"No one dies on my watch." Bill Carter's Desperate Networks

Desperate Networks is a gripping inside look at how the other half frets.

Good lead, huh?

Now, a review of any "inside baseball" book like this has to come with several caveats. First of all, a lot of the (middling) reviews I've read seem to be disappointed that there aren't any juicy revelations on the level of Jay Leno hiding to overhear a conference call (a la Bill Carter's earlier, admittedly superior The Late Shift.)

So no, there's no smoking gun. And the speed at which television changes means that even though the book references events that happened in January 2006, it's already a little out of date.

But as we do here in the R&D department at Sticks Labs, we review these things not as a consumer or a general interest reader, but as a writer toiling in the TV trenches. And as a way to know thy ene--uh--collaborator...it's a very valuable book.

The centrepieces of the book are the outsized portraits of characters like NBC's Jeff Zucker, ABC's Steve McPherson, and the deposed Lloyd Braun, CBS's Les "Hot Wife" Moonves, Mike Darnell, whose FOX reality ideas so freaked out then-prez Gail Berman, she had to make clear, "no one dies on my watch, let me be really clear about that, Mike."

You see how the personal quirks and obessions of these powerful men (and the somewhat less powerful women who usually fill the executive rank just below) shape what we watch and what we, as writers, sell.

If you're a genuine white-wine swilling Hollywood Insider, maybe none of these stories will be news to you. But if you swim on the periphery, like, say, Marc Cherry pre-Desperate Housewives, this is the kind of book that will make you feel better and worse. (More on Cherry later.)

Among the insights, you hear a lot about the legendary micromanaging tendencies of Disney, Zucker's distaste and bias against half-hour filmed comedies, and why and how Fox always seems to go back to the reality well.

But more than this, you see an absolutely crystal-clear illustration of the vintage dictum that William Goldman uncorked for all of us:

Nobody knows Anything.

In fact, in television terms, it's worse. Not only does nobody know anything, but they do everything they can not to express their opinions, unless they're at the tippy-tippy-top.

And that's death. Because the other thing that emerges as you read this book is that it's never the guy at the top who has the big idea. It's usually some middle-executive, forced to stick their neck out and offer their opinion. That's how revolutionary, or quality shows get on the air.

(The only counter to this offered is LOST, which Lloyd Braun generated, supported, and boosted literally at the cost of his job.)

In the clearest example, A passel of female ABC executives lament that since Sex & The City and Ally McBeal went off the air, there's "no show for women to watch and talk about later." Eventually, that complaint reverberates around enough brains that it spawns Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.

Ghen Maynard, the low level (at the time) CBS executive who fought and fought for Survivor, has what is maybe the best insight into network decisionmaking in the book:

Adapting his social psychology training, Maynard had been observing the mechanics of decision making in television, where eight or ten executives would often gather in a room with no one willing to step up and take a risk. He associated the process with something he had studied called the "unresponsive bystanders theory," which posits that if you're lying in the street half dead, you're more likely to be helped if just a few people are in the vicinity than if you are surrounded by a crowd.

Which, by the way, is how we writers up dead and bleeding on the ground. Metaphorically, of course.

That leads us to the other big piece of news in the book: (well, news-ish...) the confirmation of what everyone's always suspected: every show that you know of as a hit was turned down. A lot. And the whys and hows of how these things get turned down is a catalogue of capricious decisionmaking and short sightedness.

• Friends would have been a FOX show, except for a sticking point of $150 000.
• ABC had CSI locked up, and lost it because of a laughably small amount of money.
  
• Every U.S. network turned down American Idol -- and the show only made it onto FOX because Rupert Murdoch's daughter leaned on Dad.
• Desperate Housewives could have been on the year two years earlier.
• Survivor was turned down by everybody -- including CBS. It took extraordinary lengths to push Moonves into supporting it.

Moonves definitely emerges as the book's star -- but with a puzzling myopia at the centre. This is a guy who, while at Warner Brothers, shepherded Friends and E.R. But once at CBS, it seems like anything really different -- he has to be really sold on. It's like the position of power dulls the desire to take the bold creative risks that actually pay off.

And Moonves is the guy who did good.

If you're a writer looking for solace, a break from writing that pilot or spec script, or banging your head against your script development deal, inspiration comes in the form of Marc Cherry. Here's a guy who was washed up. A has-been. Marc Cherry is so broke before Housewives that he's living with his mother. Wait. It gets worse. His agent embezzles almost $80 000 from him. He writes this script -- everybody who reads it, loves it, and it doesn't go anywhere. Not for a long time...

