001 ins and outs of the production process.

But the structural limitations of the industry in Canada allow for very little of that. And so I'm writing show bibles, thinking up characters and storylines, and hoping against hope that one of these irons actually catches fire.

This also means that we don't have a lot of good showrunners in this country. Seriously. It's a pretty short list.

But because there is this lingering idea that "British Drama is so good, and they only do six and they don't do writing rooms..." it's hard to sell people sometimes on what the room really can bring to a project...and it means that often the Producer doesn't have a writing background. TV is so hard to get done in Canada that often the Producer here is the guy who puts together the deal.

That's right. You heard me.

The money girl calls the shots. Which is great if you're Warren Buffet. But most of the money in Canada isn't Buffet-money, it's taxpayer money.

So the person in charge is the person who can work the grant applications the best. That sounds delicious, doesn't it kids?

(Cover thy ass caveat: I am NOT saying that you can't be a good showrunner if you're not a writer. But I'm saying that the job is SO hard, and SO many things can go wrong, that it's probably way, way better if the person in charge also understands how to write the show -- and how it all goes together. Also, I have worked with (and blogged about) people who were NOT writers -- network people, production company people -- who do understand how to make things better. I have been HUMBLED by the quality of notes I have gotten from production and network partners.)

(Get your dignity back snark: but then again, there's a reason why a lot of shows here are bad. When the hand wringing starts, someone inevitably suggests that it's the writing. And sometimes it is. But if it is, it's because there's so little opportunity that anyone with any talent eventually goes bat-crazy and sneaks over the border on a skidoo (which is kind of like a burrow, but you get to drink beer on it.))

I'm not saying that Dennis Potter wasn't brilliant. But anyone who saw CRACKER with Robbie Coltrane can't tell me that you didn't want to see more. Maybe THE OFFICE wouldn't have been good for 100 episodes. But man, I wish they'd done twenty-five.

And at night, I still dream of those ten or twelve extra FAWLTY TOWERS that never were.

Prison Break'in

I remember when this came on a few people said, "meh, kinda slow."

I can take this kind of slow just fine.

By the way...

Today is my birthday.

I demand popcorn necklaces and macaroni paintings.


I will be deserting this blog for the remainder of the week as I head up to a cottage for some much needed R&R. First of the summer which officially ends today, I know, everyone in Canada is intimately acquainted with the ending of seasons, trust me.

I will, of course, be taking my computer, my efforts to clear away all work before decamping up north having utterly and spectacularly failed.

Be Good.


Edit: Is there any more beautiful, maudlin new song out there right now that beats out Death Cab For Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark?"

The answer is, "no."

Who's got access to Overnights?

If you do, (I don't,) I want to hear the full story on MY NAME IS EARL.

I thought it was smart, very funny, engagingly paced, with witty writing and its number one strength was how it didn't judge its characters at all. And making Carson Daly the bringer of Karma? Genius.

But I think, sadly, that it's destined to be NBC's Arrested Development. And NBC's so far in the hole right now I don't think they can afford that.

I love that writers can still get smart and funny on the air, but I'm not convinced they can get 30 million Americans to watch. And that's the game, right?

Other sitcoms were a mixed bag, I'm afraid.

I wanted to like HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, especially after the article in the NYTimes painted the creators as such likable guys, but it's just a very anemic show with not enough laughs. Alyson Hannigan....sigh..... is just playing a PG-13 version of the flute girl from American Pie. And Neil Patrick Doogie is playing a dumbed-down riff on his much funnier "I'm playing myself" in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. "Suit up!" is not, and never shall be, a catchphrase. Actually, the show really kind of reminded me of the late and utterly unlamented The Single Guy. (Brrr.)

How I Met Your Mother also displays the scourge of the American half-hour comedy; the thing that kills most of 'em out of the gate -- and a trait that it shares with another CBS entry, OUT OF PRACTICE:

Bland leading men.

Holy Gods, what are the casting people in L.A. smoking these days? Sam Malone had edge. Tom Cavanagh had a puckishness about him. Zack Braff was a pleasing geek archtype. Even Eric McCormack had a bit of a weird energy...but both Mother and Out of Practice have these earnest central characters who I just do not want to watch. I do not care.

Here's a thought: if the guy is not as interesting as "your weird friend" in real life, (And I firmly believe that everyone has one "weird friend") don't build a frigging show around them.

Out of Practice was weird in so many ways; likajokes littering the landscape, the inexplicable attempt to render Paula Marshall not-hot...but I refuse to believe that Chris Lloyd and Joe Queenan can't do better, so I'll give it another shot.

Considering we're losing Winkler's hilarious Barry Zuckercorn from Arrested, and probably Channing's Abby Bartlet from West Wing, too -- this show cannot suck. But blando the series lead is a real problem. Come home Kelsey, all is forgiven.

Now where are those damn overnights?