It sucks not being able to say something you know, and it's a great relief when you can.
Tanya Huff posted the big news on her blog, so I feel sanguine about repeating it here:
U.S. Blood Ties viewers: Lifetime has picked up the back nine. You will get to see all 22 eps of the first seaon, including the 2 and 1/2 written by me.
Now, if you'd be so kind to take a moment -- to write Lifetime a nice "Thanks!" email, I'd be much obliged. And please... wait a proper period of time before bugging them about picking up season two.
I suggest...72 hours. That should be enough.:)
Monday, April 30, 2007
Sorry, No Fanfic Sale.
I gotta make something clear -- because I just got a very sweet email from a woman in the midwest who's obviously very passionate about her fanfic, and insists that there are plenty of great stories that I would enjoy if I would just...
I'm not going to quote her, because it was pretty long and it doesn't need to be quoted to make this point:
Please don't send me fanfic. About any show. Ever.
Because I get paid to write, you see. And I never, ever, ever want to have to actually defend myself against accusations that I've stolen from fanwank. And now that I'm coming off a show with fan buzz, (Blood Ties) -- it's a real fear. I have not read fanfic -- any fanfic -- since I started getting paid to write TV. I can't, you see. And it's your fellow travellers that make that so.
(And I'm going to jump in and put in an edit here -- because I want to make it clear that I understand the enthusiasm. And I understand that most people who will go and write fiction based in a world they see on TV will do so because they love it. I get that. There's not a writer alive who wouldn't totally grok and love that enthusiasm. But that enthusiasm wanes when it starts to cause you problems.)
Doris Egan, who's probably one of the best hourlong writers out there right now, actually has fanfic people coming out and accusing her of taking from them on her blog. Follow the comments here.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the not-funny side of the funny little rant of a few days ago. If for no other reason, this is why fanfic -- all of it -- is a bad thing. Fanfic writers: so long as these deluded people are in your community, you should expect utter hostility from pro writers, everywhere.
Shame on you.
Accusing a writer of plagiarism is the most serious thing you can do. It is not cute. It is not funny. It is not just for fun.
So don't send me -- or any pro writer -- fanfic. Ever. What you're doing actually hurts the shows that you profess to love. I don't care if you're the biggest fan in the world. If you write fanfic, and tolerate the people who entertain fantasies that TV writers actually have the time to steal from you -- you are supporting libel. And that is not a hobby. That's a crime.
I'm not going to quote her, because it was pretty long and it doesn't need to be quoted to make this point:
Please don't send me fanfic. About any show. Ever.
Because I get paid to write, you see. And I never, ever, ever want to have to actually defend myself against accusations that I've stolen from fanwank. And now that I'm coming off a show with fan buzz, (Blood Ties) -- it's a real fear. I have not read fanfic -- any fanfic -- since I started getting paid to write TV. I can't, you see. And it's your fellow travellers that make that so.
(And I'm going to jump in and put in an edit here -- because I want to make it clear that I understand the enthusiasm. And I understand that most people who will go and write fiction based in a world they see on TV will do so because they love it. I get that. There's not a writer alive who wouldn't totally grok and love that enthusiasm. But that enthusiasm wanes when it starts to cause you problems.)
Doris Egan, who's probably one of the best hourlong writers out there right now, actually has fanfic people coming out and accusing her of taking from them on her blog. Follow the comments here.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the not-funny side of the funny little rant of a few days ago. If for no other reason, this is why fanfic -- all of it -- is a bad thing. Fanfic writers: so long as these deluded people are in your community, you should expect utter hostility from pro writers, everywhere.
Shame on you.
Accusing a writer of plagiarism is the most serious thing you can do. It is not cute. It is not funny. It is not just for fun.
So don't send me -- or any pro writer -- fanfic. Ever. What you're doing actually hurts the shows that you profess to love. I don't care if you're the biggest fan in the world. If you write fanfic, and tolerate the people who entertain fantasies that TV writers actually have the time to steal from you -- you are supporting libel. And that is not a hobby. That's a crime.
Durham County: Gushing By Proxy
The Toronto Star's inimitable Rob Salem had a feature yesterday about Durham County, the new, 6 hour pay cable mystery series coming to TMN and Movie Central next week. I link to it because I'm behind in writing something that I'm just thrilled to be writing -- a gushy review. I've seen the whole show, and it's a monster, folks.
Maybe the best drama series Canada has ever produced. (En anglais, anyway...)
I'm loathe to build it up too much and raise expectations too high, but then again, it's Canada, there isn't enough advertising money, so what's the point in not gushing? It's not like it's going to get a proper, American-style promotional push on our second-class airwaves engorged as they are, 24/7 with U.S. promo, like a mosquito drunk on blood from...(okay...enough of that)
I'm not done my own review yet, so let's let an excerpt from Rob's article be my placeholder:
They are coming from almost opposite directions, playing characters who are violently, diametrically opposed, and yet they share so much in common.
Primarily, that in Durham County – the new six-part series debuting next Monday, May 7 at 9 p.m. on The Movie Network –they both deliver what may well be the performances of their respective careers.
Hugh Dillon, the musician/actor who so memorably blew movie audiences out of their seats in Bruce McDonald's Hard Core Logo, dials it all the way down to simmer as Durham's Mike Sweeney. He's a hard-boiled homicide detective with issues driving him back to the old neighbourhood: a sterile suburban enclave surrounded by ominous, omnipresent electrical towers.
There he re-encounters Ray Prager, his one-time best pal, as vividly and kinetically embodied by Justin Louis, the veteran Canadian character actor (Missing, Hidden Hills, Urban Angel). Prager has issues of his own, not the least of which is that he has recently become a copycat serial killer.
In a sense, it is almost as if their roles are reversed. Dillon, who at a younger, angrier and more self-destructive point in his life was not that far removed from Logo's incendiary Joe Dick, would seem perhaps the more natural choice for the explosively thwarted Ray.
Louis, with a couple of decades' worth of cops and crusaders on his acting resumé, could basically have mailed in the role of Mike.
But, then again, this is far from your traditional cop-versus-killer scenario. Durham's complex characters are painted in subtle shades of grey, a testament both to the actors who play them, and to the uniquely estrogen-intensive ensemble (producers Adrienne Mitchell and Janis Lundman, writer Laurie Finstad Knizhnik, director Holly Dale) that created them...
Louis grew up in the Jane/Finch corridor, raised on welfare by a strong single mom. Director Holly Dale, who helmed the first four Durham episodes (with producer Mitchell finishing out the run), guided him through one of his first major film leads, in the 1995 Canadian comedy Blood & Donuts.
It was she who helped him get over any initial reservations – on the advice of his agent, he passed on the project. Twice..."But then, having read it ... I was blown away. I mean, I read all six of them in like two hours. And then I looked at the cover (page): `It was written by who? This woman – oh, I've got to meet her.' And then, in talking to her, I really related to what she wanted. This is essentially a feminist viewpoint of a serial killer. And I was like, `Well, that's different.' It just seemed like a character that had so many colours that I could explore."
If you don't have TMN or Movie Central, you're going to be missing out.
[EDITED TO ADD: I should also add, that this show was also developed with GLOBAL -- who'll have second broadcast window. They deserve a big praise-up, too. Good for them. There's enough glory for the quality of this one to go around.]
Read the rest of Rob's feature on Durham County here.
Step Away From The Canadian TV Crack Pipe
So, um...looks like the CRTC hearings into the CHUM/CTV Globemedia Sale opened this morning. I have many nervous friends at CHUM Stations who'll be watching these hearings closely. For those keeping score, the coverage helpfully whittles down the number of major Canadian media companies left on the horizon:
What's my take?
Erm. I have none. What about you?
John Doyle gets my lovin' recommendation, though, for a very, very funny/sad rant in today's Globe & Mail. More about the recent news of Canwest rebranding CH than CTV/CHUM, but still:
Mmm. Mmm. Delish. That's good rant. We need more ranting in this industry.
Just not from me. heh heh.
- CTV Globemedia-CHUM
- Canwest-Alliance Atlantis
- Astral (Standard Radio)
- CBC (if no one tries to pull a fast one, that is)
What's my take?
Erm. I have none. What about you?
