You Say You Wander Your Own Life...

INSPIRATION comes from funny places. As does context.

I have a friend who gets ideas from opening the dictionary, and pointing to a word at random.

Another, has gone on Ebay and bought old phone books, like, from the forties, for major North American cities. He says the ads help him think.

I've been known to mouse through my copy of the Complete New Yorker to try and get something going. But I've also written before about the inspiration-generating power of music.

A writer friend of mine hits random on his Ipod, and goes with the first song he gets. Something in the lyric, something in the tone just sets him off. I've used his method myself and it rocks.

When it comes to music, there's melody people and there's lyric people. (or at least there used to be; with the latest evolutions of the music biz I'm not so sure now) Lyric people will forever be surprised by that wedding they went to where the couple's song was "Every Breath You Take." Music people just shrug.

I'm guessing you'll agree without too much trouble that most writers probably tend to be lyric people.

So it was that I found myself at Vancouver's Orpheum last night.

The Orpheum is a beautiful Vaudeville-era house, opened originally in 1927. Since 1977, it's been government owned and is the home of the Vancouver Symphony. Not as much history as Massey Hall in Toronto, maybe, but just as much personality. If you've ever been in the Wintergarden Theatre in Toronto, you get an idea of the ornate interior. It's just a beautiful place to see a concert. And the acoustics are amazing.

Last night was the final night of the North American tour for English trio Keane. Keane had a rough year last year. Then, most of their North American tour was canceled so that lead singer Tom Chaplin could get rid of his demons in rehab. I'm sure all the snickering about the band being "for people who thought Coldplay was too hardcore" didn't help.

But Tom Chaplin was in fine voice last night, and the Vancouver crowd was raucous, appreciative and incredibly vocal. (Seriously, I'm used to going to concerts in Toronto, whose crowds are notoriously deadly)

I got into Keane when I was in South Africa in 2004. Cape Town hews way more to the British cultural orbit than the American, so I was hearing Hopes and Fears and its signature tune, "Everybody's Changing," all through the summer of 2004. Then I came home and got to hear it hit radio in Canada six months later. No Matter.

"Everybody's Changing" is a soaring song of despair. It's about dislocation, and longing, and not knowing where you fit, and seeing everyone else around you moving forward while you can't figure out where you are, or where you belong. It's exactly the kind of catchy melody + lyrics that connected with a guy tooling around in the worst car known to man, working crazy hours in a strange city as far from home as he'd ever been. Pile on the fact that the guy was seriously questioning aspects of his relationships and friendships, suffering from a bit of heartbreak and moral tiredness, and you've got a glorious soundtrack of despair. With keyboards!

(Guess I never got over that Howard Jones phase. Not really.)

Keane's Hopes and Fears is so much a part of my South Africa experience, from paying an insane amount of Rand for it at the Waterfront CD Wherehouse, to playing it all through my post-work week driving through Stellenbosch and the Western Cape of Africa, that I can't seem to separate it out from my memory. "This Is The Last Time" calls up memories of winding my way through Camps Bay or trying to dodge the taxis as they barrelled down the road in Seapoint. "Bedshaped" is the song I'd listen to as I watched the Atlantic crash from my window, wondering, "how is it that I came to be here, at this moment, on the Southern Tip of Africa?"

Flash ahead Two and a half years - and I'm in another rented house. This one's even bigger than the flat that I had in South Africa, which was easily twice the size of my condo at home. I'm also alone in another city, working on a totally different show. So...everybody's changing, do I still feel the same?

Well. Yes and no. WC Dixon wrote an affecting piece a while back about the dislocation involved with working in this industry in Canada. I hadn't really thought about it before then, but he's right. I think it's hard for writers working and planted in L.A. to understand just how fluid you have to be if you work in Canada. The vagaries of tax credits and production mean you're always going somewhere. The Corner Gas writers traipse out to Saskatchewan for several months every year. I'm in B.C. Someone else will be off to Winnipeg for something or other.

When I was in South Africa, much as it was an adventure, I found myself wondering if I was putting off life by doing these sorts of things. Then I came back, and did grinding development work for more than a year, where I didn't go anywhere or do much of anything exciting. So you can't win.

But standing in the Orpheum last night, tapping my feet, while the good-looking and waaaaayyy younger than me crowd sang along, I realized that this time, I didn't feel the same dislocation. I've made peace with the bouncing around and the moving, because that's my life. And that's my adventure. So be it.

And then they played "Everybody's Changing" -- 2nd song in.

It was great, but...second song?

Guess I have to work on the timing of my little life moments, is all.

Strike One, Strike Two...

So. The CFTPA went to court to try and put the phooey on ACTRA's continuation letters and strike.

De-Nied:

From the ACTRA release:

CFTPA FAILS IN EFFORT TO STOP ACTRA'S STRIKE

January 30, 2007 - TORONTO - The trade association that speaks for Canadian producers lost its bid to stop ACTRA's strike in Ontario's Courts today. The CFTPA failed to stop ACTRA's strike and failed to get an injunction against the continuation letters that ACTRA is offering to producers as a way of ensuring stability in the industry.

The court sided with ACTRA and stated that there was no evidence the continuation letter strategy ACTRA adopted had caused ‘irreparable harm' to the industry or the CFTPA as the CFTPA had claimed.

The court also ruled that unspecified issues should continue to be litigated before an arbitrator. Arbitrations are often lengthy. Appeals are also possible.

ACTRA called on the association to stop wasting time and money and to settle the current strike instead.

The CFTPA got one thing going, though: the judge did tell both sides to get an arbitrator.

It's hard to see how the CFTPA can spin this as a win for them. ACTRA's continuation letters keep their actors working, and CFTPA has lost its bid to quash the strike spreading to other provinces.

But wait a second...then there's this:

Provincial mediator Vince Ready has scheduled three days of negotiations between bargainers for the actors union and producers led by the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which reps Hollywood studios and indie prodcos.

See, apparently new media ISN'T a sticking point in the B.C. negotiations. If there's a quick settlement of their strike, that kind of leaves ACTRA twisting in the wind. With SAG and WGA strikes possibly on the horizon next year over the same issue, and U.S. producers looking to stockpile material before that in a place where they can shoot...Vancouver looks like it's gonna get really busy.

I'm reminded of the Prince's last lines in Romeo & Juliet:

"All are punish'd"

Oh Yeah, Like You'd Be Cooler.

Those of you who've been reading the blog for a while have probably figured out by now that I don't gab on too much about projects that I'm actually working on. I would hope that for most of you, the reasoning behind this would be self evident. I've said before how the room is a place of trust, and when you work on a TV show you want people you work with to feel they can speak freely to you without their words winding up on the internet. This is part of what my father once euphemistically referred to as, "social skills."

I give that preamble because there have been a few people sending me emails asking me to talk more about the show I'm working on, and I wanted to explain a bit why I don't.

That being said, here's one little anecdote I can share.

Yesterday, on set, we had a Jaguar.

No. Not the car.

Never mind why the script calls for it. Once the sun went down the action shifted to the front of our production offices, which double for the entrance to the police station.

From the upstairs kitchen window, the other writers and I watched as the animal trainer ran the cat through his paces. There was a board he had to hit for his mark, then go behind the car and right into the cage. I was impressed by the efficiency with which they do this. There is no malingering. It's boom, mark, trot, cage. I guess the idea is to get the animal to perform the action quickly, and be done with it.