Finally, it sells. And a Director is assigned to the pilot, Australian Director P.J. Hogan, best known for My Best Friend's Wedding -- coming straight off the flop of the live action Peter Pan. And what happens next nearly derails Cherry's comeback before it gets started:

They ended up at Hogan's house, to go over his analysis. Hogan began giving notes to Cherry: what image he wanted to open with, what sort of interiors he expected.

Cherry, thinking this was the typical television collaboration, responded with some suggestions of his own. Hogan reacted cooly every time Cherry spoke up. Cherry began to suspect that Hogan expected the kind of writer-director relationship he had experienced in features, which often amounted to lackey and master....Cherry did not challenge Hogan and agreed with many of his notes. Two he did think were "so fucking stupid they would make my head explode." But he did not voice his objections to Hogan yet.

The next day, Cherry learned that Hogan had up and quit, declaring that Marc Cherry was impossible to work with. One of the Touchstone people confronted Cherry...even his own agents asked him how he had managed to offend this guy so thoroughly in one day...

The episode totally pissed Cherry off. He was just getting his career back on track, and this conflict, which he felt he had no way instigated, had make him look like an asshole in the eyes of his studio and his network -- and apparently even his agents.

Then there's Mr. Evil, Simon Cowell. I remember a conversation I had with someone about Idol not so long ago where they couldn't seem to understand why no one had believed in it before it came over. "I mean," they said, "it was a HUGE hit in England. Huge. All they had to do was watch the show!"

I never questioned the Pop Idol/American Idol translation problem, because I'd seen it up close. I'd done a story ten years before on Endemol, the huge Euro gameshow reality producer, and in the process of putting together the story, I'd talked to several U.S. TV types at a convention in Las Vegas. To a one, they all agreed, it would never work here. The reason? Well, there were lots of reasons spoken, but they all boiled down to one, best expressed by a frustrated middle exec from NBC I spoke to, who, frustrated at my question, blurted, "Look. Europeans are just weird."

Ah, America.

I would hate to think that writers would read this book and use it to self-justify their failure with poorly executed or conceived ideas. But reading it, you do think that you've got to take a more zen approach to whether you succeed or not. You have to be zen about the failure, but at the same time, you have also got to amp up your sales and your pitch. Your show is never going to go anywhere unless you break through the bystander syndrome, and get someone, anyone at your network or prodco to stand up and say, "this one. this one, I believe in."

If you think you're going to get to where you need to be without doing that, you're just kidding yourself.




Next time: Desperate Networks and the Canadian TV industry.

Oh Baby, Don't Be That Way, You Know I Still Love You...

Hey ho. Well. I'm a writer who's just spent the bulk of the last couple days not writing, which always makes me cranky. But you know, good stuff can come out of meetings, too. Great stuff. But I'm chomping to get back to the MOUNTAIN of writing and rewriting that I have to do.

Plus, up here North of the 49th Parallel, the weekend coming up is a long weekend. Victoria Day, actually. The Birthday Celebration of that dowager princess Queen Vic. Of Queen Vic and Prince Albert fame. There. You're thinking about a pierced penis right now, aren't you? Don't even try to deny it. There's a good friend of mine who thinks it's funny that if you write my name real fast it looks like penis. Twenty years and she hasn't tired of that joke. And she's a mother.

Anyway, there's plenty of stuff for everyone to chew over with the upfronts and the fallout from the upfronts and the meetings that CBC is doing to explain their new strateregy here in Canada. And then there's that long weekend, which we here call the May 2-4 even though this year it's nowhere near May 24. (2-4 is also Canadian slang for a case of la biere. I know. More than you needed to know.)

All that's a long way of saying that blogging will be light til next week here. I've got limited procrastination time, don'tcha know, and I'm probably going to be cheating on you blog readers with a book in my off seconds.

I've just gotten ahold of the latest from one of my favorite TV writers, Bill Carter (The Late Shift.) If I'm not writing like I should be, or daydreaming like I sometimes do, or wiggling my toes in the grass like I should do more often on a long weekend, chances are I'll be reading this book. I'll let you know what I thought next week.

In the meantime, please, don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Is it just me, or...

Was Grey's Anatomy a bit of a hammock last night?

Great beginning. Great ending. Sagged in the middle. The interview the interns bit was flaccid, and the prom-planning stuff was just...dumb. Bailey's sass about the silver and white was the only inspired portion of that plot.

I know every woman in America is hungup on the Mer/Der thing, but for me the only real relationship convo--again-- was the one with Sara Ramirez and T.R. Knight. George and Cristina remain the main reason to watch this show.

I'm glad for its massive success, but I'm not sure I'll follow it next year. Especially if its moved to another night.