John Doyle gets my lovin' recommendation, though, for a very, very funny/sad rant in today's Globe & Mail. More about the recent news of Canwest rebranding CH than CTV/CHUM, but still:
The last thing the Canadian TV networks and the watching Canadian audience need is more air-headed coverage of American celebrities.
But that's precisely what we're going to get with CanWest Global's bizarre decision to foist the execrable E! Entertainment Channel on Canadians. With the signing of a cheque and, presumably, the agreement of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, CanWest Global is turning over its venerable CH stations to the content of an American cable outfit that's entirely devoted to maniacally intense and superficial reporting on U.S. showbiz. This move is grotesque. It's the sellout of a string of Canadian over-the-air channels to dumb-as-a-post American cable coverage of already overexposed and often talentless idiots.
It's important to be clear that this is not the arrival of E! on cable in Canada. CanWest's CH network is made up of six local television stations located in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Five are owned outright by CanWest, and the sixth, in B.C., is owned by the Pattison Group. These stations reach the largest markets in Canada.
They are over-the-air stations and they use the airwaves that belong to all of us, not to CanWest. Any broadcaster who wants to use our airwaves is obliged, in return, to provide Canadian content. That's the way it works.
In this instance, CanWest says it will rebrand the CH stations as E!, but maintain local news and current-affairs content. Maybe it will, but that sliver of local content will be aired on a station ostentatiously rebranded as a Hollywood-obsessed celebrity-news machine. It sounds highly unlikely that the CH stations will continue to look anything like they do now.
As I write this, the E! channel is airing The E! True Hollywood Story - Tori Spelling, followed by The E! True Hollywood Story - Lionel & Nicole Richie, and that is followed by The E! True Hollywood Story - Goldie & Kate. I think the latter is about Goldie Hawn and her daughter Kate. In prime time on the day I'm writing, you'll find E! Entertainment Special: Wildest Dating Show Moments. That's a show composed of "outrageous clips from TV's most popular reality dating shows. Clips from Blind Date, Cheaters and Fifth Wheel are featured."
Just in case you need to know what's coming on CH, on E! tonight, in prime time, you could see Dr. 90210: An Officer and a Gentle Woman. That's a reality series about plastic surgery in Beverly Hills. On tonight's episode, "A probation officer turned beauty queen seeks out Dr. Rey for breast implants, and Hayley decides to return to acting after her visit home to Montreal." Like, wow - some woman from Montreal appears on the show. There's your Canadian content right there.
Mmm. Mmm. Delish. That's good rant. We need more ranting in this industry.
Just not from me. heh heh.
And While We're On the Subject...
The good grey Globe & Mail's redesign: what does everybody think?
I like the look, and I'm cautiously optimistic about some of the new columns/features. There have been a couple of things I've read in the last week (besides Doyle) that I quite enjoyed that came from neither the Guardian or the NYTimes. That's a nice change.
Any other Globe readers? What do you all think?
I like the look, and I'm cautiously optimistic about some of the new columns/features. There have been a couple of things I've read in the last week (besides Doyle) that I quite enjoyed that came from neither the Guardian or the NYTimes. That's a nice change.
Any other Globe readers? What do you all think?
So You Want to Freelance For a Series...
MONDAY MORNING and I'm still pulling receipts together. So why not take some time and hear the freelancer process as described by a freelancer?
Tanya Huff, besides writing all the fine books on which the BLOOD TIES series was based, also freelanced an episode called "Stone Cold," which aired in the USA last night on Lifetime.
She's got a unique perspective -- being the person who invented the characters in the first place. She's got some interesting thoughts about the differences between TV writing and Novel Writing (which I think is a process that most of us could probably imagine. TV, not so much.)
Emails fly back and forth and we all agreed that medusa will be my monster of the week (it's way too complicated for freelancers to do mytharc episodes) and I returned to the city and the writing room to break the story...
Now, here's the first difference between the writing I usually do and writing for television. At this point in my career when I set out to write a book, I send the concept of what I want to do to my agent and he presents it to my editor and she tells me when they need me to have it finished. Okay, there's some other stuff about money in there but that's pretty much it. I tell them what I want to do, then I do it. For about a year. All by myself. Television, otoh, is collaborative. Roughly translated, this means you may get to go to the toilet by yourself but that's about it. And no one's making any promises about the toilet.
So, I'm in the writing room with Peter and Shelley and Dennis and Mark and we're about to break an idea down into a teaser and four acts. And I say something along the lines of, well, what if there's these guys and they're unloading statues in a warehouse and one of them has bleeding eyes. And instead of someone saying, "go for it, this is when we need it done" the four other people in the room take the idea and start throwing it about. Ever been to a concert and seen a beachball go bouncing over the heads of the crowd? Like that.
Idea are flying thick and fast and all of them are either good or interesting or both but none of them are being explored. Or not in any way I recognize. Oh wait, the bouncing and the flying thick and fast – that's the way they explore the ideas. Oh! (little lights go off in my brain) So I throw a few ideas in too. This is fun! It doesn't seem to be actually accomplishing anything, but it's fun...
Except – and I'm still not entirely certain how this happened – at the end of the day, we have all the points of the episode up on the white board. Beats are being hit, acts are ending with a bang, and the most basic outline of the story is complete and Peter, who is, as you'll remember, the man in charge because this show is his baby, has essentially agreed to what's been created. I say essentially because he was actually on the phone with casting for part of it and we kind of snuck act four in under the radar. As far as I recall, my main contribution here was to say, "Why don't we use his mother again since we're already paying her?" And Shelley said, "Man, the producers are going to love you."
The rest of Tanya's description of writing for Blood Ties is in three parts, and it can be found on her livejournal here .(Spoiler Warning: it does discuss plot details for her ep, so if you are in a country (Hellooo Canada) where it hasn't aired yet and you're spoilerphobic, you might want to come back later.)
Not that you would, but if anyone wonders where I am in this process when she's talking to the other writers -- I haven't joined the show yet at this point. I'm still back in Toronto slaving over Across The River To Motor City.
It's a good read. Go.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
On Fanfic II: Weinman Tries to Separate the Good From The Bad From The Ugly
WEINMAN'S GONE sideways off my little fanfic (shudder) rant:
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to check back and see if anybody comes up with anything. And Weinman's example sounds kind of neat. But there, nestled right there -- are the warning bells: overripe prose, and the weird, slightly fetishy sheen. That's exactly the thing that makes one feel skeevy about fanfic.
But there's something else -- something that perhaps got lost in my ranty goodness, and which was picked up by a commenter on the original thread. Something that Weinman twigged me to again when he writes, "Some of the stories aren't bad."
Stories are hard.
They really are. I was on the phone today talking to a friend about the series he's on and the problems of breaking story and what a story is and isn't...(hint, it's not and then this happens, and then this happens -- not unless those things build upon each other and go somewhere.)
After the conversation a sentence popped into my head. I don't know if this is my own brainpan or if I read it somewhere, but here goes:
Coming up with the surprises is hard. That's why most comedy is lame.
Coming up with story events that seem like inevitability only in retrospect (ie: the audience doesn't figure it out too soon or see it coming) is hard. That's why most dramas fail to fully engage you.
Someone who can come up with even a "pretty good story" is someone who should be trying to write for real. I can't for the life of me figure out why such a precious resource (everybody thinks they can tell a story, so few actually can) should be wasted writing material that's just derivative of other writers' work.
We all are inspired by what came before. "Good" fanfic -- if such a beast truly exists (I'm still not convinced it does) -- is a short circuit and an evolutionary dead end. If you actually can write -- the hard part's past. I want to see what you can come up with on your own. Hell, all first novels are autobiographical and frequently a little derivative. But that's how you grow.
A good writer writing fanfic -- that, to me, is not just weird. It's a tragic waste. Talent is too precious a commodity to blow it off writing stories about Cameron and House fucking.
Oh, and judging by the statcounter, the fanfictotums have found me. Pray for me.
I certainly don't think most fanfic -- including my own occasional attempts -- is very good, though I will say that I have seen plenty of fanfic that is no worse than the average spec script for the same show.
But here's a question: can you name any actual good fanfic? That is, fan fiction you think qualifies as good storytelling in and of itself?
