You know the rest of that quote, right?
Last night I went to a launch event here in Toronto for CBC's new round of comedy pilots. One of the problems with the Canadian industry is that there's not enough money to develop and pilot a lot of concepts, as they do in the USA. If a project makes it through development, it works itself out in (or more often, doesn't...) in its first few episodes.
A couple of years back, CBC started piloting selected shows. They air them in January after New Year's, before deciding whether to make an order for...usually, six, that air the next year.
Now those of you doing the math will realize that even if you do grab the brass ring, you're not going to make a lot of money. Actually, at WGC rates, if you write all six yourself, you can probably live -- frugally -- for almost -- almost one whole year.
Yup. Showbidness the Canadian way is lucrative to the max!
I was pretty unimpressed by the three pilots CBC put on the air last year -- including the two that were subsequently given further episodes: Hatching, Matching & Dispatching and Getting Along Famously.
This year, the three pilots are called This Space for Rent; Rabbittown, and Cheap Draft, Bad Language, Fast Cars, Women, and a Video Camera (an absolutely terrible title made all the more terrible by the fact that it's a little too close to the British show Two Pints of Lager & a Packet of Crisps.)
I'll post a review of the full shows just after the New Year (they air in Canada starting Jan 3 on CBC) but I will say one thing now: the one to watch is Rabbittown -- the story of two competative frenemies drinking and carousing the streets of St. John's, Newfoundland. It's a witty and wicked take on Abfab -- with younger women. It was laugh out loud funny in several places, and well made. The best thing about it was the way that it refuses to judge the characters. In Canadian series television, that's a real rarity.
I think CBC is doing the best it can in trying to pilot these comedies, but there's a couple of things that came out of the event last night that indicate some of the huge structural problems series comedy faces in this country: first, the presentation went to great pains to point out that the pilots were from Vancouver, Halifax, and Newfoundland. That's right, kids...regional politics rule the CBC and sometimes the most important thing is to show your regional bonafides. Imagine a corresponding U.S. presentation where the most important thing was to go to great pains to point out how none of the series originated in Los Angeles. Yaaaay!
The other thing -- and I will not out the person who said it -- but at one point someone got up and described their show as "TV for people who don't watch TV."
Poor CBC. You would think that they'd be focused on their current problem: making TV for people who do watch TV but don't have anything to watch on CBC.
Sadly, this mentality rules the roost in Canada. It seems they're constantly giving TV shows to people who really want to make "Canadian feature films" and who don't much like, or care for TV. So we get judgemental drama, heavy handed melodrama, and comedy about characters who are so busy trying to make a point, that they skimp on the whole broth of trying to be, you know, entertaining.
You know, like a comedy's supposed to be.
Comedy is hard. One of the shows I'm developing right now is a comedy, and it's a huge struggle. I have no idea if it's going to work, and I have no idea if its going to go. It's hard to get comedy through the process here because no one understands what a unified voice is, and by the time something makes it to air, it usually has so many fingerprints on it that the product isn't distinct, and the tone is no longer fresh. I think this is why Canadians are much better at doing topical, sketch driven comedies than comedy series.
Anyway, you'll hear more about these three pilots closer to the airdates. In the meantime, I'll go back to trying to write TV for people who actually watch TV.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Music for Screenwriters, or How I Walk The Line
On impulse yesterday I bought a New Order CD. They have a new Singles collection out here in Canada. Roughly the nineteenth one they've put out. I thought I'd grok onto hearing the old faves I remember, but the thing really left me cold.
The seventeen year old self, the one with way more arrogance and way, way, way more hair -- would doubtless sneer at this, but I realized that somewhere along the line to becoming a screenwriter, I also became a country music fan.
Now, let's not go crazy. I don't like Garth Brooks or anything. Kenny Chesney -- in fact, hell, most of what passes for popular country today, I despise. You can take your redneck women and your dime store patriotic pablum and ride it straight to hell. But around the edges, I notice that most of what I listen to has got that "Americana" or "alt.country" twang to it.
Steve Earle. Lucinda Williams. Dwight Yoakam. Ryan Adams. Whiskeytown. Kathleen Edwards. Pernice Brothers. Wilco. Lyle Lovett. Rodney Crowell. Shelby Lynne. Iron & Wine. Calexico.
Last week I went to a show at Massey Hall that was just Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, John Hiatt, and Joe Ely sitting around singing songs on the guitar. It was magic. I was transported.
And Thursday, cause KCRW pre-empted the schedule, I got to listen to a few hours of Johnny Cash -- this is after seeing the excellent film Walk the Line last weekend.
What's struck me is this: country and country-influenced stuff is storytelling music. And that's what I crave now. Sure, I'm still susceptible to hooks and buzz bands like Arcade Fire -- but these days the music I'm most attracted to are the story songs. And country is all over that shit.
It's not just country, of course -- Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan -- all rely on story songs as a big part of their repetoire.
It's just funny that my musical taste has shifted so far without me really thinking too much about it. Weird.
So there it is. Throw it open for the big thread: let's call it Music for Screenwriters. I want to know your picks. All of 'em, till my comment box runneth over.
If you're a storyteller, who should you be listening to?
The seventeen year old self, the one with way more arrogance and way, way, way more hair -- would doubtless sneer at this, but I realized that somewhere along the line to becoming a screenwriter, I also became a country music fan.
Now, let's not go crazy. I don't like Garth Brooks or anything. Kenny Chesney -- in fact, hell, most of what passes for popular country today, I despise. You can take your redneck women and your dime store patriotic pablum and ride it straight to hell. But around the edges, I notice that most of what I listen to has got that "Americana" or "alt.country" twang to it.
Steve Earle. Lucinda Williams. Dwight Yoakam. Ryan Adams. Whiskeytown. Kathleen Edwards. Pernice Brothers. Wilco. Lyle Lovett. Rodney Crowell. Shelby Lynne. Iron & Wine. Calexico.
Last week I went to a show at Massey Hall that was just Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, John Hiatt, and Joe Ely sitting around singing songs on the guitar. It was magic. I was transported.
And Thursday, cause KCRW pre-empted the schedule, I got to listen to a few hours of Johnny Cash -- this is after seeing the excellent film Walk the Line last weekend.
What's struck me is this: country and country-influenced stuff is storytelling music. And that's what I crave now. Sure, I'm still susceptible to hooks and buzz bands like Arcade Fire -- but these days the music I'm most attracted to are the story songs. And country is all over that shit.
It's not just country, of course -- Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan -- all rely on story songs as a big part of their repetoire.
It's just funny that my musical taste has shifted so far without me really thinking too much about it. Weird.
So there it is. Throw it open for the big thread: let's call it Music for Screenwriters. I want to know your picks. All of 'em, till my comment box runneth over.
If you're a storyteller, who should you be listening to?
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Happy Yanksgiving
To all my American readers. Please remember the following:
Wait 15 minutes before seconds. Seriously. Digest a bit first.
It's never a good idea to drink and carve.
Grandma was young once, too.
Just because Billy says he's gay, doesn't mean you love him any less. The Pilgrims were pretty fruity, too. Mayflower? Hello?
Wait 15 minutes before seconds. Seriously. Digest a bit first.
It's never a good idea to drink and carve.
Grandma was young once, too.
Just because Billy says he's gay, doesn't mean you love him any less. The Pilgrims were pretty fruity, too. Mayflower? Hello?
In The Future, All TV's will be triangular...
Deep in the depths of the early 1990's, before I turned to writing full time, I was a producer on a show called media television.
media television was fairly revolutionary for its time. How revolutionary? In the second program, the show profiled the first issue of a brand-new magazine called WIRED. We were (arguably) one of the first programs to regularly display our email address at the end of the show. mediatv was slugged "the modern art & science of persuasion." We covered the intersection of advertising, modern television and emerging new media. This is back in the day when everyone called it "the information superhighway."
For whatever reason, Toronto's always been a hotbed for the whole "prognostication on the future of media" industry. We had Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. We also had Citytv, which, along with shows like media television was the brainchild of a Canadian media shaman and raconteur named Moses Znaimer. Once upon a time, Citytv was a mind-blower of a local station. In shows like The New Music, it did MTV before MTV was even a wisp. It went to an all videotape newscast while other stations were intoning, "film at 11..." It also got those newscasters out from behind the desk. Today, if you watch Citytv, it's a pale shadow of its former self -- like everything else in media, it's chasing the same trends and dollars, and is now in the pleasing shareholders business -- but once upon a time, it was a weird, wonderful, and mind expanding place to be.
What working on media television gave me was a front seat for the rise of the first internet hype bubble. Over a period of four years, I interviewed all manner of futurists, visionaries, prognosticators and analysts -- along with a passel of twenty-one year old geniuses who were burning through millions in venture capital, but who giggled any time you said, "how are you eventually going to make money at this?"
Well, we know pretty much how that ended now, don't we?
I look back on my experience at media television as kind of the geek equivalent of the journey Cameron Crowe's eponymous narrator goes through in Almost Famous. I can tell you what I saw at the revolution. But in the end, what it mostly added up to was bullshit.