Hey, You Writer Action BBS types...

I see you surfin in on my sitemeter.

I hope whatever article you're linkin to is givin you a chuckle or something. See I can't tell, because I'm not WGA. I'm WGC. So I can't join your little BBS club.

Second class citizen and all.

Have fun pokin around. Solidarity forever.

Or as my English friend Mike would say:

"Oi, Wanker. Shove off right?"

Upfront Week

Lots of people blog about this, so I'm not gonna. But as networks announce their schedules, you can find good coverage here and here and here and here.

In Which Our Hero Is Reduced To a Blubbering Mess of Goo By a Napkin

I've had a little time to think about it now and I've decided maybe not to be so glib.

It's funny how a TV show can change your life.

I've had a lifelong fascination with the idea of service, and with American politics. As a child, my twin, Sarah Vowell-like obsessions were Lincoln and JFK. For about five seconds, as a good Catholic boy, I entertained thoughts about maybe entering the priesthood. (Then I discovered girls. More specifically, that girls, unlike boys, usually smell really good.)

In 1999, I was not particularly happy. I'd been in a new job for about two years. I was a television producer, making good money. I'd helped start up a station. I liked the people I worked with (most of 'em, anyway.) I got to write a little in my job -- mostly sketches and things like that. But there was kind of a maw there, just waiting to claim me. I'd just turned thirty the year before, and when the question, "Is this how you pictured your life?" came up, when I was honest, I had to admit not just "no," but "hell no."

Then I saw the premiere episode of The West Wing. From the moment the show premiered, from the moment Jed Bartlet walked into the room quoting the First Commandment, I knew two things absolutely: 1) that I had a new favorite show, and 2) that I had to get the hell out of my job.

It wasn't just the quality of the writing or the acting or the direction, though they were all fine. I'd been more or less devoted to Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin's first television series...I'd been lucky enough to see A Few Good Men on Broadway, and had tracked Sorkin's writing ever since.

What The West Wing did for me, though, was to rekindle those thoughts of service. Thoughts that had been rattling around for years, that made me think, "what is it that you should be doing? What is the best use of what you have?" I knew it wasn't necessarily politics. First of all, living in Canada was a bit of an impediment to that, and Canadian politics just didn't inspire me like American politics. I'd been teaching University part-time for a number of years, and though that did feel like I was doing something --(it certainly wasn't the money, which was pathetic) it didn't leave me feeling that I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

Jed Bartlet wasn't just a character; he was an ideal. I didn't see a lot of him where I worked. I didn't really respect my current boss too much. In meeting after meeting, I had come to realize that they didn't really respect me. I could say things like, "well, here's what the students I teach say," when trying to chase that elusive youth audience, but it didn't connect. I could say things like, "the ACTRA (actor's union) contract says this..." but none of that mattered if you weren't listened to. I had a meeting with an old boss inside the same organization and she said the very wise words that galvanized me: "maybe it's time for you to go."

I wanted to be a counsellor to the President, serve at the pleasure of the President -- or at least have a life where I was doing something that I believed in.

Then there was the show itself. Holy God, the writing -- long, breathless strings of dialogue that was funny and angry and smart and about something. I didn't know TV could be like that. If TV could be like that, then what the hell was I doing interviewing people who wrote books, or promoting bad movies with more kitch than cultural value?

So a few months later I started writing a spec script. And then I wrote another. And then I took one of my plays and turned it into a screenplay. And that got optioned and for a while it looked like maybe it would get made. Then it didn't.

I applied to two programs. One was the Disney/ABC Writers Fellowship. The other was The Canadian Film centre. Heads, I go to L.A. Tails I stay here. If I didn't get into either program, well, I was just going to quit. Quit and figure out something else to do...or more accurately, some other way to do what I wanted to do, the only thing I could think of doing now, which was to try and write something 1/10th as good as The West Wing.

I entered that West Wing spec script in one of those script competitions. It won. It got me into the CFC, if not Disney/ABC.

Then the American political process went all pear-shaped in the 2000 election and I was kind of glad not to be down there. I tried not to think about it. I thought about Jed Bartlet, and the people who worked in a place doing jobs they believed in.

And I quit my job.

And I went back to school.

And I have never regretted it for a single second.

And six years later, I haven't written that show 1/10th as good as the West Wing yet, but I'm getting closer. And when I sit in meetings, talking about story, people listen. In about forty-five minutes, I'll sit in on the first production meeting of a series that I'm partially responsible for creating. And you know what? It's for the same place where I was unhappy as a TV producer. It was the right call for both me, and the company. I didn't stay and become bitter, which is probably why I'm able to work with them now -- and hopefully help them to create something that will accrue more value to the company than I ever could have accrued as an employee. That's the value of following your heart. It's not saving a bunch of Cubans on rafts, floating into the Port of Miami -- but it'll do.