I sometimes think that could apply to some of the stories at the Batgirl Bat-Trap Homepage. Though it seems to be part of a fetish site (about Batgirl being tied up and the like), and though the prose in the fanfic is kind of over-ripe sometimes, some of the stories aren't bad. And if you read enough of them it really does, in a weird way, come to feel like the author has enriched and expanded the '60s Batman universe for the better. It helps that the author has, instead of just writing straight-up Batman stories, writes stories focusing on an under-used character (Batgirl) and creates a new universe of characters to back her up, even while the main characters of the original show still have a lot to do.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to check back and see if anybody comes up with anything. And Weinman's example sounds kind of neat. But there, nestled right there -- are the warning bells: overripe prose, and the weird, slightly fetishy sheen. That's exactly the thing that makes one feel skeevy about fanfic.
But there's something else -- something that perhaps got lost in my ranty goodness, and which was picked up by a commenter on the original thread. Something that Weinman twigged me to again when he writes, "Some of the stories aren't bad."
Stories are hard.
They really are. I was on the phone today talking to a friend about the series he's on and the problems of breaking story and what a story is and isn't...(hint, it's not and then this happens, and then this happens -- not unless those things build upon each other and go somewhere.)
After the conversation a sentence popped into my head. I don't know if this is my own brainpan or if I read it somewhere, but here goes:
Comedy is surprise piled on surprise.
Drama is inevitability piled upon inevitability.
Coming up with the surprises is hard. That's why most comedy is lame.
Coming up with story events that seem like inevitability only in retrospect (ie: the audience doesn't figure it out too soon or see it coming) is hard. That's why most dramas fail to fully engage you.
Someone who can come up with even a "pretty good story" is someone who should be trying to write for real. I can't for the life of me figure out why such a precious resource (everybody thinks they can tell a story, so few actually can) should be wasted writing material that's just derivative of other writers' work.
We all are inspired by what came before. "Good" fanfic -- if such a beast truly exists (I'm still not convinced it does) -- is a short circuit and an evolutionary dead end. If you actually can write -- the hard part's past. I want to see what you can come up with on your own. Hell, all first novels are autobiographical and frequently a little derivative. But that's how you grow.
A good writer writing fanfic -- that, to me, is not just weird. It's a tragic waste. Talent is too precious a commodity to blow it off writing stories about Cameron and House fucking.
Oh, and judging by the statcounter, the fanfictotums have found me. Pray for me.
When I Grow Up
I HOPE to one day write an episode of a series that so many people watch that it's worth going over the writing process to explain how you got there. But until I do, I hope I get to keep reading stuff like Doris Egan's deconstruction of her last episode of HOUSE:
You can read her description of the choices of building the episode here. (With this caveat: you really have to have seen the episode first.) EDIT: the link doesn't work because Egan is in the process of transferring a lot of her posts from LiveJournal over to her own site --at some time in the future you'll be able to search "House Training" and get the full post.
I've been wanting to do an episode about the team dealing with failure for a long time. Yes, in television we all buy in to the central conceit that the main character will always be right, and always in the nick of time, and I like that as much as anybody. But to really appreciate what they do, you need to see a rabbitless hat at least once. At least once, Edith Keeler must die. Otherwise, you're living in a world too far removed from reality, and you begin to take the characters less seriously -- at least, I do. And having seen our team deal with success, I was curious as to how they coped with its opposite. The first two thoughts I had were: House, the answer-man, can only cope with the emotional freight by obsessively finding the answer. He's going to do an illegal autopsy without waiting for the family's consent. And, hmm, maybe Cameron seems to be the only one of our characters handling the death in stride, supporting everyone else; and then at the very end we see her crack -- maybe she gets pulled over for speeding and loses her temper with the cop.
Those were the two places I started from. After the Tritter arc, we couldn't go back to "pulled over for speeding," so I needed something else. Meanwhile, I had to find the medicine to support the character story; usually this is one of the toughest parts of the job, but in this case I was very fortunate, in that one of the doctors we work with laid it out for me.
You can read her description of the choices of building the episode here. (With this caveat: you really have to have seen the episode first.) EDIT: the link doesn't work because Egan is in the process of transferring a lot of her posts from LiveJournal over to her own site --at some time in the future you'll be able to search "House Training" and get the full post.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Wherein Kirk and Spock Make the Man Love With The Cast of Heroes and Jane Eyre pokes Rocky Balboa.
Sometimes when you're good, particularly on a Friday, the subject to write about just falls into your lap.
Commenter and wit ValP weighed in below, on the post "Writers are Neurotic, You know."
ValP, I call bullshit.
I call bullshit on the whole idea that fanfic (shudder) pays homage to anything. I call bullshit on your attitude of bruised entitlement. I call bullshit on the whole sordid, badly written, laughably awful bastard genre. Fanfic sucks. All of it.
(And somewhere out in the interwebs, the fuming begins.)
Now, let's put the caveats up front. I love fans. I think there is a certain great joy in being a fan of something, of having that kind of kinship and bond with something. I talk about HEROES with my agent all the time. I call people on the phone and giggle like a schoolgirl after a particularly great Sopranos. In every writers room I've ever been in, everyone eventually geeks out about The Simpsons. I downloaded the meticulously edited Kirk/Spock YouTube Slash Video and loved it. Loved it. Wait, I love it so much I'm going to link to it right here and now:
I mean, come on. That is just awesome, no matter how you measure it. Yup. It takes the characters and copyrighted materials and rejigs them into a form that was never meant by the creators. Yup. But it also kicks serious ass.
And there's where my feelings about fanfic start to take shape.
There are people who make moral arguments -- that they're not your characters, that it muddies the artistic intent of the creator, what have you. I don't care about any of that, any more than I care about two seven year olds playing with Star Wars and Star Trek action figures and spinning off all manner of cross-universe adventures.
But to me, the thing about fanfic is ... it's bad. All of it. So close to all of it that, yeah, you might as well say all of it. It's like When Leonard Nimoy recorded albums. I'm sure somebody could make the argument that, hey, you know his cover of...X...actually wasn't too bad. But it doesn't matter. Ed Wood might have very well, in one of his movies, wrung a real human emotion out of somebody and done a great scene. But it doesn't matter.
What matters is the overall impression. And the overall impression of fanfic -- all the fanfic I've ever read -- is that it's puerile, overwrought, florid, hamfisted, tin-eared, illiterate, badly spelled, laughably punctuated, intellectually bankrupt pig vomit.
I'm not sure I've made myself clear enough.
Fanfic makes the Baby Jesus cry. It's snuffed it. Bereft of life, it's gone up the pole and shuffled off to meet its maker. This is an Ex-Genre.
And please, ValP or whatever mu-mu, caftan wearing keyboard ranger who's reading this right now, shuddering with rage at my callous disregard for all the people paying homage - don't send me the good stuff. I don't care. I really, really don't.
A writer, someone who trades in words, is always going to be rankled a bit by bad writing. But bad writing involving great characters that professional writers have worked at, invented, discussed, outlined, drafted, and pored over, is just -- yucky.
I think people trying to repaint Monet's waterlilies are yucky, too, by the way. Hell, I think anyone who tries re-painting Warhol's soup can is yucky, too. I would rather see someone's bad watercolor of the view of the bluejay in their yard than see their bad attempt at the Warhol soup can. I'd rather see their bad attempt at the bluejay than their pitch perfect copy of the Warhol soup can, too.
While we're at it, too, let's drop the intellectual dishonesty on the paying homage front, too. Because that's not the drift of most fanfic. Trying to find a neutral exploration of fanfic in any universe is like trying to find someone who's neutral on the subject of abortion or Israel or Islamic fundamentalism.
There's the fanfic that tries to "fix" things the "writers got wrong," which is always about someone letting their fanboy or fangirl ID run wild. There's the people with the political or sexual ax to grind; ramming the square peg of Mr. Fabuabs into Miss Purity's round hole; or maybe Principal Upright's stern taskmastering gets turned to show that smarmy Kid Teen Dynogreat that fifty year old Rotarians need freaky, too.
And this is not even taking into account the sad, deluded person out there who writes a story that posits something happening that is completely, totally easily extrapolatable from the premise of the show and the characters, and then when that story shows up on the show -- actually thinks the writers had the time to sift through the great wasteland of fanfic to find their one, polished gem of an idea.
Fie on it. All of it.
Onceuponatime, I guess, all this stuff was passed at conventions or in odd, zine-like ways and the impact of it was small. But now Fanfic is part of a political, and growing movement of fan entitlement that is softheaded at best, and genre-damaging at worst.
