As We Were Saying...

If you're a Canadian producer, I don't know how you're not screaming that you get treated differently than big American productions on new media rights, but whatever.

From Playback (by the way, Playback Daily rocks!):

Actors and producers have a deal -- again

ACTRA, the CFTPA and its sister APFTQ on Tuesday finalized terms on a tentative three-year deal to end Canada's first-ever actors strike.

As part of the revised IPA deal, producers may choose either Option A or Option B to pay ACTRA members for performances that show up on the Internet or other new media. Option A will see actors receive a full daily rate for new media work, and then earn 3.6% of gross distribution revenues after six months of initial use. For old media converted to digital media, including TV shows, ACTRA members will this time receive a percentage of revenues from the first dollar.

Producers can also choose Option B, which allows negotiating with ACTRA on a production-by-production basis, setting minimum fees for Canadian actors.

The catch is, productions choosing Option B must be guaranteed by an approved distribution guarantor --¬ in other words, must be a U.S. studio shoot, without being designated by name as such in the IPA agreement.

Full Playback article is here.

I *Said* I'd Report Good News...

So here it is:

Shaw to resume TV funding

Feb 20, 2007 10:18 AM
Canadian Press
OTTAWA – Shaw Cable has agreed to pay up its commitments to the Canadian Television Fund.

The president and CEO of the cable company, Jim Shaw, made the announcement during an appearance before the Commons heritage committee.

Not to anger the Henshaw, but I'm still mulling and keeping to my CanTV layoff this week. Stay tuned.

Reprints are Golden when They Involve Karate and the baby Jesus

So today, I want to call your attention to one of my favorite reprints. I do this for a very specific reason.


When I first came up with my fantasy-series based on the above awesome album cover, it was just a lark.

Never did I guess that about six or so months later, I'd be on the west coast of Canada, working on Blood Ties with a real life Mike Crain.

So far as I know, this Mike Crain has never been a Karatist preacher.

But...

You never know.

(BTW, keep reading through to the comments on the linked post. My response where I explain the terms of my fantasy world to Alex is one of my favorite things I've ever written on this blog, ever.)

Now. Outline delivered. Time to drive out to Maple Ridge. Chop Chop.

When I Heard About "Deal Or No Deal Canada" I Didn't Think That Meant Anything Like This...

From Playback:

Hollywood studio heads have balked at Friday's handshake agreement between Canadian actors and producers to end the ACTRA strike, leaving CFTPA and ACTRA representatives to find a face-saving formula on new media residuals for the major studios so a new IPA deal can be finalized this week.

Hollywood studio CEOs flinching over payments for Internet rights on Friday caused widespread frustration among the Canadian bargainers.

For months, the industry has questioned why humble Canada had to hammer out a deal on Internet compensation before Hollywood took a crack at it.

For weeks, ACTRA urged that the issue should be side-barred to a joint committee for up to a year, likely until the SAG talks began. But the producers insisted they needed certainty, and so pushed for a deal on new media residuals.

And when they had one, the studios balked.

Words just fail.

With that I bid adieu to Canadian TV for a week. Seriously. Cold Turkey. I'm busy working a script, it's all too depressing and frustrating, and my teeth are starting to hurt from the grinding. Until at least next Monday, only happy news about Canuck TV, if even that. Daddy's getting the monkey off his back, at least for a while.

Wherein I Punt...

Those of you who read this blog frequently should know by now that I don't really burn to make movies. I much prefer the TV medium. That being said, like a lot of people who live in what the Quebecois call, "ROC," (Rest of Canada,) I have a somewhat difficult personal relationship with Canadian Film.

There have been some I liked, to be sure. And I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with Art House film (some of my favorite films are Art House, to paraphrase an ancient justification...) but I find the Canadian flavor of Art House frequently enervating, unengaging, precious, and narratively challenged.

I know some of you just popped a clot. That's fine.

Yes, I know the TPB movie was accessible, maybe too much so. Yes, I acknowledge that Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a step in the right direction (only one step though, and only part of the direction -- we don't need an industry of Bon Cop clones, I'm not saying that.)

But I think it's telling that when I try to think of a truly Great Canadian film made in the last few years, the only one I can come up with is actually very, very, very much a Quebec film. In French.