The cat was impressive, shiny, black as night. It was really something to see.

So then about a half hour later I'm going out to my car to go home. Usually I park in a space right outside the office, but since that area was "hot" I had parked way in the back.

So I'm leaving, I go out the side door, and the director says to me, with some concern, "Be careful, Denis...the cat's back there." And I actually said, "Isn't he in a cage?" And looked around twice in fear.

Then, of course, comes the laugh and the smile.

One of my sisters, one of the most endearing thing about her is that she kind of believes you whatever you say. Even if it's outlandish, even if it's obvious that you're putting her on, there's a part of her that wants, that needs the reassurance that, yes, in fact, you're kidding. She's never 100% sure you are, til you say you are.

I think it's endearing, but I never really understood it. When something seems wrong on its face, how can you still have that nagging doubt?

I get it now. I mean, I knew there wasn't a jaguar wandering back behind the trucks without a fucking leash. But I wasn't exactly walking to the Taurus till someone spelled that out.

Maybe it's cause I'm not a cat person.

One of our cast, Kyle, who plays Henry, apparently did a scene where he's right there and the cat's roaring at him and he's roaring at the cat. Apparently it looks amazing.

I wouldn't do that for a million dollars. Actors, man. They're awesome sometimes.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to spend twenty minutes checking my back seat.

EDIT: The episode won't air for months and months, but in a comment below someone posted something that could be construed as being a little spoiler-y (After all, we know how rabid some people get about such things.) So read the comments at your own risk.

Hey Now, It's Larry Sanders.

Once upon a time there was a Television show about the backstage life of a television show. And it was self-referential. And brilliant and prickly.

But this one had Rip Torn. And Jeffrey Tambor, and Carol Burnett uttering the words, "I can see your balls." And ladies, in one episode, you get to seen Jeremy Piven's naked ass.

The Larry Sanders Show flamed out on DVD because the first season didn't sell well enough to release more, which bums out people like me who loved the show with a white hot pure fire.

Well, now it turns out that there's going to be a new set of 23 Episodes across all six seasons. And Garry Shandling is extensively involved. In fact, it sounds like these might be some of the weirdest, most revealing extras you're ever going to see on a TV DVD set.

Other performers might be content to put out such packages with a few sweeteners, maybe some outtakes and running commentary from the star. But Mr. Shandling has never been like other performers. More than a year ago he set out, hand-held camera crew in tow, to interview virtually everyone connected to the show. There are the series regulars, including Jeffrey Tambor, who played Hank Kingsley (“hey now!”), Larry’s eager-to-please yet quick-to-lash-out sidekick, and Rip Torn, who played Artie, Larry’s fiercely protective executive producer. Mr. Shandling’s camera also found many of the A-list guest stars whom he had goaded into cameos on the original show, including Mr. Seinfeld, Mr. Baldwin, Sharon Stone, David Duchovny, Carol Burnett, Jon Stewart and Tom Petty.

Thus the DVD’s title, “Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show,” and its length: four discs, despite containing just 23 episodes.

Mr. Shandling concedes that these recorded conversations — which are presented largely unedited, with awkward silences and plenty of mistakes — are at least partly self-congratulatory. Taken as a whole the treatment is also expansive, exhaustive and at times exhausting, with Mr. Shandling’s new material (including a documentary) adding up to nearly eight hours.

But the results are, in many instances, riveting. There are some good casting stories: Ms. Burnett, for example, tells how Mr. Shandling persuaded her to be a guest and to play against her clean-cut image. (On the talk-show-within-a-show, she warns Larry that the loincloth costume he’s wearing isn’t covering what it needs to cover.) And Bruno Kirby, whom Larry memorably “bumped” from the last episode, made an appearance as well — his last, it turned out, before he died last summer.

But to those who watch them carefully — and Mr. Shandling hasn’t a clue whether anyone will — the interviews are also striking for his efforts to make amends. He apologizes to some of the best-known people in Hollywood for having failed to thank them for their service on “Larry Sanders,” and for largely allowing them to drift from his life in the years since.

The full New York Times article about the upcoming set is here.

People Only Die of Love in The Movies

There are many ways to discover a new city. When you're a not a tourist, of course, the compact is different. No guidebooks or landmarks to hit. No schedule. Instead, there are stolen moments. You discover the mundane first: the grocery store. The coffee shop you like to go to. In Vancouver, that's a bit of an audition process. I have it narrowed down to three on Commercial Drive. (I'm still trying, however, to call it, "The Drive." I fear that will take far longer than learning to call New York just "The City," however.)

Having more or less mastered the drive to the office (if not the insanity of those with whom I must share the road) driving opened up to me a bit this weekend. The weather, lo and behold, consisted of something other than torrential rain or slushy snow, so it was a good weekend to go exploring. Saturday it was a walk through Kits, and a jaunt through English Bay.

Dinner out Saturday night, I managed to see a bit of a neighborhood on Main Street I want to go back and explore. There are no great pubs in this city, I've decided, a matter of some concern to me. I gather the local licensing laws that make Vancouver's restaurant scene so robust are the same ones that foil a nice homey pub from getting up and running. Is there a place where film and TV people hang out, I wonder? And don't tell me the Shark Club. That place is ass.

I had some familiarity with this city before this latest trip, but my map is out of date. It's been five years since I've been here, and the differences are puzzling and surprising. Yaletown, which was just getting started when I was here last, has reached the tipping point of young urban obnoxiousness. There's construction everywhere, trying to anticipate the boom of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Robson Street looks very different to me, and of course, there's the people. At one time I knew probably ten people who lived in Vancouver. But one by one they all drifted on, moved back east, or otherwise pulled up stakes. That leaves me to explore the city more or less alone, which is a great tonic for indulging moodiness and a dreamy, wander-y quality that one never gets at home.

As someone said to me recently, "After all, three months isn't long enough to put down roots, but it's long enough that you have to make a life of it."

One thing that's currently fascinating me is a show that's just opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery. A German immigrant named Fred Herzog took color slide photos of Vancouver through the fifties and sixties, and the city that he captured could not be more different than the place it is today. There's lush neon everywhere in the photos; places like the Downtown East Side that are smashed and worn today show a vibrancy and color of a lost time. The city Herzog captured in the photos seems raw, unformed, a small port city still figuring itself out. I share the photographer's dismay at the loss of the vibrancy and color. That Vancouver looks like an amazing place. All bustling in Kodachrome. Another Le Chateau, and the swapping of the Virgin Megastore for another HMV doesn't seem like an equitable trade.

What's doubly interesting for me is that this exhibition has piqued my interest in the history of this city in a way I've never felt about the city I call home. I came to Toronto with my family nearly 30 years ago now. And I don't really ever recall having a thought about what the city was like pre-CN Tower, for instance. I remember it being rather stiff and British even when we arrived. The best thing that ever happened to Toronto, as any Montrealer will tell you, was the Parti Quebecois. Once the separatists took the reins, the drive down the 401 of all the money and capital infused a color and vibrancy, along with the explosion of immigration, that handed Toronto the crown Montreal once wore so well, as Canada's most populous city.

Still, there's that history. Writers like Mordechai Richler, and the history of the Quiet Revolution, Jean LeSage, and Trudeau (as well as the slightly naughty implication that Montreal was the place New Yorkers went to get into trouble) have brought that city alive for me. New York looms large in the imagination for any lover of great cities -- the eras etched upon the mind like so many Walker Evans photos, all in pristine black and white.