I've been mostly inoculated against the "where things are going" virus since. Especially on the internet, it seems, any discussion of changes in distribution models seem to be driven by people with a very shaky understanding of consumer behavior, economics, psychology, business, and techology...take your pick, really... William Goldman famously opined that "Nobody Knows Anything." And when it comes to the changing nature of how TV will be distributed, he couldn't be more right.
Not that it stops people from trying.
In New York, a writer I quite like, Adam Sternbergh, tackles the implications of subscription TV, and how TV on the Ipod might spin out and change the distribution model of TV. Read it here.
Sternbergh makes some interesting points, but he also falls pretty far down that prognostication well. Over at Brollywood, John Sullivan points out the major flaw in Sternbergh's argument: what he calls, "The Josh Paradox."
Basically, it's all well and good to say that advertising is irrelevant, and that the Joss Whedons of the world can cut out networks and sell directly to consumers -- but that belies the fact that no one is going to pre-buy from someone they don't know. So you need the reputation first. And how do you build that reputation without big media companies and their promotional push behind you?
This is exactly the same argument as "artists don't need labels anymore." No. Madonna doesn't need them. Elton John doesn't need them. If you're a young band just starting out, sure, you can post your album on your website. Like 2 million other bands. Now. What do you do next?
I know that this is not hard and fast. I recognize comics like Dane Cook have been able to leverage the 'net to bypass some of the traditional routes to success. And yes, the Nobody Knows Everything dictum applies to the gatekeepers and big companies, too: FOX did cancel Family Guy, then reverse themselves. DVD sales are changing how success is measured, and definitely have affected how serialized you can make your stories -- but the problem with predicting how things will play out down the road is that you can never, ever take into account all the variables in all the right proportions -- never mind account for the "X Factor" -- that nebulous accident that could change everything.
What do I find interesting in media trends? Well, I think that the product placement thing will probably continue and increase. Hopefully, it'll be subtle, like Ford's alliance with 24. But maybe not. I also think the recent trend of single sponsors for shows may continue, and increase. And how interesting is that? That part of the solution to TV's future may come from its past -- the single sponsor show. In a world where everybody has PVR's, maybe breaking into the program for ads six times doesn't make sense.
I think DVD sales will continue to change what gets greenlit, and how long things run.
I think networks and production companies probably will sell reruns at low price points. You will never have to miss LOST again (as I did last night...I'm in Canada, so I can't download it legally from Itunes, but if I could, I'd be there, boom, no problem.)
But if the history of media teaches us anything, it's that things don't get destroyed by technological change. TV did not destroy radio. TV did not destroy movies. Neither did the VCR. To say that we're moving toward a "viewer buys from program maker" model ignores the example of that recent Internet boom: eventually, everyone decided that what they wanted most was entertainment and info from the same sources they got them from before. Big companies had the pockets, and they still had the edge. Maybe it wasn't quite the 100 percent stranglehold it used to be. Maybe it was just...90 percent.
If you were a 500 pound gorilla in the old order, you had a great chance of being one in the new order. Not to say that there wasn't a chance for a new monkey to come along and grab some love, but people still prefer the New York Times to Bennie's Spokane News Hut.
After I moved on from media television, I started working at Canada's version of the Sci-Fi channel. What I noticed there is this: people talk about how they want things first. And some do. Some people probably will pay top dollar. But the other side of that argument is this: no matter how long they've been available on DVD, no matter how many times they've been rerun'ed -- every time we took a show off the air, somewhere, somehow, viewers complained. There is always an audience. There is always someone new to reach. There's always a different way to get to them.
The audience is not monolithic. It's a big tent, and the lesson is that there's no one way that audiences want to consume their entertainment anymore.
So if you're a creative person, what should you make of all these emerging trends?
Well, honestly? I think the only thing you can do is hone what it is you have to offer, and not worry about it. Work on the creative side. I am nowhere near as interested in the idea of how someone will watch TV on an Ipod as I am, for instance, in the fact that in the upcoming King Kong game, we now take for granted that you can "play as Kong, or play as a human." That has way greater implications for people who are trying to create compelling stories than 99 cent downloads from Itunes.
Back in the mediatv days, the big thing was going to be interactive tv. The idea that the videogame would take over the narrative arts. Then you had people like Penn Jillette, who dared to call "bullshit." I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something to the effect that, even 2000 years ago, sitting round the campfire, a storyteller could weave a tale and then stop and ask you, "okay, what happens next?" And you wouldn't care. Because that sucks. What you want is a good story.
And let's face it: everybody thinks they can write. Fans on TV Without Pity will always say that if only those stupid program makers had listened to the fans, the show would have been better. I have one cab driver a week who thinks he could come up with way better stories than what's on tv right now.
Okay. Great.
But they don't do it, do they? And that, my chickens, is the key. Worrying about how the distribution model is changing and 'what that means' is just one more excuse for anyone trying to be creative, not to buckle down and do the really hard thing, which is to get your ass in the seat and get to work.
So by all means, if you're creative and you want to write or create, keep abreast of how things are changing. But don't believe for a second that there's some great egalitarian future out there where you can directly reach out and pluck your audience.
You will always have to deal with the Man.
The trick is to do it in such a way that you don't become the Man.
Because the Man can talk all he likes about how this model or that is going to go...
But yesterday I sat in a room with three writers for six hours, and at the end of it we had two broken out half hour episodes. Funny episodes, where in the morning we had nothing.
And that's the thing that has real value. The rest is just prognostication. Leave that for the pointy heads and MBA's. Work on the stuff that actually matters. And when people tell you how the future is going to be, nod politely and remember that anyone can predict what comes next. Especially if you don't mind being wrong.
But if you can face down the blank page, well, then that's the wine, my friends. The rest is just arguing over the shape of the bottle, and the color of the label.
I'd rather talk about the wine.
media television was fairly revolutionary for its time. How revolutionary? In the second program, the show profiled the first issue of a brand-new magazine called WIRED. We were (arguably) one of the first programs to regularly display our email address at the end of the show. mediatv was slugged "the modern art & science of persuasion." We covered the intersection of advertising, modern television and emerging new media. This is back in the day when everyone called it "the information superhighway."
For whatever reason, Toronto's always been a hotbed for the whole "prognostication on the future of media" industry. We had Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. We also had Citytv, which, along with shows like media television was the brainchild of a Canadian media shaman and raconteur named Moses Znaimer. Once upon a time, Citytv was a mind-blower of a local station. In shows like The New Music, it did MTV before MTV was even a wisp. It went to an all videotape newscast while other stations were intoning, "film at 11..." It also got those newscasters out from behind the desk. Today, if you watch Citytv, it's a pale shadow of its former self -- like everything else in media, it's chasing the same trends and dollars, and is now in the pleasing shareholders business -- but once upon a time, it was a weird, wonderful, and mind expanding place to be.
What working on media television gave me was a front seat for the rise of the first internet hype bubble. Over a period of four years, I interviewed all manner of futurists, visionaries, prognosticators and analysts -- along with a passel of twenty-one year old geniuses who were burning through millions in venture capital, but who giggled any time you said, "how are you eventually going to make money at this?"
Well, we know pretty much how that ended now, don't we?
I look back on my experience at media television as kind of the geek equivalent of the journey Cameron Crowe's eponymous narrator goes through in Almost Famous. I can tell you what I saw at the revolution. But in the end, what it mostly added up to was bullshit.
I've been mostly inoculated against the "where things are going" virus since. Especially on the internet, it seems, any discussion of changes in distribution models seem to be driven by people with a very shaky understanding of consumer behavior, economics, psychology, business, and techology...take your pick, really... William Goldman famously opined that "Nobody Knows Anything." And when it comes to the changing nature of how TV will be distributed, he couldn't be more right.
Not that it stops people from trying.
In New York, a writer I quite like, Adam Sternbergh, tackles the implications of subscription TV, and how TV on the Ipod might spin out and change the distribution model of TV. Read it here.
Sternbergh makes some interesting points, but he also falls pretty far down that prognostication well. Over at Brollywood, John Sullivan points out the major flaw in Sternbergh's argument: what he calls, "The Josh Paradox."
Basically, it's all well and good to say that advertising is irrelevant, and that the Joss Whedons of the world can cut out networks and sell directly to consumers -- but that belies the fact that no one is going to pre-buy from someone they don't know. So you need the reputation first. And how do you build that reputation without big media companies and their promotional push behind you?
This is exactly the same argument as "artists don't need labels anymore." No. Madonna doesn't need them. Elton John doesn't need them. If you're a young band just starting out, sure, you can post your album on your website. Like 2 million other bands. Now. What do you do next?
I know that this is not hard and fast. I recognize comics like Dane Cook have been able to leverage the 'net to bypass some of the traditional routes to success. And yes, the Nobody Knows Everything dictum applies to the gatekeepers and big companies, too: FOX did cancel Family Guy, then reverse themselves. DVD sales are changing how success is measured, and definitely have affected how serialized you can make your stories -- but the problem with predicting how things will play out down the road is that you can never, ever take into account all the variables in all the right proportions -- never mind account for the "X Factor" -- that nebulous accident that could change everything.
