Holy Sheep! Three More and We Have a Table Read!

Apple previewed Leopard, their next operating system iteration, this morning. In it there's a new voice, Alex. Click here and scroll down and you can hear how Alex does in natural-sounding speech. (You'll need Quicktime.)

Seriously good, huh? I mean, intonation, breath sounds...great stuff.

I would already gladly use this to hear voiceover read back, and we're almost at the point where that "read back the script" thing might actually be useful.

Way cool.

Reprint: Book Review: A Great Feast of Light

I noticed that John Doyle's book is newly in paperback, so I guess now's as good a time as any to repost my review of it, (originally posted 11/2005)


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.

Was it Sunnier Before?

I fully accept that this might be a heretical view. And the caveat is that I've only seen two episodes of the new season...but...

...is it just me, or was It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia funnier without Danny Devito?

I think Devito's funny, it's just...I don't think the anarchic spirit where they'd go for any joke last season is quite the same. Now they have to service his character. I find the show a little unbalanced now.

I'm hoping that's transitory, as this show has given me more solid laughs than most shows I've seen in the last year or two.

Omnibus of Exhaustion: On Muppets, the Street, the Book Club and the Medium

I'm plum tuckered. I spent last week cranking out three production drafts for Across the River To Motor City. That's when you take the writer's draft and ready it for production by cutting pages down, cutting all unnecesary locations and characters, and just generally trying to sharpen the document down to its most concise and shootable. I have three more to go, before smaller rewrites to address further production, actor concerns, etc, kick in. So amidst a bunch of other stuff, I've been trying my best to take it easy this August long weekend.

But a bunch of articles I've been reading all seem to lead me in a similar direction. First of all there's one from the New York Times this weekend. The Children's Television Workshop is doing something for the 37th season of Sesame Street that they haven't been able to do -- introduce a lead female muppet who sticks. The new candidate is called Abby Cadabby -- she's meant to be a kind of girly-girl muppet. It is interesting to me that in the entire run of Sesame Street, none of the female muppets ever achieved iconic status. Don't get me started on Elmo, now. I was the first Sesame Street generation, and thoughts of Elmo and of the fact that adults can now see Mr. Snuffleupagus just make me feel dead and cold inside.

LIZ NEALON, executive vice president and creative director of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind “Sesame Street,” wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted in a new Muppet for the show’s 37th season, which starts on Aug. 14. But she did have one major goal: She wanted the creative team, at long last, to come up with a female Muppet star. The show did already have a number of female characters, including Zoe, a rambunctious, orange, furry friend of Elmo’s, and Rosita, an emerald-blue, bilingual Muppet with a sweet, friendly soul.


“We have our wacky, and we have our gentle,” Ms. Nealon said in a recent interview. “But we wanted a lead female character. If you think about ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ some girls relate to Rhoda, who’s our Zoe, and some girls really relate to Mary, who’s a girly girl. And we didn’t have that girl. We made a definite decision to sit down with the writers to figure out what this character might be.”

For anyone who spends time trying to wrestle characters to ground, it's nice to see that the Sesame Street folks have their own meticulous process to go through. Article is here.

That article was still in my head as I went back through the Globe and Mail yesterday and looked over Kate Taylor's piece on the male-female fiction divide.

“Women read more, they read more novels, they read earlier and they read later. Sixty-five to 70 per cent of the [Canadian] book market is women,” observes Brad Martin, president of Random House of Canada, adding that the American and European markets are probably similar. “How many men do you know who are in a book group?”

No surprise, then, that when the federal Department of Canadian Heritage surveyed Canadian reading habits last year, it found a distinct gender gap. Women accounted for 60 per cent of the daily readers and 70 per cent of the heavy readers who had read 50 or more books in the last 12 months. Women also outnumbered men two to one as regular readers of both classic and contemporary novels.

The divide is not new: The department's previous survey, in 1991, had found similar results, while academics can trace the characterization of novel reading as a genteel — or frivolous — female pursuit as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the gender gap is both particularly pronounced and much debated these days, partly because publishers have exploited it so successfully with their marketing strategies, and partly because teachers and parents are so concerned that boys lag behind girls in their literacy skills.

I find this article interesting because of my own experience, and also the implication Taylor comes to later in the piece.

Once upon a time, I had a fairly constant reading regimen: I'd read one work of fiction, followed by a work of non-fiction. I'd sometimes stagger them so I was reading both at once. But the busier my career got, the more fiction became kind of a siren call. If I'm into a novel, it's too easy for me to just disappear and do nothing else. I've had to burn the midnight oil a couple of times for no other reason than I spent seven hours reading when I should have been working. When you don't have someone standing over your shoulder in the office, you can do that kind of thing. So, gradually, I tapered off my fiction reading. I can read non-fiction for a few pages at a time, not voraciously, like fiction. So except for rare treats or special occasions, fiction to me is like videogames; love'em, but seriously, I can't afford to lose that much time to them. Which, I recognize, is somewhat sad.

Where Taylor gets in her article is that because the fiction gap is so pronounced, marketing to it has become pronounced, and that's making the problem worse. Women read fiction, so fiction that's catered to women drives the market. This does change the kind of stuff that gets talked about and written -- because besides habits, reactions are so very much different. I think I wrote before that when the whole James Frey/Oprah thing blew up, it was the women I knew who read the book who felt betrayed. The men shrugged it off.