There are vast sections of fandom on the net now that are devoted to ripping down everything. I call it the Television Without Pity affect. (EDIT: someone close to me busted me...of course it should be "effect." Damnit. I never make that mistake. Although, now that I look at it again, "affect" kind of works too...Okay, now back to the regularly scheduled rant.) Psychologically, in these quarters, you build yourself up by tearing the shows you watch down. It's ugly, and it's fast becoming the worst face of fandom. Once upon a time your "core" fans were really the ones you could always count on. The ones who did write letters and followed everything were positive and kind. But what the internet has done is empower another group, of kvetchers and bitchers, who think it's their job to constantly find fault, or plot holes, or things that are bad about the show they watch, and hate, and yet keep right on watching. It's bizarre. And their little perch becomes an echo chamber, where they all trade their myopic little off-base opinions, and convince themselves that they are a) smarter than everybody else, b) way smarter than the people doing the show and c) somehow owed something because they watch the show.
But you know what? Even if there are ten thousand of these fans writing, posting, doing this stuff -- the thing that they don't understand is that they are still a small, tiny, tiny portion of the audience.
Ninety-nine percent of people who watch HEROES or HOUSE, or GREY'S ANATOMY and love the show as much as you do would never in a million years think of reading, never mind writing, fanfic about it. They are not less discerning or less smart or less engaged than someone who haunts one message board or who spends fourteen weekends fixing the egregious slights House heaped on Cameron by having them make the sweet sweet love while Cuddy watches -- they may even criticize the show, talk about how it used to be better, or even that it's jumped the shark. But the difference is -- they're getting their jollies by enjoying the show. They're not projecting some relationship where somehow they're owed for their loyalty. They have, in the words of Bill Shatner, "moved out of their parents' basements and kissed a girl."
I should also be clear that I'm not talking about all people who read, or post on a message board. I've done that. I've even done that on shows I've worked on (though I try to resist.) There are fans who spend hours photoshopping custom sigs to tag their posts so everybody knows just what they love about the show. And I think that's awfully sweet. I really do. I'm not being the slightest bit sarcastic, here. That's the side of fandom I remember -- that's the thing that got me to buy the Star Fleet Technical Manual and try to draw Snoopy and Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader, back in the day. I think people who make fun of people who go to Star Trek conventions or who make fun of people who lovingly assemble Stormtrooper uniforms from scratch -- I think those people are big meanies.
But fanfic? Nope. Sorry. That's bullshit.
At the end of the day, if you're highly offended by everything I've just written and want to prove to me that, in fact, you could write HOUSE better, then you know what? There's a way to do that. People break into the business everyday. But fannish whingeing about the lack of respect for fanfic just shows how out of touch you are.
I wouldn't want to let an amateur land my plane.
I wouldn't want an amateur to take out my spleen.
I wouldn't want an amateur to take care of my kid.
I wouldn't want them to fix my car.
Do you see now what I mean?
If you can write, write. Invent characters, describe a world. Write a novel or a short story or a TV series or a screenplay and go through the same painful process we all do. Or hell, design a video game. Or....fine....Ohkaayyy... if you must write fanfic to get it out of your system, then hell. Do that, too. But the moment you go showing it and sharing it, you're taking a stand, and you're standing with a bunch of people whose thinking is, frankly, focacta. You deserve and are owed no more respect than Milli Vanilli.
And shit, that dude killed himself, yo.
If you can write, write.
But not if you're dressing up in borrowed robes.
Being original is hard.
That's why we professionals get paid to do it.
Oh....Mmmm. Good rant. Mmm. I feel sleepy now. Mmm. Good.
Commenter and wit ValP weighed in below, on the post "Writers are Neurotic, You know."
Ah, I see you managed to blanket-trash fan fiction. How clever, especially since the writers are paying homage to you and other writers, at least indirectly, fanboy.I worry sometimes that I don't express myself directly enough, so let me take a leap and do that for a change right now.
ValP, I call bullshit.
I call bullshit on the whole idea that fanfic (shudder) pays homage to anything. I call bullshit on your attitude of bruised entitlement. I call bullshit on the whole sordid, badly written, laughably awful bastard genre. Fanfic sucks. All of it.
(And somewhere out in the interwebs, the fuming begins.)
Now, let's put the caveats up front. I love fans. I think there is a certain great joy in being a fan of something, of having that kind of kinship and bond with something. I talk about HEROES with my agent all the time. I call people on the phone and giggle like a schoolgirl after a particularly great Sopranos. In every writers room I've ever been in, everyone eventually geeks out about The Simpsons. I downloaded the meticulously edited Kirk/Spock YouTube Slash Video and loved it. Loved it. Wait, I love it so much I'm going to link to it right here and now:
I mean, come on. That is just awesome, no matter how you measure it. Yup. It takes the characters and copyrighted materials and rejigs them into a form that was never meant by the creators. Yup. But it also kicks serious ass.
And there's where my feelings about fanfic start to take shape.
There are people who make moral arguments -- that they're not your characters, that it muddies the artistic intent of the creator, what have you. I don't care about any of that, any more than I care about two seven year olds playing with Star Wars and Star Trek action figures and spinning off all manner of cross-universe adventures.
But to me, the thing about fanfic is ... it's bad. All of it. So close to all of it that, yeah, you might as well say all of it. It's like When Leonard Nimoy recorded albums. I'm sure somebody could make the argument that, hey, you know his cover of...X...actually wasn't too bad. But it doesn't matter. Ed Wood might have very well, in one of his movies, wrung a real human emotion out of somebody and done a great scene. But it doesn't matter.
What matters is the overall impression. And the overall impression of fanfic -- all the fanfic I've ever read -- is that it's puerile, overwrought, florid, hamfisted, tin-eared, illiterate, badly spelled, laughably punctuated, intellectually bankrupt pig vomit.
I'm not sure I've made myself clear enough.
Fanfic makes the Baby Jesus cry. It's snuffed it. Bereft of life, it's gone up the pole and shuffled off to meet its maker. This is an Ex-Genre.
And please, ValP or whatever mu-mu, caftan wearing keyboard ranger who's reading this right now, shuddering with rage at my callous disregard for all the people paying homage - don't send me the good stuff. I don't care. I really, really don't.
A writer, someone who trades in words, is always going to be rankled a bit by bad writing. But bad writing involving great characters that professional writers have worked at, invented, discussed, outlined, drafted, and pored over, is just -- yucky.
I think people trying to repaint Monet's waterlilies are yucky, too, by the way. Hell, I think anyone who tries re-painting Warhol's soup can is yucky, too. I would rather see someone's bad watercolor of the view of the bluejay in their yard than see their bad attempt at the Warhol soup can. I'd rather see their bad attempt at the bluejay than their pitch perfect copy of the Warhol soup can, too.
While we're at it, too, let's drop the intellectual dishonesty on the paying homage front, too. Because that's not the drift of most fanfic. Trying to find a neutral exploration of fanfic in any universe is like trying to find someone who's neutral on the subject of abortion or Israel or Islamic fundamentalism.
There's the fanfic that tries to "fix" things the "writers got wrong," which is always about someone letting their fanboy or fangirl ID run wild. There's the people with the political or sexual ax to grind; ramming the square peg of Mr. Fabuabs into Miss Purity's round hole; or maybe Principal Upright's stern taskmastering gets turned to show that smarmy Kid Teen Dynogreat that fifty year old Rotarians need freaky, too.
And this is not even taking into account the sad, deluded person out there who writes a story that posits something happening that is completely, totally easily extrapolatable from the premise of the show and the characters, and then when that story shows up on the show -- actually thinks the writers had the time to sift through the great wasteland of fanfic to find their one, polished gem of an idea.
Fie on it. All of it.
Onceuponatime, I guess, all this stuff was passed at conventions or in odd, zine-like ways and the impact of it was small. But now Fanfic is part of a political, and growing movement of fan entitlement that is softheaded at best, and genre-damaging at worst.
