Who's to Blame for Arrested Development?

Well, it doesn't look good for the Bluth Co.

FOX yesterday benched Arrested Development for the remainder of the November sweeps. VARIETY and others are reporting that the episode order was also cut from 22 to 13.

Now it's true that FOX has cut the episode order every year, but never this much. No one seems to be saying cancellation yet, but you have to assume the writing's pretty much on the wall.

I was one of four million tuned in to see the show's post-baseball return on Monday, and I laughed pretty hard the whole hour. But sadly, though those numbers weren't that far off what the show has done this season, two Very Bad Things combined to put the shiv to the further adventures of the Bluths: the show dragged down the ratings for Prison Break, which follows it...and number two: reruns of Prison Break in that timeslot tend to do better.

(By the way, Kitchen Confidential also got the same no-love treatment, but let's not dwell on the further misadventures of Ex-Alias and Buffy alums.)

There's going to be lots of blame-gaming coming down the pike in the next little while. So, really, who's to blame?

There will be tons of fanboy rage directed toward FOX. But I don't think that's fair. I was shocked when they renewed it at all. Gutsy move. They've done their best trying to get Arrested an audience. They haven't been stingy with timeslots or promo power. The show won Emmys galore, and they knew they had a prestige project on their hands. Compared to say, Family Guy, I can honestly say that FOX seemed to always treat Arrested with respect and with a genuine concern that the show didn't seem to connect with an audience.

Do you blame the creators for making a show that wasn't accessible?

Well, maybe. I don't know. I've got to confess that this entire third season, the show has felt to me like they're just doing things to make themselves laugh. Which is fine, because that's exactly my sense of humor and I find the show hilarious. But I can see how the show was impenetrable to people who hadn't tuned in before. And let's face it, if you can't get an audience for a show where Charlize Theron is your guest star, there has got to be something else going on.

Do you blame the audience?

I'm sure you're going to see some of these articles. Critics hate it when people don't watch the things they praise -- even though that's hardly a rare occurrence. Here in Canada, there will be the inevitable examples that point to Arrested's failure to thrive as an example of how dumb or unsophisticated the US viewing audience is. (Seriously, there's a small and persistent population of cultural elitists who love playing that game. This, in a country that played Variety shows in Prime Time with people playing fiddles into the 1990's. Tommy Hunter. Rita MacNeil. Brrrr.)

Arrested was a dense show. It moved fast and furiously, it didn't circle back and include you in. I watched my parents watch it one night, and they were...completely...utterly....totally lost. Actually, it was kind of sweet.

But at the same time, I feel pretty leery about blaming the audience because they didn't like a show. LOST is a hit, and it's smart. But it also appeals to a very large group of people -- probably lots who aren't smart. Arrested demanded that you follow, and that you know things, and that you were quick.

I went to the Genie Awards a few years ago (they're like Canada's Oscars, except, um...soooooo Not) and, if you can picture this, filmmaker after filmmaker got up and basically berated the audience (who wasn't watching on tv) for not going to see these "great" Canadian movies that were winning all the awards. To them, it was fully and completely the audience's fault. Imagine their impertinence, not showing up to see the nominated masterpieces! I wanted to throw up.

Nope -- blaming the audience isn't gonna get you anywhere, son.

So the thing I keep coming back to is this: maybe it's no one's fault.

Network TV is in such a squeeze right now that I can't exactly blame them for benching a comedy that underperforms, especially when they give every opportunity for it to catch on and find an audience. Seinfeld started out disastrously too, after all. NBC gambled and it paid off eventually. FOX gave Arrested the good ride, and it just didn't pan out.

And 4 million viewers, or 5 million viewers -- is that really such a small number? If the real estate wasn't so expensive, Arrested wouldn't be such a disappointment. We crow over the Daily Show and Chappelle's show and The Shield and Battlestar Galactica -- but those shows don't reach nearly the amount of people as Arrested did on its worst week.

And it's not like My Name is Earl or The Office are burning up the airwaves over on NBC, either. Scrubs is smart, and hilarious, and it's never had a big audience.

Maybe it's just time to admit that comedy, unlike drama, is such a hard medium, and so dependent on taste, that the idea of a wide-appeal comedy might be a thing of the past. In a world where everyone's experience is fragmented, when we all have different touchstones and obsessions, maybe there's no middle ground to make that broad appeal comedy TV series anymore.

Or maybe Americans really do want to see more fat guys with skinny wives. I don't know.

I'm just glad Arrested got its three seasons, however truncated. And you bet I'll pull the chair up to the TV the next time I see Mitch Hurwitz has a show.

That Wacky Josh Friedman

Just look at what that scamp is up to.

Where do you start?

It's not an easy question when you're trying to design an original television series.

First there are the numbers. If you're doing a half hour, you're probably trying to come up with a three act story that tops out at twenty-one minutes of screen time. If you're doing an hour, you're aiming for about 42-44 mins of story (it's different in Canada and the US) and either four or five acts.

Now, here's another number: 56. That's the number of years narrative dramas have played into people's homes. (That's taking an arbitrary date of 1950 as a time when TV started to be in a lot of homes. In Canada, it would be 1952. As I'm learning from John Doyle's delightful new book, A Great Feast of Light, if you're Irish that date's sometime in the early 1960's. Anyway, go with me here.) The point is that we're now into the fourth generation of stories being written for television. With every year, the audience has seen more plots. And hybrids of plots. And post-modern deconstructions of plots. Anyone need a mimosa yet?