But not Toronto. Poor Toronto. Maybe the Vancouver hate is already seeping into me. A water borne explanation would be miraculous, because lordy, T.O. they do hate you here, beyond all reason and sense.

Even reading the paper out here, you see articles twisted in order to slip in a dig to the city they insist thinks it's "the centre of the universe." I try telling people that all Toronto ever does is envy New York. So far that's not helping. I'll keep working on it.

How strange, then, to find yourself in one of a million coffee shops going through your weekend papers, and lo and behold, there's the Vancouver Sun. Vancouver is one of the cities that people worry about with media concentration. Both papers here are owned by the same company. Compared to Toronto, where there are four separate dailies (which is probably better than most cities in North America) you would think that put Vancouver at a disadvantage. But testify, the Sun kicked the Globe & Mail's ass this weekend in the sheer number of interesting stories on different topics. Sometimes the poor grey Globe just seems like a sad old mare waiting to be shipped off for glue. The Vancouver Sun, at least the edition I read, makes me think that the lurid color of those Herzog photos hasn't entirely disappeared. It's just underground now. Surrounded by cables and apple boxes as another crew tries to shoot for Chicago or L.A. or D.C.

Then, last night, I come home and just as I'm thinking about bed, there on TCM is - Oh God - it's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

There's an hour and a half gone. Every time I stumble on this movie, I can never turn it off.

Here is color even brighter than Fred Herzog ever dreamed. And there's Catherine Deneuve, all of nineteen.

Non, je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi, Je ne pourrai pas, ne pars pas, j'en mourrai! Un instant sans toi et je n'existe pas, Mais mon amour, ne me quitte pas. Mon amour, je t'attendrai toute ma vie, Reste près de moi, reviens, je t'en supplie! J'ai besoin de toi, je veux vivre pour toi, Oh, mon amour, ne me quitte pas.

Poor Genevieve. And Guy. And love gone wrong. And of course, there are the umbrellas, which have been a little bit on my mind recently out of necessity. And did I mention the young Catherine Deneuve? Seriously, if you're a man and you can't get behind the young Catherine Deneuve, then I don't even want to know you.

I defy anyone to sit through that last meeting at the Esso station, and not have a good, awful, wonderful ache.

Mon amour, je t'attendrai toute ma vie, Reste près de moi, reviens, je t'en supplie! J'ai besoin de toi, je veux vivre pour toi, Oh, mon amour, ne me quitte pas.

Anyway, they're singing that song, and it was all so perfect. I think maybe last night I dreamt in Kodachrome.

All around, a pretty good weekend.

And I Told My Mouth To Shutup, But it Wouldn't!

He doesn't post enough...but one of our up and coming writers, who'll be sure to succeed in the coming, inevitable post-U.S.-Canada-Iraq cultural merger, Callaghan, contributes a great one about the pitch from hell.

I remember being in a meeting a while back now where there were lots of people from the network, and lots of people from the co. I was working with, and the perfect example of a show that had lessons for what we were trying to do with our project, and the only person who'd seen the show were me, and the big, big, big, big boss. All the underlings, all my fellow partners? No help.

So me and the big boss talked this show for four minutes as other people looked at their nails. It was weird. But lessons learned: a) that's how you get to be the big boss, and b) remember, always, that you can't count on the people you're pitching to to actually be up on the genre or material. It's far more likely that they'll be enthralled with the last book they read that said one brad, not two. Or whatever.

Anyway, C. We have all been there, bud. Thanks for sharing your shame. More.

Pros, what's your pitching horror story?

Bite Sized Bits

I don't have the full mojo for a big post, so a couple of observations on unconnected subjects follow:

Dresden Dolls

I caught the premiere of The Dresden Files on the weekend and thought it was kind of spiffy. Paul Blackthorne is very good, the production values were great, and the story was, you know, good old fashioned genre double. I call shows like Dresden Files "peanut butter" because they're never going to win Emmys, but when you're curled up on your couch it's actually nice and diverting. I'll be watching it again. And best of all -- shot in Toronto, so yay for that. (Sci Fi in the USA, Space in Canada, Sundays.)

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

I've been laying aside 2nd season Rome till I had the time to devote to it. I got just enough time to watch the premiere episode last night and found something so great and valuable in it that it actually made me clap my hands in delight. One of the things I'd been wondering was, in the aftermath of the death of Caesar, how would they handle the oration over the body? How do you top "Friends, Romans, Countrymen Lend Me Your Ears, I Come to Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him?"

Well the answer, of course, is you don't. You go to the aftermath: straight to the scene where Marc Antony negotiates with Brutus to get him out of Rome because the crowd turned on the killers after Antony's oration. Brilliant! You play the fact that EVERYONE KNOWS THIS SPEECH, or at least everyone literate. You're playing on the audience's own knowledge, and engaging them. Then you play a scene from the perspective of the lower classes, recounting the two speeches -- not quoting the speeches, but simply speaking about the emotional content and how it made them feel. Dramatize the effect, because that's what's important for the narrative. Not the cause.

We struggle all the time with: how much does the audience know here? Should they know more? And sometimes we forget that you can actually count on the audience quite a bit. Twenty years ago they didn't trust that you could cut from someone in a car to someone knocking on a door. Now, you can omit the oration speech and play other scenes we haven't seen a hundred times before.

Whenever you can omit the scene we've seen a hundred times before, why wouldn't you do it?

How many of those scenes are in your script. Rip'em out.

Conservative Surprise

I can't figure out our Conservative Government here in Canada. But I am glad they seem to recognize that as screwed up as it is, the TV industry is actually an industry that employs real people. Go read this article in the Globe and Mail, and then read the comments below. That's what we're up against. I swear, it's when I read these comments from the body politic that I think to myself, "what are you doing here? Just take the hit, move south, and let them trade their damn country away." They'll get teary eyed at a beer ad manipulating Canadian pride, but they'll blithely hand over cultural sovereignty when it counts.

Canadians, you are an odd, odd people.

I Hate The Line

There's a Toronto-based comic named Sabrina Jalees. She's all of 21 or 22, and is probably best-known nationally for appearing on a Muchmusic TV show where she makes fun of Videos. (Yup, the kind of thing Beavis and Butthead were doing almost fifteen years ago.) But she's also been a professional comic since she was 16, has played Just For Laughs and scored roles in several movies. She now writes bits for CBC Radio and the Toronto Star.

Sabrina is, I believe, of Pakistani descent. Or she's mixed-race, anyway, a real Canadian story. She also went on tour on the Allah Made Me Funny comedy tour across Canada last year -- which featured Muslim comedians, and played to mixed audiences.

I observed to a few people I knew awhile back that Sabrina is exactly the kind of person they should be considering for a junior writer on a show like Little Mosque on The Prairie. I still think that. I also think she's kind of winning, though she could use better material occasionally. But hey, she's out there doing it. And that's great.

But the latest thing she wrote in her column in the Toronto Star just made me a little sad.

Titled, "How Comedy Struggles With Being Race-Y," Jalees quotes heavily from comic Kenny Robinson, who runs a "Nubian Comedy Night" in Toronto, and Al Rae, who's one of the writers on Mosque.

Robinson says:

"Nubian night was born around the time of the L.A. riots, and the O.J. Simpson trial. It was a point where racial eyebrows were being raised in society ... we turned away 200 people our first show. We had no idea it was going to be such a huge success. It just goes to show, what's going on in the world will always affect what's going in comedy."