I last wrote about C.R.A.Z..Y. (among other subjects) here. I'm just putting the mention in now because I see that there's finally a decent special edition coming out. With features with English subtitles. I suggest you go get it.

Oh, and I'm not the only one who likes C.R.A.Z.Y. Looks like the Director will soon be partying with Scorsese.

What can English Canadian film learn from C.R.A.Z.Y.? You tell me. In the comments below.

Musings on a Sunday: What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?

The nice thing about working on a Sunday is that you have a little time to meander. I mean, it's Sunday, after all.

And I wanted to post something else, because really, I can't bring myself to have bald Britney top of my page for more than a few hours.

In my meandering I was reading this article in the great British Music Magazine UNCUT this afternoon. It's a recounting of a tumultuous press conference Elvis Costello gave in the U.S. in the midst of his tour to support Armed Forces.
What happened was this:

Elvis and his mates were in some bar with some American musicians from another band. And things got loud and scrappy. It's hard to remember now, with the Krall and the Twins and all, but onceuponatime Elvis Costello was quite an angry young man. Anyway, things get heated, and Elvis winds up saying something horrible about Ray Charles and James Brown. Come on. You know what he said. Let's just say he called him two things, and one of them was "blind."

Well, this gets reported in The Village Voice and, understandably, there's a bit of a flap. What the UNCUT article does (it's in the issue with Radiohead on the cover -- I know that doesn't really narrow it down too much, but I bought it off the stand yesterday so it's either the new issue or the last issue) is recount the entire press conference where Costello attempted to set the record straight and say that he's not a racist.

This thing had the potential to sink Costello in America, remember. He was getting into fights and scraps on the tour all the time.

The press conference is remarkable. Costello tries to explain himself, and say that he's not a racist, it was just a matter of trying to hurl the most outrageous thing you could say into the atmosphere of the fight. But he's also still clearly annoyed with the press, and he will not back down from that. In fact, he makes no secret of how much he dislikes them. He winds up apologizing but tries to evade that at first, as he tries to make the point that the only reason he's here is because the reporting of the incident takes things out of their context.

Reading this flap, more than a quarter century on, strikes me as peculiar and interesting. Because the questions from the press are the same plodding, usual questions trying to trap him into this and that. They're peevish and high handed, and though he's being a bit of a prat, your sympathy reading the thing is clearly with Costello. The context was, and is, important. It must have been mortifying for Costello, who had written lots of songs decrying racism and had great respect for black music, to find himself in the position of having the press he loathed (and who loathed him right back) trying to sink him with a quote that he had actually said.

But of course...it went away. We don't think of Elvis Costello as a racist today. In fact, today we see him doing records with Allen Toussaint.

Bowie flirted with Neo-Nazi statements in the midst of his Berlin drug haze. Today he's a rock elder statesman and a new father with Iman.

I don't know what, if anything, this says about Michael Richards -- but Richards was caught in a remarkably similar situation to Costello. I mean, remarkably similar. But this time there's video, and video that's instantly playable on YouTube. And then there's also the 24 hour news cycle. And those things have changed everything -- and I'm not sure the changes have good implications for what we as writers do.

Maybe it's the fact that if I see one more mention or picture of a certain poor deceased Playboy model, I'm gonna hurl, but I think that the mediascape we live in now goes beyond venerating the shallow and being celebrity obsessed. I think it's rewired us in a way to not reach conclusions -- or at least to jettison context for ubiquity, and form conclusions based not on consideration, but repetition.

It's in the best interests of the cable news 24 hour cycle to keep you watching every moment; to not have you reach conclusion or closure with anything. Even (especially?) when there's nothing new. So we get endless updates with no context at all. And the repetition of images, over and over, replace thinking with pure emotion, which we're expected to internalize and feel, and react to: and inevitably, we conclude certain things because we are "familiar" enough with the story to think we've thought it through. When really, we're no further than those reporters were at that Elvis Costello press conference. We don't have answers. But when someone asks you what you think, you have to say something, and what comes out of your mouth is the spin.