What do I find interesting in media trends? Well, I think that the product placement thing will probably continue and increase. Hopefully, it'll be subtle, like Ford's alliance with 24. But maybe not. I also think the recent trend of single sponsors for shows may continue, and increase. And how interesting is that? That part of the solution to TV's future may come from its past -- the single sponsor show. In a world where everybody has PVR's, maybe breaking into the program for ads six times doesn't make sense.
I think DVD sales will continue to change what gets greenlit, and how long things run.
I think networks and production companies probably will sell reruns at low price points. You will never have to miss LOST again (as I did last night...I'm in Canada, so I can't download it legally from Itunes, but if I could, I'd be there, boom, no problem.)
But if the history of media teaches us anything, it's that things don't get destroyed by technological change. TV did not destroy radio. TV did not destroy movies. Neither did the VCR. To say that we're moving toward a "viewer buys from program maker" model ignores the example of that recent Internet boom: eventually, everyone decided that what they wanted most was entertainment and info from the same sources they got them from before. Big companies had the pockets, and they still had the edge. Maybe it wasn't quite the 100 percent stranglehold it used to be. Maybe it was just...90 percent.
If you were a 500 pound gorilla in the old order, you had a great chance of being one in the new order. Not to say that there wasn't a chance for a new monkey to come along and grab some love, but people still prefer the New York Times to Bennie's Spokane News Hut.
After I moved on from media television, I started working at Canada's version of the Sci-Fi channel. What I noticed there is this: people talk about how they want things first. And some do. Some people probably will pay top dollar. But the other side of that argument is this: no matter how long they've been available on DVD, no matter how many times they've been rerun'ed -- every time we took a show off the air, somewhere, somehow, viewers complained. There is always an audience. There is always someone new to reach. There's always a different way to get to them.
The audience is not monolithic. It's a big tent, and the lesson is that there's no one way that audiences want to consume their entertainment anymore.
So if you're a creative person, what should you make of all these emerging trends?
Well, honestly? I think the only thing you can do is hone what it is you have to offer, and not worry about it. Work on the creative side. I am nowhere near as interested in the idea of how someone will watch TV on an Ipod as I am, for instance, in the fact that in the upcoming King Kong game, we now take for granted that you can "play as Kong, or play as a human." That has way greater implications for people who are trying to create compelling stories than 99 cent downloads from Itunes.
Back in the mediatv days, the big thing was going to be interactive tv. The idea that the videogame would take over the narrative arts. Then you had people like Penn Jillette, who dared to call "bullshit." I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something to the effect that, even 2000 years ago, sitting round the campfire, a storyteller could weave a tale and then stop and ask you, "okay, what happens next?" And you wouldn't care. Because that sucks. What you want is a good story.
And let's face it: everybody thinks they can write. Fans on TV Without Pity will always say that if only those stupid program makers had listened to the fans, the show would have been better. I have one cab driver a week who thinks he could come up with way better stories than what's on tv right now.
Okay. Great.
But they don't do it, do they? And that, my chickens, is the key. Worrying about how the distribution model is changing and 'what that means' is just one more excuse for anyone trying to be creative, not to buckle down and do the really hard thing, which is to get your ass in the seat and get to work.
So by all means, if you're creative and you want to write or create, keep abreast of how things are changing. But don't believe for a second that there's some great egalitarian future out there where you can directly reach out and pluck your audience.
You will always have to deal with the Man.
The trick is to do it in such a way that you don't become the Man.
Because the Man can talk all he likes about how this model or that is going to go...
But yesterday I sat in a room with three writers for six hours, and at the end of it we had two broken out half hour episodes. Funny episodes, where in the morning we had nothing.
And that's the thing that has real value. The rest is just prognostication. Leave that for the pointy heads and MBA's. Work on the stuff that actually matters. And when people tell you how the future is going to be, nod politely and remember that anyone can predict what comes next. Especially if you don't mind being wrong.
But if you can face down the blank page, well, then that's the wine, my friends. The rest is just arguing over the shape of the bottle, and the color of the label.
I'd rather talk about the wine.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
You're making it too hard.
So there I am, trying to come up with fiction. And silliness. And comedy. Yet in the last 48 hours, we have the leader of the world getting flummoxed by a door, the right screaming that some TD's lineup gaffe is evidence of the antichrist, reports that the U.S. planned to BOMB A TELEVISION STATION and what passes for normal -- the further fallout of a 37 year old military vet being called a coward.
Oh, and some more US soldiers died. And the bird flu's still coming.
And FEMA won't talk to New Orleans.
Would you %#$@ers please, please, please give me a break? There is NO WAY I can try to manufacture absurdity in a climate like this. Seriously.
Remember when everyone talked about the death of irony after 9/11?
Can we go back to that? Seriously?
You're salting Daddy's game, here.
Oh, and some more US soldiers died. And the bird flu's still coming.
And FEMA won't talk to New Orleans.
Would you %#$@ers please, please, please give me a break? There is NO WAY I can try to manufacture absurdity in a climate like this. Seriously.
Remember when everyone talked about the death of irony after 9/11?
Can we go back to that? Seriously?
You're salting Daddy's game, here.
Back to the Room
Gonna be a little light here over the next couple of days. I'm back in a room breaking story for a friend's project.
I'll just leave you with this:
3-D is not ready for prime time. And Medium is still a ridiculous show. How ridiculous? It makes me miss what's-his-name- the-husband's role on The Mind of the Married Man. Serious.
I try to watch every show at least once, but seriously dude, you couldn't get me to watch Medium again with a mallet. Ghost Whisperer, I'm talking to you, too. Feh.
I'll just leave you with this:
3-D is not ready for prime time. And Medium is still a ridiculous show. How ridiculous? It makes me miss what's-his-name- the-husband's role on The Mind of the Married Man. Serious.
I try to watch every show at least once, but seriously dude, you couldn't get me to watch Medium again with a mallet. Ghost Whisperer, I'm talking to you, too. Feh.
Monday, November 21, 2005
No Way in Hell
...are you going to get me to say a word about the Gemini Awards. (Canada's Emmyhahahhheee heh hhhee heee hhee ho ha...damnit. Really thought I'd get through that without laughing.)
Nope. Not a word.
For that you have to buy me beer.
Nope. Not a word.
For that you have to buy me beer.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
The Office & Earl
I have no idea if it'll stick around much longer, but after an extended PVR clean off, I've got to say that the American iteration of The Office has completely won me over.
There were glimpses of possibility last season. I thought the episode that dealt with the racism training was incredibly, almost absurdly subversive, and packed a much deeper punch than the equivalent episode of the original BBC series. (Which is entirely appropriate, considering that issues of race are a third rail in the United States -- far more in-your-face than they are even in vaguely xenophobic Great Britain.)
But with the season 2 run of episodes, some interesting things have started to happen. First, the American show has, I think, now produced more episodes than the show that spawned it. Second, the growth in the American characters has finally reached a tipping point for me where I'm no longer missing the UK versions. Pam is at least as engaging and funny as Dawn. (Interestingly, I think they've also made the character smarter.) The Tim/Jim character in the US version is not as self-loathing and ambivalent about his job as his UK counterpart, which is an interesting, and I think very American change. I always thought that Rainn Wilson was gifted enough to make his charcter work, even though you'd never forget or stop missing the glorious Gareth, but in the last couple of episodes, Wilson's deadpan delivery has just slayed me.
Then there's Steve Carell. No, he's no David Brent. He's a particularly American slice of self-absorbed. It's amazing how if you tweak a few traits, a character can be so completely different in the ensembe. The one thing that worried me most about the American Office was that Michael Scott just didn't have anything like the bubbling under, "he's so sad" cluelessness that made you feel a strange, sick sympathy for Ricky Gervais' David Brent.
But in the last few episodes, with the aborted romance with his superior, Michael Scott finally got some sympathy points. Grudging, horribly fought, and compromised as they were. It's a testimony to Carell that he can take this American boss -- who's so much less likable than the British model, and still make him riveting.
I'm not sure how the show played in the U.S. press when it premiered there, but here in Canada it was a pretty predictable backhand-slamming. It's undeserved. For my money, The Office is the most successful British import since probably Sanford and Son. It puts Queer as Folk and Cracker to shame.
What Greg Daniels did in adapting the show for the American market was recognize some very basic differences at the core of the psyche of the two countries. Michael Scott is such a product of the sunny, individual-first school of American mythmaking that he fits. Tim was likable because of his doubt and his self-lacerations. Jim is likable because, well, his decency. The interactions with the warehouse staff play on issues of hip hop and cultural difference, not class difference. It's obvious that Daniels really studied the British show, and then let it go.
Contrast that with the absolutely horrible American version of Coupling from a couple years back and the achievement becomes even more striking. I never knew how they were going to adapt Coupling. Each of the six main characters on that show seemed to me to embody a different, yet distinct slice of New British archtypes.