The question of how to approach race in comedy is a good one, and has never been more trenchant. The article goes on to recount one of the now semi-famous reasons Dave Chappelle gave for walking off his show -- about doing a sketch in blackface and getting the "wrong kind of laugh" from a white crew member.

Jalees gives Rae the last word:

"One of the biggest challenges of writing comedy where race is a component is to make sure you never get to that line," Rae says in response to the Chappelle incident.

"It's the reason that I'm reluctant to take my 14-year-old daughter to see Borat. I think he (Sasha Cohen) is clearly sophisticated enough to create one of the funniest motion pictures I've seen in years, which, on the surface, appears to be monstrously racist and inappropriate.

"The question is, when my daughter goes to see the film is she sophisticated enough as a viewer to understand? Not everyone will necessarily understand that he's satirizing anti-Semitism and not promoting it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the creator thinks.

"Do the vast majority of your audience understand what your intentions are?"

For the security of Al Rae's job, the future of Canadian television and the possibility of my guest-starring role on Little Mosque on the Prairie, I'm hoping the vast majority of its viewers do indeed.

Okay, now here's why the article makes me sad. These are all good, thorny questions. But younger comics like Jalees have grown up in the era of full-blown political correctness. So it's no wonder that we're talking about "gentle" comedies about race...and Lord knows, we all have to be careful about where "the line" is.

The problem is, "the line" isn't a line anymore. Most of the times it's been moved so far back that it's a meaningless, toothless distinction. And the line is different places for different people.

What was the whole thing about "reclaiming" words about? Wasn't the whole point of Gays calling each other Queer, and f*g and d*ke and all the other stuff about denying the power of those words to hurt? Wasn't the hip-hop embrace of "My Niggas" supposed to defuse the bomb that has always been that awful word, n***er?) Well, whatever it was meant to do or mean, it hasn't worked, obviously. Now we have black comics debating using the N-word over Michael Richards' outburst...and for the last week or so we've had the kabuki spectacle of one millionaire star of a hit TV show who's probably heard one hurtful word thrown at him way too many times, turn around and bust out another word at his millionaire co-star. So we haven't gotten beyond words.

We haven't gotten beyond race, either. Not by a long shot. But like the fiction of reclaiming words, the idea of comedy "celebrating" or reaching out across our differences is a nice idea that's not being practiced. For a lot of the same reasons.

If you go to Sabrina Jalees' website, she's got the tagline, "if you don't find me funny, you're probably a racist." Now, that's funny because she means it ironically. But in a very real sense, it's not funny at all. Cause it's kind of true. Well, not true. But that certainly is a prevailing attitude out there. That's a thing that holds us back. That accusation can get hurled and grind everything to a halt today. Why? Because to challenge the assertion would be to have an honest conversation about race. And that is something that we've simply forgotten how to do.

The fact is that we have gone far, far, far backwards in our conversation about race, in all art, but specially in Television. They're dated in many ways, but if you look at old episodes of All in the Family, or Good Times, or even The Jeffersons, you will see a far funnier, and more honest expression of our cultural differences than you ever see on TV today. Those 70's comedies were being more honest about race than any of the dramas of the time. When Mike Evans, who played Lionel on Family and later, The Jeffersons, died recently, I had the chance to back and watch some of his exchanges with Archie about race. They were sublime. Funny. True. Talk about promoting understanding. They were sophisticated in a way that you could not even have the barest hope of trying today.

Because today, the truth of race is that we don't talk to each other about it. Not really. The marketing machine has found a way to hive us off from each other. And we're all tacitly embracing this. There are movies now that black audiences go see and white ones don't. There are separate TV shows. Separate pundits. Separate magazines, radio, and media of all types. There is no conversation about race anymore, certainly nothing as honest as those exchanges between Lionel and Archie Bunker. In a very real sense, we've given up trying to understand each other -- except for the occasional, non-threatening comic who tries to work the other side of the fence. Ho hum.

I don't know how many white people saw Tyler Perry's Madea movie. I rented it because I saw him on Tavis Smiley and thought he was one of the most interesting guys I'd ever seen. I admire what he's trying to do in his community. But see...that's the point...that he's focused plainly on speaking to his own community. Time was, Perry would be the kind of guy making provocative comedy that reached across those lines.

Which brings me to Chappelle. Chappelle was wonderful and exciting because he was the first guy in a generation to really stick it. To throw down the truncheon and speak to EVERYONE's cultural biases. The fact that he eventually felt he couldn't go on maybe says something about who we are today. Maybe it just says something about him. But while he was saying it, Chappelle was the man precisely because he blew away all the carefulness, all the calcium that had crept between "the understanding between the races" through the years.

He. Moved. The Line.

Borat, too, is an interesting case. I felt uncomfortable with the movie because of the personal stuff, not because of the racial stuff. I respect and understand Rae's point - but this, too, is nothing new. One of the old criticisms of Archie Bunker back in the day was, "What if people don't get the joke?" And you know what? There were people who didn't get the joke--who thought the point of All in the Family was that no one saw Archie's common sense. But I'm betting there were far more people out there who, like me, learned a lot of lessons about race by seeing the face of a genial, ignorant racist on TV, and knowing the things he said and thought were unacceptable.

Things like All in the Family, and comics like Richard Pryor, hell, they were scary. And they shook things up. And sometimes, you weren't sure if you should be laughing, and that made you think, too.

In contrast, I have no problem watching the hicks on Little Mosque be completely boorish and awful to the Muslim characters, because that doesn't threaten me at all. I'm evolved. I don't think that way. I can feel nice and superior. Of course, it's not funny. And because there's not an ounce of subtlety to it, it doesn't run the risk of actually tripping me up on my lingering mixed feelings, which are probably in there waiting to be exposed by a surprising joke that makes me go, "oh, wait, why did I laugh there? Is that me?"

In comedy, if your object is never to cross the line, then you never learn where the line is, and that always, always, always means that the line gets moved steadily back.

It's a shame that Sabrina Jalees works in a world where the line is where it is, wherever it is, today. Because race is screwed up in this country (Canada.) It's even more screwed up in the USA, and it's no prize through Europe these days, either. There's nothing gentle about racism, and there's nothing gentle about gentle comedy that tries to defuse racism, either. It's not gentle. It's toothless. And if you're really going to take on something as deep as our ingrained attitudes about each other, you need those teeth, my friends.

Where's Archie Bunker when you need him?

When The Crazy Pokes Back

I've talked a bit about poking the crazy, and the defect in my character that is my love of poking the crazy.

Every once in awhile I get what I call the "hmmmm" emails. "hmmmmm" emails are from people who do not know you, have never met you, and either

a) assume a level of intimacy that's just...weird.
b) are vaguely insulting or sometimes not even vaguely...
c) show a real nutty disregard for the values of Common Sense.

I don't blame the internet for this, necessarily. I noticed in the last few years I was teaching a growing sort of cavalier (ness?) (ity?) (tude?) man...that's going to bug me all afternoon... from students who thought nothing of phoning you twelve times on one assignment, emailing at all hours and expecting to be phoned back right away, etc, etc, etc.

What am I saying? Okay, here goes. Everyone starts out in screenwriting knowing nothing and no one. You learn your craft by reading, watching, talking, learning, and more reading and, of course, most importantly, writing.

But just because you haven't sold anything yet, doesn't mean you shouldn't be professional.