There are vast sections of fandom on the net now that are devoted to ripping down everything. I call it the Television Without Pity affect. (EDIT: someone close to me busted me...of course it should be "effect." Damnit. I never make that mistake. Although, now that I look at it again, "affect" kind of works too...Okay, now back to the regularly scheduled rant.) Psychologically, in these quarters, you build yourself up by tearing the shows you watch down. It's ugly, and it's fast becoming the worst face of fandom. Once upon a time your "core" fans were really the ones you could always count on. The ones who did write letters and followed everything were positive and kind. But what the internet has done is empower another group, of kvetchers and bitchers, who think it's their job to constantly find fault, or plot holes, or things that are bad about the show they watch, and hate, and yet keep right on watching. It's bizarre. And their little perch becomes an echo chamber, where they all trade their myopic little off-base opinions, and convince themselves that they are a) smarter than everybody else, b) way smarter than the people doing the show and c) somehow owed something because they watch the show.
But you know what? Even if there are ten thousand of these fans writing, posting, doing this stuff -- the thing that they don't understand is that they are still a small, tiny, tiny portion of the audience.
Ninety-nine percent of people who watch HEROES or HOUSE, or GREY'S ANATOMY and love the show as much as you do would never in a million years think of reading, never mind writing, fanfic about it. They are not less discerning or less smart or less engaged than someone who haunts one message board or who spends fourteen weekends fixing the egregious slights House heaped on Cameron by having them make the sweet sweet love while Cuddy watches -- they may even criticize the show, talk about how it used to be better, or even that it's jumped the shark. But the difference is -- they're getting their jollies by enjoying the show. They're not projecting some relationship where somehow they're owed for their loyalty. They have, in the words of Bill Shatner, "moved out of their parents' basements and kissed a girl."
I should also be clear that I'm not talking about all people who read, or post on a message board. I've done that. I've even done that on shows I've worked on (though I try to resist.) There are fans who spend hours photoshopping custom sigs to tag their posts so everybody knows just what they love about the show. And I think that's awfully sweet. I really do. I'm not being the slightest bit sarcastic, here. That's the side of fandom I remember -- that's the thing that got me to buy the Star Fleet Technical Manual and try to draw Snoopy and Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader, back in the day. I think people who make fun of people who go to Star Trek conventions or who make fun of people who lovingly assemble Stormtrooper uniforms from scratch -- I think those people are big meanies.
But fanfic? Nope. Sorry. That's bullshit.
At the end of the day, if you're highly offended by everything I've just written and want to prove to me that, in fact, you could write HOUSE better, then you know what? There's a way to do that. People break into the business everyday. But fannish whingeing about the lack of respect for fanfic just shows how out of touch you are.
I wouldn't want to let an amateur land my plane.
I wouldn't want an amateur to take out my spleen.
I wouldn't want an amateur to take care of my kid.
I wouldn't want them to fix my car.
Do you see now what I mean?
If you can write, write. Invent characters, describe a world. Write a novel or a short story or a TV series or a screenplay and go through the same painful process we all do. Or hell, design a video game. Or....fine....Ohkaayyy... if you must write fanfic to get it out of your system, then hell. Do that, too. But the moment you go showing it and sharing it, you're taking a stand, and you're standing with a bunch of people whose thinking is, frankly, focacta. You deserve and are owed no more respect than Milli Vanilli.
And shit, that dude killed himself, yo.
If you can write, write.
But not if you're dressing up in borrowed robes.
Being original is hard.
That's why we professionals get paid to do it.
Oh....Mmmm. Good rant. Mmm. I feel sleepy now. Mmm. Good.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Aw Hell.
From The NYTimes:
Remember when we just used to watch movies and goddamn tv shows?
Sheesh.
NBC was hit yesterday with the news that one of its important stars, Alec Baldwin, who plays a lead role in the network’s promising new comedy “30 Rock,” had asked to be let out of his contract on the show.Sharon Waxman in the Times gets it right:
The network immediately expressed confidence that Mr. Baldwin would return to the show next season. The news came after a whirlwind of negative publicity directed at Mr. Baldwin for a tirade of anger he unleashed at his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, in a message recorded on a phone answering machine.
None of this would have been possible a very short time ago. “The dark side of all this wonderful technology is that things that by their nature would have remained private as recently as 10 years ago are now available for, literally, almost everyone in the world to see and hear,” said Allan Mayer, a partner in the publicity firm 42West, who specializes in crisis control.
“We’re way past what’s fair or not,” he continued. “It’s simply about the fact that these situations would never have gone beyond a small circle of eyewitnesses, and even then, they wouldn’t have had the same impact.”
Who leaked it and why? The very same could be asked about Mr. Baldwin’s phone message. Motives matter, so does context, neither of which can be discerned in a selected two-minute rant.Celubutard culture got us here. E-Talk Daily, Entertainment Tonight, Access, Star! Daily, E! News, Blah, Bleah, Blah, TMZ, Cough, Burp, Kvell...Britney, Lindsay, Paris, Michael Richards, etc, etc, etc. Feh and Fie upon you all.
Remember when we just used to watch movies and goddamn tv shows?
Sheesh.
Just Thinking
IF YOU'RE Tim Minnear, how bitter are you right now?
And what do you do next?
Such a run of interesting, offbeat, critically admired shows -- Wonderfalls, The Inside, Drive... (I have to admit I never did see the latter. It was on my PVR but when I saw the way the wind was blowing I never watched.) I mean, he's good, he's a solid writer, and everything he does gets received like anthrax in an envelope.
Seriously. I'd be depressed beyond belief. What if you're good at what you do and...still...nobody buys your tone?
I've said before that I think Love Monkey was a show that was so close to what I'd like to write and ppddffap! that was gone in twenty seconds.
This is the kind of thing that keeps a TV writer up at night.
And what do you do next?
Such a run of interesting, offbeat, critically admired shows -- Wonderfalls, The Inside, Drive... (I have to admit I never did see the latter. It was on my PVR but when I saw the way the wind was blowing I never watched.) I mean, he's good, he's a solid writer, and everything he does gets received like anthrax in an envelope.
Seriously. I'd be depressed beyond belief. What if you're good at what you do and...still...nobody buys your tone?
I've said before that I think Love Monkey was a show that was so close to what I'd like to write and ppddffap! that was gone in twenty seconds.
This is the kind of thing that keeps a TV writer up at night.
Heroes Shanks The Watchmen
SO I'M A bit late on this one -- and besides the fact that my PVR ran out on Monday's Heroes just as Hiro met Future Hiro -- the otherwise well-paced, exciting episode left me with one lingering "whaaa?""Um, did they just steal the climax of The Watchmen?"
Homage? Steal?
I wasn't sure...but a couple days later now...it kind of feels like a steal.
Worse, a steal that could keep that Watchmen project in Development Hell for LONGER. (Just film David Hayter's script already! Jeez!)
Looks like I'm not the only one thinking this, either.
There's not an idea in the SF or Comics Genre that someone hasn't tried to say "I got there first." It's one thing for fans to come up with a million derivative spins on "Yesterday's Enterprise" or this way or that way to bring back a beloved character. It's one thing to look at BSG and say everything good about Ronald D. Moore's version comes straight from the original (an extremely dubious fanboy proposition at best.) But this...this is a smiley face of a different order.
I like Heroes. I have a lot of time for Heroes. I think that their handling of the mutant-powers thing is sufficiently different from X-Men that I don't feel like it's too much of a ripoff. But I feel extremely negatively toward the Linderman plot reveal -- and the endgame regarding New York.
And I'm not sure I can tell you why the latter bothers me while the former doesn't. Maybe because one is stealing a general concept (people all around the world discover extraordinary abilities) and one is stealing the climax of a narrative.
I'd be down for a good old fashioned space opera -- but I'm not sure I'd dig it if the big reveal was the villain telling the hero (or even the Hiro) "Hey, by the way...I'm your father."
Am I being inflexible and fanboy here? What do you think?
I'm still an enormous fan of Future Hiro and his Great Big Effing Sword.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
I Have A Headache
SO, Canwest's CHCH and other CH branded stations are becoming E! Canada.
CHUM's STAR channel was launched as kind of an E! Canada a few years back. They used a lot of E! Programming. I guess that's going to go away.
Also, CHUM and CTV were probably going to argue in their merger hearings before the CRTC that Global had two stations in each market so they should have them too. But now one is branded a different type of station. What does that mean?
For that matter, how can the CRTC allow E! in when STAR already exists? Isn't that the point of what they do?
No?