When the American version premiered, within five minutes it was painfully clear that nothing had been done to find the corresponding American types. Patrick, Tory that he was; Jeff, a very British eccentric, even the particular brittleness of Sally -- none of the Americans looked in any way like actual in-your-30's types you'd find hanging out in an American city. They were too good looking, and too bland by half.
Greg Daniels learned the lessons of Coupling well. I, for one, hope that Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant enjoy their creator royalties for some time to come. The Office is sophisticated, heartfelt, true -- and American to the core.
I also have caught two or three more episodes of My Name is Earl. Initially, I thought that the whole show pretty much rested on Jason Lee's shoulders. But in the recent episodes, they've really done quite a bit to spread the comedy around, with deft turns from both Ethan Supplee as the brother, and Jaime Pressly as Joy. I think Earl is great, good natured fun. I would probably spec it if I needed a half hour sample.
Both these shows, I think, prove that just like the box-office slump story of 2005, the "comedy on American TV is dead" story is seriously overblown.
Now if we could just get a few more comedies on the air in Canada...
UPDATE: With the November 22, 2005 show (Michael at Improv class, Dwight's Office Romance, and Jim's Karaoke Party) The American Office has achieved a wicked pinnacle. The secondary characters are as interesting as the British ones were; the world is more fleshed out, Jim's fundamental decency is stronger and clearer than ever -- the introduction of the Camera as character is a stylistic step forward from the original...In other words, the child has definitely grown up. The show stands on its own comic feet. As well cast, as well observed, and as funny as the original ever was. As David Brent would say: Fact.
*okay, they still haven't done anything as funny as the David Brent "If You Don't Know Me By Now" video -- but give them time.
There were glimpses of possibility last season. I thought the episode that dealt with the racism training was incredibly, almost absurdly subversive, and packed a much deeper punch than the equivalent episode of the original BBC series. (Which is entirely appropriate, considering that issues of race are a third rail in the United States -- far more in-your-face than they are even in vaguely xenophobic Great Britain.)
But with the season 2 run of episodes, some interesting things have started to happen. First, the American show has, I think, now produced more episodes than the show that spawned it. Second, the growth in the American characters has finally reached a tipping point for me where I'm no longer missing the UK versions. Pam is at least as engaging and funny as Dawn. (Interestingly, I think they've also made the character smarter.) The Tim/Jim character in the US version is not as self-loathing and ambivalent about his job as his UK counterpart, which is an interesting, and I think very American change. I always thought that Rainn Wilson was gifted enough to make his charcter work, even though you'd never forget or stop missing the glorious Gareth, but in the last couple of episodes, Wilson's deadpan delivery has just slayed me.
Then there's Steve Carell. No, he's no David Brent. He's a particularly American slice of self-absorbed. It's amazing how if you tweak a few traits, a character can be so completely different in the ensembe. The one thing that worried me most about the American Office was that Michael Scott just didn't have anything like the bubbling under, "he's so sad" cluelessness that made you feel a strange, sick sympathy for Ricky Gervais' David Brent.
But in the last few episodes, with the aborted romance with his superior, Michael Scott finally got some sympathy points. Grudging, horribly fought, and compromised as they were. It's a testimony to Carell that he can take this American boss -- who's so much less likable than the British model, and still make him riveting.
I'm not sure how the show played in the U.S. press when it premiered there, but here in Canada it was a pretty predictable backhand-slamming. It's undeserved. For my money, The Office is the most successful British import since probably Sanford and Son. It puts Queer as Folk and Cracker to shame.
What Greg Daniels did in adapting the show for the American market was recognize some very basic differences at the core of the psyche of the two countries. Michael Scott is such a product of the sunny, individual-first school of American mythmaking that he fits. Tim was likable because of his doubt and his self-lacerations. Jim is likable because, well, his decency. The interactions with the warehouse staff play on issues of hip hop and cultural difference, not class difference. It's obvious that Daniels really studied the British show, and then let it go.
Contrast that with the absolutely horrible American version of Coupling from a couple years back and the achievement becomes even more striking. I never knew how they were going to adapt Coupling. Each of the six main characters on that show seemed to me to embody a different, yet distinct slice of New British archtypes.
When the American version premiered, within five minutes it was painfully clear that nothing had been done to find the corresponding American types. Patrick, Tory that he was; Jeff, a very British eccentric, even the particular brittleness of Sally -- none of the Americans looked in any way like actual in-your-30's types you'd find hanging out in an American city. They were too good looking, and too bland by half.
Greg Daniels learned the lessons of Coupling well. I, for one, hope that Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant enjoy their creator royalties for some time to come. The Office is sophisticated, heartfelt, true -- and American to the core.
I also have caught two or three more episodes of My Name is Earl. Initially, I thought that the whole show pretty much rested on Jason Lee's shoulders. But in the recent episodes, they've really done quite a bit to spread the comedy around, with deft turns from both Ethan Supplee as the brother, and Jaime Pressly as Joy. I think Earl is great, good natured fun. I would probably spec it if I needed a half hour sample.
Both these shows, I think, prove that just like the box-office slump story of 2005, the "comedy on American TV is dead" story is seriously overblown.
Now if we could just get a few more comedies on the air in Canada...
UPDATE: With the November 22, 2005 show (Michael at Improv class, Dwight's Office Romance, and Jim's Karaoke Party) The American Office has achieved a wicked pinnacle. The secondary characters are as interesting as the British ones were; the world is more fleshed out, Jim's fundamental decency is stronger and clearer than ever -- the introduction of the Camera as character is a stylistic step forward from the original...In other words, the child has definitely grown up. The show stands on its own comic feet. As well cast, as well observed, and as funny as the original ever was. As David Brent would say: Fact.
*okay, they still haven't done anything as funny as the David Brent "If You Don't Know Me By Now" video -- but give them time.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Book Review: A Great Feast of Light
It could be that I'm just becoming an old fogey. I recognize that. But lately, when I look out at a television landscape of TIVO's and extended cable, of satellites and timeshifting and VOD, 343 channels of Gilligan's Island starting on the hour -- I can't help but think that something's been lost.
It's not just that Bruce Springsteen's once-scorching "57 Channels and Nothing On" seems crazy-quaint. (Dude, it's your own fault! Why didn't you TIVO?) It's that the explosion of choice and program-management techniques (what we used to call "taping,") has fundamentally altered what made television so revolutionary in the first place.
John Doyle's "A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age" is a memoir and a love letter. It's a book that rights the wrongs of a thousand McLuhan descendents who like to natter about how TV ruined everything. It's the story of a young boy growing up in a cloistered, maddening, provincial country, and how a magic window into a wider world changed everything, forever. Doyle manages to be both wistful and clear-eyed, speaking of his childhood in the small Irish town of Nenagh. Television came late to Ireland...RTE went on the air in 1961. In describing the people of his little town, Doyle paints a scene ripe for a shocking, cathode-ray corrective:
"...their stories were always the same, going around and around until everybody knew the punch line. They were always about farmers and shopkeepers and how the world was fixed with everybody in their allotted place. On television, events changed things. The truth came out and justice was done. I knew that teachers and adults weren't as instantly entranced by television as small children were. And I knew why, without anyone explaining it to me. Grown up people were stuck in their ways and their old stories. They knew everybody they were ever going to meet.
But that would change too. Television would break through all the layers of habit and conformity. The smallness of their old world would become clear as day."
The book contains amusing reminiscences of programs as varied as Bat Masterston and Get Smart, The Avengers and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. But the focus is squarely on how these new worlds, new ideas and ways of looking at the world seeped into a society that was still in thrall to the Catholic church; filled with "thick" brothers and cruel nuns, and a generally backward way of thinking.
For the Irish Americans tugging at their collars now, this is no Angela's Ashes, a parade of miseries and petty cruelties moving from horror to horror. The Doyles sound a lot more like my people -- a little more middle class, perhaps. But with a father working for Irish Life and a mother who didn't seem to cotton onto those who promoted small mindedness, Doyle paints a quiet childhood where television did exactly what all its haters feared: gradually seeped in and molded the thinking of a young boy.
The Doyles moved around Ireland quite a bit. I was pleased to read the chapters about tracing a childhood through County Roscommon and Leitrim, since that's where my Mom's people are from. This section also gives rise to the book's most moving passages: contrasting the peace of a country childhood with the horrors that lurked just beyond the mist. As young John Doyle walks the fields of Carrick, we're reminded that this area was once ground zero of the famine that decimated Ireland.
It's a strange turn for a memoir about television, but it does set the stage -- because if you know your Irish history, you know what's coming.
I've often talked to my parents about what it was really like to see Vietnam on the TV every night. I've spent hours in a little cubicle at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, watching back news programs of the time. I've seen the moment where Walter Cronkite turned against the war. As an adult, I, like everyone, sat back and watched in quiet awe as satellites relayed live pictures of bombs raining on Baghdad. Twice.