When the news only came once a day, the politicians weren't focused on never losing a moment of the news cycle. The absolute primacy of spin hadn't yet taken root. It seems to me that now, with the internet and the 24 hour news cycle, it's not just in the best interests of the news people to keep the story alive, it's in the best interests of the news people to keep the story from progressing too much. Details need to be revealed for maximum impact, teased endlessly before you get anywhere. And we all watch. So the simple narratives of celebutards are perfect because, really, how much change and growth are you going to have?

Before all this was available, more of us read newspapers or newsmagazines which weren't so hot in their reaction, but offered the context that allowed us to slow up a bit and weigh different elements and points of view before coming to a conclusion.

If there was a 24 news cycle back on the Armed Forces tour, I'm not sure Elvis Costello would have survived. And maybe we'd be calling David Bowie that flaming Nazi poofter.

What does this say about what we do as screenwriters? Well, one of the other things I used to love was the movie that I had to think about for three days. You'd come out of the theatre and think one thing but then you'd consider it a little bit and a little bit more and eventually there'd be a synthesis and that process was engaging and delightful.

But now movies are made for the 24 hour news cycle, too. Which means that ponder time, that time that allows for the sober second thought, is cut off. Same is true with TV. Though shows like LOST are analysed and discussed endlessly -- I'm not sure it's people coming up with their own constructs. It's not a synthesis. To be perfectly honest, when I watch shows that I think are layered and interesting like Battlestar Galactica, I'm baffled and appalled when I go online and see the utter banality and surface nature of most people's analysis of what they've just watched. It's not that they're not getting it (well it is, but that's not my point) it's that they're not even giving themselves the time to get it. Any moment of character development, any moment of ambiguity, needs to be answered or stamped out immediately. After every cliffhanger of every show, I check the Google search queries that bring people to my blog, and inevitably they're trying to get an answer about this or that possible plot point that just unspooled.

People used to try to work this out on their own...and that working out..that helped to provide context. It helped improve the quality of our understanding. Now people Google because they need to know what to think right away. They need to know the answer, they need to know how to feel, who to hate, who to blame -- and I think it's our mediascape that has taught them to be that way.

I just don't know how we tell stories for that. Because it seems like those aren't the kinds of stories I really want to tell.

I bought the 2 disc DVD of The Departed this weekend. And I was watching the documentaries, and all of a sudden, I saw Scorsese talking about one scene that is pivotal in the narrative. (Not to spoil too much but it's the scene where a certain character says, "I sent you to the wrong address.") What Scorsese says is that scene is ambiguous, because there's a couple of ways to read it. And that blew me away. Because I read it one of those ways and thought that was the only way you could possibly have read it when I saw The Departed. But he's right. It is ambiguous. And that's way way cooler. Why didn't I see that ambiguity the first time? Am I skipping the consideration stage, too? Is that why I went straight to that conclusion?

I'm not sure. But since the point, these days, is to jump to a conclusion and not allow for any context, I'm going to go ahead and blame Wolf Blitzer.


Way to go, Wolf. Asshole.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

Because he dodged a bullet, kids.


I've been with the railers against celebutard culture all along, but I think we're now at the point where I almost want to hear from Mailer or Tom Wolfe.
Or...oh....oh....Mm. Wait for it...

Mmmmamet.

Your Homework for This Weekend

I'm tired of all the Canadian TV shouting! I'm going to turn this blog around!

Anyway -- there are multiple people, including radio enthusiast and former crazy smart student o' mine Dan Misener (student for like, one term...he was smart before and smart after I futzed with his head) who have cottoned on to my embarrassing man crush on Ira Glass and This American Life.

Well, here's why that crush exists. I was a student at a certain Canadian University, studied broadcasting, got a degree, and later taught at that same University. And in all that time, and all that teachin' and learnin' I don't think I've ever had the concept of telling story broken down as succinctly as this.

Ira's talking mainly about storytelling for radio -- but listen, because his comments on approach have just as much to teach screenwriters.



When I worked at the television station in Toronto, one of the problems was that there was always a pressure to churn stuff out no matter what. To always make it into something. There are still people back there who don't understand the point made here: that 1/3 of the stuff you shoot just isn't going to work out and needs to be killed. The glee of killing it that Glass expresses: that's the point you have to get to. Never mind "kill your darlings," you have to WANT to kill them. This is NOT failure. This is the cost of creativity. Just like when you drill for oil or pan for gold, you have to go through a lot of rock. That doesn't give you the excuse to never finish anything, though.