You know, all these huge companies with all these big rebrands, and sales, and duelling press releases about which of their B.S. entertainment shows about U.S. celebrities do better in Canada....and the only thing they're all dead sure of is that there's no way they have any more money to make real Canadian programs that Canadians want to watch.
There are receipts all over my floor.
Sweet, sweet, sweet Advil Blue.
CHUM's STAR channel was launched as kind of an E! Canada a few years back. They used a lot of E! Programming. I guess that's going to go away.
Also, CHUM and CTV were probably going to argue in their merger hearings before the CRTC that Global had two stations in each market so they should have them too. But now one is branded a different type of station. What does that mean?
For that matter, how can the CRTC allow E! in when STAR already exists? Isn't that the point of what they do?
No?
You know, all these huge companies with all these big rebrands, and sales, and duelling press releases about which of their B.S. entertainment shows about U.S. celebrities do better in Canada....and the only thing they're all dead sure of is that there's no way they have any more money to make real Canadian programs that Canadians want to watch.
There are receipts all over my floor.
Sweet, sweet, sweet Advil Blue.
Writers are Neurotic, You Know
WE'VE ALL benefited quite a bit from Unified Theories - Diane's questionably healthy obsession with HOUSE. Her weekly recaps are always a good read, and a recent foray into taking on the phenomenon of shipping was a hoot, but for me, something about her writer interviews really stand out. She talked to LAWRENCE KAPLOW for the second time last week . The piece is a fun read and is available at Blogcritics here.
Better, though, is Diane's edited transcript of the whole interview. Why better? Because you get a sense, a peek into the mind of a very gifted and neurotic writer. Kaplow's comments on House and his character, his humanity and lack thereof, and the interplay between real life medicine and onscreen drama is thought provoking, and the kind of thing that any writer would do well to follow.
Apparently, some of those comments about House's humanity is already getting Kaplow roasted online. (I'm not gonna link because...well, I don't really care.) I think if you parse Kaplow's comments they're pretty insightful about character in general, and the character of House in particular. Because I harp so often about keeping the audience in mind when you write, this is probably the point to bring up the indelicate.
It is always our job to keep the audience in mind and ask, "what are they getting out of this?" But it is not our job to give the audience what they want. Not always. In fact, rarely. If you give the audience what they want, you're a hack, and it's not even that they won't respect you -- they will actively hate you. Because at the end of the day, though they say they want to see House with Cameron or Cuddy or Wilson -- they really, really don't want that. It's our job to give the audience not what they want, but what they never realized they needed. We are merchants of surprise. But you can't get there either by not thinking about who you're trying to surprise, and why, or by cravenly giving in to what your (god help us) online fan base is telling you to do.
If they could do it, they'd be doing it.
They can't. Vide: fanfic. Shudder.
Anyway, House.
Even if you're not a fan, House is a show to be admired for many reasons: strong characters, great act outs, and a muscular blend between the medical moments and the character moments. Unlike some Canadian shows -- all of these scenes -- every one -- is story. I love it.
And I recognize too much of my own personality in Kaplow not to be flattered and frightened by that, too.
Better, though, is Diane's edited transcript of the whole interview. Why better? Because you get a sense, a peek into the mind of a very gifted and neurotic writer. Kaplow's comments on House and his character, his humanity and lack thereof, and the interplay between real life medicine and onscreen drama is thought provoking, and the kind of thing that any writer would do well to follow.
Apparently, some of those comments about House's humanity is already getting Kaplow roasted online. (I'm not gonna link because...well, I don't really care.) I think if you parse Kaplow's comments they're pretty insightful about character in general, and the character of House in particular. Because I harp so often about keeping the audience in mind when you write, this is probably the point to bring up the indelicate.
It is always our job to keep the audience in mind and ask, "what are they getting out of this?" But it is not our job to give the audience what they want. Not always. In fact, rarely. If you give the audience what they want, you're a hack, and it's not even that they won't respect you -- they will actively hate you. Because at the end of the day, though they say they want to see House with Cameron or Cuddy or Wilson -- they really, really don't want that. It's our job to give the audience not what they want, but what they never realized they needed. We are merchants of surprise. But you can't get there either by not thinking about who you're trying to surprise, and why, or by cravenly giving in to what your (god help us) online fan base is telling you to do.
If they could do it, they'd be doing it.
They can't. Vide: fanfic. Shudder.
Anyway, House.
Even if you're not a fan, House is a show to be admired for many reasons: strong characters, great act outs, and a muscular blend between the medical moments and the character moments. Unlike some Canadian shows -- all of these scenes -- every one -- is story. I love it.
And I recognize too much of my own personality in Kaplow not to be flattered and frightened by that, too.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Blog, Not Quite Becalmed, or, How People Talking To You At Parties Changes How You View Your World
LONGTIME READERS will know that this blog has gone through a few iterations since 2005. You take a while to truly find your subject. Originally, in those halcyon days of 2005, I was really just writing to procrastinate and not be quite so lonely in my endless cycle of development.
2006 brought other challenges, and a refocus. Because other people entered the arena -- and when it comes to writing advice, I've always said if there are those doing it better than you, get out of the way. With Jane Espenson, Ken Levine, and Alex covering TV craft issues regularly, I throttled back a bit, and this blog became more about my experience with TV. I figured, maybe a chronicle of a writer's life might help, and also carry along that whole try-not-to-be-so-isolated thing. That latter part worked like gangbusters. In the last couple of years, I've met, virtually or in person, a whole gaggle of Canadian writers, just like me. It's been a great eyeopener; it's almost starting to feel like we have a real community here.
The other thing, of course, was that I started writing a lot more about the particular challenges and peculiarities of Canadian TV. I worried for awhile (and my hits confirmed it) that this kind of inside baseball for such a small industry would tank any audience I had (and that, dear readers, is the pernicious truth -- at some point, even in a stupid free blog -- you start thinking about your audience.)
There certainly was some drop off -- I imagine a lot of the American readership confronted with one too many posts about the CRTC went, "ah, the hell with it" and got going when the going was good.
But then a funny thing happened.
Canadians started coming out of the woodwork. A lot of them. Some of them way better connected than me in this business; some just starting out, some as outside of the TV game as outside can be. I was frustrated by the fact that there was so little out there I could find about the industry that I was working in -- that the creative problems, pitfalls, challenges that I met were reflected nowhere on the internet or on the screenwriting sites. So I started blogging about that.
And lo, people started reading. I guess there's a lot of creatives in this country who were as frustrated as I was that in the discussion of the Canadian industry that occasionally pierces the business pages of our papers, no one really ever talked to us.
To be honest, starting to write more about Canadian TV released a logjam or a waterfall or pick your other metaphor of people writing me, commenting -- even stopping me at industry events to talk about this or that column I'd written. I started seeing hits coming in from the CRTC and from CBC and from CTV and Rogers, and...And the interview requests started coming, too. This paper, that radio interview...much to my bemusement, this thing that was really about me not banging my head against the wall in isolation had turned me into a -- spit take -- pundit.
Yes. That's a dirty word. I used to book pundits, you see. I used to chase them down and read their books, and ferret them out of their little pundit holes and whack em for this or that piece of juicy info that I could cut into a breezy and entertaining two minute piece. That was my other life.
I remember interviewing the Sci-Fi author Bruce Sterling once in this little cafe in Austin, Texas, when he said, "it's not my job to figure out the whys and hows; it's my job to say bold and outrageous things." (I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically it.)
Now I was the guy being chased. Somebody wanted me to say the bold and outrageous things. It really does come around.
My first boss in the industry put it best: "you want sparks on a panel -- get an American."
The dark side of this newfound "fame" (and believe me, in this context, no one puts "fame" in more quotes than me) was that I started hearing from my agent, "People are reading your blog."
It wasn't exactly said with encouragement.
Jim Henshaw wrote awhile ago about this Toronto actor, who penned this remarkable J'accuse covering the Canadian theatre, film, and television industry. I didn't get a chance to see Tony's show, but I totally respect what he did, and the great gulf that precipitated his need to do it.
To quote Jack Nicholson as the Joker, "this town needs an enema."
Change town to Industry.