The same thing that Taylor talks about in fiction is also happening in TV, of course. The female audience is becoming more pronounced as the male audience shrinks. And consequently, except for things like the zombie-driven Fat Guy w. Skinny Wife comedy shows, it's getting harder and harder to actually get male characters who act like male characters on the air.

Having watched it a few times now, I think the best thing that Lucky Louie has going for it is that it actually deals head on with how men and women think differently, and doesn't take a stand on one side being right and the other wrong.

We're both crazy -- Men and Women. That's funny. And hilarious. And true from the moment we hit the playground.

But it strikes me as so weird that they've never been able to sell a female muppet on Sesame Street.

Oh Eff It.

I say we all start drinking. Now.

Antonia's got a doozy.

Vamping the Sideboard

I'm only on Page 17 of my latest rewrite, so home haul-assing is in order.

In the meantime, you should go welcome some new links to the sideboard. Frequent commenters both, Jutratest and WCDixon both work in CanTV and have their own blogs to prove it.

Go and Sally Forth, and especially thrill to this entry Will's posted. He links to an article from the great Aaron Barnhart, TV critic for a KC paper (who I remember most fondly from his email list years ago about the Letterman show. That's right, kids. A TV fan who became a paid TV critic. It is to swoon.) Apparently there's going to be too much good TV this fall.

Kid, meet candy store.

Dude! That's wack! Or...sick! Or...God, I Don't Even Know Anymore.

To: God@heaven.org
From: I.fecan@CTV.ca

Dear God And/Or Santa:

I know you've given me everything I could possibly hope for in terms of utter domination of the Canadian TV landscape, but if you could feel free to bless my network, CTV, with some free awesome publicity, that would be awesome.

Love, Ivan Fecan
CEO, Bell GlobeMedia

Reply To: I.fecan@CTV.ca
From: Santa@northpole.ca

Done, and done.


How about this:

VANCOUVER (CP) - Gold medal snowboarder Ross Rebagliati is suing CTV over a television show he says makes him look like a drunken criminal.

CTV and Boardwatch Productions are airing a new television show called Whistler.

But lawyer Joyce Thayer says the lead character looks exactly like Rebagliati.

The character is a drunk driver who leaves a woman paralyzed in a hit-run accident.

Uh. Yeah. He also, like...dies in the first episode.

Rebagliati says he's had strangers approach him and ask if he's the one in the show.

He says he's concerned people are losing the connection between fact and fiction.

Um. A majority of Americans think Saddam had WMD's. A Majority of Canadians think we're loved around the world as peacekeepers. The Daily Show really IS becoming the most trusted name in news. Dude. That ship has so sailed.

Thayer says their suit doesn't quantify the damages they are seeking but she says they are significant.

I'll bet. Hey, Waiter? I'll have what he's smoking.

Slings: The Love You Take IS Equal To The Love You Make

For the Second Week in a row, Slings & Arrows delivered a sucker punch ending surrounding William Hutt's character, Charles Kingman, the actor playing King Lear in the New Burbage Festival's production.

Of course, each season of Slings manages to nicely weave the theme of the major production through the offstage storylines. I guess I'm a traditionalist that way, but I really much prefer TV writing -- especially in drama -- where the various plotlines all comment and expand upon aspects of the same theme.

Of course, you're not going to find a more potent broth to steal from than King Lear, but still, even in the early stages, the way that they're setting up the conflict between age and youth, and echoing the idea of the faithful daughter (Cordelia) versus the interlopers -- well, all of it is tremendously satisfying. Especially if you've read your Shakespeare.

For as much as sometimes I get down on Canadian TV in this blog, this is where I start to get really pissed off. The people who do this show have one of Broadway's biggest hits right now. This show is funny, and heartfelt, and as well-executed as anything I've ever seen come from an American and British source.

So where is the coverage?

Where are the articles? The Ads? The columns? The buzz?

I'm not talking about the half-assed "Slings and Arrows returns" pieces that greet the premiere. Any half-assed piece of shit gets that sop thrown at them -- usually all reprinting the same article by Canadian Press.

I have no truck with people who say you should watch Canadian produced shows just cause they're Canadian, if you're Canadian. That's a load. But Slings is one of the cases where, if you're not watching it, I can honestly say that culturally, humanistically, and from an entertainment point of view -- it's your loss.

So why is no one writing that?

Anyway, back to the ending. Hutt's performance is something -- fearsome, reducing cute little Sarah Polley to tears like that -- and then at the end you find out why and it's perfect, of course, but also...wow. It makes me realize anew the ultimate truth of TV writing -- Directors and Network types will always talk about the opening, and the teaser, as where you absolutely need to grab and hold the audience's attention. That's true, as far as it goes. But the real punch to the gut that brings you back -- where the decision to return is really made, far as I know -- is the ending. The ending, the ending, the ending. That's where your casual viewer converts to a loyal, regular viewer -- no matter how cluttered the viewing landscape.

LOST knows this. DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES used to know it, and hopefully will again. 24 is all over that. And SLINGS, with a tenth of the budget and nowhere near the histrionics of those American shows -- understands that lesson too.

And just because I couldn't figure out how to work it into the body of this post: Chris Leavins has a very deft turn as Geoffrey's therapist. Puts Huff to shame.