It's well known that most TV viewing by kids is "aspirational." If you want to attract 8 and 9 year olds to your show, the main characters should be 11 or 12. If you want young teens, your characters should be 16-18. If you want 16 year olds, Paris Hilton. Okay. The metaphor breaks down there, but I hope you take my point, which is this:

If you aspire to be professional, the acting professional part of it starts now. It starts in the comments you make on blogs, as well as the emails you send, meetings you take, and people you meet.

Don't be Crazy, yo.

That wasn't a funny post. Damn. Not enough time today. That's okay, though -- because this post by Craig Mazin that illustrates what I'm talking about is freaking hilarious.

For the record, I am not *the* Denis McGrath. I am simply *a* Denis McGrath.

Playback Goes Daily & Jim Shaw Shoots Blanks

Playback is Canada's Variety in the same way as the Geminis are the Emmys and the Genies are The Oscars.

Which is to say, ehhh, not so much.

But they're taking a step in the right direction. As of today, Playback is launching a daily email newsletter that should keep Canada's TV and Film Industry up to date. I'm sure, like everything else in Canada, it's being done with too few people and too few resources, but it's still a tremendous step forward, and for all the people who are probably killing themselves to get this thing out, I say, thanks and this is long overdue.

Interestingly enough, today there's more of Jim Shaw in the daily sheet, where he expands upon his reasons for choking off his 56 million dollar CTF contribution.

Now, I have to say that I've just gotten a SHAW digital box here in the temp digs in Vancouver, and his digital terminal layout kicks Rogers' ass in terms of elegance of design and navigation. The technology is much, much better.

Jim Shaw's firmware, though, needs a whole lot of updating.

The comment that caught my eye:

"We keep paying, but what shows are being made? Am I just getting shows like Trailer Park Boys with all those guys running around half-naked, swearing and smoking weed? Is that what Canadians are getting?" he asks.

Okay, to borrow from Jon Stewart, Jim, meet me at Camera Three.

I appreciate that you're very, very, very old. But whatever your point about the CTF is, you seriously undercut it by seeming to take the stance that somehow your 56 million dollars should reflect your personal taste of what constitutes "good or worthy" programming.

Trailer Park Boys sells DVD sets by the skid. It's been successful enough for Showcase that it's spawned Christmas specials and a movie produced by a Canadian who's made quite a bit of money, and whose judgement I trust a whole lot more than yours: Ivan Reitman. The Boys attract crowds wherever they go. (They're making two nights of personal appearances at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver this week or next, for instance.) They're popular enough that they've been asked to host the East Coast Music Awards for the second straight year.

So, in short, if your point is that you're not willing to fund shows that don't connect, then TPB is a baaaaaad example. If your point is that you think that networks should pay more money to license shows, and rely less on CTF handouts, TPB is a baaaaaad example. But if your point is that you should get to be the arbiter of what's successful and what we should be spending money on, and TPB is your example of something we shouldn't be...supporting, well...

You're an old, out of touch, cranky duffer. And you just shot yourself in the foot. Whatever good you had to say, whatever point you had to make is pretty much moot. Because you just insulted one of the few shows that lots of Canadians connect with, laugh at, and love.

Shame on you, you pampered monopolist. I hope they fine you big time.

Or as Ricky would say, "Hey Jim, Knock Knock, Who's there, Eff Off, you tool. Now...smokes."

Little Mosque: My Take

Okay, so I finally got a chance to see the second episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie.

I was really reticent about posting anything negative about the show at all, because I thought that those premiere numbers and the coverage was such a good step in the right direction for CBC that I don't want to rain on the parade. But let's face it, no show is perfect. And if CBC wants a long term hit with the show, there's definitely some things that need a good tweak.

I did not think the Pilot of Mosque was very good television. The most interesting thing about it was the concept. The execution, I thought, was lacking. I thought Episode Two was better, which was a personal relief.

You can argue all you want about the backseat driving discussions -- ie: the howiwouldhavedoneits -- it should have been edgier, etc, etc, but on the merits of the show they say they're going for -- a straight down the middle family, wide appeal comedy, here's what I think's good, and what needs attention in the next batch of eps (assuming, as seems likely, that the show gets a pickup.)

The Good:

• Babur. I think this character is clearly the Hiro of the show. (See what I did there? I made a pun, kind of, on the guy from Heroes. Aren't I just so...oh wait...arrrggh...I just broke my arm patting myself on the back. ow. ow.) Babur is a muslim Archie Bunker. He's intolerant and dogmatic, conservative and doesn't question things. He's rigid and inflexible, but still somehow pretty lovable. The masterstroke: making him a single father of a Canadianized girl. I wish they'd hit a little harder the fact that he didn't push the hijab question because he wants his daughter to fit in, not because he didn't want to talk to her about her period. This plotline has the most juice in the show.
  
• Yasir. He proves it on 24, but CarloRota is clearly a star. He's got presence for miles, a good nature, and you just want to spend time with him.
• Sheila McCarthy. I think her character is odd. It's problematic to use her, as they did in the pilot, to express "outsider" views of Islam (like being more ignorant of how Ramadan starts, or what foods are traditional, etc, when in her backstory she converted long enough ago that she has an adult daughter with Yasir. But in both the pilot and the 2nd episode, she had little comic awkward moments -- with the press in Ep. 1 and the Protesters in Ep.2 where she showed a goofy looseness that was winning.)
• The occasional sharp line. The joke about the pot-smoking guy joining the United Church, the "You dress like a protestant. You mean Prostitute. No I mean protestant." Occasionally, there are lines that land that are good. It would be easier if the premises were inherently more funny, but there you go.
  

The Bad:

• Zaib. He looks good, he could probably be good in his role as the Imam, but he mugs and overacts insanely. The guy needs to be reined in, hard. It's like he believes no one will find it funny unless he actually rolls his eyes. (I'm not dreaming that, am I? He really did roll his eyes?)
• Wake Up, White People! Neil Crone, who plays the right wing radio host, is a great comedian who is absolutely stranded in his role. It's decent, at least, that they managed to spin it in Episode 2 that he was fomenting intra-Muslim conflict as well as conflict with the community...but come on. Compare this character to Maurice Minnifield in Northern Exposure. Where does he go in three eps? What is the slightest bit interesting about him?
• Fatima I hate to say this, but the fact that Sheila McCarthy's character got to use her as a tactic to play on the feminist protestor's political correctness (because she's a person of color, see?) was the best use of this character so far. She plays the same role in the show as Babur. Two characters who play exactly the same role does not work in Comedy. You don't need two Dumb Joeys...you don't need two space cadet Phoebes, and you don't need Fatima and Babur, both. One's gotta show a different side or it's gonna be a bitch trying to service them both. It's not enough that she's a person of color. What makes her distinct and unique? She was useful as a plot point (she's a woman and wants the barrier too!) but useful as a plot point does not a good character make.
  
• The Imam vs. Rayann. The standard Romantic, "they hate each other, but they like each other" thing that they're going to play here is a big problem for one big reason: there's nothing keeping them apart. She's a progressive single Muslim, He's a progressive single Muslim. They live in a town where Muslims are a serous minority. They agree on most things theologically. What's keeping them apart? What's the obstacle? Diane was brainy and Sam was dumb and brawny. Then they got together, and once it didn't work, the obstacle was external: Frasier. (Thanks to my friend with the house for this point.) Also, they missed an opportunity by putting the most interesting thing about Rayann: that she discovered her faith as an adult, in the backstory. Why would you not have dramatized this journey in the show? Could have been a brilliant way in. If they're not careful, Rayann could turn into a scold.
  