So you're trying to come up with a show. (In the USA, if you're trying to do this, you're likely a writer with a whole lot of money and a shiny career, which really does beg the question, "what the hell are you doing reading a blog by some poor bumpkin in Canada?"

What an excellent question. "I'm sorry, I really can't comment on that as it's the subject of an ongoing investigation." This is how I think we should all answer uncomfortable questions from now on. But I digress.)

In Canada and I think in some other places around the world, the above isn't the case. In Canada you have many mid-level writers trying to pitch shows because getting a development deal to write six or thirteen shows is often the only way that you can get work. It's a little nutty, but whatever.

So - your show. Presumably you've got yourself a kickass concept, (the premise) and you've populated the ensemble with interesting and compelling characters who read as something other than an amalgam of cliches over those 56 years of television burned into your bones like white phosphorus (let it not be said that I'm not current.)

Maybe you even have a first draft of your bible. Now you want to sit down and come up with your pilot episode.

And the question I asked in the title of the post immediately pops up. Where. Do. You. Start?

Premise vs. Backstory

It's not an easy question to answer. If you've read any screenwriting book, you probably know the dictum to always "enter late, and leave early." Well, how does that apply to a pilot?

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to how you define your Premise, and how you define your Backstory.

When people talk about a "Premise Pilot," they mean a show that tells the story of how so-and-so came to be. Moonlighting is a premise pilot since it tells the story of how Maddie and David started working together. Friends is partly a premise pilot -- because it tells the story of how Rachel comes to be part of the group. Interestingly, lots of the other relationships are already in play, and clearly defined. You don't learn how Chandler and Joey met -- that's in the backstory. Frasier is a premise pilot - his Dad moves in with him, and they hire Daphne Moon, and Niles immediately falls in love with her. In the British Coupling, Steve is dating Jane at the beginning and has fallen for Susan by the end - what has been before is no longer, we are into a new reality. You've told the story of how your premise came to be. Compare that to The West Wing - Bartlet has been Mr. President for a year, and the staff are already all in place in their jobs. The Trailer Park Boys are up to no good in the very first episode. In The Office, BBC Crew is already following David Brent and the poor drones of Wernham Hogg all around Slough, and Tim is already ass over teakettle for Dawn. That's not a premise pilot. You're just thrown in the middle and asked to catch up.

I got thinking about this partly because I'm in the middle of developing three pilots, and partly due to a convo they've been having about an existing show over on another site.

Brollywood Does Weeds

Over at Brollywood they've been pondering the pilot of Weeds. (I know it's old news to you Yanquis, but up here North of the 49th Parallel we're only on episode 4 or so. I've seen the whole series and love it. How have I seen the whole thing? NEVER YOU MIND.)

Here's the relevant passage:

But damn, it takes off at a brisk clip. Normally the first episode of a show like that, you’d expect to start off before all this happened. Meet the happy housewife, blissfully unaware of what fate has in store for her. We’d meet the husband, see how wonderful everything is. Then at the end of the first act, the husband would keel over dead. Oh no, what will she do? She finds out there’s no money, she’s desperate. She somehow gets hooked up with her supplier and, at the end of the ep. she plunges into the world of dealing pot to bored suburban hypocrites.

That’s what’s called a premise pilot. It tells the “origin story” for the show. If this was a movie, it would basically be act one. We start with the protagonist in her ordinary world, then we have an inciting incident - her husband dies. She reacts to that incident by leaving the ordinary world and crossing the threshold into the extraordinary world of the story. That would be your act one turning point.

But not this time. The very first scene of this pilot, we meet the protagonist at a sort of PTA meeting where she’s debating with her best friend about whether they should remove all sugary soft drinks from the school vending machines or spare the diet soda. It’s got nothing to do with anything, except maybe to characterize the friend. All the stuff that sets up the show has already happened - we never meet the husband because he’s already dead. We just get hints in the whispered gossip among the women in the audience wondering how she’s doing.

Similarly, the question of how she got introduced to these drug wholesalers from a very different side of the tracks, and how it occurred to her that the thing to do under the circumstances was start dealing pot is almost completely ignored. She’s just there in the kitchen, with pot all over the table, while they bag it up and weigh it and banter with each other. There was one quick reference to someone’s brother hooking them up or something - it went by so quickly that I mostly missed it.

The logistics of how she found her suppliers, I’m not worried about. Obviously they found each other somehow, because there she is. But the whole “I’m going to sell pot to support my family” thing is another story. That’s a pretty huge leap, and I’m not sure we can be expected to buy it just because they show her dealing. There’s a weird feeling about it, and I want to know what other options she considered and rejected beforehand.

Still, they mostly got away with totally skipping the setup and just dropping us in the middle of act two. TV is getting more and more sophisticated all the time, and relying more and more on the sophistication of the audience.

Now for the record, I agree with Sullivan's contention that the audience is becoming more sophisticated. And also that stories are being told faster and faster. In fact, if there's a persistent weakness in Canadian development, I think it's how little the people here seem to trust the audience. Things are always being over-explained.