Enjoy the rest of this masterclass, and let's see if, in the comments below, we can build our favorite points. Oh Ira, you are dreamy. Oh wait. Before we go to the rest of the storytelling videos, if you click here you can see a teaser trailer for This American Life -- The TV Show. As the fangirls say: squee.

Now, for the rest of the storytelling videos. Do you hate your stuff? Or are you afraid that early show you're working on is bad? Or do people run you down by pointing to the crappy thing you're working on and make you feel bad about that?

Screw em. Listen to Ira.

Deal Reached in ACTRA Strike

Tentative.

Details -- as they become available - at Playback.

I look forward to the dueling press releases.

You may all now return to work.

Oh...you were working already?

Um. Then...uh...never mind.

UPDATE: several people forwarded me this email from ACTRA to its members about the agreement. Thanks to all who did so.

A tentative agreement was reached today on a new IPA.

ACTRA won its points on every issue being fought in the strike.

We achieved our full pay demand.

The agreement provides members with a 10 per cent pay increase over the next
three years -- the largest pay increase achieved by a Canadian film and
television union in at least seven years.

The internet won't be free.

Residuals will be due to performers on internet use from first dollar - the
first time ACTRA has achieved SAG-style residuals in a major use category
(with one exception: dramatic productions like webisodes, made specifically
for the internet, will have a six-month basic declared use period prior to
residuals. All other productions -- ie conventional productions sold through
the internet -- will pay residuals from first dollar).

A "reopener" provision will allow the parties to revisit these terms after
the Screen Actors' Guild has negotiated its next agreement. ACTRA will use
this clause to seek further improved internet terms should SAG achieve them.

Other key deal points:

* ACTRA adjusted its low-budget terms to promote independent Canadian
production.

* New terms are set out to make the agreement work better for "reality"
shows.

* Rules governing background performance have been better harmonized between
Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. Cash background rates will rise by 13 per
cent over the term of the agreement.

The full terms of the tentative agreement will be posted and distributed as
soon possible.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ACTRA'S STRIKE WILL REMAIN IN EFFECT UNTIL THE TENTATIVE
DEAL IS SIGNED OFF BY THE PARTIES.

Welcome Back, Eh?

Well, well, well. Look who's coming back.

John, we have back bacon at the ready, and a bit of Sleeman's in the fridge.

Have you met my friend Gordie?

Remember, In Canada, your Monkey always goes farther.

When "Fed Up" Doesn't Cover It

Paging Dr. House. Your refrain, "Everybody lies," has hit class A hemorrhagic infection status in the Canadian TV game.

ACTRA and CFTPA have stopped their duelling pressers for now, but that doesn't mean either side's closer to the truth.

Everybody's got a take on Jim Shaw and the CTF, but having a good point doesn't mean stamping your feet and taking your ball and going home is right.

Then there's Konrad Yakabuski, who earned his asshat by writing this howler of a story in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business section yesterday. The breathtaking thing is that he "gets inside the mind of what everybody was REALLY doing and thinking" over the flap at the Heritage Commitee, then bumbles just about every fact he quotes to make his point.

Viewers, meanwhile, are not watching any more Canadian dramatic programming than they were a decade ago.

Enter Jim Shaw. The outspoken Alberta cable king dared to say publicly what his industry cohorts have long been complaining about before the CTF's 19-member board. We'll let the TV critics determine whether Mr. Shaw's depiction of Trailer Park Boys as "guys running around half-naked, swearing and smoking weed" is fair game. But let's end the myth that the show is a ratings success.

Trailer Park Boys has drawn an average audience of less than 80,000 viewers this season, compared to more than three million for any one of the CSI franchises. The Canadian series, which got $2.8-million from the CTF this year, has been sold to a few foreign cable networks, but in the thousand-channel universe, fees for such sales are negligible. Maybe a few hundred Australians get a kick out of the beer-swilling trailer trash from Canada. But should Canadian taxpayers have to pay for it?