• The Direction. From scenes that are overacted, to scenes that are staged wrong, the comedy is consistently crushed through bad choices in shooting. You also get the sense that there's A LOT of editing surgery going on to put this together. Two examples that explain all: The Pilot, where the Imam's on the phone and is mistaken for a terrorist. The women in front of him reacts, big, and goes off. If only that was staged as a slow burn with her behind him, it would have actually have been funny. Dont' announce, "ATTENTION AUDIENCE, JOKE AHEAD!" Trust them to find funny things funny. Example two is in Ep 2, the sequence where the women get on the board to prevent the men from putting up the barrier again. This could have been rich. But it was shot indistinctly, there was no build to it, and a potentially funny sequence (Imagine what Niles Crane would have done here, or hell, Lucy) was as flat as the board it was played on.
• The Scheduling. Good God Almighty. The one thing the CBC has going for it is that because it's not a slave to simulcasts, it can put a show on and run it and not move it, so people can get used to when it's on. So they premiere in one slot, move, run a rerun, then get pre-empted. Are they TRYING to shake off 500, 000 viewers, or what.
  

There's also a lot of merit in what Alex said when he wrote about the show:

A really clever look at Canadian society, seen from the point of view of people who are outsiders in some ways and insiders in others. Sometimes it takes a fish out of water to notice how odd terrestrial critters really are. This is where the show really fails for me. I don't feel its white characters are keenly observed at all. They seem to be mostly racist and all stupid. Whereas I bet most white people in the Canadian Prairies are extremely tolerant, and racists are in the minority. Most Canadians bend over backwards to be nice to minorities (except possibly not to the Natives), reserving their passive aggression and venom for empowered white people. Instead of making out every white character to be a buffoon, why not write episodes based on actual observation of white society, from a Muslim's perspective? How white people's kids are defiant to their faces? How white women wear push-up bras and low-cut shirts but get mad when people stare at their breasts? How white people worship an impoverished, anti-intellectual, rabble-rousing mystic carpenter and cherish money, hierarchy and dogma? Etc.

I think the show really does have promise. It's still not my type of humor, but I wish CBC every success with it, and I hope it will lead to lots more "higher concept, boundary breaking" shows on CBC.

And like Matt Watts observed a few days ago, it would be nice, now that they have their feel-good Muslim comedy, if at least one or two of those new boundary breakers was pitched to be edgier and more clever, a la the last time CBC really, really broke through with a critical homegrown hit: those first glorious eps of The Newsroom. (Before Auteur Ken disappeared up his own digestive tract, I mean.)

UPDATE 02/20/2007: I'm closing comments for this post. I'm tired of deleting ignorance. That is all.

Whither the Poor ODG? (Original Dolphin Girl)

Okay, this is a bit premature for you Yanquis who haven't seen this week's Studio 60 yet. (But wait a minute, none of you are watching it anyway so screw you guys...)

There is a bit in the show where Sarah Paulson's Harriet is brought to Matt (Matthew Perry) and auditions a new voice for a sketch, called "Dolphin Girl."

Basically, that's it. She can laugh like a dolphin.

Well. La-dee-da.

Now, I can say this because I'm currently away and so I won't have to endure all the usual rabble who stalk and follow every move of nobody Canadian TV writers...it's a very small fraternity, but Norman is very persistent...ahem.... when I reside in Toronto there is this bar on John Street in the shadow of the CityTV building called The Friar and the Firkin, which, shall we say, is not entirely unknown to me.

Among the storied staff there, which includes Carla and Graham and Marcella, there is Nicole. Nicole is now, and always shall be, the original Dolphin Girl.

Much as I love Aaron Sorkin, Nicole, if you're feeling litigious, I'm more than willing to swear out an affidavit when I hit Toronto. Seriously.

Emphasis on romantic comedy, my fanny. They're going to try and milk Dolphin Girl. The shame. The shame.

Pitchin Woo on Sorkin: Me and My Big Yap, Agin

Well, what do you know. Looks like old Alex and I are quoted all over this Toronto Star article about the return of Studio 60. (Tonight in Canada, Tomorrow in 'Murrica.)

Ratings have been disappointing in the U.S. but the show does better in Toronto, frequently appearing in the top 30 rated shows for the week. That doesn't mean everyone's happy. The healthy audience includes Canadian writers – who are also bloggers – who have some constructive criticism for Sorkin.

"Most show take a while to find their feet," says Denis McGrath, a TV writer currently working on a vampire show called Blood Ties in Vancouver. He thinks the show has only started to find itself in "the last few episodes, once they started featuring the new writers and Mark McKinney got a recurring role."

Part of the confusion, he says, comes from marketing; the ads "made it look like a comedy, but it's not a comedy. It's a drama about making a comedy show."

"West Wing this ain't," says Alex Epstein, whose credits include Naked Josh and is the author of the book Crafty Screenwriting. "I stuck with it because of Aaron Sorkin," but in his blog he noted early on that the show "feels like it either needs to be funnier, or have higher stakes."

"The first few episodes," he says now, "were about how terribly important sketch comedy is, and the recent episodes have been about a bunch of people to whom sketch comedy is important." That's progress, he says, because "you're telling a story about a family – every good TV show is about a family."

Both of the writers love the addition of McKinney's character, an utterly melancholy writer.

"I thought the way he was introduced was so great, he was a comedy writer who knows funny but never laughs, and never finds anything funny. I've worked with those guys," says McGrath.

Epstein just hopes the show finds out what it should be. "If he keeps it to the level of the Christmas episode, he's going to have a great show. I think he has to try to not be too funny. Like that episode, it was funny in the way a drama is funny."

I think Alex is on the money about The Christmas Show. That one had the mix of shameless manipulation, heart tugging melancholy, and good banter back and forth that Sorkin does so well.

I just want to say for the record that I have no advice to give Aaron Sorkin, despite what the article says. I am not quite that cheeky. And I swear to God -- I don't think it's Mark McKinney's job to save the show. But you know how we like our Canadian angles...

Still, I think Raju, the article's writer did a very good job. The Heroes article in the same paper is great, too.

If anything, the thing that I think that could save Studio 60 most isn't the romance at all. As astute blogger Diane recently observed to me, "Sorkin is great at writing male friendships." They haven't mined the most important relationship in the show, yet: the friendship between the two main characters.

If Matt and Danny can approach the level of camaraderie of Casey and Dan (Sports Night) -- then they'll be cooking with gas.

Showrunners: What they is, What they Aint, And How The WGC's Trying to Frame The Discussion

A few days ago I got an email in my email box that made me feel happy.

Not just because it had to do with the Canadian Screenwriting Awards, though that would be reason enough.

See, the Canadian Screenwriting Awards are pretty much the most awesome party of the year on the Toronto production calendar. Forget the Genies. Never Mind the Bollocks. (not actually an award, but still a mighty good album) P-shaw to the Geminis, DGC Awards, Toronto International Film Festival Galas or whatever lame what have yous. The annual writers award dustup is, hands down the place to be. Partly because the awards themselves are pretty painless. They're in and out in forty minutes. Then there's the food. It's good. Then there's the drinks. There's lots. People enjoy them. A lot. And when writers enjoy themselves, and when writers are cleaned up and start talking -- well, they're funny. Even the drama writers. I've laughed out a lung at some of these awards.