(Shit, here he goes, off on a tangent again: I promise this one will be quick. Three examples: If you watch the commentary of the pilot for E.R. there is a lot of talk about how the network was freaking out about all the medical jargon. It moved too fast and no one would understand all these crazy tests. People would become confused and tune out. Instead, it changed the medical drama forever. Example 2: the film Rounders. All sorts of arcane poker talk, none of it explained. No 'window in' if you didn't understand the jargon. It made the film fresh and real, and oh, by the way, anticipated the poker craze by at least three years. Example number three: When I was a resident at the Canadian Film Centre, we were lucky enough to have a visit from Peter Casey, the Executive Producer and one of the creators of Frasier. He told the story that when they were designing the show, they knew they wanted Frasier and Niles to be erudite, and make jokes about literature, opera, and the like. For the people they were suppposed to be, it was a no-brainer, but the network was nervous. They didn't want to turn the audience off or make them feel dumb. Casey and his partners responded that those jokes would just be "10 percenters," as in 10 percent of the audience would get them, and they'd be happy with that. It wouldn't turn anyone off, because there would be enough for everyone to laugh at throughout the show. Well, after Frasier was on the air for 4 or 5 weeks, they got some interesting feedback. They found that somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of the audience was getting the 10 percenters. He paused at this point and took a sip of water. "Which begs the question," he smiled, "the shows that won't go for the 10 percenters -- what level are they being aimed at?")

Where Brollywoodster and I part ways is on this question of what is Premise and What is Backstory? I would argue that the impulse to start the show with the happy housewife, and having her deal pot by the end of the show, would be such a wrenching, disconnected, awful slog that the show would have never gotten past the pilot. Jenji Kohan probably would have gotten a mountain of stupid notes saying that the whole thing was too unrealistic. You would have to deal with all sorts of things that aren't dramatically interesting.

Then there's the problems of characters acting like characters and how do you arc out a season? In Weeds, Mary Louise Parker is clearly frustrated and grieving, but has started to try and pick up the pieces of her life. If the husband dies in Episode One, you have all sorts of problems: the grief of the family is raw, and full of histrionics. That kind of grief may play well come Emmy time, but it's not as dramatically interesting as aftermath and trying to start over. How do you make the leap from grief to we have no money, to I'm going to deal pot? How do you have her date someone in episode 9 or 10 if the audience thinks, "you should still be mourning?"

Everything in the above paragraph is the basis for a Lifetime movie, but none of it resembles the series Weeds. Weeds is about the contradictions between the suburban ideals, and the "real world" of dealing pot. It's a great metaphor, or satire, or whatever. And by starting the pilot with the complicated issues of backstory out of the way, Jenji Kohan was able to deliver Showtime a show that did reflect what the rest of the series would be like.

Instead, you have a very cagey first scene with Mary Louise Parker on the fringes of the PTA meeting. We see her attachment to suburban affectation by the four dollar iced coffee she's sipping. We see the shallowness of the concerns af the Agrestic wives, and the climate of gossip that surrounds the "new widow." And for good measure, we get a nice dollop of wicked satire -- she'll argue to the wall against sugared drinks in the schools, but, oh, by the way, she's a pot dealer.

Deciding what is backstory and what is premise is really difficult sometimes, especially when what happens in your backstory is compelling. Network people, particularly, will sometimes try to push you toward including it. But you have to keep in mind "what is your template going to be?" Ie: What is going to happen every week. If the premise pilot strays too far from that template, you have got to seriously think, and re-think, and re-think again, the story that you're going to tell in that first episode.

For my money, the smartest thing The West Wing ever did was throw you right in the middle. Because down the road, it gave you four or five episodes where you could flash back and explore the backstory once the audience already knew and loved the characters.
I'm not sure I would have ever tuned into Rescue Me, if it had shown what happened to Tommy and Jimmy on 9/11.

Here's another current Canadian example: DaVinci's City Hall. Yup, it probably would have been pretty interesting to see how Dominic DaVinci fought and won an election, but that's not where you want the stories to be every week. Haddock et al were intersted in how DaVinci exercises power, not how he campaigns to get it. So yup, you've got a fascinating backstory; but it's not your show.

In the current scripts I'm developing, one is a premise pilot, because the template of the show is students living together in a residence, and how that changes them. So you need to see the people they are first, and how they come together.

I've struggled a bit more with the hour-long show I'm developing. It's set in an office, in a field where there haven't been a lot of shows set before. (or, um...any.) I wanted to try and avoid having to over-explain things in the episode, but in the end I've gone with "it's so-and-so's first day," because I felt that it would help the audience to see the story through a fresh set of eyes. But at the same time, I'm not sure it's a premise pilot, because it's not about how the place is changed by this new person coming onto the scene: it's more about how that new person experiences the place when she's thrown headfirst into the environment.

Anyway. Where do you start? Big question.

Unfortunately, I can't address it any further since it's the subject of an ongoing investigation.

The Struggle for the CBC ...well, um...duh.

Almost fifteen years ago, I was working one of my first jobs in television. I was a Researcher/Story editor on a ridiculous call in show on a small Public Educational TV Network here in Canada. (It was literally a phone in show. That's right. Radio on TV.)

Anyway, the host was this irascible old Newfie broadcaster named Harry Brown. Harry had been around forever. He had stories for everything and opinions to match. Sometimes Harry was a bit much, but he was our host and he'd been in the business forever, and I was all of twenty-one. So I listened.

One time we were on a remote in Ottawa. (It may have been radio on TV, but at least this time it was radio on TV on location.) We were driving from the University of Ottawa back to our hotel. On the drive we passed by the CBC Headquarters in Ottawa. Harry was an old CBC type from way back. He pointed at the building and turned to me and shook his head and said, "There it is. CBC Headquarters. One thousand people work in that building. And the place is completely innocent of camera or microphone."

I couldn't believe that such a huge building could house so many employees that had nothing to do with the actual work of broadcasting radio or TV. I was young, and obviously had a lot to learn about the CBC.

My thoughts returned to that day several times during the recent eight week lockout of creative employees by CBC Management. The incident made the CBC a joke around the world -- I mean, the national broadcaster basically shut down for two months.