That's All Well And Good, But What About The Feelings of The Sugar-Titted Community?

So the Mel apologies keep right on coming.

Y'know, the whole weekend I kept thinking that this scene was so over the top that if you wrote it you'd get a bunch of notes about how over the top it was.

Has Real Life Always been OTT, or is that a more or less recent thing?

What It's Like Being Alone in a Northern Town

Caught a couple of new CBC summertime offerings last night.

The first was a CBC half hour comedy called Northern Town. This is a series set in the Yukon, and it's kind of like a Canadian Northern Exposure. Good so far. I loved Northern Exposure.

The whole thing seems to be built around a meteorite that explodes one night over the town. Slacker Brian (Luke Kirby) wants to find it and get rich. His hyper-loquacious boss, Heinz (Tom McCamus) is a skeptical naysayer in a winning deadpan performance. Good thing he has crazy Iveson (the always winning David Fox) to inspire him. There's also cutie wildlife officer Mona (Jessica Greco) who manages to be gamine and winning with her hands in bloody marmot entrails (don't ask.)

Northern Town is a sweet little series populated by oddballs with their own little obsessions. (I told you it was NX-like) but with a nice Canadian perspective. The main character saying, "I don't want to do this," while doing something -- well, that's Canadian to the core. And Iveson's quixotic desire to defend Yukon airspace from the Americans flying out of Alaska, well...let's say that I usually don't find the phrase "godd**** Americans!" funny. But in this case -- it's all in the delivery.

The show comes courtesy of Daniel Irons, one of the producers of Slings & Arrows, Daniel Janke, a writer based in Whitehorse, and Director Gary Burns. Other writers include Kate Miles Melville and Bob Martin -- who also wrote Slings and is currently heating up Broadway as Man in Chair in The Drowsy Chaperone.

The show could perhaps be a little tighter...but they've got the right cast and it's a setting we haven't seen -- at least not since NX. It has terrible opening credits, however. Like, Grade School Art project terrible. More glitter and macaroni, please!

This is a show that if nurtured and supported, could have the potential of becoming CBC's Corner Gas.

And they'll probably strangle it in the crib. Wheee!

I wanted to like What It's Like Being Alone. And I'll probably give it another chance. The animated series comes from Brad Peyton, an ex-Canadian Film Centre Guy who grabbed a lot of heat a few years back for his hilarious short Evelyn the Cutest Little Dead Girl. It was produced by new CBC Head of Programming or whatever his title is, Fred Fuchs. There's a lot to recommend the show: it's got that Tim Burton-Nightmare Before Christmas kind of look -- there's a crazy character named Princess Lucy who flops back and forth from being annoying to being funny in the same scene. I'm sick, but there's also a one armed character named Armie whose head hits the floor any time he tries to use his one appendage to do anything. It's that kind of show.

Ostensibly, there are all these ugly orphans in an orphanage just trying to get by. Good setup. But the jokes are obvious and a little heavy handed. The second half of both episodes I've seen, once the plot kicked in, I didn't laugh once. There's something there, but it desperately needs a story editor.

But they did manage to namecheck my favorite flash thing ever. Shout out to Strindberg & Helium!

Both shows are a step up from what CBC has commissioned over the last few years in terms of ambition and execution. Let's see if they survive the new regime.

Darth Vader, The Great White Hope, and Perspective

An interesting thing happened to me last night. After a long and, sadly, not particularly lucrative poker game (though not as dire as some,) I found myself trying to find, for a friend, this hilarious video I'd come across on a website last week of a bunch of scenes from Star Wars recut so that they used James Earl Jones' voice from other movies to craft a slightly new narrative. Of course, I couldn't remember what the remix or mashup or whatever we're calling it this minute was called so I trolled YouTube.

This is the video I found first:





Pretty funny, right? I mean, I laughed, and my friend laughed at this one. Cause it's funny. But it wasn't the one I was looking for. This one was way more...well...obvious.

The one that I'd laughed my butt off a couple days before had struck me because besides being just funny, it actually took the thought to recast all of Star Wars as Vader's personal death (star) spiral: a journey that was partly racial, partly sexual in nature -- and far more the portrait of a Sith Lord in the grip of a serious existential crisis.

It was a more sophisticated piece of work. Yet it sprung from exactly the same idea -- and though entertaining, let's come out front and state for everybody, it aint exactly a rocket science, off-the-charts, original idea: take clips from other James Earl Jones movies and mash them into images from Star Wars.

See, what "The Vader Sessions" (the version below) has that the other doesn't is narrative vision. It actually arranges its clips in a cohesive way to explore a theme, and not just go for the easy laugh.

It also helps that the guy who arranged The Vader Sessions had access and knowledge of a much richer and wider palette of clips to choose from: including one of my favorite James Earl Jones movies, the film adaptation of The Great White Hope. (The story of Jack Johnson. No. Not the singer from Hawaii. Seriously. If you don't know who Jack Johnson is, or his story, go. We'll wait.) See? Like Ali, only earlier. Neat, huh? Okay.

See, this is what people talk about when they say that you can't copyright an idea. I you're serious about telling stories, the tale of the YouTube Vader mashups is where you can start on the idea of interpretation. You should also probably take a look at the two versions of the Exorcist prequel, by Paul Schrader and Renny Harlin.