But that's not what made me happy. What made me happy was this email:

A new award will make its debut on April 23, 2007, at the Canadian Screenwriting Awards - the WGC Showrunner Award. Help us celebrate our country's best showrunners by submitting a nomination.

A showrunner is a writer/producer who holds the creative vision for a television series. He or she controls all creative decisions and oversees the series from development, through prep and production, to the completion of post. In other words, the showrunner is the creative force behind the series, and it is time for our best to step forward and be celebrated by their peers.

All nominees must be a WGC member and the recognized showrunner of a series working under a WGC writer/story editor contract.

IMPORTANT: At least one of the episodes of the showrunner’s series must have had a FIRST broadcast date between December 1, 2005, and November 30, 2006.

To nominate your showrunner, you must be a WGC member working on the nominee's series under a WGC contract. Go to http://www.wgc.ca/cscs_awards/index.html (you may have to copy and paste this link into your Internet browser) for a complete list of rules, a partial list of eligible shows and a nomination form. If a series you have worked on aired during the eligibility period and is not on the list, please call the guild and we will verify its eligibility.

The deadline for nominations is March 1, 2007.

Now, why is this award so important?

It's important because in Canada it's still semi-heretical to actually insist that a writer can be someone who holds the creative reins on a series. It used to be that the Producer class who ran Canadian shows came almost exclusively out of Line Producing. This is because deals and financing are so difficult to put together in this country that the person who sells something has a lot of power. Networks have relationships with these people, not generally with individual writers, as in the USA. They haven't always seen the difference. So the net result is that you have a lot of series pitched and developed to a point and then sold by people who are, effectively, lawyers. Or nuts and bolts producers, trained to watch the budget -- but not creative producers.

In this scenario, series are pitched, bought and sold by people who don't write. So the characters may be vague or non-existent, the concept may not be sound. Smarm sells the series, not the kickass pure quality of the idea.

Then writers are brought in. Writers are brought in, usually not for a lot of time because you want to save the money, and they have to try to make something meaningful out of the show. Then they write scripts and are paid out and sent on their merry way, and the series gets shot, edited, and delivered.

Well, you might say, what happens when you need to do production changes?

Good question. What happens is that the Producer does them. Or the Actors, or the AD's -- or maybe there's a writer there with the title of story editor or head writer who doesn't really have any power to change anything, it's just their unlucky fate to have to implement the faustian bargain that the series has become. Changes are made without a regard to story. Actors get to write their own dialogue. Directors get to change whatever they want to make a cool shot whether or not it serves the story, and because there's nobody there that really understands the story like a writer does, from the top-down, god's eye view... the changes that happen tend to throw out things like structure, and coherent story and character development for atmosphere, and cool "moments."

...or it might be, as it often is, that there are several Producers on the show who all jockey for influence and position. There is no one person who's the final word on creative questions. Instead, there's infighting between producers, each pushing their own agendas, burning money, crew, and goodwill as the show comes apart around them.

And the series turns out an incoherent, under or overcooked mess.

And then, you know what they do?

You guessed it. Usually they blame the script.

So for years, the reality is that if you were a TV writer with any ambition, you had to get the hell out of Canada. Don't take my word for it. House's David Shore is a pretty smart guy who thinks the same thing:

There is obviously a smaller market, and therefore less money and greater limitations, but I think the problems are deeper than that. I left Canada because I knew I had a lot to learn as a writer and I saw very few opportunities to do that without moving. In my opinion, Canadian television so often fails for the same reason American movies so often fail: They're not controlled by writers. Now I'm biased on this one and there are obviously great, smart directors out there and great, smart producers but no one knows the story like the writer. American movies are controlled by directors; Canadian television is controlled by producers; American television is controlled by writers.

Now that's how it used to be, and it's changing, slowly -- there are some writers who actually have fought their way into production so that they have a seat at the table and are influencing the end product, and in some cases truly fulfilling that creative vision in the same way as, say, a David E. Kelley or Stephen Bochco or David Shore or Jenji Kohan or Shonda Rimes does.

But something else has happened along the way, too. Some non-writing Producers have discovered that, you know, that Showrunner title is pretty nifty. So now they're calling themselves Showrunners.

The problem, of course, is that the "Showrunner" title doesn't mean that. It means the Writer who runs things. If you don't write, there is a perfectly nifty and nice title available to you. Or several. "Produced by" is great. So's "Executive Producer." Hell, that's a smashing title. But you know what, just like I don't get to call myself "General" if I haven't served, you don't get to call yourself "Showrunner" if you can't write.

The Simpsons, in its many years, has had many showrunners. The end "big" exec producers don't change: James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, and Sam Simon -- but they weren't the people actually running the show from day to day.

Sometimes the creator of the show is the showrunner, and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are for a few years, then they move on and do something else, and a new showrunner takes over. (See lots of long running shows like The Simpsons, E.R., Seinfeld, Sex In The City -- all of whom wound up with different showrunners.)

The thing that defines the showrunner is not the title, it's the job. And what's the biggest part of the job? Say it with me, kids:

It's the writing, stupid.

You may be an excellent producer. You may be an awesome manager, who keeps your show humming along smoothly. You may be the greatest Executive Producer in the history of executive producers. But if you don't write, you are NOT the showrunner. And if your writing is bad, and your ideas are not great, then covering that by hiring a bunch of writers to "realize your vision" does not make you a great showrunner. It kind of makes you a fraud.

A Showrunner is a writer in the development meeting, the pitch, the story room, the casting process, the shoot, the edit, the sound mix, and the press for the show. They are a writer first, last, and always.

It's a damned hard job. Because you have to learn about budgets and costs and you have to motivate and manage a small army of people, and supervise this and deal with the network and answer everybody's questions, and somehow you have to do all this and take all this pressure and not turn into a raging asshole, because that's going to hurt the unity of the production going forward.

It requires a number of skill sets that don't normally go together. So when you find a person who can do all that, they're special, and they're golden. I'm working for an honest to Betsy showrunner right now, and let me tell you, the hours are long like they always are in TV, but the creativity is front and centre and it's a little piece o'heaven.

So fie upon any charlatan who pretends to that throne without having the chops. You're wearing colors that don't belong to you -- and you're making it harder to identify the very types of people who will help us to make our programs better, and relevant, and popular.

So, back to what the WGC has done. By establishing this award, they are going to shine a light on these special people, these showrunners who actually can do it all. And it's not going to be a case of B.S. and credit stealing because whoever's nominated for the award has to be nominated by writers who work for them.

Simple. Elegant. Brilliant. Way to go, WGC. Bravo.

My money's on Haddock.

(*I'm adding a caveat here... there *are*, of course, other ways to mount a successful show. I would venture that Slings & Arrows is an example of a top quality show where the writing and conception, direction, and production all form a cohesive whole, and works, but were in the hands of different people, ie: there wasn't one person overseeing all of it. This takes nothing away from the producers of Slings & Arrows. Obviously, they're brilliant. Look at the show. But though development may have been a little bumpier at times, it wasn't dishonest. Everyone was allowed to function by bringing their full expertise to bear, and it worked out. When something is GOOD, there is ALWAYS enough credit to go around.)


*****

UPDATE: March 2010.  So I saw some traffic to this old post and thought I should update a bit of what I think, based on three more hard won years.


First -- the WGC finally came up with a list of competencies called the Showrunner code.  It describes what the basic functions of a showrunner are in a classic, U.S. based system.