The reverberations from that are ongoing, but one of the most depressing things to come out of the chicanery and bloviating that surrounded the "labor disruption" (to use the management weasel-phrase) was the sense that the CBC will probably never be fixed, because the very people charged to fix it are...um...the problem.

An excellent article in last Sunday's Toronto Star sketches the enormity of the problem, and offers a pretty provocative solution.

Which of course will never, ever, ever happen.

In some parts of the CBC, there is one manager for every 3 employees.

As a writer, I have never pitched a program to CBC. I don't even know who I'd pitch. I mean, I know names. There are six or seven of them. But who does what? Comedy doesn't seem to only do comedy. Some miniseries are done by the series department. There are TV series that didn't go through the drama series department.

Who do you call? Beats me.

Read the article here.

Orange on a Toothpick

Below, in the rollicking comment free-for-all, Jutra writes:

I am attending my first casting session this week.. What does one look for at these?? Does anybody know what makes a good actor for TV?

That's easy.

A huge head.

I am hardly the first to notice this, but I will for the sake of the argument, defer to the great early Scottish casting genius, Stuart MacKenzie:

"Would ya look at the size of that kid's head! It's the size of a planetoid and it has its own weather system! ... I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Aye, now that was offsides, now wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow."

South Park doesn't have things far off. Neither do the makers of those bobblehead dolls. In my experience, the most amazing thing about your exemplary TV actors is they seem to be bred for it. Not just to be unnaturally good looking (though the "plain girl" in any TV movie is usually someone most of us would give our eyeteeth to date) but also to be below-average in height, in a proportion that ... and you'll have to give me slack here, I'm doing this from memory ... roughly corresponds to DaVinci's Golden Ratio: Uh...I think it's roughly 20% legs, 10% torso, 50% head.

The eagle eyed among you will notice that that does not add up to 100%.

That's because the rest is hair.

Seriously, TV actors are a huge-headed, expressive bunch. Exaggerated eyes or huge mouths also seem to dominate -- especially in the newscaster division.

Steven Colbert mourned the firing of CNN's Aaron Brown last week because he was the last regular anchor guy with glasses. I also can't help but remark that the man who helped us through 9/11 helped us by stirring example. The terrorists who brought the Towers down could do nothing to dent Aaron Brown's head. Damn you, Anderson Cooper, and your Vanderbilty regular-headedness.

Lest you think I'm being glib, I submit to you a partial list of actors whom I've seen up close, or interviewed in my previous journalist life, who fit the big-head stereotype:

Sarah Polley, Will Ferrell, Nicholas Campbell, Charlton Heston (huge), Kevin Smith, Jill Hennessey, Kevin Sorbo, Patrick Stewart, William Shatner, James Doohan, Jeri Ryan, Penn Jillette, Martin Sheen, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Garner, Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Tilly, Milla Jovovich, Mike Myers, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Mark McKinney, Dave Foley, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas, Geena Davis, Rachel McAdams

And the list goes on.

Is it that the camera likes the big head'uns? Maybe. Is this changing with the move to 16:9 from 4:3 tv sets? Still too early to tell. I think a bigger change is going to be the shift to HD. A friend of mine is an editor in Toronto, and a couple of years ago he edited a couture special for Fashion Television. I watched it since I was just about the only guy he knew with an HD set. Two things disturbed me. In HD it was really, really easy to tell which of the models were dangerously underweight and sickly, not sexy, looking...and Joan Collins.

Joan Collins in HD almost ended my life. For real. Brr.

So there are other factors, Jutra. Sure, a certain charisma, smarts and flexibility in the audition, the ability to take direction, even a certain ineffable sense that maybe the needy actor in front of you isn't totally crazy and might be a decent person needing a break...all of those intangibles are important.

But if the field's crowded and you're pressed for time and can only consider one factor:

Go with the great big head.

The Holmes Bros. Bring it on Home

One of the questions I inevitably ask writing friends of mine is this, "do you write naked, or do you use the crutch?"

That's not nearly as interesting as it sounds.

I have two computers. A beloved, G3 Imac lamp which is ensconsed in my office, and my G4 Powerbook Laptop which made the trek to South Africa with me. (Though it's bothering me now because it's got a venting problem that means I often have to run if off juice with the battery out.) I bounce back and forth between the two of them. If the day's not going well, and procrastination is winning, I'll grab the laptop and head out. If it's rainy or cold and I'm making good speed, I'll stay in the office and stare out at Lake Ontario as I brood over the next page.

But I always use the crutch.

For me, the crutch is music. Always has been. It's forever on in the background no matter what I do. I've got it down to a science now that I can't analyze too deeply lest I rob the ritual of its power. Suffice it to say that there are certain scenes or themes that demand Ben Webster. While writing Charlie Jade in South Africa, I found myself haunting the jazz section of CD Wherehouse at the V&A Waterfront. I'd pick up the latest by Winston Mankunku Ngozi, Hugh Masakela or Andile Yenana, pay way more than I've ever paid for CD's in my life, then drive back to my rented flat in Seapoint in the production car they'd given me, (which I not-so-fondly christened "Old Paint." One day I'll tell you the true story of the day Old Paint died.) Once the SA Jazz fired up my Ipod, then I could write. (To my eternal shame, I also listened to a whole lot of Keane, proving the adage that when you're far from home and lonely, sometimes you need something even more twee than Coldplay.) In the throes of my last heartbreak, whatever I was working on at the time, I made only one vow to myself: thou shalt only listen to Dylan's Blood on the Tracks once in a twenty-four hour period. Lately, there's been nefarious action composed to The Killers or the new Depeche Mode.