Trailer Park Boys airs on Showcase. Konrad here is basically comparing ratings for 2nd tier cable with terrestrial, which considering the difference in their reach, is laughable. It's like comparing FOX ratings to ratings for F/X, Fox's cable station. The Sopranos, which is a monster show for HBO, would be canceled or on the bubble with the ratings it gets, were it on ABC.

On Showcase, a top American import like Rescue Me, might do a few hundred thousand viewers. And that's a massive number. The 80 000 figure he's quoting for TPB is likely to be, inevitably, the average viewership for the season which is now in its 2nd or third cycle through on the channel. It is not a premiere showing.

But see, it's not enough to actually talk about what's really wrong in Canadian TV. There's such a streak of stupid perversity running through Canadian media, that you have to do this bullshit dance of trying to tear down the stuff that actually does work. "Trailer Park Boys isn't a hit!" Yup. The guys sell out Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom for a personal appearance, host the East Coast Music Awards, get mobbed at signings. The movie flopped. I'm sure the Amazon.ca sales this week don't mean anything, either. Konrad knows the score. He goes on:

It took CNN to pump up Little Mosque on the Prairie, which got $2.5-million from the CTF, for Canadians to tune in to the show's debut on CBC last month. The public broadcaster subsequently took out full-page newspaper ads to boast the show's success with 2.1 million viewers. It hasn't, however, advertised the fact that once was enough for most Canadians. The most recent Mosque episodes have drawn fewer than 300,000 viewers.

In their 2nd window repeats. Yes. The reality? Let's turn to how Bill Harris wrote it in the Toronto Sun:

NOT-SO-LITTLE MOSQUE

No one can deny any more that CBC's Little Mosque On The Prairie is a hit. A new episode on Wednesday attracted another 1.2 million viewers. The numbers for all five first-run episodes thus far have not dipped below a million.

Here on this blog there was a bit of back and forth of what "stabilized ratings" means. Well, we now have a metric that's based on five airings. The huge number (2.2 million) of the first airing did go away, but the 1.2 million average of the last few weeks is stable. And the repeats get 300 000 to 600 000 viewers, which means when you add them together, Little Mosque is always in striking distance of 2 million viewers a week. In a country of 30 million. (By the way, this kind of mismanagement of ratings data is exactly why a lot of Canadian networks play those numbers close to the vest. Can't trust a reporter to do math, after all. Not when they, too, think of 'hits' and 'misses' in U.S. style numbers. Even that 80 000 number has a selling commercial value in Canada for cable. I mean, at SPACE, when they got 300 000 viewers, for anything, people would be clicking their heels and lighting cigars with fifty dollar bills. But I digress.)

Online, if you look at that article, you'll see that it's been corrected. But it wasn't corrected in the original article. Konrad's fuzzy math is out there. A lie gets halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on. In an industry beset by problems on all sides, what chance is there for resolution when the public is ill informed, the lies fly fast and furious, and lazy writing gets to muddy the debate like this?

By the way, by point of contrast, let's look at an outsider view. Maureen Ryan in the Chicago Trib, writing about Slings & Arrows:

What’s with these Canadians taking American jobs?

Aren’t we Yanks supposed to be crafting delightful backstage dramas about the catfights, crankiness and passion that go into the creation of a work of artistic genius?

Well, I guess if the behind-the-scenes chronicle “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” was any good, we wouldn’t have to worry about incursions from north of the border (though the terrific backstage comedy “30 Rock” is doing us proud).

As it is, let’s just allow the Canadians to show us how it’s done with the rollicking and ultimately moving third season of the import “Slings and Arrows,” which debuts 7 p.m. Sunday on Sundance Channel.

Maureen also is working in one of the markets where Davinci is a syndie hit on U.S. tv. Suddenly it all makes sense.

If we want to get support for the beset Canadian TV industry, all we have to do is...

...turn to Americans.

Pathetic. Absolutely Pathetic.

Ze Frank Gets It

You think you understand the nature of procrastination?
You don't know procrastination.



H/T to P.Mohan

Memo to Doyle: So Far, Nobody's Asked

In the Globe and Mail today, John Doyle throws down a bruising gauntlet toward Canada's TV writers over the whole Shaw thing:

Where are the Canadian cultural warriors ready, willing and able to articulate why we need Canadian-made television?...