FWIW, I think now that as it's currently run and constituted, the (weak) Canadian system requires a partnership kind of hybrid to have the best chance of functioning. And that's because of the lack of Canadian Studios.


Producers here are on the hook in a way that individuals aren't down south, and there's no level of studio in between (I know in the vertically integrated model a separate network/producer isn't the norm in the USA a lot either, but for the purposes of the discussion, that's the best way to explain it.


What's happened up til now is a lot of crappy shows have resulted from unfocused creative choices made by Producers who don't understand and can't internalize the creative because they don't understand it like a writer does. This is why writer producers in the USA became the norm.


Without studios, what's the future? What's the possibilty? Well, I think it's either got to be Writer-Producers or Partnerships where the two are equal, and trust and respect each other.  But one way or another, the "keep the writer in the dark and treat them like the hired help days?" Gone.

Motivation

I've got about three big scenes and a wash-and-read through the whole script left to do. And here, outside my window in Vancouver, is the motivator for getting it done:

I'm not entirely sure what it is. It almost looks like a giant, flaming ball of incandescent gas. I have dim memories, like from childhood, that seem to suggest that this thing is good and desirable. It's frustrating, though, because those memories seem oh so distant now. I hope the villagers of Vancouver do not fear this thing and attempt to kill it before it eats the sky.

At least before I finish my draft, anyway.

Hand Waving

..is what we call it when, usually in an outline, you've got something not totally worked out yet but it depends on an action sequence or something cool happening, but it will be totally great on the day...

As in: "Lot of hand waving in Act three."

"Yeah, I know."

Anyway, this is me handwaving. Deeeeep in first draft country. Trying to finish today. Hoping to get a chance to write up some stuff on the weekend. In your meantime:

• May I direct you to Will Dixon's fine first part of a post profiling his friend and BONES creator/showrunner Hart Hanson. Lots of good TV stuff, and some Canadian TV stuff too.
• Matt Watts has a plea for people trying to pitch comedy to a Canadian audience. For those who don't know him, Matt's a very funny actor and writer who was on The Newsroom, among other things, and has also created a couple of great radio series for CBC Radio. I've got thoughts on his definition, too. But those will have to wait til later.
• A reader passed along this link to an article in the Vancouver Courier that makes some interesting points about Little Mosque, that I very much agree with.
  
• Jaime Weinman, on his Macleans' blog, has a great rundown of the Colbert style interview and how it trumps CNN. I'll have something more to say on this, too, when I get the chance. (It won't let me link to it for some reason...stupid innertubes...but go to Macleans.ca, click on TV Guidance, and scroll down to 18 January, Papa Bear Meets Baby Bear.
  

And oh yeah. "Hey Honey, you want to go see that new documentary about Horse fuckers?"
Hand waving out!

Little Mosque: Episode 2

Overnights: 1.2 Million viewers.

That's a little less than a 50% drop, but...

...the initial number was off-the-charts large. Two million two is a ridiculous number for a TV show in Canada. That's CSI, Grey's Anatomy numbers. So the question is, when is a loss of half your audience not a bad thing? There'll be no answer to that question for another week.

...the CBC screwed up by moving the timeslot, and by confusion over the Monday showing being new or a second repeat.

If the dropoff in week three isn't major, even if it retains somewhere around the million mark, this will be a monumental piece of good news for CBC. Even with that hanging over, my guess is we'll hear about a pickup of 13 episodes very soon.

Best part about that is that now I won't feel like I'm piling on when I write about how I think the show could be a lot better. But that's for another day when I have time. For now, I think there's a lot of people at CBC changing their drawers. At least I hope they are.

Thanks to my secret-squirrel spies.

Welcome To The 1970's

I've discovered the secret to writing on the West Coast: stay on East Coast time.

Not that I've had much time to do it, but it struck me last night when I tuned in a half hour too late to catch Little Mosque on the Prairie's second episode, that my TV life is radically different, and distantly familiar, than it is at home.

Monday, I had to rush out of the office at 7:00 p.m. to catch the second part of 24. After I tuned in CBC last night, I realized maybe I'd gotten the time wrong and wanted to make sure. So I had to tune to the onscreen cable channel, and wait for CBC to scroll around again. It only showed me what was on for the next hour.

Last week, I had to choose whether I would watch Intelligence, or House. This weekend, any plans I have are at least partially structured around knowing I have to be home Sunday night to catch Battlestar Galactica.

I'm ruled by the broadcast schedule clock. I have no VCR. I cannot pause live TV, rewind to see something again, watch an earlier feed, or skip a single commercial.

Out here on the West Coast of Canada, the crafty cablecos have fixed it so you can't even rent a PVR, so that's out. I'm looking at getting a digital package so at least I have timeshifting options. I can't really justify buying a VCR for a few months, even if they are sixty bucks.

It's an interesting experience. A cold splash of water that demonstrates candidly just how much television has changed.

NATPE, SHMATPE?

"The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit."

Tom Petty

One of the Producers on the show I'm working on right now blew out of the office yesterday afternoon to catch a flight to Vegas.

I hope he has some fun while he's there. Lord knows I always have. But fun isn't why he's going.

Right now, the NATPE conference -- short for National Association of Television Program Executives, is going on in Vegas. This is one of the most important conferences in the TV business for selling stuff. Well, depending on who you talk to. Most will probably say MIP, but MIP's in France and I think all those fuckers just want to go to France.

I went to NATPE once, when it was still in New Orleans. (Ah, New Orleans.) It was interesting to see that side of the business up close. I fought for an interview with Johnnie Cochrane, who was joining CourtTV. Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless showed up to kiss station owners' asses. So did Cybill Shepard. And Ed Koch, the new host of the People's Court (at the time.) And Springer. And Sally Jessy Rafael. And Chris Carter was there flogging the X Files because it was going into syndication. Everyone was deadly serious about announcing their 'clearances' in the rest of the country. I think one of the hot shows they were hawking was Nightman. Yup. You heard me.

It's on this side of the business, the side that I don't particularly understand or care about, where the shit-scary changes that are roiling the whole industry are going on. If The Business is the World, then NATPE is kind of like Lois Lane in the Car at the end of the first Superman movie. Oh, the earth's opening, bitches. She's going in. But because this aint no fantasy, there isn't a strapping young, ablebodied Chris Reeve anywhere who can fly round the globe and turn the whole thing back. There aint no turning back on this one. But if you're looking to toil in this sweet demi-business we call TV, you, and I, absolutely have to grok the kind of fault-line panic going on at places like NATPE. The issues that are being talked about there aren't theoretical, and they're not five years out. The business model is broken now. The scrambling is happening now.

Both Will Dixon and Jim Henshaw have current takes on what NATPE looks like now. Jim thinks it's good for creative people. Wouldn't that be a kick? Will's got a link to a Broadcasting and Cable article explaining why syndication is so messed up. That article blows by one more funny thing: the messed up nature of syndication is exactly why shows like DaVinci, Corner Gas, etc, are starting to sell into U.S. syndication. They're buying them for the same reason the Canadian nets fill their schedule with U.S. shows: they're cheaper.

I suggest you go read 'em. And stop waiting for Superman. He aint coming.

Dude, I'd take Krypto.

ABC Showrunner a-go-go

There's various versions of this session from the Press Tour found on the net, but I think the Toronto Sun's Bill Brioux captures it well as any.

ABC Showrunners Speak.