Occasionally the crutch takes its toll, and I need to go back and re-jig. More than once, I've found a character taking on the slightly sonorous, dulcet and oh-so-English-Aus-L.A. tones of Nic Harcourt. (KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic is an afternoon staple in the Condo of Creativity and Reason.)

The reality is that I can't imagine writing without the crutch. It may be a carryover from the days with roommates, it may be the fact that (as several of my friends can attest) I come from a family where the concept of the Inside Voice is not as well developed as it perhaps should be -- but not listening to music when I write is simply a non-starter. To attempt to construct drama without it would leave me alone in the white noise of my head. And that way, reader, lies madness indeed.

The other value of being a music partisan is that you can find yourself in the tide of cross-inspiration. Such was the scene last night when I took in the legendary Holmes Brothers at Toronto's venerable, beat up and beautiful Horseshoe Tavern.

I've been in an okay place in the last few days with my various projects. Ideas are flowing, collaborations seem to be hitting their stride, and notes have generated ideas and directions that are reaping great rewards in the two pilots I'm writing. But to be able to shake and shimmy at the sight of three old men brewing a seamless weave of blues, funk and gospel: well, it just twists your own creative ideas around and shoots them off into another place entirely. I think it was halfway through He'll Have to Go last night when, BAM! Three thoughts entered my head. Two different shows; three nuggets, three ideas that reframe and recontextualize both projects. Where do ideas come from? I have no goddamn clue.

But last night, they came courtesy of the Holmes Brothers. (And I'm not even going to get started on Ornette Coleman, who I saw last week for the first time. The guy makes seventy-five look easy.)

Y'all can have your Ashlee Simpsons. I'll take the crutch.

*Interesting Aside Alert*


I was all set to try and link the "Ashlee Simpson" above with some interesting photos from a hilarious protest I witnessed outside her Muchmusic appearance Tuesday. Sadly, though they had great signs and everything -- protesting the "manufactured" nature of the pop tart, and the sheer fakery of the machine behind her, not a single Toronto media outlet seems to have mentioned the incident. Nope. Can't lose the opportunity to do the big-bend-over sell!

If she hadn't wigged out at a McDonald's later the same night, Ashlee's Much visit would have gone down as a pure P.R. triumph. (Actually, I'm ashamed to admit it, but the video's damn funny. Read about it here.)

It's Hockey Night In Canada

...and for the first time, the CBC is broadcasting the game in HD.

It's...


...beautiful.

Mug

Am I smug here? Satisfied? Drunk? All three?



This was a lovely, slightly rainy night in May in Manhattan at my cousin Beth's wedding. The next day I saw a matinee of The Pillowman and then I spent all day Monday in the NY Public library trying to crank out a draft for a deadline Tuesday.

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

"Mom. Dad. Sit Down. I have to tell you something...I'm a Writer..."

I've mentioned a couple of times before that I teach a class at a local University here in Toronto. This year, the class isn't very onerous. It's got the vaguely pretentious course title of "Master Writers Workshop." In reality, the class pretty much boils down to "Professional TV writers come in and bare their souls about how and why the hell they do this."

I don't teach for the money. (Thank Dog, because it's like, beer money at best.) But it's extremely useful, because it gives me a weekly window into what a bunch of 20 year olds think - and it also forces me to think about and try to articulate what I do. I've learned quite a bit about writers I thought I knew already by leading them through questions for this class.

Striking the right balance is often the hardest part. Because you don't want to misrepresent the writing life. But when you talk about the reality, it's easy to seem negative. Especially in Canada.

When I'm procrastinating, occasionally I'll troll the sites of aspiring screenwriters and wonder, "why, exactly, do you want to do this?"

It's a question that's so important. And I'm not sure it's one that's answered truthfully or honestly very often.

I've yet to meet someone who got into writing for the money who actually made a go of it. Yes, I know how much Shane Black made for selling Lethal Weapon. Yup, I know that spec sales throw dollar sign dreams into the eyes of any doe-eyed newcomer.

But the reality is that you may very well polish that screenplay for seven years. It may indeed be good. And it might sell. But how much work did it take? And if you really wanted to make money -- if that was the goal, then wouldn't some currency trader route be, I don't know -- easier?

I've got a cousin who's a Very Big Deal in the financial world. He's damn good at his job. I met him for a drink at the Royal York Hotel when he was in town not so long ago, and we had a great old time. He's decent, a good guy, a very good businessman...he works seventy hours a week and oh... he's a millionaire.

I wouldn't trade places with him for the world.

The truth is, most writers I know that achieve some degree of success are doubters. They constantly doubt their material. It's wrenching to send a script out there. You never feel confident about it. At least most writers I know who are good don't.

(By the way, this is the root of why I think writers -- especially TV scribes, need to really stay away from fansites. Cause that stuff can F you up proper, g.)

I know others. I know people who really think that what they do is just...great. Every finished script will change the world. Every script is the greatest thing they've ever done.

And without fail, it's the doubters who get further ahead. I tested this theory in a convo with my agent last night. He agreed immediately. "When I get a script, if the person talks about how they're not totally happy with it, it's inevitably better than the person who says, "this is the best thing I've ever done."

My agent is cool. He has long hair and everything.

So doubt works. So does finishing. The main thing that separates people I know who actually make a living writing from those who don't is that the ones who do are finishers. And the way they finish is by focusing on small, realistic signpost goals, and chipping away.