Is there no one among the many producers, writers and actors who benefit from the CTF who is willing to speak out, angrily and passionately, about the outrageous stunt being pulled by certain Canadian cable companies? Representatives of Shaw Communications Inc. and Vidéotron Ltée have been getting away with murder as they flit about the country in their corporate jets, sneering at the public, the CTF, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, and Heritage Minister Bev Oda.

Perhaps those who actually make Canadian TV are cowering in fear. Perhaps they are afraid of the cable companies. If so, they should be ashamed of themselves. Soon, it will be too late and the question will be this: Who speaks for the dead?

I'd love it if this was actually a real call to arms. The problem is timing, right now, of course. The Actors are busy embroiled in their strike or non-strike against the CFTPA, so two groups that might be talking to each other and coming up with a strategy, aren't.

But to take Doyle's argument sideways: why is it that this major thing is going on and the Heritage Committee is content to hear only from CBC executives?

Canada is kind of like that. Business people talking to business people. We make Line Producers the creative geniuses in charge and wonder why they can't speak eloquently about creative (or execute great ideas.) We don't employ a writer-showrunner culture (for the most part) so writers are, as Doyle suggests, mostly cowed and fearful employees. For most Canadian writers, the thought that they would be the ones to be consulted is... well, it's an idea from Mars, you see. Writers are kept as far from the levers of power as possible.

There are a few who could step up and make the argument. I think Chris Haddock could do it. And maybe Don McKellar (who had plenty to say in this space recently) but beyond that, I think things grow rather thin on the ground. Linda Schuyler from Degrassi, maybe. Maybe Brent Butt from Corner Gas.

I think the fact that there AREN'T more obvious choices for creatives to speak out, says volumes about the kind of industry we actually do have here. And maybe the reasons why Shaw has so far gotten away with their behavior. The TV industry is too important to be left in the hands of people who make TV, you see. You run along and play now, and let the grownups talk spreadsheet-talk.

While some of us tilt at windmills, blog-style.

Okay. Back to Vampires now.

Funny?

One of the things that's oddest about comedy is the way that it can often make a point more deftly and truly than argument or drama ever can.

But that's only when you play by comedy's rules.

Below are two of the strangest clips I've ever seen. They're from "The 1/2 Hour News Hour," which is 24 Producer Joel Surnow's FOX News inspired take on the Daily Show.

Let's leave aside for a moment the truly weird meta-commentary at play here: the fact that, oh, I don't know, one of the hosts of this gabfest is Canadian (Jenn Robertson) and therefore not exactly ideologically committed to the cause. Then there's the fact that these bits feature the worst canned laughter in a generation...

...let's just look at the bits themselves.

Are you going to tell me that the Rush-ites are actually going to find this funny?

Mmm.

Okay, maybe they will. But that's neither here nor there. One of the interesting things about the Right Wing Dominance of U.S. government through the last few years was that even though they ran everything, they never stopped crying victim -- they were treated unfairly by the media, there were forces trying to subvert the president, blah blah blah.

Now you take this little show and you see, I think, the entire agenda of FOX News laid open and made the creepy thing it truly is -- way more than you ever could with Hannity or O'Reilly or any of the other screaming angries. Because this is supposed to be comedy, the fact that they start with the ideological and try to twist it funny is so telling. And not just because the jokes are so lame, that it seems even more like bad propaganda than Fox News itself.

Whether it's Weekend Update, or Daily Show, or 22 or Mercer in Canada, the great thing about topical comedy is that the joke is the thing that rules. Funny rules. You start with the joke, first. That sometimes means they roast Dems when they do something stupid. Jon Stewart is brilliant at this.

But this...well...

Is it just me, or does the whole thing smack more of the Leni Riefenstahl? Right down to the obedient, droning canned laughter, standing in for well-choreographed displays of obedience. In any case, nowhere is there room for real human reaction.

It's one thing to call yourself "fair and balanced" when you spin the news. And to say that you're doing it because the news has been spun that way for years. But somehow, at least to me, standing up there and saying, "look, isn't this funny?" when it so patently isn't (I mean, Rush Beating Howard Dean for President? Is 1998 calling or something?) is worse. Because at least the Fox newscasters are clothed in the garb of news. They look like they're from news.