And yeah, Aaron Sorkin's Bartlet, who could quote philosophers I didn't know or hadn't read, would never have made the mistake of missing that the Founding Fathers set a March, not a January inauguration, but the fact that the show was able to bounce back to a level of quality at all without Sorkin (which it did) is inspiring, in a way, too. The idea is not to become irreplaceable. The idea is to create something so indelible that it changes the way other people write.

So Keb'Mo singing America The Beautiful while people box up the Oval Office -- some people might not like that on the message boards, but of course that is the beauty and the power of the American system. That is what's beautiful in it. The Orderly Transition of Power, the Government of Laws Not Men. It's this that makes me choke up when I think of America, when I think of how easily it can be threatened, and hopeful when I think that though the cost might be high, ultimately the system will right itself. Because there have to be people out there with that idea of service. Maybe my calling was to write TV, but I have no doubt that there are Josh Lymans and Sam Seaborns and Toby Zieglers and C.J. Craigs there, for real.

I have no doubt that forgetful chief executives can one day take that last walk and remember everyone's names (Something I never managed to do in all those years teaching.) I have no doubt that the principle, not the men, ultimately survive. It's that idea that The West Wing celebrated, right til the very end.

And that's how a TV show can change your life.

Well, At Least Sorkin Doesn't Have to Compete With HImself

Well, Guess I need a new Spec for sure, now.

My West Wing spec, Written May 2000, has gotten me a lot of work over the years. But that's not what I'll miss most.

I just don't know what I'm going to do without Alison Janney on my TV every week.

"When You Find Yourself On a Run About Socialism, You Know That Pretty Quick You've Got To Light Homer's Pants On Fire"

That's just one of the delicious insights in today's Times Arts & Leisure section.

I talk a lot about the audience here -- mainly because I feel a lot of Canadian writers don't; that, if anything, is the main creative malaise stalking the industry here. (Leaving aside all the much more pressing and depressing structrual problems.)

In today's NYTimes, Christopher Noxon has a fascinating article that runs down the careful balancing act at play in the search for the (rapidly disappearing) crossover audience.

AS he puts the finishing touches on "Superman Returns," the director Bryan Singer is thinking about bathrooms.

During a screening of one of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, Mr. Singer noticed how many kids in the audience made a mad dash for the bathrooms during bits of dialogue-heavy exposition. "It was like a stampede," he said in recent phone interview. A little while later, during one of the movie's prolonged battle sequences, he noticed adults making a similar exodus. Mr. Singer predicts a similar shuffling when his "Superman" lands in theaters June 30.

"I'd like to think this movie is entirely universal," he said. "But I know there will be bathroom moments for the kids and bathroom moments for adults."

Again, this is another reason why I toil in TV not film. In TV we're starting to learn that going for niche is the only way to score - by trying to reach everyone you reach no one. But it's still an eye-opening and interesting search.

Good questions raised by this article. I might have more to say on it later: but right now I have to go watch another episode of Footballers Wive$. Have at it in the comments section.

Bring Me The Renegade Glaciers!

Funny, and yet not. President Al Gore's address on SNL.



Go watch it before NBC makes YouTube Take it down.

And Yet According To Jim Still Lives...

Sons & Daughters follows Love Monkey and Arrested into that good night.

You think it's frustrating as a viewer?

Try being a guy trying to write good TV, seeing the TV you love just...not...connect.

I don't blame American Idol -- after all, American Idol made HOUSE a hit.

Still. It's hard not to...you know...reach for the scotch.

Fred Goss' announcement is here.

The Office: Jim Grows A Pair

(spoilers for the Season Finale of The Office below.)

Well.

That didn't take long.

A friend once revealed to me that, back in high school, this girl I dated complained to him that I was the most frustrating person in the world to argue with -- because every time she thought she'd score a point, I'd nod and say, "Okay. You're right about that. I concede the point."

Then, I'd reframe the argument or move on to something else. Apparently it was very frustrating. In my book it's called listening, and it's also the way you argue -- present political climate to the contrary.

That's a long-winded Saturday way of saying that I take back the statement I made below:

Has there ever been a "super sized" episode that was better than a normal episode of the same series, rather than just bloated and unnecessary?

Yup. Thursday's season finale of The Office.

The charm of the American version has always been (even more than its British parent) the wonky rhythms of its storytelling.