But the other thing to keep in mind when you're exploring this territory is: what's your depth? What do you know? What have you read? What have you experienced? Are you sure you're attacking your story from a fresh point of view that actually takes into account what came before?

I remember when I was in high school, and I'd hear a song and someone would later tell me that the version that I'd heard was a cover, I'd feel a little silly or ashamed that I didn't know the original version. These days, I'm constantly running into people who -- never mind they don't know that riff or sample is from James Brown or whoever -- they don't care. Seriously. If you're looking to make music or generate filmed entertainment in the early years of the 21st century, and you don't realize that the medium has about a century's worth of history on you...well...then...ugh. Sad for you.

I know that this is a classic old fogey move...but I can say with conviction that over the last few years -- in the time that I've taught a new crop of 20 year olds every year...I've seen the appreciaton for and the knowledge of culture outside your immediate frame of reference go down. I think Hollywood TV weathered the storm a few years longer than it maybe should have because all those smartypants grads from Harvard actually had a good education -- but education doesn't replace curiosity, especially when it comes to culture.

And not knowing about "The Great White Hope" seriously burns you when you're trying to do the definitive James Earl Jones Vader mashup. Just sayin'.

Here's The Vader Sessions on YouTube:



Or check out the original site and tell them what you think.

Torn in Toronto

So, here's the deal.

This blog gets many more hits than comments. I do mix it up a bit -- probably write too much about the CBC, but you know, it's the summer. I keep up the TV writing stuff when I can, and I do enjoy writing about other work. But I don't think I've ever been shy that the primary function of this blog, for me, is to give focus (and thereby, control) my bouts of procrastination.

We're about three weeks away from my blog-a-versary here, and I'm faced with a philosophical decision.

It's about commenting. Anonymous commenting.

Blogger lets you set three levels of comments. The first, and most restrictive, means that only "members" of the blog can comment. Not what I'm looking for. The second allows people who've registered an account with Blogger to comment. It's easy to sign up. I think they still have it worded so you "have to set up a blog" to comment -- but you really don't. You can just go through all the steps and then just register without starting a blog. It means you have a screenname, and any blogger blogs you go to, you'll be able to comment under that screen name.

It's the first level that's giving me pause. Blogger also allows a setting where "anyone" can comment. You see these -- they're the 'Anonymous' comments that show up. It's the quickest and easiest way to go. It means you'll get more feedback.

But...

It also means that the person really is anonymous.

I have a longstanding disdain for anonymous commenting going back over my whole career. When I first started work at the Small Educational TV Station, at some point they started a BBS, and in that BBS there was a provision for an "Anonymous Forum" where people could post...anything. Well. They did. This Small Educational TV Station was a terribly dysfunctional place, with lots of management by fiefdom and jealousy and frustration, and poison in the air. The anonymous forum got hairy pretty quickly. And because I was a fairly voluble young guy anyway, I got accused of making a lot of the posts in that anonymous forum. And 99% of the time, it wasn't me. Nope, I was (and am) actually dumb enough to tell you what I think with attribution.

At this same Educational TV Station, there were weekly leaks to a Canadian satirical magazine called FRANK. (Kind of like Private Eye, but not as funny.) One of the top execs -- a dour humourless bureaucrat -- became convinced that I was the leaker, even though most of the stuff that appeared was material about money and decisionmaking that I didn't even come close to having access to.

Anyway, though it was meant to be a valve, this first experience with anonymity plus the internet plus the desire to stamp out those who avail themselves of anonymity left a sour taste in my mouth.

Through the years, I've found that anonymity causes people to say things they wouldn't otherwise say, and also to be, obviously, less accountable for those things.

Anonymity works when you're trying to criticize the power structure. But in this blog, there is no power structure. There's me. I don't have power, or I have exactly the power you would expect a freelance writer to have.

The bottom line is: every time there's an anonymous comment on this blog, it seems to be something posted by someone looking to say something nasty that they wouldn't say if they could be identified. Now. I'm identified with this blog, but most of the time, I don't have a dog in that fight. Nor do I want to.

I know that if I change the settings I'll make commenting fractionally harder and less democratic. But -- it will remove the stigma of being attached to remarks that I would rather not be associated with.

What do y'all think?

Outrageous Fortune

It's not often that we Canadians get something great, first. But last night, I finally managed to catch the 3rd season premiere of this fine homegrown comedy. It's stellar. It's probably going to be the best season yet.

They've started from an intriguing place: success. New Burbage (the thinly disguised Stratford Festival) is utterly flush; the momentum of (last season's) production of Macbeth led to a glittering remount in New York.

Richard (Mark McKinney) is on the cover of Canadian Business. Things are good, and Geoffrey (Paul Gross) is about to take on King Lear. He has his pick of whichever famous actor he wants. Everyone's chomping at the bit.

But Geoffrey's madness has a new tic: he seems to be weeping uncontrollably in front of strangers. Richard, too, realizes that his life is empty. Even when he gets a new car given to him by the board, all he can do is cry.

The idea of the emptiness of success, and the desperation that comes from the dawning horror that success does not lead to fulfillment and happiness -- is a potent theme for season three. Even better paired with the idea of putting on Lear. Mark McKinney's nuanced acting has turned that character from a cutout in Season 1 to someone utterly compelling to watch. Paul Gross is so, so, so much better when he's acting and not trying to wear nine hats and save Canadian Television.