This seems like a bunch of frat boys making fun of poor people. It's beyond ham fisted. It's beyond desperate.

Anyway, it's just bizarre. Enjoy.

You Get The Culture You Deserve

Alex has a very nice piece up over at his shingle about Canadian culture, something we talk a lot about on this blog but not always so much on his. Alex states his case forcefully and persuasively:

Without Cancon on our TV and movie screens, what is there telling people that their country is worth saving? What tells people what we stand for?

In the rest of the world, Cancon, when it's supported and promoted, gives Canada clout by giving foreigners a sense of the country. It promotes the Canadian brand. When people see Une Dimanche à Kigali in the US, or in France, or in Russia, it gives people there a sense of who we are. That may sound mushy. But so are ocean currents. In the long term, they have a powerful effect. Human beings feel more comfortable with people they know. They prefer to agree with people they like. When the nations are picking sides for the next Cod War between Canada and Spain, there are economic issues, sure. But people have trouble grasping large abstract numbers. They tend to side with the people they know and like.

When the question of who owns the Northwest Passage comes up, or softwoods, does it matter whether Americans think of Canadians as their nice friendly sidekicks, the would-be 51st State, or as a real nation? You bet it does.

You think culture doesn't matter? Look at the Mideast. Is there any conflict there that couldn't quickly be resolved on rational grounds except for culture?

I would like to point out that Alex is an American Transplant to the wonderful and beautiful city of Montreal. You might not think that's significant. But though I rib Alex sometimes about his Canadian bonafides, the fact is that he's embedded there with a unique perspective: he has the weight of all that American cultural thinking behind him. He's a New York guy, and for the last few years he's had a crash course not just in the culture of les Quebecois, but of TROC (the Rest of Canada.)

One of the nice side effects of this crash course, for all of us? Alex was one of the people who wrote the screenplay for Bon Cop, Bad Cop, which I watched again last weekend and enjoyed even more the second time through.

Canadians (especially the rabid, Alberta-like, crypto-Yankees who whine endlessly about Toronto and the CBC's "left wing bias") are so blase about what makes us different, and often so ignorant of what really does make us different.

Then again, that's nothing new. I believe, once upon a time, when they were young, Americans got an earful from a guy named De Tocqueville, did they not?

The Whiplash of Disappointment

That's a phrase I use sometimes to describe the feeling you get when you think something really really cool has happened and then a second later you realize, "Oh, no, wait a minute. That's not the cool thing I thought it was. What they're actually talking about is kind of lame."

Case in Point:

This is the headline I saw this morning:

Second City, CBC team for series

"Yoinks!" I thought to myself. If you're like me, kids, and let's face it -- you are, my darlings... you secretly have been waiting all these years for somebody to get it together, kick Andrew Alexander in the pants and get a new version of SCTV on the air. Back up the truck for Joe Flaherty, coax Eugene Levy back for a payday, appeal to the nostalgia factor for the others to make an appearance, and build the show around the hot talent that's passed through the doors in the last couple years. I'm thinking people like Lee Smart.

I know for a fact that there are a ton of comedy writers and TV writers who would move heaven and earth to work on something called SCTV. Who knows. Might even be good. And CBC, a perfect place for it, right? CBC does comedy, after all.

Wow, I think...they're finally going to do it! Then I click through to the rest of Bill Harris' article:

Second City and the CBC are teaming up for a reality-TV series called The Second City's Next Comedy Legend.

It will air on the CBC this summer.

Aspiring sketch comedians from across the country will compete for a spot with the troupe. As is the tradition with reality TV, each week one of the contestants will be forced to walk the comedic plank.

Hosts and judges still are being finalized, but you can bet that many notable Second City alumni, and perhaps some Canadian celebrities from other entertainment fields, will be involved.

Auditions for the show are scheduled to take place in Vancouver (March 20), Calgary (March 24), Halifax (March 28) and Toronto (April 4). Registration information is available at nextcomedylegend.com.