The amazing thing is, all I did was wrote what I thought, and what I thought wasn't some particularly marvellous insight granted from on high. It was pretty much the things that my fellow writers, directors, actors, and industry workers had been saying to each other in whispered tones at the CFC Barbecues and Film Fest Parties for years. It's just that ... no one ever put it out there. Everybody stayed cowed and quiet. Well, except Paul Gross and ACTRA, I mean.
So after a while I started hearing comments from people saying, "I love what you're doing, but I could never do it." I'd get tons of emails saying, "please don't use my name, but..." Along about the time that John Doyle in the Globe pointed to this blog as a worthwhile read about Canadian TV, I got an email from someone who, jokingly said, "when all this comes crashing down around you, remember: I've got a couch."
A few friends suggested, with some concern, "maybe you should cool it a bit."
I would think about that, and it would make me a little paranoid, and then I would go back and say, no, wait...I have to believe that I'm doing right here. I write about the CBC because I love the CBC and I want it to do well. I want Canadian shows on the air that Canadians want to watch. I want to celebrate when people I know do good work...I don't want that work to disappear unheralded.
So I kept on keeping on.
CUT TO:
Last night, The Canadian Screenwriting Awards at Brant House in Toronto. The party was a little more subdued this year. It never got to the level of a rager. And one by one, many of my friends drifted off absurdly early...
...and then it occurred to me...
...they had to get up for work. Seriously. I know more people working on shows or about to start shows than I've known since I started in this business. Things are not as dire as they have been. That is cause for celebration.
And as my friend David A said..."Open Bar!"
As for the Awards themselves:
Well, class act Brad Wright picked up the first Showrunner Award, which was totally deserved, considering the number of Canadian writers the guy has brought up through ten years of Stargate and Stargate: Atlantis.
Naked Josh co-creator Laura Kosterski won for half hour drama, while Slings & Arrows won best hour drama writing -- Corner Gas picked up the trophy for comedy. This was particularly exciting for me as I was sitting next to my good friend Kevin White when they announced his name. Every year, the script co-written with Brent Butt wins, and this year, I guess it was Kevin's turn. He was gracious and funny -- and made good use of the bottle of CC host Gavin Crawford had at the podium.
For feature writing, the award went to some actor.
Kidding. Polley gave a nice speech. Let's move on.
Afghanda won for Best Radio Drama. This was an enormously affecting piece that I hope CBC Reruns -- some of our country's top playwrights, Jason Sherman, Andrew Moodie and Adam Pettle, (as well as Greg Nelson) did great work on this.
Pawing Kevin's award, I noticed that the sucker is pretty heavy. You could really commit a homicide with that thing.
Just saying.
Host Gavin Crawford was really quite funny. His material (co-written with Kyle Tingley) was sharp and insidery but not too insider-y. All in all, an excellent host.
But every conversation I got into before and after the awards kept coming back to this blog -- and it always reached the moment -- and the phrase -- that it seems that I hear more than any other nowadays:
"You can't write about this on your blog."
And you know what? You know the funny, strange, full circle thing about that moment that really, really puzzles me? Inevitably, the thing that follows is something that I would never in a million years write about on a blog.
In fact, dear reader, here's the time to speak truth. You ready for it? Here it is -- the dirty little secret of Dead Things On Sticks:
I pull my punches all the time.
There is a wealth of stuff that you hear, that you don't say. There's stuff you know, that you can't speak. There's confidences you have, that you keep not just because it would hurt people or you if you revealed them, but because it's the decent professional thing to do. This is called life.
I have in my head this line of confidentiality and professionalism that is so crystal clear to me...it's just that the line for everyone else seems to be somewhere back in Victorian England, where they'd cover the table legs lest thoughts turn to the impure.
I mean, gimme a break. No wonder things are so screwed up, if no one will speak truth -- any truth -- out loud. What in Pity's name is everyone so goddamn afraid of? Really?
Again, I must stress, I do not think of myself as any kind of great notable person or hero or anything other than a wanker trying to make a living writing fiction for Television. I've often thought that if I'd married a few years ago, I'd probably be in L.A. now. I would have packed it in and gone south like so many of us do in Canada...but a fear of loneliness and a desire to be close to those I care about kept me here. And if I was going to try and make it here, I simply couldn't keep quiet when things were so obviously, completely FUBAR.
So I wrote about it. And I didn't get into detail about shows I worked on, I didn't betray confidences, I didn't dish dirt, I didn't settle scores. I'd go into a story room and be my kind of avuncular, big laughing self, and hope that it all came out in the wash. I'd do my work, work hard, and hope that the tall poppy wasn't about to get scythed.
I've tried to maintain standards of accuracy and truthfulness at all times...but... It's been an opinion piece...and the unspoken caveat has always been, "your mileage may vary."
CTV bought CHUM and I didn't write too much about it, only once after the initial announcement -- because I worked for CHUM in the past, and because I did work for CHUM-bought shows. I didn't call attention to the fact that I wasn't writing about it -- I just didn't.
As in most of my posts, this has gone on longer than I meant it to. People say, "how can you write such long stuff" -- but the reality as any writer will tell you is that it's always easier to go long than to be brief.
So finally now, after all that preamble, I'm going to get to the point.
I've got a new gig.
A little while ago, CBC announced its fall schedule. I'm very pleased to say that I've been hired as Executive Story Editor on one of those shows. The Border is a Pilot that's just been ordered to series.
I'm very excited about this job. The people I'm working with are people whose work I've admired for years. I think this is exactly the kind of show CBC should be doing now. It's got a good budget, it's got a good team, and I think it's going to be great. Furthermore, as an American/Canadian who's always felt like he had one foot on either side of the border himself, this show is so in my wheelhouse I can't believe it.
So this will be my focus, professionally, for the next several months. I didn't necessarily go looking to go back to work so soon after finishing one show, but I also recognize how lucky I am to have the opportunity to go back to work. Believe me. There is no magic here. I bust my ass, that's all. I'm also very lucky.
What's more -- as I've said many times, I believe in the CBC and I think the CBC has a great role to play in making relevant TV for Canadians. This is the first time I will have a shot at being part, a small, small, small part, of that solution.
And the nearest way I can figure to be true to myself, and my sense of professionalism and duty and discretion is this:
I'm not going to be writing too much about the CBC anymore. I don't think it's right to take their money and criticize them -- even constructively. The CBC has had a rough few years, and now I want to be proactive. There will be those of you who roast me for this. So be it.
This is the only way I know how to be. You wanna roast me, have at it below. Or better yet, start your own Canadian TV blog. And be sure to use your real name when you do. (Yeah, right.)
I might ease off the throttle a bit about the Canadian TV brief too. I feel that I've said much of what I felt needed saying. I think maybe it's time to hear from some other people on the subject. Who knows? Maybe you.
I will stop to praise...there's one of those coming in the next week -- a new Canadian show that I have a big super duper fan crush on. I will gush. It will NOT BE PRETTY.
So this blog is going to evolve again. We'll see where it takes us. Thanks for reading and for enriching my life. I hope to be able to keep on keeping on for a long time.
Now stop procrastinating and get to work.
2006 brought other challenges, and a refocus. Because other people entered the arena -- and when it comes to writing advice, I've always said if there are those doing it better than you, get out of the way. With Jane Espenson, Ken Levine, and Alex covering TV craft issues regularly, I throttled back a bit, and this blog became more about my experience with TV. I figured, maybe a chronicle of a writer's life might help, and also carry along that whole try-not-to-be-so-isolated thing. That latter part worked like gangbusters. In the last couple of years, I've met, virtually or in person, a whole gaggle of Canadian writers, just like me. It's been a great eyeopener; it's almost starting to feel like we have a real community here.
The other thing, of course, was that I started writing a lot more about the particular challenges and peculiarities of Canadian TV. I worried for awhile (and my hits confirmed it) that this kind of inside baseball for such a small industry would tank any audience I had (and that, dear readers, is the pernicious truth -- at some point, even in a stupid free blog -- you start thinking about your audience.)
There certainly was some drop off -- I imagine a lot of the American readership confronted with one too many posts about the CRTC went, "ah, the hell with it" and got going when the going was good.
But then a funny thing happened.
Canadians started coming out of the woodwork. A lot of them. Some of them way better connected than me in this business; some just starting out, some as outside of the TV game as outside can be. I was frustrated by the fact that there was so little out there I could find about the industry that I was working in -- that the creative problems, pitfalls, challenges that I met were reflected nowhere on the internet or on the screenwriting sites. So I started blogging about that.