But I don't think that compares to being a young Irish boy trying to sort through an old war that suddenly re-ignites on your doorstep, brought to you in glorious color on the TV. As Ireland descends into the bitter thrall of sectarian violence, Doyle clings to the images that make sense to him: the anti-authoritarian, anarchic revolution that was Monty Python's Flying Circus, the pull of soccer -- even the much milder social critiques of shows like The Liver Birds and Upstairs, Downstairs.
All in all, the memoir paints a coming-of-age that was reflected, pushed, and prodded by television at every step of the way. It's an engaging portrait of an Ireland that's simply not there anymore, an Ireland consigned to the dustbin, in part, by the tide of change ushered in by the tolling of the Angelus Bells on RTE, that night in 1961.
I'm not sure that people much younger than me (I'm 37) think of television that way anymore, or if they ever did. Television was that thing that was always there. There were always more than four channels. You never had to 'get home in time to watch something.' There are so many different types of entertainment vying for your attention now that the social effect of television is muted; and discussions of the power of the medium are far more likely to be driven by reactionary forces, for whom nothing is scarier than a hint of breast or a bad word.
I don't remember the start of television, of course. But I do remember the time of four or five channels and no VCR. And I remember the winter of 1977.
In January, 1977, we were living in Orlando, Florida. Our TV was a beat up old SONY, black and white, maybe 20 inches.
Six months later, when we moved to Canada, my Dad bought a big cabinet model color TV, and I was shocked and enthralled. Enthralled to watch shows like The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island in color for the first time -- they seemed like new shows! Shocked when I caught a rerun of Gilligan's Island in black & white. I thought the TV was broken. My Dad had to explain to me that the show used to be filmed in black & white, before they switched to color.
I loved living in Orlando. The two years I spent there still seem a little magical to me. We lived in a development called Bay Hill. (now the site of the Bay Hill Classic. If you care about golf, I'm sure that means something. Not to me, alas.) Ours was still a new development, and our street dead-ended in an orange grove. We were also across the lake from Walt Disney World. Every night of the summer, we'd walk down the road to where the orange trees started, pick one off the tree, and watch the fireworks over the Magic Kingdom.
Then there was this one time when, like wildfire, a rumor went through the neighborhood. We rode our bikes up to the Golf Club, and sure enough, dining there, surrounded by kids and other admirers, was Evil Knievel. He signed our autographs and indulged us with stories, and when it was time to leave, he simply got up and walked out, and we all hushed to see if it was true-- did he clank when he walked, from all the metal pins in his many broken bones?
I set that scene to give the proper context to this story:
We had a big backyard. Lots of flowerbeds, lots of plants and trees. My father was the General Manager of the Pepsi bottling plant in Orlando, and through that job, he met Mr. B. Mr. B was a large, kind black man with enormous hands and a booming laugh. Mr. B was the go-to man in the plant. He knew when people needed things. I first met him when he came to pick up the baby stuff -- the cribs that my sisters didn't need anymore. He loaded them into the truck and carted them off to whoever needed them. I was fascinated by this: how did he know? My father was pretty straightforward on the matter. "The people in the plant don't have a lot of money," he'd say. "He takes care of them." "Is that his job?" I wondered. "Nope," my Dad said. "That's just what he does."
I figured Mr. B was a pretty important guy, knowing what everyone needed like that. Mr. B worked the bottling line as a supervisor, and when my dad took me to work, and I saw him, I'd always run up and say hello. He'd smile, and sneak me some Dr. Pepper off the line. It tasted horrible cold -- I never did get the taste for it -- but hot off the line it was delicious.
There was a woman who used to help out my Mom with my little sisters. Mrs. L. She'd babysit sometimes, sew, and mind my sisters so my Mom could run out to the supermarket. Mrs. L was a kind southern woman who loved singing along to the country music on the radio.
One day, when Mrs. L was there, Mr. B and some of his guys were doing some yardwork for us. Mr.B came to the front door looking for water for the crew. Mrs. L said she'd get it, but Mr. B had to come to the back door.
I had NO IDEA what the hell was going on. Why did he have to go to the back door, when he was standing right there at the front door, in the 95 degree heat? It seemed stupid, so I asked my Dad about it later.
I think my Mom had a conversation with Mrs. L the next day. I didn't hear any of it. I was sent to my room to play.
A few months later was January 1977. We didn't know yet that we were going to be moving to Canada. Maybe my parents did, but I didn't. But the really exciting thing is that my parents let me stay up late with them, to watch something on TV. My parents had let me stay up to watch TV late before. One time, a neighbor of ours was on To Tell The Truth. And if there was a baseball game or a space launch from Cape Kennedy, sometimes I'd get to watch that. But this was different. There was a program, airing every night for seven nights... I'd never heard of that happening before.
It was called Roots.
After I watched it, I started to put together a lot of what I'd seen -- with Mr. B, Mrs. L -- even the strange looks I'd get sometimes from some of the white workers in the plant when Dad would take me to work, and I'd run up to say "Hi" to Mr. B.
Everyone watched Roots, it seems. We talked about it in school. And the next time Mr. B and Mrs. L were both working at our house, I noticed that she had trouble looking Mr. B in the eye. Later that month, Mr. B came by with his pickup truck, and picked up a whole bunch of baby clothes and toys Mrs. L had collected. He thanked her for them, and said he knew just who they would go to. And she nodded and turned around very fast and walked back into the house. She didn't know what to do with her hands...that's what I noticed. Her hands kept fluttering by her sides. I knew what was making her feel that way. And I wondered if she ever thought of the day that she asked Mr. B to go to the back door -- that simple, incomprehensible action that I now understood completely, thanks to Roots.
I was glad she didn't know what to do with her hands.
Anyhow. How's that for a digression?
Point is that Doyle's book re-energizes me and reminds me why I loved television in the first place -- why this is the medium where I want to tell stories. Maybe the landscape is different, and maybe television will never affect people quite that way again.
But then again, every time I'm in a new place, I remember to flip on the TV at least once. You learn things that way. Things you'd never learn anywhere else.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Getting Past the Gatekeeper
This is one of those stories that is different depending on where you live.
If you're an American writer living in L.A., your paths and ways "in" could fill several books, and all sorts of handy advice can be gleaned out in the scribosphere from all those guys way more successful than me.
So this post isn't so much about the politics or tricks of getting your stuff read in Mammon. Sorry. You can stop reading now if you want to.
Outside of the American system, driven by the purity of eyeballs and the quest for audience, things get a little weird. In Canada, in Great Britain, I imagine in Australia and probably everywhere else that's NOT the USA, you have to go through some combination of commissioning editors, network people, or quasi-governmental funding agencies.
(I know you have to eventually go through network people in the USA too, but what they're ruled by, I submit, is simpler to understand. Fear and money is always easier to understand.)
The problem of "How do you get past the gatekeeper" has been in the back of my mind for a while. It came to the forefront this morning with an example that I think illustrates the problem -- at least here in Canada.
On the front cover of today's National Post -- one of Canada's two national newspapers, the above-the-fold story is about a lawsuit. At a froofy do celebrating Maclean's Magazine's 100th anniversary (it's like the Canadian TIME Magazine. Stress ...LIKE) Disgraced Media Baron Conrad Black (kind of like the Canadian Rupert Murdoch. Stress ...LIKE) served a libel suit on a writer named Peter Newman. (Um...he's just a writer.) I didn't see the kind of play the story got in the Globe and Mail, but Toronto's other Broadsheet, The Star, played it quite prominently, too -- I believe on the front page.
What does this have to do with getting Television ideas and scripts past the gatekeeper? Hang on. I'm getting there.
This is a story about society people suing each other. Is it news? Debatable. It's certainly media gossip, and should definitely be played as such. But the fact that it gets played so prominently on front pages (and though I haven't listened today, I'm pretty sure it's a big topic on CBC Radio, too) indicates what's out of whack in the mediasphere in Canada. Though they'd be loathe to admit it, there's a rampant provincialism at work, that vastly overestimates the importance of issues like this to the population at large.
Outside of Toronto, Canadians constantly complain of a "Toronto bias" which I've been senstive to, since I'm not originally from here either. But over the years I've come to conclude that it's not a Toronto bias so much as a favouring of these kinds of stories.
The other recent example I can think is a literary prize called the Giller Awards, which gets massive coverage every year, completely out of whack with the degree to which regular people care about it.
Understand that I'm not saying you don't cover literary awards. I'm not a savage. I'm saying that the news judgement in the media here tends to favour rarefied things of limited interest to people outside that society group. Society balls are not news. But sometimes, here, they're treated as such. On your average Sunday, the New York Times does a far better job covering a wider spectrum of arts, high, low, and middle, than does the weekend Globe & Mail.
What does this disconnect have to do with commissioning editors or funding agencies? (Okay, you've been patient.)
The people reading scripts, deciding on stories to put forward are usually people who strive to be like the people up in the rarefied air. They identify with that strata, and like good little strivers, tend to put forward ideas and talent that appeal and conform to that mindset. When they do deign to do something "populist," it smacks of condescension, and it sinks below the waves without a ripple.