Sigh. Note to any actually gifted young comedians. (Especially if you're a young, female comedian.) DO NOT audition for this show. It is NOT the way.

Remember the old axiom about laughing with vs. laughing at.

Now I've got to go ice this disappointment. Enjoy your bullshit Hallmark Holiday.

Cha-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!

Four o'clock high.
Bogged down in a rewrite.
Energy at low ebb.
Let's see, what do I need?
I need...women fighting in smart pantsuits.
In slow motion.
With bongos.
And if you could throw in John Houseman, wishing he was dead, that'd be a plus.

Mmm. I know what I need.




Mmmm. Fembot goodness. That's refreshing.

Who Hates the Show More?

Which flavor of Muslim-on-Muslim criticism of Little Mosque on The Prairie would you like?

The liberal kind? Or the conservative kind?

The liberals say some pretty interesting things:

To begin with, a completely false picture of the Muslim community has been forced into the homes of non-Muslim Canadians. CBC has validated the image painted by Islamist groups that Muslim lives revolve around mosques -- nothing else. We don't play hockey, none of us have 9-to-5 day jobs, love affairs, play poker or, dare we say, cheat on our taxes or our spouses.

After watching the fourth episode of Little Mosque, we question the motives of the writer, producers, and directors of the show for focusing singularly on the most conservative segments of the Muslim community. Although the characters are meant to reflect the diversity of Muslim society, a closer examination reveals the show is not about liberal or progressive Muslims competing with conservatives. Rather, the writer has created a false dichotomy of "conservative" Muslims vs. "ultra-conservative" Muslims; the former being disingenuously passed on as feminist and progressive. Muslims who do not pay homage to their Imams; the liberal, secular or progressive segments of the community, are conspicuous by their complete absence from the Little Mosque narrative.

Writer Zarqa Nawaz has played a deft hand in attempting to sanitize what really goes on in the typical Canadian mosque. The hijacking of our religion, Islam, by politicized clerics affiliated with Saudi Arabia or Iran, finds no resonance in the sitcom.

While the conservatives, well...they don't think it's very dandy, either.

i think we need to look at it a bit deeper. why do we assume that we have to have some kind of this representation on tv? i would contend its better to not have this kind of show, despite whatever “benefits” may come of it - and i believe this moreso after seeing episode 2. you would think of everything on tv, a show called “little mosque” would be suitable for family viewing and be free of college sexual humor and people making out in front of their hijab’ed daughter, and unnecessary video of people displaying their sexual frustrations and showing people grabbing each others butts… oh wait… that was all in the wonderful representation of islam on tv

if its going to be done, it should be done right, but the way this show is done, the harms i think outweigh the benefits. its just simply unrealistic, lame, and counterproductive

Um, so nobody's happy?

Normally they say that's how you know it's the right balance. I have to say that for, me, as a non-Muslim who's bothered to read some of the Koran (though not all of it) I find the "liberal" side to be more provocative and resonant. I found the commentary from the conservatives interesting, but once you poke around you see very quickly that a whole lot of those critiques are coming from people in....Saudi Arabia. What does that mean? I have no idea. What does it mean to you?

So I don't know. I don't know. The whole thing gives me a Little Headache on the Prairie.

I'm Just Not Sure About The Office's New Direction

Editors. Is there anything they can't do?

Ho-chee-Mama, I'm Heading WEST...

Longtime readers of the blog will no doubt be familiar with the many crushes of your gracious host. Yes, there is the ongoing Rachel McAdams swoon. And of course, one must always honor the Bloodgood and the Fey. I believe we've even waxed recently about Ms. Deneuve.


Well. Set all that aside. For today the fire burns anew, for the sexiest woman of them all.

Lucinda Williams makes me physically hurt for Austin, Texas.


Yes, she's in her fifties. I'm sorry. What's your damn point? (Ask my friends Matt or Jeff what I said about Hillary Clinton. Go on. I dare you.)

She is consistently my go-to troubadour of lust and anger and heartbreak and disappointment and tenderness and rage and regret and evil and friendship and luck and loss and pain and hurt and joy and defiance and angst and longing and redemption and transcendence.

And today she's got a new record out. It's called WEST.



I'm West, right now. Clearly we're meant to be.