By the time they bring the great William Hutt (left) in as a legendary actor tapped to play Lear - hiding a shocking secret, no less! You can see the chess pieces set up for Season 3 in the most delightful way.

Success is much on the mind of everyone behind this show, of course, since most of the writers are currently the toast of Broadway thanks to The Drowsy Chaperone. Now word comes that Bob Martin et al might actually be looking at developing a Broadway-set series much like Slings & Arrows for American Television.

There's going to be a lot of juice, too, in the subplot where Don McKellar's crazy director tries to rip-off Rent. Expect all manner of joy-joy faux songcraft from Drowsy's Lisa Lambert et al. And pairing McKinney and McKellar will be a gas.

See? This is it, kittens. This is solidly written, well-directed, well conceived and acted, but not break the bank expensive Canadian produced drama. It's allowed to be what it's about. It hasn't been picked over or noted or developed to death. It is a slice of backstage life. The effect is glorious.

It's a great treat. And while we're talking, just between us girls, maybe someone should be talking to Martin and McKinney and all the people doing Slings and asking, "um, what did you guys do differently?" I know because I've asked people from CTV in the past why they think Corner Gas works, and they don't really seem to know. And I asked people from CBC why early DaVinci's Inquest worked and they didn't really seem to know.

Let's all start asking.

Are executives asking questions they did that others haven't? Are they more hands on? Hands off?
How were their note processes handled? Were there a lot of notes given? From how many sources?
What did the producers offer in pitches or bibles that got them the freedom to do this level of work?

It's not just that these people are talented. There is lots of talent in Canada. Loads.
But for this show, however it happened, the PROCESS worked. I want to know why. I want to replicate that why.

But in the meantime, I'll just sit back and enjoy the show. Nothing will come of nothing, but I expect much from Slings and Arrows 3. Shoulder to the Storm. Bring on Lear.

R.I.P. Patsy

Before I quit my job at the big Canadian Tv Company at the end of 2000, I had already taken my first steps out the door, thanks to one of my mentors in the business.

I first worked for Howard Bernstein when I was first out of University. I was a researcher on a show he executive produced. It was clear that my gifts lay not really with guest booking, but with tape, and later, writing. I drifted from the small Educational Broadcaster to the Hip Downtown Cutting Edge TV Company which gradually morphed into the big Canadian TV Company. By this time I'd spent a few years there and I knew I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. I was feeling very unchallenged, and found myself taking direction from people who didn't seem to share my love of television, and whose skills and insights into the medium didn't really inspire or command respect.

And then an offer came from my old mentor. Would I be interested in writing a new documentary show on what went on behind the scenes at the Toronto Zoo?

I did the first few episodes, and the Canadian network liked it and picked it up. I remembered thinking at the time, "this is my chance to get out." So I applied to a program at the Canadian Film Centre and quit. And strangely, no one really begged me to stay. (I kid. If there's one thing that's true everywhere, it's that no one is indispensbile. If you feel like you want to leave a job but stay because "they couldn't get along without you," seriously, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.)

The zoo show, Zoo Diaries, ran for 75 half hour episodes -- and one Christmas special. It was a very formulaic show, three act documentary structure, three stories. One story was always medically based, and you tried to profile the keeper while getting out info about the animal. The Zoo always wanted to push the conservation angle -- and the SSP -- the species survival plan. Many Torontonians don't know it, but their little zoo is heavily into the research and conservation of several species. Their programs -- most of which the public don't see -- are focused greatly on breeding and reintroducing species to the wild.

We used to joke about Zoo Diaries that the formula was, "Today at the zoo, something was born, something died, and something else did something cute."

You'd think that doing 75 episodes of a show like that over a few years would get to be dull. But it wasn't. It was my lifeline. The shows didn't take up too much of my time, and the rest of the time I tried to get myself established writing other things. It was just enough to keep me afloat through a few very lean years. One of those years, I don't think I was paid for a single piece of dramatic writing -- but the zoo kept on going.

And it was fun! You'd learn things. I started becoming a bit of a Cliff Claven. I'd have all these funny facts on hand about animals, gleaned from my research. Habits of the chinchilla. The story of the porcupine or the anteater who wandered the medical centre. Komodo dragon factoids. I sat, open mouthed and slack jawed and tried to come up with narration script that actually could do justice to the sight of a baby giraffe being born, and then getting up and walking away five minutes after being born. Whoa.

But in all those stories...let's see, three a show, seventy-five a show, but there were a few shows with only two...let's call it 200 stories of the animals and their keepers...my favorites were always the ones that featured Patsy.

Patsy was the matriarch of the African Elephants. She came to the zoo when it opened in 1974, and lived a long life. Patsy was a character. She was fierce. She got a little ornery with her keepers from time to time. Sometimes she'd decide not to come in at night. She'd just stay out. And if any of the other (now hungry) elephants tried to come in on their own, Patsy would block their way. She'd block the door, and literally rattle her cage. Patsy was the boss.