We talk about surprising people with our Act Outs, and of never letting the audience guess where the story is going. But a lot of the time those "surprises" are just cheap suspense, or a logical function of the story. What The Office has managed to convey is a genuine off-kilter appeal where you just don't know what is going to happen next. You know Michael is a train wreck and clueless, and you dread him in the room with Jan and her boss -- and he comes through by being decent, taking heat, and protecting her with a decency even she didn't think was there. You track Dwight trying to catch Oscar takig a fake sick day, and then out of nowhere comes the punch: Oscar's gay, living a perfectly happy secret life which none of his Office-mates know about. (And honestly, would you tell these guys?)

And then there's Jim and Pam.

When you think about it, The Office has already done more episodes than the brilliant Gervais original. Which means that Jim and Pam have been sniffing around each other longer than Tim and Dawn ever did.

I've written before about the subtle deviations from the British source material that make the American Office work: chief among them the fact that Jim doesn't hate his job quite as much as Tim did. But the progression of the Jim/Pam relationship has also brought some intriguing differences that speaks to national character.

I always got the sense watching the UK Office that the main obstacle keeping Tim and Dawn apart was good old fashioned repression. Dawn knew how Tim felt (he told her: twice!) and she just couldn't bring herself to change her situation. She soldiered on. (In Office-time, after all, it took her leaving for more than a year to finally bring them together.)

Jim and Pam, on the other hand, have followed a similar but very different trajectory. Pam is utterly clueless about Jim's feelings -- but more importantly, her own. As the season wore on, and Pam planned her wedding, the comic straight-to-camera interviews became more and more bittersweet, as you realized just how much Pam was deluding herself.

And Jim, decent guy that he is, kept coming up to the line of telling her, and backing away. There they were, trapped in the no-man's land of being "best friends" who really weren't best friends at all.

I love Tim, I do. Don't get me wrong. But I get Jim. I've been Jim - more than once in my life.

So for the endgame, the 'very special-ness' of the season ender to just come out of nowhere like that -- it was almost over before you knew what was happening -- well, that was a great use of 40 minutes.

From Salon's treatment of the wrap-up:

At the Casino Night (held in the company warehouse), Pam flirts through a few hands of poker with Jim before cleaning him out. Jim seems ready to give up on the night when a conversation with Jan about his plans to transfer out of the company's Scranton office, a move obviously connected to Pam's upcoming nuptials, catalyzes something within him. Finding himself alone with Pam, he decides to show her his hand, dropping his defenses so suddenly it comes as quite a shock -- both to her and us:

"I'm in love with you."

"What!?"

"I'm really sorry if that's weird for you to hear, but I need you to hear it."

Watching Jim's face through the scene, you can't help feeling sorry for the guy, and Pam almost makes you hate her when she says Jim just "misinterpreted things." But then, just when you're about ready to write her off, Pam is back in the office, talking to her mom on the phone about what has just happened. Suddenly, Jim saunters in -- you have to admire his persistence here -- and plants a big one on her. She tenses up at first, but then returns the kiss with a passion that says this is the moment she's been waiting for, too. The show ends with the two of them looking at each other with a mixture of elation and confusion: Now what?

If this is where comedy on TV is going, can we all just agree to climb on board now?

Schedule a-go-go!

On this blog, I've given stick in the past to Canadian programmers who congratulate themselves for their brilliance, when really all they're doing is simulcasting U.S. shows, trading on the creativity (and creative risk) of other broadcasters.

Well for that class of programmer, there is no phrase more headache-inducing than this: Super Sized Comedies.

The perennially lame NBC sweeps trick (Has there ever been a "super sized" episode that was better than a normal episode of the same series, rather than just bloated and unnecessary?) wreaks havoc for Canadian networks locked into simulcasting shows from multiple U.S. Networks. Check out this train-wreck of a breakdown from Bill Brioux in today's Toronto Sun.

Now for the tricky part: If you are planning to watch this show on a Canadian station, better sit down. NBC's scheduling scheme is a super-sized headache for Global, which normally simulcasts the NBC comedies.

Write this down: NBC will air the 40-minute Earl finale from 8:40 to 9:20, between super-sized episodes of Will & Grace (8 p.m. to 8:40) and The Office (9:20 to 9:59).

Global, which is locked in with Survivor Panama from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., will air the super-sized Earl from 9 p.m. to 9:40, followed by an Earl encore ("Monkeys In Space") that they will cram, commercial free, into the 9:40 to 10 p.m. slot before leading into Without A Trace at 10 p.m.