The analogy I can think of is that there are a lot of people out there who think of a writing career like it's winning the World Series of Poker. In reality, it's more like being a grinder...playing one game at a time, for hours on end, just chipping, chipping, trying to get by.

There's a price to be paid for all this. You do spend a lot of time alone. You sometimes find yourself feeling disconnected even when you're out. You have to step back and observe more often than you participate. You actually have to indulge a level of self-involvement that most people would try to avoid. (Not as much as actors, but still.)

There's a lot about this life that's actually quite negative, on balance.

So why do it?

Well, here's the rub:

Because I can't imagine doing anything else.

I'm serious. I may call one of my writer friends and have a full on bitch session laced with bitterness, with a side of bitterness. We can beat each other up til we're whacking away on some great big bitterness pinata. And then one or the other will say, "well, at least we're living the dream."

It may be a peculiar Canadian trait, to define yourself negatively like this, but the writers I know and respect all have a somewhat fatalistic view of what they do. They don't do it for lofty reasons. They don't do it for fame or even for fortune. There are a lot of petty humiliations, snubs, and indignities to suffer along the way, but in the end you do it because, if you don't, then what the hell else are you going to do?

In many ways, I think you don't decide to be a writer. I think you come out as a writer. It's not what you do, it's who you are. I know that sounds glib. But in times that are dark, I have often taken comfort from the fact that I know I would never be happy doing anything else.

So maybe the first thing you should ask yourself if you're thinking of trying to be a writer (not write on the side, not be a waiter who's working on a screenplay, not an actor who's working on a novel, but a real, honest-to-goodness-this-is-how-I-make-my living writer writer) is this:

"Could I be happy doing anything else?"

If the answer's yes, you should strongly consider doing that thing.

If not, well, welcome. Maybe you're a writer after all.

"We're here. We fear. Get used to it!"

J.D. Come Home. All is Forgiven!

You Yanquis down there in Bizarro-America (I'm sorry, I've finally snapped it: as a guy born proudly in the Bronx, a Florida voter since 1988, (absentee election law: look it up) I gotta say I've finally decided that the only logical explanation for what's going on now is that somehow, somewhere I went through a wormhole, and just like when Superman met his craggy-faced, intellectually-hamstrung doppelganger, I'm no longer looking at the United States at all. But that's the kind of aside one expects from an entirely different Dennis, so...) might know John Roberts as the good looking White House correspondent for CBS News.

But up here in Toronto, we have fonder memories. Once upon a time, John was J.D. And J.D. Roberts, among other things, was the host of a groundbreaking Canadian music show produced by Citytv called The New Music. How groundbreaking? The New Music showed videos and treated Rock and Roll seriously years before MTV was even a dream. It was one of the first places to feature The Police, The Clash, Elvis Costello and countless others - in freewheeling, serious, depth-ridden interviews. J.D. interviewed rock stars with a serious bent, and had the feathered hair and denim to prove it.

Sadly, it's been years since Citytv did anything that innovative, but that's a subject for another time.

One of my fondest memories (long before I got into TV) was being an irascible teenager, snapped up on the Peach Schnapps at some concert at Ontario Place, following J.D. around the arena. Every time he tried to do his standup, we'd let him get ten seconds in before shouting "We love you, J.D," and wrecking the take. One of my friends flashed her 16 year old breasts at him. It was all in good fun.

Well, you can take the Boy out of the Rock and Roll, but it's so much harder to take the Rock and Roll out of the boy.

Read this.

J.D., we salute you. You frickin magnificent bastard. Don't worry about the mealy-mouthed apology. We know the score in Bizarro-America. The point is, after years of leaving us wondering, we now know the truth:

You're still not afraid to give'r!

I KNEW they were a bunch of pinkos

Scooter, Cheney, Dubya, Rove, the whole lot of 'em.

Courtesy of Salon.

Those wacky local TV types!

Before turning to writing full time, I worked in a couple of TV stations for the better part of a decade. Occasionally, you wonder if trading in security and the opportunity for camaraderie was worth it.

Then someone reminds you of the reality.

The Onion gets it right here.

I laughed so hard at that one that coffee came out my nose.

And it hurt.

Then, whilst EgoGoogling this afternoon (yeah. I'm weak. Like you don't do it.) I came across this.

Remember, kids, on the Internet, nothing ever goes away, and nobody knows you're a dog.

The Virtual Poster, or When Characters Suck

Alex over at Complications Ensue thinks that Meredith Grey is a drip.

He's got a point. Good old Ellen Pompeo was far more engaging in the lovely and underrated film Moonlight Mile. When it comes to characters on Grey's Anatomy, ex-lingerie model Izzie and Ottawa's own Sandra Oh's Christina Yang blow her off the map. Even the Prince of Darkness Alex has, of late, been more interesting. (But it's still weird to see that My Fat Obnoxious Fiance Dude behind the bar - but I digress.)

The truth is that you're taking a hell of a chance whenever you name a show after your main character. I've always thought the main reason why Ally McBeal flamed out so quickly was because, well, people kind of didn't like Ally McBeal. Where would The West Wing be right now if it was called "President Bartlet," or, God Forbid, if E.R. had been "That Cute and Soulful Dr. Ross."

The main thing driving Meredith Grey at the outset of Grey's Anatomy was the fact that she slept with a dude in a one night stand. Interesting. She later found out, by the rules of co-inky-dink that he was her boss. Very Interesting. Then at the end of the pilot, we found out that her Mom, a famous surgeon, was squirrelled away in a nursing home with early onset Alzheimers. Muy Bueno Interestingo!