At the Toronto Zoo, they have a strict policy where they don't go in with the animals, so much of the care of the elephants has to be voluntary. They get trained to offer their ear so blood can be taken, they offer their feet for cleaning. It's quite a regimen, interspersed with enrichment activities to stimulate their minds, too. They were smart and they were mischievious. In the stories, after a while, you could definitely notice the different personalities of the elephants. Everything about them was fascinating. Writing an elephant story for Zoo Diaries was something that, to this day, brings a smile to my face. It was great.

Patsy was a strong elephant and nobody's fool. Eventually, they had to redesign the whole elephant enclosure to give her her own entrance so that they could get the elephants in at night. She was really something.

Patsy died earlier this week at the ripe elephant age of 40. She was euthanized when tests showed that her arthritis had progressed so that she was in constant pain, and wasn't going to get any better.

Keepers left the body of Patsy in with the other elephants overnight, so that they could mourn her, and touch her with their trunks. This is important to do, because it will help them to process she's not coming back, rather than the fact that she just disappeared. Also, it will help the process of the social order re-aligning itself as one of the other females assumes the role of matriarch.

I'm kind of glad we wrapped Zoo Diaries a few years back -- cause I don't think I would have wanted to see that, much less write about it. It's just so sad.

Anyway, from the times I got to see you as a kid visiting that zoo, to a baby writer trying to make his bones, you were a beautiful and important elephant, Patsy. You fired the imaginations and the hearts of everyone who saw you. I and all the visitors and keepers and viewers of Zoo Diaries are going to miss you a lot.

The Toronto Zoo release can be obtained here. This is a Star article on Patsy -- but I can't guarantee the link will work.

I'm Your Man

By the way -- Itunes Music Store is rocking me hard today on this soundtrack to a concert film of everyone's favorite Trouba-Eeyore, Leonard Cohen.

Some of the versions are unexpected and sublime: like Martha Wainwright doing Tower of Song. I was a big fan of Lloyd Cole's Chelsea Hotel No. 2 - but Rufus Wainwright's slowed down version comes close. You can't go wrong with Nick Cave doing I'm Your Man, and Jarvis Cocker's I Can't Forget is surprisingly affecting.

And hey, he needs your money. Go download this -- and pay for it, hippie. Pay for it.

How To Get Through The Production Rewrite

Not bad. I've managed to do about five hours of solid revision work with less than 10 mins of procrastination time. That's a great ratio. I deserve a little keyboard stretch.

Right now, I'm trying to get from what's known as the last writer's draft to the Production White. This is where the script gets locked, and numbered, and all those little scenes go up on the board and it's all terribly exciting.

The Production White is where the A.D.'s have shaken their finger at you and said, "we can't possibly afford that." In my experience in Canadian TV -- the most common A.D.-driven notes come down to this:

1. -What the fuck were you thinking putting in so many Night Exteriors?
2. -What the fuck were you thinking putting in all those speaking parts?
3. -What the fuck were you thinking thinking we could shoot a 55 page script?

I want to be clear: A.D.'s and Producers are usually nicer about saying these three things. I hear the "what the fucks" in my head because, well, that's how Daddy's built. But they definitely say these three things. A lot.

Wait. Driving shots are another one. Driving rigs? Very expensive. What the fuck are you doing putting in so many driving shots?

Besides eliminating all the stuff that isn't strictly necessary to tell the story (Scenes and setups that add atmosphere for days are all well and good, but not if they burn a day of shooting you can ill-afford) there's creative considerations, always.

To begin with, since you're starting from the beginning, and it's probably been a while since you've seen that first script, you start seeing stuff that's changed along the way -- stuff that fit when you were writing episode one may not exactly track with what you learned about the characters in later episodes. Or maybe you want to set up other stuff that pays off a few episodes down the line. In this case, in an earlier draft there was voiceover that was removed...everyone missed it, so now it's back.

With every one of these changes, you see that page count creep up and down and front and back-- and it's a bit like a teeter totter. But it's also kind of fun, too. It's like a negotiation with yourself. "How can I solve the problems to make this more produceable?"

There are writers who hate doing production-driven rewrites. I think I've never been that kind of writer. To me, sharpening the script for production is kind of fun.

I say that now.

Talk to me when we're at double goldenrod.

What I generally do, because I like to warm up, and am essentially lazy and stupid -- is go through and do all the easy stuff first. Change characters names. Examine Day/Night splits and change them. Combine characters, and eliminate unnecessary stuff. Put the voiceover back. There are scenes that need to be artfully and more extensively rewritten. I generally try to leave them til the beginning of a session and attack them in this order:

1. -the second hardest
2. -the hardest
3. -kind of hard
4. -not very hard
5. -easy

Start second hardest, because you have to warm up a bit before attacking the enchilada. Also, I find that skipping around the script allows you to view it more like the A.D.'s do -- as a series of component parts. We get precious about our material, we writers. But at some point, it's got to be interpreted. Skipping around helps me to view it that way. (I do an organic "last pass" from start to finish before submitting the script.)

Still, by the time Kind of Hard comes around, I'm generally whining for a popsicle or a glass of water with lemon or something. Note to self: I have to get a dog, because whining to yourself is just really, really pathetic.

Anyway. Truth is that every script in the world starts out overwritten. And sometimes a little pruning can be fun. I don't get people who like to garden. When I was a kid, I famously tried to strike a deal with my father. We lived in Florida at the time, and had a big yard. And they wanted to pay me to go out and weed, and I suggested the rate of 25 cents a weed. My father did not think much of my offer. I did not think much of weeding, period.