This is especially true at CBC -- but it's also something you'll see in various points at a lot of the funding agencies. A lot of the smaller channels and specialties do have a better handle on who's actually watching and what they actually like. But they have far less money to spend, and far less influence, too.
The problem of the out-of-touch-Gatekeeper is not a small one. Because the arts media in this country all strive, for the most part, to be part of the rarefied group, you don't get a lot of critical coverage of, say, Candadian films that don't appeal to most Canadians, or TV shows that portray a world that's very different from the world that most Canadians experience. TV producers and writers shouldn't want to go to events with the president of the TD Bank Hedge Fund. I don't even know what that is. But it doesn't sound like fun.
Here's the worst part: there's no real incentive to change, because people who fail to deliver an audience don't ever lose their jobs. Most of the money in Canadian TV is made from re-broadcasting US TV, anyway.
The fact that no one has examined Corner Gas, and to a lesser extent, Trailer Park Boys, and tried to understand why they resonate, completely flummoxes me.
They succeed because somehow they got on the air -- they go over the head of the rare air types and right into the homes of Canadians. And like Hockey Commentator Don Cherry (who the CBC tried to fire, then found themselves in the middle of a shitstorm revolt and backed off) people watch them because they're relevant to the 29 million people who don't care about 90% of what's in the Arts section in weekend Globe & Mail.
By the way, Quebec doesn't have this problem. Tons of popular films. Tons of popular homegrown shows. They'll tell you it's because of the language barrier. Don't you believe it.
So say you're a writer trying to reach an audience. Your problems are twofold: do you play the game and show the Gatekeepers the kinds of things they want to see, that conform to the people they'd like to be, and the country they'd like to show? (In which case you may indeed have a very nice career and may even get invited to parties where important people sue each other.) Or do you write for a show that you think will connect with the people?
Decide. Good luck with that. And let me know how it goes, ok? I'd really like to know.
Now... international scribes -- how does it work in your neck of the woods? How do you get past the mighty Gatekeepers? I'm interested to know.
If you're an American writer living in L.A., your paths and ways "in" could fill several books, and all sorts of handy advice can be gleaned out in the scribosphere from all those guys way more successful than me.
So this post isn't so much about the politics or tricks of getting your stuff read in Mammon. Sorry. You can stop reading now if you want to.
Outside of the American system, driven by the purity of eyeballs and the quest for audience, things get a little weird. In Canada, in Great Britain, I imagine in Australia and probably everywhere else that's NOT the USA, you have to go through some combination of commissioning editors, network people, or quasi-governmental funding agencies.
(I know you have to eventually go through network people in the USA too, but what they're ruled by, I submit, is simpler to understand. Fear and money is always easier to understand.)
The problem of "How do you get past the gatekeeper" has been in the back of my mind for a while. It came to the forefront this morning with an example that I think illustrates the problem -- at least here in Canada.
On the front cover of today's National Post -- one of Canada's two national newspapers, the above-the-fold story is about a lawsuit. At a froofy do celebrating Maclean's Magazine's 100th anniversary (it's like the Canadian TIME Magazine. Stress ...LIKE) Disgraced Media Baron Conrad Black (kind of like the Canadian Rupert Murdoch. Stress ...LIKE) served a libel suit on a writer named Peter Newman. (Um...he's just a writer.) I didn't see the kind of play the story got in the Globe and Mail, but Toronto's other Broadsheet, The Star, played it quite prominently, too -- I believe on the front page.
What does this have to do with getting Television ideas and scripts past the gatekeeper? Hang on. I'm getting there.
This is a story about society people suing each other. Is it news? Debatable. It's certainly media gossip, and should definitely be played as such. But the fact that it gets played so prominently on front pages (and though I haven't listened today, I'm pretty sure it's a big topic on CBC Radio, too) indicates what's out of whack in the mediasphere in Canada. Though they'd be loathe to admit it, there's a rampant provincialism at work, that vastly overestimates the importance of issues like this to the population at large.
Outside of Toronto, Canadians constantly complain of a "Toronto bias" which I've been senstive to, since I'm not originally from here either. But over the years I've come to conclude that it's not a Toronto bias so much as a favouring of these kinds of stories.
The other recent example I can think is a literary prize called the Giller Awards, which gets massive coverage every year, completely out of whack with the degree to which regular people care about it.
Understand that I'm not saying you don't cover literary awards. I'm not a savage. I'm saying that the news judgement in the media here tends to favour rarefied things of limited interest to people outside that society group. Society balls are not news. But sometimes, here, they're treated as such. On your average Sunday, the New York Times does a far better job covering a wider spectrum of arts, high, low, and middle, than does the weekend Globe & Mail.
What does this disconnect have to do with commissioning editors or funding agencies? (Okay, you've been patient.)
The people reading scripts, deciding on stories to put forward are usually people who strive to be like the people up in the rarefied air. They identify with that strata, and like good little strivers, tend to put forward ideas and talent that appeal and conform to that mindset. When they do deign to do something "populist," it smacks of condescension, and it sinks below the waves without a ripple.
This is especially true at CBC -- but it's also something you'll see in various points at a lot of the funding agencies. A lot of the smaller channels and specialties do have a better handle on who's actually watching and what they actually like. But they have far less money to spend, and far less influence, too.
The problem of the out-of-touch-Gatekeeper is not a small one. Because the arts media in this country all strive, for the most part, to be part of the rarefied group, you don't get a lot of critical coverage of, say, Candadian films that don't appeal to most Canadians, or TV shows that portray a world that's very different from the world that most Canadians experience. TV producers and writers shouldn't want to go to events with the president of the TD Bank Hedge Fund. I don't even know what that is. But it doesn't sound like fun.
Here's the worst part: there's no real incentive to change, because people who fail to deliver an audience don't ever lose their jobs. Most of the money in Canadian TV is made from re-broadcasting US TV, anyway.
The fact that no one has examined Corner Gas, and to a lesser extent, Trailer Park Boys, and tried to understand why they resonate, completely flummoxes me.
They succeed because somehow they got on the air -- they go over the head of the rare air types and right into the homes of Canadians. And like Hockey Commentator Don Cherry (who the CBC tried to fire, then found themselves in the middle of a shitstorm revolt and backed off) people watch them because they're relevant to the 29 million people who don't care about 90% of what's in the Arts section in weekend Globe & Mail.
By the way, Quebec doesn't have this problem. Tons of popular films. Tons of popular homegrown shows. They'll tell you it's because of the language barrier. Don't you believe it.
So say you're a writer trying to reach an audience. Your problems are twofold: do you play the game and show the Gatekeepers the kinds of things they want to see, that conform to the people they'd like to be, and the country they'd like to show? (In which case you may indeed have a very nice career and may even get invited to parties where important people sue each other.) Or do you write for a show that you think will connect with the people?
Decide. Good luck with that. And let me know how it goes, ok? I'd really like to know.
Now... international scribes -- how does it work in your neck of the woods? How do you get past the mighty Gatekeepers? I'm interested to know.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
Okay. Cereal's eaten, coffee's poured, blogs blogged, paper read, ass in seat -- today is about the focused work. So as not to leave you hanging, dear reader, here's a wickedly entertaining piece from Slate speculating about "How you'll know when the boomers have lost control of the media."
Read it here. You'll be glad you did.
Read it here. You'll be glad you did.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Dead Things Index
As of 6:31 PM, 11/15/2005:
Total Ass in Seat Hours: 9
Number of Glasses of Water consumed: 10
Number of Glasses of Coke Zero consumed: 3
Cups of Coffee consumed: 6
*note to self: may be dying.
*further note to self: what is the deal with Coke Zero, and why is it so much better than Diet Coke?
Pages revised: 14
Longest sustained block of work: 1.8 hours
Trips to the Bathroom: 5
Time, in minutes, spent watching birds swoop and turn outside my 9th floor window: 76.3
*how do they all know to turn at exactly the same time?
And what are they planning, flying in formation like that?
Amount of time spent updating sidebar links, in minutes: 28
Scribosphere-related procrastination, in minutes: 111
Time spent reading paper, in minutes: 11
Time spent reading John Doyle's book, in minutes: 13
Time spent talking to agent, in minutes: 6.3
Time spent talking to fellow writer friends, in minutes: 37
Time spent worrying about career, in hours (foreground): 1.3
Time spent worrying about career, in hours (background): 9.8
Time spent listening to Wilco's new live album, in hours: 1.3
Time it took for some reason to download album off Itunes, in hours: 1.4
Time spent wondering what seminal 80's song The O.C. will commission a cover of next, after "If You Leave" and "Forever Young," in minutes: 17
Best Guess, after 17 minutes: "Don't Stand So Close To Me" or "The Safety Dance"
Quality of today's work, expressed as a percentage: 58
Quality of today's procrastination, expressed as a percentage: 42
Quality of today's lunch, as expressed as a percentage: 28
Minutes until I have a celebratory, "you did what you could today" tumbler of Red Breast Irish Whiskey: 2
Total Ass in Seat Hours: 9
Number of Glasses of Water consumed: 10
Number of Glasses of Coke Zero consumed: 3
Cups of Coffee consumed: 6
*note to self: may be dying.