But now -- Dr. McDreamy and Meredith's illicit affair is out, and over...and everyone knows about Mom. The things that made Meredith interesting were unsustainable. Now you're stuck with a main character -- a narrator, for godsakes, who is nowhere near as interesting as the other characters.

The amazing thing, of course, is that this is not an unusual problem in TV. TV is constantly putting up shows that are meant to be focused around one character, that fall quickly to the wacky or more interesting friend syndrome. I've always been of the opinion that the least interesting characters on Will & Grace were Will & Grace. As for this season's offerings, you see sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Out of Practice, where the bland leads make you almost want to dive for the remote.

You've got a special burden where you have a titular character. On Charlie Jade, we were constantly having to remind ourselves that the main character's name was in the title -- and no matter how you liked the bad guy or how cool that scene would be -- look at the title and bite it back.

There are examples from the current crop of TV where you can see them doing it right. No one, I think, would argue that My Name Is Earl's most compelling character is Mr. Hickey himself. Even Fox's Bones, a flawed show at the best of times, has a main character, name in title, who is the main reason to watch.

All of this means something when you're thinking about creating shows. The not-interesting main character is not as uncommon a problem as you think. I'm involved in two projects right now where that problem is being attacked in different ways.

In the first, the network exec's note came back that the main character wasn't interesting enough. To young or particularly frustrated writers, this is like getting a note that says, "raise the stakes" or "what does so and so want" -- it's enough to make you see that little spot of blood behind your eye. Yes, Virginia, that is an aneurism. Brace yourself...here comes Mr. Floor...

But the thing is, the note was right on the money. You can't just say that your main character is going to be the bedrock of the series. You have to earn that. You have to create a nuanced, probably flawed character who still has audience appeal.

When you figure out the magic bullet for that, please let me know.

The other project I'm doing, I originally conceived as starring a Young Female Protagonist. I worked through a series Bible and a Pilot with that in mind.

But the more that I worked through it, the more the notes came back not about my main character, but about the other characters, two of them in particular. I realized that I'd spent most of my time figuring out how this Main Character related to two other characters in the firm where she worked. (And I'm not telling you what kind of firm because it's just too frickin good.)

What happened was, the Virtual Poster was lying to me.

The Virtual Poster is how you imagine your series characters come promo time. You imagine a cast photo or a movie-like onesheet, or a DVD Box cover. How does it look? Is it a bunch of people all standing in a line? Ensemble show. Is it one person way out in front, with other people standing in the background? You have a lead.

What gradually evolved for me was the idea that in my virtual poster, there were three people out front. The woman whom I thought was my lead was in the centre, but the two people beside her were just as prominent. I had created a triangle. And once that conceptual divide was crossed, everything came easier.

I think the reason why the original Star Trek is still the most beloved (and the one that can be rerun forever without the ratings dropping below a certain level) is because the troika they put up there was interesting. Those three you wanted to watch. Not so much with the other ensembles.

By the way, the more studious among you may have noticed what I just did there. I punted on the issue of the main character.

Aint I a stinker?

David E Kelley hates five acts, too.

I realize that out here on the hustings, in faraway Canada, we hear things a little late sometimes. But it seems like the move to five act hour dramas doesn't have lotsa fans in the creative community, either.

Exhibit A: David E. Kelley, speaking at the ABC panel on the Summer Press Tour back on June 27th:

"I don't like the five-act structure at all," Kelley said. "I think it is terrible. If there's anything that makes me envious of cable television and wanting to run to that world, it's the intrusion of commercial breaks. When we're down to eight minute acts before a Dodge Ram commercial comes pounding in, it's out a burden on us to try to compete with these commercials. We've got to now bang in after those commercials to try and get the viewer's attention back."

Kelley said the more commercial breaks there are in a one-hour drama, the more difficult it becomes to tell a story, "especially when you're trying to tell quiet stories, emotional storylines. It's easy to come in after a commercial break and have someone stab someone with a knife, and get back the viewer's attention. But when you're trying to come in with a softer scene, a scene that's maybe based more on character, it's just getting harder and harder."

Kelley called on the networks to come up with a solution to both the number of breaks and the number of commercial minutes, which have cut down on the storytelling time in each show. "When I was doing L.A. Law (in the '80s), I think we had 48 minutes [of storytelling time] per hour. Now we're down to 41 minutes to the hour, and it's a terrible trend."

Source is Mediaweek. Link's here.

How I missed this, I'll never know. Must be the Guinness.

Video.Google.Com

Procrastination just entered the 21st century.

"I got a fever ... and the only cure is MORE COW BELL."

Go check it out. I'll wait.

What Writers can Learn from George W. Bush...Part Deux

So Georgie Boy withdrew Harriet Miers as Supreme Court Justice. He says it's because of a dispute about "White House Documents." She's the lawyer, see? She'd rather withdraw then put Presidential Privilege in jeopardy.

Do your best Dr. Evil with me now:

Riiiiggggght.

A few days ago, Charles Krauthammer suggested this as a way out.

Then on Monday, this happened.

When George W. Bush was asked this morning about a report that the White House is thinking through contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers' nomination, he responded with what we thought was a non sequitur: Rather than confirming or denying the report, the president said that he will refuse to release documents reflecting the advice Miers has given him as a member of his White House staff.

That Georgie sure is silver-tongued. It's like someone asked him not to think about elephants, and the first thing he says is "Elephant!"

While the Beltway waits for indictments, and the whole administration seems in tatters, it's interesting that the lies continue, so battered, anemic, and laughable that only the fiercest dittohead right wingers could stomach them.