Could that be more confusing? Yes, actually. Global has no plans to air tonight's second-last episode of Will & Grace, "Whatever Happened To Baby Gin?" Bernadette Peters guests as Karen's long-lost sister who was injured as a child in a game of Twister. Sounds like Will & Grace is ending just in the nick of time.

NBC has it at 8. Global, which fobbed this over to CH years ago, has it on the shelf. CH is clogged up tonight with two hours of American Inventors (8-10 p.m.). Maybe an inventor will some day figure out some way Canadian networks can cram even more American shows onto their schedules.

Next week, Global will air the one-hour Will & Grace series finale, plus the one hour retrospective special (from 8-10 p.m.). Not CH, Global. Does your head hurt? My head hurts.

It gets worse. The Office has a 40-minute season finale tonight (9:20 - 9:59), written by series star Steve Carell. Something about a casino night in the warehouse. Huge laffs.

Global can't show it tonight and might show it later. Or not.

Whew.

Now, I don't have any objection to channels making money. Hell, my livelihood depends on it. But seriously -- on some level, when you read the above -- wouldn't it help to have a few hit shows that you actually had control over?

You know what makes this worse, too? Once upon a time, if you were a Canadian network and you couldn't show the show at the same time as the U.S. net, you sometimes got the opportunity to pre-release it. So the show would air a night earlier in Canada. That largely seems to have disappeared, especially for the big shows. Canadian networks sometimes show a show, say, an hour earlier than in the U.S., but I'm willing to bet that in the downloading world, distribs are a whole lot tighter about letting the show air in Canada too much ahead of the U.S. broadcast.

Almost makes you think it would be easier to, you know, make your own shows.

Nah.

Final Draft Catches Up

Final Draft released an update -- 7.2 -- this week. I've had my frustrations with FD in the past. I shudder to think of the glitch that prevented me from running my newly-updated-to-7 program on my 17 hour flight to South Africa two years ago. Trying to call customer service in L.A. -- nine hours and 10 000 miles away wasn't very fun either. In fact, I think through the entire time I was working on Charlie Jade I wound up going back to FD6 just cause 7 was so stupidly buggy. Like, Microsoft buggy.

The ongoing Screenwriter or Final Draft debate is the most boring argument in Scriptendom. It's so boring it makes the Mac vs. PC imbroglio look like a full-contact deathmatch performance of The Mikado by naked Playboy Playmates.

I'll give you a minute with that. Yes. Picture it. Good.

Moving on...

My thing (as someone who's used both) is that I prefer FD simply because I'm a Mac user, and that's the platform it started on. Screenwriter feels and looks like a PC product ported to Mac. (Which it is.) But FD is also a colossal pain in the ass.

But I was eager to update, because this new version (7.1.2, build 34, to be precise) is the first that's native to my brand new Intel-chip based Macbook Pro. (Yes, Yes, I know. No, I can't afford it. Ah Credit, is there any trouble you can't get me into?)

Cruising the program, I'm pleased to see that it seems to have fixed some lingering issues.
And more importantly, they've finally caught up with what has always been one of FD's strengths: TV templates.

The TV templates included with Final Draft have always been a good idea with a bad execution. Simply put: they don't update them enough.

So I was pleased in the new update to find templates ready made for The Office, My Name is Earl, Commander in Chief (okay, maybe not that one, sigh) Bones, The L Word, Prison Break, Numb3rs, House, Grey's Anatomy, Entourage, and How I Met Your Mother.

Sure, you still have to wade through some of the less-than-desirable templates. (Seriously, is anyone out there writing an According to Jim?) But it's still a step in the right direction.

I assume these templates are created by someone who's actually looked at an actual script from the show, and reflect each show's particular quirks. (I mean, I hope so, if not: lame.)

I'm pleased with their effort to stay more current with the templates. I hope it continues.

Now, if they could just come up with one for The Unit...

I Am Utterly Fascinated by This Story.

Yet I'm not sure why.

From today's NY Times.

Have You Any Dreams You'd Like to Sell?

Last night, I had the one where I was supposed to perform (in this case, a song) but I didn't know the lyrics. So I had to go find them before the performance. But I was moving too slowly, so I just started flying.

That's right. The Performance Dream + The Flying Dream.

I'm now having hybrid dreams.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Procrastinatey

I worked straight through the weekend and turned in a draft yesterday. So I had no weekend, right? So I should be taking today off and contemplating the next step and the meeting I have Friday, right?

Wrong.

Sigh. Instead I'm taking an animation pitch to outline. Glamorous! Awesome! Feh!

But because I'm burned out, I'm also surfing and doing the wasting-time dance.

I'm really digging this woman's blog right now. Curious about staffing season and what it does to people? Go give it a read.