*further note to self: what is the deal with Coke Zero, and why is it so much better than Diet Coke?
Pages revised: 14
Longest sustained block of work: 1.8 hours
Trips to the Bathroom: 5
Time, in minutes, spent watching birds swoop and turn outside my 9th floor window: 76.3
*how do they all know to turn at exactly the same time?
And what are they planning, flying in formation like that?
Amount of time spent updating sidebar links, in minutes: 28
Scribosphere-related procrastination, in minutes: 111
Time spent reading paper, in minutes: 11
Time spent reading John Doyle's book, in minutes: 13
Time spent talking to agent, in minutes: 6.3
Time spent talking to fellow writer friends, in minutes: 37
Time spent worrying about career, in hours (foreground): 1.3
Time spent worrying about career, in hours (background): 9.8
Time spent listening to Wilco's new live album, in hours: 1.3
Time it took for some reason to download album off Itunes, in hours: 1.4
Time spent wondering what seminal 80's song The O.C. will commission a cover of next, after "If You Leave" and "Forever Young," in minutes: 17
Best Guess, after 17 minutes: "Don't Stand So Close To Me" or "The Safety Dance"
Quality of today's work, expressed as a percentage: 58
Quality of today's procrastination, expressed as a percentage: 42
Quality of today's lunch, as expressed as a percentage: 28
Minutes until I have a celebratory, "you did what you could today" tumbler of Red Breast Irish Whiskey: 2
Think I'm Kidding about CBC?
I'm not.
Matt Watts is a very funny guy. Comic, writer, and one of the stars of recent episodes of The Newsroom, the show that, about ten years ago, made people go, "CBC did something hip?"
Well, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose...
Dear Richard Stursberg & Robert Rabinovich,
This is how you guys are treating your talent. Not some guy off the street. Not some unknown writer. A writer who's worked for you before. Who's on one of your big shows.
Seven months.
Good Grief.
Matt Watts is a very funny guy. Comic, writer, and one of the stars of recent episodes of The Newsroom, the show that, about ten years ago, made people go, "CBC did something hip?"
Well, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose...
Dear Richard Stursberg & Robert Rabinovich,
This is how you guys are treating your talent. Not some guy off the street. Not some unknown writer. A writer who's worked for you before. Who's on one of your big shows.
Seven months.
Good Grief.
Don't feel so bad.
Yes, my fellow Yanquis, he does look like a monkey.
But we in Canada don't have it so hot, either.
This is our current Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Paul "Mr. Dithers" Martin:
Isn't that awesome?
Now wait. It gets better. Because we're in a minority government situation here (if you don't understand the parliamentary system, Wikipedia, kids. But first, drop and tell me the line of succession in the USA to five places...) the Government is likely to fall sometime in the next two weeks. And there will be an election campaign.
An election campaign...over Christmas.
For a vote...in January.
They're going to make Canadians go to the polls in January.
Hahhahahahahahahahahaahahahahahah!
Don't laugh too hard, though, Chickens.
We still have a surplus.
But we in Canada don't have it so hot, either.
This is our current Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Paul "Mr. Dithers" Martin:
Isn't that awesome?
Now wait. It gets better. Because we're in a minority government situation here (if you don't understand the parliamentary system, Wikipedia, kids. But first, drop and tell me the line of succession in the USA to five places...) the Government is likely to fall sometime in the next two weeks. And there will be an election campaign.
An election campaign...over Christmas.
For a vote...in January.
They're going to make Canadians go to the polls in January.
Hahhahahahahahahahahaahahahahahah!
Don't laugh too hard, though, Chickens.
We still have a surplus.
Google Fun
Someone just came upon my blog by Googling the term:
"advantages of vaginaplasty"
To the best of my knowledge, I've never written on this subject.
I'm cold. And afraid. And the wolves are after me.
What are you guys thinking in Tokyo, anyway?
But I also have a 2nd draft to crank out, so...
Brr.
"advantages of vaginaplasty"
To the best of my knowledge, I've never written on this subject.
I'm cold. And afraid. And the wolves are after me.
What are you guys thinking in Tokyo, anyway?
But I also have a 2nd draft to crank out, so...
Brr.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Lessons of the Sith
Boy, Star Wars: Episode III sucked.
I remember when I saw it last May. I was in New York for a few days for a family wedding and they had digital projection at the AMC on 42nd Street. So I bought my ticket to a matinee and settled in.
Undeniably powerful in places, sure, but I remember audibly groaning at most of the dialogue - and I wasn't the only one. After it was over I trundled out into the greatest city in the world and, you know, found a bar.
I really didn't think too much more about it. Well, since the DVD's out, last night on a lark I decided to rewatch it with my critical eye. I guess it's good when art allows you to salvage some meaning, even if it's not the meaning the creator intended.
REFLECTED DRAMA, RELY ON IT YOU MUST NOT.
Now that we've seen the three films of Lucas' second trilogy, the whole "why did they suck," "are they really kids films" etc. Let's lay all that fanboy stuff aside. What struck me watching the third film a second time was, though it was easily the best of the flawed second trilogy, it also relied heavily on you bringing your knowledge of the first trilogy into it. In fact, most of the emotional moments were tied and predicated on you knowing what happened next. Yet they did nothing to reveal or recontextualize those moments. I see this a whole lot in student scripts and scripts by new writers people ask me to read. A crime drama that spends so much time referencing Pulp Fiction or Goodfellas, that there's not really any room for any spark of originality. The fact that Lucas was cannibalizing himself was just sad. Really, you have to ask yourself, what beyond circumstantial evidence (the "CSI-what's") did you learn about the turning of Anakin from watching the third film?
In structuring the second trilogy, I think the biggest mistake they made was making it the story of Anakin. Because we know what happens to Anakin. The hero of the first trilogy is not Anakin, it's Luke. The natural heroic journey for the second trilogy would have been to track Obi-Wan. Then maybe you could have had an interesting character exploration -- how does one man's failure lead to the loss of a friend forever?
Near the end of Sith, it gets interesting for about fifteen seconds when Anakin thinks that there's something between Obi-Wan and Padme.
Now there's a story.
A triangle! Wow! I get it! A triangle between Padme, Obi-Wan and Anakin would have given the whole second trilogy so much more heft. The friendship would have been messier, it would have given rise to jealousies real and imagined. It would have given Obi Wan some soul. Imagine having to step aside because the woman you loved loved someone else?
Nah. Probably wouldn't have worked. Certainly didn't work in say, oh, I don't know... the King Arthur mythology.
What did the entire "Jedi's must not love" thing serve? And where did it come from? I mean, the idea of courtly love is a big part of the Knights of the Round Table, which is presumably the inspiration for the Jedi.
Throughout the first trilogy, whenever you heard about the Jedi Knights, you got a great chill. It was great. But by the second trilogy, the Jedi Knights became the Jedi Order. And ... you know... not so much with the chill. In fact, more with the yawning than the chilling.
Watching Episode III, I kept thinking that the fatal flaw that made the Jedi boring was this: with the dark side, you give in to your bad emotions. Okay, yup. Got it. That's not good.
But the Good side of the force, as embodied by the Jedi, seem to me to be not about keeping those bad emotions in check (which is interesting, and indicative of actual human struggle) but learning not to feel them at all. And why do I want to watch a film about characters who don't feel anything?
Pretty retarded.
WHEN WRITING GENRE, TO THE FANBOYS DO NOT LISTEN
Fanboys always like to nitpick. And George Lucas is nothing if not the ultimate geek. Fanboys like to know the reasons why spaceships work, and how this thing could happen. Trying to play that game is ri-dic-u-lous. They will find flaws that aren't there. And if you play that game, you'll wind up going down some weird paths.
Exhibit A: The MidiChlorians. No one cared how The Force worked. Exhibit B: Ben Kenobi and Yoda appearing after their deaths. No one cares that that's a skill that needed to be learned. It was nice to bring back a name check to Qui-Gon or whatever his name was, but in a film with nine endings, it just wasn't needed.
Ten or twelve minutes could have been cut from the ending by just getting to the hero shot of his uncle and aunt holding baby Luke on Tatooine.
COOL EFFECTS SHOW DON'T TELL DOES NOT MEAN
There's an article in the Globe & Mail today, picked up from the WSJ, that talks about how visual effects are becoming more cost effective for TV shows. I think they use the example that there are 200 more effects shots now in each episode of Smallville than there were a few years ago. And an effect that once cost $7500 now costs only $1500 to reproduce. One of the speculations is that this, combined with the move toward bigger TV's, might shift TV from being more about the writing and the story to the spectacle, a la the movies. Of course this means that TV then becomes a director's medium, just like film is now.