His audience is the nation. Your audience is your reader, and eventually, if what you're doing gets made -- whoever sees it. You do have a responsibility to them. In its most simple state, it's this: they agree to give you an hour, or two, of their time: you agree to give them an engaging story. You agree not to cheat to get to the end of it. You agree that your plot will logically progress, that your characters will not change without explanation, that your resolution will be earned and not come out of nowhere. In short, you agree not to lie.

Because if you lie often enough, even the most dedicated audience falls away.

Frankly, I'm shocked, shocked! he didn't raise the terror alert. Surely someone must be planning something? After all, they attacked us on 9/11...

Four Acts, Five Acts, Six Acts, More!

There was a discussion of this over at WriterAction. A couple of showrunners reported that, yes, there is a deliberate choice at some networks to change the act structure. The idea is to get rid of the ads at the end of a show, so that people don't change channels before the next show starts.

Of course, those ads have to go somewhere. And where they go is into a newly created act break.

Best,
Jacob Sager Weinstein

All righty, then.

This is not happy news in Sticksville. I've been going through an old sitcom/old TV drama phase lately, watching a lot of older shows. It's interesting, because the old drama model, with slower moving stories, is hard to watch. But with the comedies, it's amazing to see the amount of space one had to tell a story, and be funny. These days, a half hour is barely 21 minutes. An hour is 44 or 45 if you're lucky. It's hard to craft any kind of meaningful story in that amount of time.

Of course, in this context, we're talking about ACTS as simply the amount of time before a commercial break comes in. Maybe this move toward five and six act dramas, and three act comedies explains the growing number of 'soft' outs I've been seeing lately.

Time was, you only went out on two things: jeopardy or new information. But if the days of even 12 minutes of story before a commercial are over...if you have to come up with six turning points in your stories, I start to wonder at one point the weight of the structure starts to turn in on itself. Six turning points in forty-odd minutes? How you do that?

Maybe MOW writers will be the new series writers. I don't know.

Anyway, food for thought.

As for me, I've just had the crappiest salad in creation. Now it's back to the room.

Forms & Format

So, almost off to Day Three in the room, after two hours of tweaking a script this morning. Tonight, it's teaching.

A long day.

Anyhow, a question to ruminate over (and feel free to chime in on your comments):

Traditionally comedy on TV followed a two-act structure, plus teaser and tag.

Has it now moved completely to three acts, so they can fit in an extra commercial break?

I seem to be noticing the same thing among hour dramas -- LOST, for instance, unless I miss my guess, has five acts. ALIAS too, I think.

What are other people finding?

Not enough hours

It's good when you get back into a work hum...but less good when that reminds you of the great pile of things left undone.

I'm cranking out finessed pages on a long-delayed half-hour comedy right now. I need to deliver the script midweek, which is a tighter deadline than I'd like, but for all sorts of legit reasons, it has to be that way. Sometimes you take the lumps. Especially when you're the guy who created them.

Add to that, the truly exciting news, that tomorrow I get to go into a room for three days for the first time since Charlie Jade last year. And luckily, I only have to go about ten K from my house to do it, not 8000...

...it's a development comedy, solid idea by a good friend of mine, and our task is to break story for the pilot and one other episode. This is also the first work I'll be doing for a Canadian channel that I've wanted to work with for a while.

All's that apologia to say that I may be light for the next few days. Talk amongst yourselves.

The DaVinci Code (not the #@%*#! unreadable book)

So there's an interesting thing going on in Canadian TV right now.
Not so much with the talk of the sucking.

Or at least that should be the story -- in Canada, it seems, it never is. The problem with a lot of Canadian TV criticism is that it ping pongs back and forth between undeserved boosterism and lukewarm or lazy sins of omission.

But one thing gets Canadians interested real fast. Always. Predictably...
the second the United States takes notice.

That's why Canadian TV is interesting right now.

First, the Trailer Park Boys went to BBC America, and made the leap to a Ivan Reitman -produced big screen incarnation, debuting sometime next year. If you haven't seen TPB, well, let's just say it's an acquired taste. But if you acquire that taste, the taste is not unlike the crack. (Not that I know anything about the crack. I'm taking poetic license here.)

Next, Slings & Arrows got rapturous reviews -- and eyeballs --on the Sundance Channel.

Corner Gas may not show in the US, but thanks to internet buzz, there's curiousity about it, and anyway, even without US interest, it continues to pull about 1.5 million viewers a week -- which is an astounding number for a country of only 30 million people.

Let's not forget that Cold Case, that CBS hit show, actually got to its beat second, after years of a grittier show on CTV called Cold Squad -- which had the exact same premise (more or less.)

Finally, last month, came the last linchpin: DaVinci's Inquest, a truly superior crime drama, debuted in syndication in nine U.S. top markets, and lo and behold...it's killing.

DaVinci is just about the only thing on the Canadian Broadcasting Corproration drama slate that they should be desperately proud of. It's that good. It's also the show that has a strong writer-showrunner behind it (Chris Haddock.)

It amazes me that the CBC doesn't realize the value of the writer-showrunner system. They have slate shows that go to auteurs: George Walker on This Is Wonderland, Ken Finkleman's increasingly vanity-driven projects, but there it is, the one show they've had for years that's undeniably good, and they don't think "hey, why is it good and how do we do more shows like that?"

It's tough when you live in a country where it seems like they're always trying to re-invent the wheel. In any case, if you're an American that's just discovered DaVinci's Inquest, you may find it interesting to know where it's going...

Read about it here.