She seems to be handling it rather well.

I'm also channeling my inner Jane Espenson right now -- I just realized that I've been obsessing over the thought of a Ham and Swiss Sandwich on Wheat Bread from wagamama, the cafe across the street from me.

Damnit, I gotta go buy that sandwich. And if they have the Potato Leek Soup too, well, I'm going to freak out.

And that answers that, too...

I thought it was a John Spencer-related thing.

Depressing that it, once again, it all comes down to the filthy lucre.

If only it had won the Emmy, you know, Five times...

Be Careful What You Wish For.

My friend Alex of Complications Ensue and I have a little ongoing thing that started when we were in South Africa. Actually, come to think of it, he may not even be aware of this thing we have. This thing is basically this:

He watches Gilmore Girls.

I laugh at him because he watches Gilmore Girls.

I've never liked Gilmore Girls. I think I'd rather...well...I'd almost rather watch 7th Heaven than Gilmore Girls. At least 7th Heaven had that hottie on it. Or did she leave? Anyway, that show's gone too -- so nevermind.

Now. Before you diary writing, Lorelai-lovin Stars Hollowin freaks have at me, remember: taste is taste. I watch Grey's Anatomy, which is, if anything, even girlier than Gilmore Girls. (And they're also getting way out of hand on their music cues.) Anyway, he doesn't like Battlestar Galactica, and I think he's nuts for that. So there it is.

All that as preamble to this:

Here's a very, very interesting article about the nitty-gritty of why Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino aren't returning to Gilmore Girls next year.

The short version is that they wanted a two year deal, and some other stuff, and the PTB said, "nope." But it's the long version that should frost your cornflakes if you actually entertain fantasies of one day rising in the TV writing ranks to showrunner:

Dan: For the six years, we've been working seven days a week, 'cause we knew every aspect of the show. We'd break every story, we'd edit, this last year we directed seven between ourselves, we have written 90-something scripts.
Amy: We also take a pass at all scripts that go out and by the time our season ends, by the time I'm done editing and by the time I'm done with sound mixes and everything like that, it's mid-May. We start back June 1. We work through every holiday... Christmas, Thanksgiving. It's been quite a load.
Dan: So, having done that for six years, we really wanted to expand our personnel base. We wanted more writers, more bodies in that writers' room, we wanted a director on staff, which I think every other hourlong show has, except ours. Not having that director on staff means Amy and I have to be down on stage supervising other directors, which leads to the seven-days-a-week thing. So we were needing more personnel. And we never got around to convincing people that that was absolutely necessary.
Amy: And part of the reason we went to the studio so early in the game is because we wanted to be able to go out and find writers then. And find a director-producer then. So that everything would be in place the following year. Because at this point in time, shows are being picked up, people are putting their schedules together, the marketplace is thin. Great people are being snapped up. And we went to the studio and said, "Look, give us a chance to get everything in place now. Let's have everyone sign up for next year. Let's start working on next year this year." I think it's a couple of things. Businesswise, we spoiled them, because why spend money on other writers when you don't have to? [Laughs] There's a little bit of that. And I also think that everybody thinks that everybody's playing poker, and who's going to blink first? And we were like, very honestly, like, in an Andy Hardy movie going, "No, seriously, we really want to put on a show in the barn if you just listen to us, mister!" And it just never got to that point. And it wasn't until things really came to a head that suddenly people realized, "The insane people are actually serious about this."

Ulp.

Cleanin' up Tony? @%$#!

Today's NY Times has an interesting article about A&E's ongoing project to "clean up" episodes of The Sopranos for their basic cable premiere next year. Now, before you scoff (oh go ahead, scoff, I can see you want to) remember that there are 60 million Americans, roughly, who never saw The Sopranos on HBO. They don't have HBO, and apparently neither rent DVD's or engage in "antisocial" downloading behavior.

Here in Canada, of course, Canadian network CTV made a big splash by rerunning Sopranos afer its premiere on our own Pay Networks, TMN out east and Movie Central out west.

The most interesting part of the article, though, is the part where they walk the spin. Predictably (and you should maybe take this with a large grain of salt) they don't have to change too much. In Sopranos? You fuckin' kiddin me? Well. Apparently not. Here's why:

As A&E works its way through the project — it is currently deep into screening episodes from the first two seasons — Mr. DeBitetto says that he has already been surprised by one dynamic: that the network has actually had to designate very little to cut. On average, it has trimmed less than 30 seconds from each episode, which can run from 45 minutes to nearly an hour. One reason, Mr. DeBitetto said, is that so much of the tension in "The Sopranos" hinges on the unseen anticipation of violence. And when someone does die in a "rubout" or "whack," Mr. DeBitetto said, those scenes are often no more gruesome than those one might see on a drama like "24" on broadcast television.