Once again, based on the example of Sith, and that whole second trilogy: I call bullshit.
George Lucas could have done anything. He proved pretty muscularly that he could show anything. That whole final fight on the Lava planet is some pretty jaw-droppingly awesome stuff.
But the rest of the film, the big ugly middle, is all talking. We hear about plots and plans and suspicions, and never see them. The film finally takes off only when the Jedi start getting offed. At least that's visual.
I have zero patience for the whole writer vs director pissing match. It's why I don't have much ambition to ever work in film. But the thing is: the directors who make good movies are the ones who actually do have an understanding of story.
Most directors I know think in terms of visual sequences, and cool moments, but not in terms of story. The ones who do -- Clint Eastwood, say -- inevitably turn in richer, better films. George Lucas is not a story guy. Michael Bay is not a story guy. And you know it from the second you see their films.
You know what show I've been watching a lot of lately? South Park. And you know the thing about South Park that's great? The stories. They actually have nice, simple, executable, logical stories.
George Lucas could learn a thing or two from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I know he's developing series based on the Star Wars universe right now.
Whether I watch one second of those series is entirely dependent on whether he steps up and hires a showrunner. A writer.
Spectacle might fool me into the theater. But it won't keep me coming back week after week.
Which leads me to the final lesson of the Sith:
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH SYCOPHANTS, YOU MUST NOT
If there was ONE person around Lucas who could speak truth to power, maybe the films could have been better. Rick McCallum, you hack, I'm looking at you. Or whoever.
But for powerful producers or spec monkeys alike, the lesson is the same: you need someone reading your shit who will call you on your shit. Some writers I know are married to that person. That's great. For some, it's a trusted friend, or a fellow traveller. Whatever. Find that person you must. Or suck your work always will.
I remember when I saw it last May. I was in New York for a few days for a family wedding and they had digital projection at the AMC on 42nd Street. So I bought my ticket to a matinee and settled in.
Undeniably powerful in places, sure, but I remember audibly groaning at most of the dialogue - and I wasn't the only one. After it was over I trundled out into the greatest city in the world and, you know, found a bar.
I really didn't think too much more about it. Well, since the DVD's out, last night on a lark I decided to rewatch it with my critical eye. I guess it's good when art allows you to salvage some meaning, even if it's not the meaning the creator intended.
REFLECTED DRAMA, RELY ON IT YOU MUST NOT.
Now that we've seen the three films of Lucas' second trilogy, the whole "why did they suck," "are they really kids films" etc. Let's lay all that fanboy stuff aside. What struck me watching the third film a second time was, though it was easily the best of the flawed second trilogy, it also relied heavily on you bringing your knowledge of the first trilogy into it. In fact, most of the emotional moments were tied and predicated on you knowing what happened next. Yet they did nothing to reveal or recontextualize those moments. I see this a whole lot in student scripts and scripts by new writers people ask me to read. A crime drama that spends so much time referencing Pulp Fiction or Goodfellas, that there's not really any room for any spark of originality. The fact that Lucas was cannibalizing himself was just sad. Really, you have to ask yourself, what beyond circumstantial evidence (the "CSI-what's") did you learn about the turning of Anakin from watching the third film?
In structuring the second trilogy, I think the biggest mistake they made was making it the story of Anakin. Because we know what happens to Anakin. The hero of the first trilogy is not Anakin, it's Luke. The natural heroic journey for the second trilogy would have been to track Obi-Wan. Then maybe you could have had an interesting character exploration -- how does one man's failure lead to the loss of a friend forever?
Near the end of Sith, it gets interesting for about fifteen seconds when Anakin thinks that there's something between Obi-Wan and Padme.
Now there's a story.
A triangle! Wow! I get it! A triangle between Padme, Obi-Wan and Anakin would have given the whole second trilogy so much more heft. The friendship would have been messier, it would have given rise to jealousies real and imagined. It would have given Obi Wan some soul. Imagine having to step aside because the woman you loved loved someone else?
Nah. Probably wouldn't have worked. Certainly didn't work in say, oh, I don't know... the King Arthur mythology.
What did the entire "Jedi's must not love" thing serve? And where did it come from? I mean, the idea of courtly love is a big part of the Knights of the Round Table, which is presumably the inspiration for the Jedi.
Throughout the first trilogy, whenever you heard about the Jedi Knights, you got a great chill. It was great. But by the second trilogy, the Jedi Knights became the Jedi Order. And ... you know... not so much with the chill. In fact, more with the yawning than the chilling.
Watching Episode III, I kept thinking that the fatal flaw that made the Jedi boring was this: with the dark side, you give in to your bad emotions. Okay, yup. Got it. That's not good.
But the Good side of the force, as embodied by the Jedi, seem to me to be not about keeping those bad emotions in check (which is interesting, and indicative of actual human struggle) but learning not to feel them at all. And why do I want to watch a film about characters who don't feel anything?
Pretty retarded.
WHEN WRITING GENRE, TO THE FANBOYS DO NOT LISTEN
Fanboys always like to nitpick. And George Lucas is nothing if not the ultimate geek. Fanboys like to know the reasons why spaceships work, and how this thing could happen. Trying to play that game is ri-dic-u-lous. They will find flaws that aren't there. And if you play that game, you'll wind up going down some weird paths.
Exhibit A: The MidiChlorians. No one cared how The Force worked. Exhibit B: Ben Kenobi and Yoda appearing after their deaths. No one cares that that's a skill that needed to be learned. It was nice to bring back a name check to Qui-Gon or whatever his name was, but in a film with nine endings, it just wasn't needed.
Ten or twelve minutes could have been cut from the ending by just getting to the hero shot of his uncle and aunt holding baby Luke on Tatooine.
COOL EFFECTS SHOW DON'T TELL DOES NOT MEAN
There's an article in the Globe & Mail today, picked up from the WSJ, that talks about how visual effects are becoming more cost effective for TV shows. I think they use the example that there are 200 more effects shots now in each episode of Smallville than there were a few years ago. And an effect that once cost $7500 now costs only $1500 to reproduce. One of the speculations is that this, combined with the move toward bigger TV's, might shift TV from being more about the writing and the story to the spectacle, a la the movies. Of course this means that TV then becomes a director's medium, just like film is now.
Once again, based on the example of Sith, and that whole second trilogy: I call bullshit.
George Lucas could have done anything. He proved pretty muscularly that he could show anything. That whole final fight on the Lava planet is some pretty jaw-droppingly awesome stuff.
But the rest of the film, the big ugly middle, is all talking. We hear about plots and plans and suspicions, and never see them. The film finally takes off only when the Jedi start getting offed. At least that's visual.
I have zero patience for the whole writer vs director pissing match. It's why I don't have much ambition to ever work in film. But the thing is: the directors who make good movies are the ones who actually do have an understanding of story.
Most directors I know think in terms of visual sequences, and cool moments, but not in terms of story. The ones who do -- Clint Eastwood, say -- inevitably turn in richer, better films. George Lucas is not a story guy. Michael Bay is not a story guy. And you know it from the second you see their films.
You know what show I've been watching a lot of lately? South Park. And you know the thing about South Park that's great? The stories. They actually have nice, simple, executable, logical stories.
George Lucas could learn a thing or two from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I know he's developing series based on the Star Wars universe right now.
Whether I watch one second of those series is entirely dependent on whether he steps up and hires a showrunner. A writer.
Spectacle might fool me into the theater. But it won't keep me coming back week after week.
Which leads me to the final lesson of the Sith:
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH SYCOPHANTS, YOU MUST NOT
If there was ONE person around Lucas who could speak truth to power, maybe the films could have been better. Rick McCallum, you hack, I'm looking at you. Or whoever.
But for powerful producers or spec monkeys alike, the lesson is the same: you need someone reading your shit who will call you on your shit. Some writers I know are married to that person. That's great. For some, it's a trusted friend, or a fellow traveller. Whatever. Find that person you must. Or suck your work always will.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Haiku Happy Place
Ah, the glamor. Another working weekend living the dream. Freelance is Awesome! I leave you with a soothing ode to the power of Network Notes delivered Friday.
Act one foolishness
Can it really be the truth
Must I raise the stakes
Oh my comic foil
They want more drama for you
Will the center hold
A writer friend told
Of a notes call filled with bile
And it went like this
"It will be funny
That we know for sure" he said
Like it was easy
Revision mode on
Turn jokes from black to bright red
Different not better
And yet much was good
Suggestions that spark and flame
How can you ask more
Somewhere I'm making
Closing arguments at trial
The road not taken
Have a fabulous weekend.
Act one foolishness
Can it really be the truth
Must I raise the stakes
Oh my comic foil
They want more drama for you
Will the center hold
A writer friend told
Of a notes call filled with bile
And it went like this
"It will be funny
That we know for sure" he said
Like it was easy
Revision mode on
Turn jokes from black to bright red
Different not better
And yet much was good
Suggestions that spark and flame
How can you ask more
Somewhere I'm making
Closing arguments at trial
The road not taken
Have a fabulous weekend.
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