Weeding through my words, though -- that I can do.

Blog-o-roll meets Procrasto-Man

Sal is a guy who's finishing up a stint in the Disney ABC Writer's Fellowship. I've been reading his blog for a while and it's a straightforward blow-by-blow diary of one guy breaking in. Considering that's the single biggest question anybody ever gets asked, I think it's well worth your perusal.

As for me? Rewrites, baby. Track how things are going by the number of posts, I make today and tomorrow.

YOUR HANDY DMc PROCRASTO-KEY:

0-2 posts
plugging along, thank you

3-4 posts
I wish one time Samantha woke up in bed on Bewitched, and both Darrens were there, and she screamed and screamed and screamed. That would have been a cool episode.

5+ posts:
If I pull my tongue really hard, I wonder if I could rip it out? And how much would that fucker bleed? Seriously!

If A Program Airs in the Middle of a Vacuum, Does It Make a Sound?

Day Two of casting today. At least it's Day Two for me. You see, the Casting Agency and the other Producers have already viewed scores and scores of candidates and tapes, and these are callbacks. I had no business being near the casting the first time out because I was still busily pounding out scripts. Now I'm starting the more manageable production rewrites.

Casting is just one tiny, small part of making TV. An incredibly important part, to be sure, but a small part nonetheless. There's also finding studio space, locations, all the key crew, dealing with governments and bonders and organizations you need permission from, and agents and the list goes on and on and on.

As I finished the tone meeting for one of the scripts last night, one of the other producers and I were joking as we walked out onto Yonge Street, about how "the glamour" of making TV really isn't very glamourous at all.

It's hard, hard work. Which is why if you poke over to Toronto Star media columnist Antonia's blog today what you'll read is just so depressing.

See, one of the things that is most lacking in Canadian TV is effective publicity. Yeah, maybe there are problems with the shows sometimes. Undoubtedly the material could be better. The Material can always be better. But if there's not a basic level of competency in the promotion of that Material, you're dead before you start. And all that work is for nothing.

While you read the coverage at The Star, I want you to remember the following things:

1. - The P.R. managers who came up with the outsourcing plans are paid for out of Canadians' tax dollars.
2. -The salaries of the senior managers are paid for out of Canadians' tax dollars.
3. -The shows that they're talking about, or not talking about as the case may be, are paid for out of Canadians' tax dollars.
4. -Danny Iron, who may or may not be a producer who's being punished, is one of the people who did Slings & Arrows, one of the best Canadian TV shows produced in the last ten years.
5. This is the same network that hung the creators of Prairie Giant out to dry just last month.
6. This is the same network who declared to all that they wanted to be "friendlier to creative people" the month before that -- when they toured to 11 different cities, paid for by Canadians' taxpayer dollars.
   

Years ago, when I was still a "journalist," I wanted to do a story on the critical and audience hit that CBC had just put on the air, called The Newsroom. The CBC publicist I talked to then was so cute, and very bewildered. She was delighted -- DELIGHTED -- to have something to promote that the public and the critics seemed to be embracing.

I betcha she got fired last year.

Yeah, Right, Sea Cow.

Another week, more summer, more desire to be on Vacation. I'm in casting today, looking at rewrites later this week. Sounds to me like the perfect time for a little Jim Gaffigan.

You know you want some. Bonus: some good old fashioned Dr. Katz action, too.

What Betty Can Teach Us About Globalization

She's got Salma Hayek shilling for her. She's conquered Colombia and much of Latin America, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and even India. And yes, she's kind of ugly.

(L: Salma Hayek, Exec Producer of "Ugly Betty." Why can't my producer be this hot?)

The question is, is Betty the one? Or at least, as far as ABC is concerned, more The One, than, say, oh...The One?

If you take a spin over to the New York Times site today, there's an incredibly interesting article about the attempt to bring the Colombian telenovela "I Am Betty The Ugly" to American screens. ABC will premiere their version this September 22nd. Will it hit in the USA like it did in all those countries I mentioned at the top? And since when does Amurrica, the greatest exporter of culture in the history of the world, take direction from, you know...anywhere?

“The traditional telenovelas tend to be Cinderella stories of social mobility,” said John Sinclair, author of the book “Latin American Television: A Global View.” “With Betty, she is able to change her unfortunate situation not by discovering her father was secretly a very rich man but by discovering she is beautiful.”

By the end of its two-year run — 340 half-hour episodes, all written by Mr. Gaitán — “Yo Soy Betty La Fea” was Colombia’s most popular telenovela, pulling in three million viewers a night. Betty’s every move became a national obsession. With Colombia in the midst of a huge political bribery scandal, Betty briefly considered accepting money from a fabric company desperate to get into business with her boss. El Tiempo, the country’s influential daily newspaper, ran an article on its front page decrying “They Want Her Ugly, But Not Corrupt,” and Mr. Gaitán wrote a column urging the show’s fans to remain calm. Betty, of course, did not accept the bribe, and for her integrity she was rewarded with an enormous raise. Colombians rejoiced.

So did the show’s production company, RCN. By 2000 the show was drawing record ratings throughout Latin America; in Puerto Rico, when the leaders of political protests in Vieques noticed crowds thinning out, they erected a giant screen for viewing the show.