In such instances, loyal viewers may be hard-pressed to determine what exactly A&E has retouched. For example, in one scene from the first season, two of Tony's lieutenants, Silvio (played by Steven Van Zandt) and Christopher (Michael Imperioli), put a bullet through the head of a quivering turncoat who has been found to be wearing a wire. In the edited scene, as in the original, blood splatters on a nearby wall. All that is missing in the edited version of the shot is perhaps two seconds of film in which what appeared to be a chunk of brain matter began to slither down an air-conditioning unit.

This is worth keeping in mind. Hollywood movies used to know how to do this, too. I still cringe in fear at Hitchcock films, because he knew so well how to build the tension. I mean, really, look at Rear Window or The Birds. There's nothing there that you couldn't show an eight year old, except for the fact that if they watched closely, you might, you know, scar them for life. Rosemary's Baby is laughably tame by modern standards. So why does the movie scare the shit out of me?

Much is made of the freedom of cable. But we tend to forget that sometimes, as writers, it's the limitations of the frame we have to work within that can be our salvation. Whether it's having to constrain your story to four or five acts, or dealing with the implications and anticipation of violence, rather than let it all hang out, SAW or HOSTEL style -- there's something to be said for limitation; simply in the way that it forces you to dramatize rather than shock, and tease rather than bludgeon.

I'm not that surprised that so much of The Sopranos can actually be preserved -- but I am a little skeptical, or at least interested, to see if it does as well for A&E as they need it to.

I wrote some time ago -- in one of the spec script posts, I think -- that most television can be listened to, rather than watched. It's very dialogue-driven -- perhaps a throwback to the days when everyone was doing four things in front of the TV, like homework and making out and the ironing.

But Sopranos is a big exception to that rule. The series is very visual, and if you're not watching, and watching closely, you can miss important moments.

I wonder if your average inattentive American viewer -- the great untapped market that has never seen The Sopranos -- will respond to it the way A&E wants it to. After all, this is the big roll-the-dice replacement for Law & Order. And if there was ever a TV-that's-really-radio show on TV, it's Law & Order.

Dyslexic Scrubs Nerds Untie!

Sorry. That's just low blood sugar talking. One of my favorite shows meets one of my favorite stupid jokes.

Diane Kristine over at Unified Theory of Nothing Much continues her peerless reportage of all things TV with this Q&A with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence.

My favorite part, of course, because I'm a sad, sad narcissist, is where she picks up on an earlier post of mine. Lawrence's answer to that question is particularly interesting:

BL: Here's the deal. Hollywood, especially networks and studios, they love to see what the trends are. Most recently, one of the things people have been saying is the sitcom's dead, three-camera sitcoms are dead. Before that, it was dramas are dead. And before that, it was sitcoms are dead. Now it's going to be reality is dead. It's a never-ending cycle.

It's all just hogwash, first of all. The only thing that's really changed in television is that people have so many options. My dad, who's 60, has 150 channels and will tell me about shows he likes that I've never heard of before. The one thing you have to realize is that sitcoms aren't dead. It's just that crappy television is dead. I think it's so competitive out there right now that a middle-of-the-road show that's just OK, nothing special, isn't going to survive the way it used to.

Because of that, I think you have one of two options. If you're super, super lucky, you have one of those giant hits that just grabs the public zeitgeist, whether it's Grey's Anatomy or American Idol or one of those shows that seems like a giant steamroller that everybody in the world watches. In which case, you get to sit back and celebrate. If you aren't that, I feel the only way to survive is to become a cult show, in the sense that your core audience is so loyal that they will follow you and stick with you and truly keep your show alive and successful for the network.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great example of this. It was never a huge hit, but had such a loyal cult following that it basically drove that show into long-term success. The Family Guy, their cult following put that show back on the air. For us, for Scrubs, that's what we're so grateful for. Because we weren't a huge financial asset for NBC, the show's had I think seven or eight timeslots in five years. Luckily our fans are so loyal, that same core group has followed us from timeslot to timeslot and from evening to evening and really helped to keep the show going.

Long before I got into television, I remember the last time the "sitcom was dead."

There were all these articles talking about how the sitcom was over. Then, that fall -- The Cosby Show premiered. The last time the drama was dead, I believe, E.R. premiered that fall.

Let pundits and TV writers make the prognostications. If you're an artist and a writer, I think at the end of the day, your only choice is to play the long game.