I've read a bit about telenovelas in the past, and though I'm not that familiar with any form of the soap opera, I have seen how they can fulfill different places depending on the culture. "Soapies" as they called them, were one of the biggest things on the South African television landscape when I was there, too. "Coronation Street" seems to hit a different kind of storytelling itch than the Australian soaps, and all of these forms make the American soap operas look like what they are: brittle, silly, escapist trash.

So ABC getting behind "Betty the Ugly" means is, I think, something different. Time was we all looked to the United States as the be all and end all of television programming. There might have been the occasional exception, like All in the Family, a program that came out of an import, but for the most part, U.S. television is, and was, regarded as "The shit."

When watching the extras for Coupling, and even Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais talking about "The Office," I was struck by how much they spoke of U.S. programming as the golden bar, the thing that we should all aspire to.

If you look around the TV landscape today, that's just not so. The Office is highly regarded as one of the best comedies on the air right now -- and that's because it manages to Americanize the beloved British original. But without that show's pioneering spirit, it's highly doubtful that any American office comedy would have developed and filled the comic landscape that's now on display on NBC every week.

Sure, there's CSI. But the biggest show in the USA is American Idol, which is a straight import of a British show -- complete with Simon Cowell and all. Before that, there was Millionaire. Or Big Brother. Or Survivor. Take your pick. I'm pretty sure that there have never been so many shows on the air at the same time that came not from the idea factory in Hollywood, but from elsewhere.

Ten years ago, I did a story on Endemol, one of the world's most popular reality TV companies. At the time, they were trying to peddle their program formats in the USA and no one was biting. They couldn't understand why -- because they had shows that worked in country, after country, after country. How could the American execs they were meeting be so arrogant as to think that the United States was the one country where the show wouldn't work?

Obviously we've moved beyond all that now -- but just as the attitude is changing in the USA, there are places outside where we're still struggling to catch up. Canada, Australia, even the U.K. -- a lot of people I talk to and correspond with seem to be in thrall to American TV just at the point where Americans have finally started looking around at what works elsewhere and saying, hmm...

Another article in the Times today marks the U.S. premiere of the BBC's Life On Mars, which is coming to BBCAmerica sometime this week. (I think those of us who suffer with BBC Canada are still S.O.L. for the moment. EDIT: It looks like Life on Mars will premiere on BBC Canada on Sept 27) David E. Kelley has already bought the American remake rights, just like Betty was snapped up. So what does that say?

With “Life on Mars,” it is easy to see how humor and bits of science fiction can be scattered throughout a grim, straight-ahead television cop drama. But eight years ago, when the creators of the series, Matthew Graham, Ashley Pharoah and Tony Jordan, first pitched their genre-bending idea — revisiting the unconflicted lawlessness of a testosterone-driven 70’s-style police force through the brain of a coma patient — the BBC’s reaction was not warm.

“They just looked out the window,” Mr. Graham said, adding that the series was finally given the go-ahead after a regime change in 2004. The new executives agreed to take a risk, Mr. Graham said. “They said: ‘Look, we think the idea is insane, but let’s do it, let’s show the world that the BBC leads the way with innovative dramas.’ That was it. We never looked back, really.”

"Let's show the world that the BBC leads the way with innovative dramas."

That's a bold statement -- and it's also the key to breaking the malaise. To stop the tail wagging the dog.

I see so many of my compatriots here in the Canadian industry trying to ape or come up with U.S. style shows -- pale retreads -- or going off completely in the other direction, and coming up with shows that are so anti-U.S. style programming that they eschew things like plot, and pacing, and humor, and things for an audience to seize on and chew on.

We-who-do-not-work-in-Hollywood do not work in Hollywood. We have to stop pretending that we do, or reacting childishly and doing the equivalent of smearing crap on the walls for attention -- making unwatchable shows. America takes notice and comes calling when you come up with shows that speak to your home, that mines what's unique about you. Trailer Park Boys is filthy and profane and dumb, and wouldn't come anywhere but out of Nova Scotia. CBC had a pilot called Rabbittown last year that was singular and different, and they didn't pick it up. Of course. Degrassi became a hit because it was a high school show that just seemed so different than any U.S. high school show. They dealt with serious, fucked up stuff. Americans watching on PBS couldn't get enough. A generation later, it's still rocking The N in a new incarnation.

We've had it backwards for a whole long time now. We think we should do American style shows. But we shouldn't. We should entertain our audience -- doing that is not pandering, it's not trying to sell out and be American -- it's doing what TV is supposed to do. But nowhere are we trying to do something as wacky as our own Life on Mars. Why not? If we have one-tenth the budget and no money for promotion, don't you think a concept that grabs you by the throat might work better? Might at least get us some traction? Should we try to do The O.C.? Or should we do the show that the O.C. would never dare to be?

Where are the fucked up ideas? Where are the shows that no one in their right mind would ever try to pitch in the USA?

Those are the shows we need to be doing -- and if we do it, ten will get you nine U.S. that the Americans will finally beat a path to offices in London, or Toronto, or Sydney.

That means we writers have to free our minds and go nuts. And we need to get in there and batter down resistance from our risk averse, milquetoast, American wannabe network execs.

We are Betty the Ugly. Let's get out there and stir the shit.