And lo, people started reading. I guess there's a lot of creatives in this country who were as frustrated as I was that in the discussion of the Canadian industry that occasionally pierces the business pages of our papers, no one really ever talked to us.
To be honest, starting to write more about Canadian TV released a logjam or a waterfall or pick your other metaphor of people writing me, commenting -- even stopping me at industry events to talk about this or that column I'd written. I started seeing hits coming in from the CRTC and from CBC and from CTV and Rogers, and...And the interview requests started coming, too. This paper, that radio interview...much to my bemusement, this thing that was really about me not banging my head against the wall in isolation had turned me into a -- spit take -- pundit.
Yes. That's a dirty word. I used to book pundits, you see. I used to chase them down and read their books, and ferret them out of their little pundit holes and whack em for this or that piece of juicy info that I could cut into a breezy and entertaining two minute piece. That was my other life.
I remember interviewing the Sci-Fi author Bruce Sterling once in this little cafe in Austin, Texas, when he said, "it's not my job to figure out the whys and hows; it's my job to say bold and outrageous things." (I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically it.)
Now I was the guy being chased. Somebody wanted me to say the bold and outrageous things. It really does come around.
My first boss in the industry put it best: "you want sparks on a panel -- get an American."
The dark side of this newfound "fame" (and believe me, in this context, no one puts "fame" in more quotes than me) was that I started hearing from my agent, "People are reading your blog."
It wasn't exactly said with encouragement.
Jim Henshaw wrote awhile ago about this Toronto actor, who penned this remarkable J'accuse covering the Canadian theatre, film, and television industry. I didn't get a chance to see Tony's show, but I totally respect what he did, and the great gulf that precipitated his need to do it.
To quote Jack Nicholson as the Joker, "this town needs an enema."
Change town to Industry.
The amazing thing is, all I did was wrote what I thought, and what I thought wasn't some particularly marvellous insight granted from on high. It was pretty much the things that my fellow writers, directors, actors, and industry workers had been saying to each other in whispered tones at the CFC Barbecues and Film Fest Parties for years. It's just that ... no one ever put it out there. Everybody stayed cowed and quiet. Well, except Paul Gross and ACTRA, I mean.
So after a while I started hearing comments from people saying, "I love what you're doing, but I could never do it." I'd get tons of emails saying, "please don't use my name, but..." Along about the time that John Doyle in the Globe pointed to this blog as a worthwhile read about Canadian TV, I got an email from someone who, jokingly said, "when all this comes crashing down around you, remember: I've got a couch."
A few friends suggested, with some concern, "maybe you should cool it a bit."
I would think about that, and it would make me a little paranoid, and then I would go back and say, no, wait...I have to believe that I'm doing right here. I write about the CBC because I love the CBC and I want it to do well. I want Canadian shows on the air that Canadians want to watch. I want to celebrate when people I know do good work...I don't want that work to disappear unheralded.
So I kept on keeping on.
CUT TO:
Last night, The Canadian Screenwriting Awards at Brant House in Toronto. The party was a little more subdued this year. It never got to the level of a rager. And one by one, many of my friends drifted off absurdly early...
...and then it occurred to me...
...they had to get up for work. Seriously. I know more people working on shows or about to start shows than I've known since I started in this business. Things are not as dire as they have been. That is cause for celebration.
And as my friend David A said..."Open Bar!"
As for the Awards themselves:
Well, class act Brad Wright picked up the first Showrunner Award, which was totally deserved, considering the number of Canadian writers the guy has brought up through ten years of Stargate and Stargate: Atlantis.
Naked Josh co-creator Laura Kosterski won for half hour drama, while Slings & Arrows won best hour drama writing -- Corner Gas picked up the trophy for comedy. This was particularly exciting for me as I was sitting next to my good friend Kevin White when they announced his name. Every year, the script co-written with Brent Butt wins, and this year, I guess it was Kevin's turn. He was gracious and funny -- and made good use of the bottle of CC host Gavin Crawford had at the podium.
For feature writing, the award went to some actor.
Kidding. Polley gave a nice speech. Let's move on.
Afghanda won for Best Radio Drama. This was an enormously affecting piece that I hope CBC Reruns -- some of our country's top playwrights, Jason Sherman, Andrew Moodie and Adam Pettle, (as well as Greg Nelson) did great work on this.
Pawing Kevin's award, I noticed that the sucker is pretty heavy. You could really commit a homicide with that thing.
Just saying.
Host Gavin Crawford was really quite funny. His material (co-written with Kyle Tingley) was sharp and insidery but not too insider-y. All in all, an excellent host.
But every conversation I got into before and after the awards kept coming back to this blog -- and it always reached the moment -- and the phrase -- that it seems that I hear more than any other nowadays:
"You can't write about this on your blog."
And you know what? You know the funny, strange, full circle thing about that moment that really, really puzzles me? Inevitably, the thing that follows is something that I would never in a million years write about on a blog.
In fact, dear reader, here's the time to speak truth. You ready for it? Here it is -- the dirty little secret of Dead Things On Sticks:
I pull my punches all the time.
There is a wealth of stuff that you hear, that you don't say. There's stuff you know, that you can't speak. There's confidences you have, that you keep not just because it would hurt people or you if you revealed them, but because it's the decent professional thing to do. This is called life.
I have in my head this line of confidentiality and professionalism that is so crystal clear to me...it's just that the line for everyone else seems to be somewhere back in Victorian England, where they'd cover the table legs lest thoughts turn to the impure.
I mean, gimme a break. No wonder things are so screwed up, if no one will speak truth -- any truth -- out loud. What in Pity's name is everyone so goddamn afraid of? Really?
Again, I must stress, I do not think of myself as any kind of great notable person or hero or anything other than a wanker trying to make a living writing fiction for Television. I've often thought that if I'd married a few years ago, I'd probably be in L.A. now. I would have packed it in and gone south like so many of us do in Canada...but a fear of loneliness and a desire to be close to those I care about kept me here. And if I was going to try and make it here, I simply couldn't keep quiet when things were so obviously, completely FUBAR.
So I wrote about it. And I didn't get into detail about shows I worked on, I didn't betray confidences, I didn't dish dirt, I didn't settle scores. I'd go into a story room and be my kind of avuncular, big laughing self, and hope that it all came out in the wash. I'd do my work, work hard, and hope that the tall poppy wasn't about to get scythed.
I've tried to maintain standards of accuracy and truthfulness at all times...but... It's been an opinion piece...and the unspoken caveat has always been, "your mileage may vary."
CTV bought CHUM and I didn't write too much about it, only once after the initial announcement -- because I worked for CHUM in the past, and because I did work for CHUM-bought shows. I didn't call attention to the fact that I wasn't writing about it -- I just didn't.
As in most of my posts, this has gone on longer than I meant it to. People say, "how can you write such long stuff" -- but the reality as any writer will tell you is that it's always easier to go long than to be brief.
So finally now, after all that preamble, I'm going to get to the point.
I've got a new gig.
A little while ago, CBC announced its fall schedule. I'm very pleased to say that I've been hired as Executive Story Editor on one of those shows. The Border is a Pilot that's just been ordered to series.
Drawn from today’s headlines, The Border is a fast-paced, hard-driving series set in Toronto in a paranoid post-Sept. 11 world concerned with security crises, terrorist infiltrations, cross-border police actions and trafficking in everything from enriched uranium to abducted children.
I'm very excited about this job. The people I'm working with are people whose work I've admired for years. I think this is exactly the kind of show CBC should be doing now. It's got a good budget, it's got a good team, and I think it's going to be great. Furthermore, as an American/Canadian who's always felt like he had one foot on either side of the border himself, this show is so in my wheelhouse I can't believe it.
So this will be my focus, professionally, for the next several months. I didn't necessarily go looking to go back to work so soon after finishing one show, but I also recognize how lucky I am to have the opportunity to go back to work. Believe me. There is no magic here. I bust my ass, that's all. I'm also very lucky.
What's more -- as I've said many times, I believe in the CBC and I think the CBC has a great role to play in making relevant TV for Canadians. This is the first time I will have a shot at being part, a small, small, small part, of that solution.
And the nearest way I can figure to be true to myself, and my sense of professionalism and duty and discretion is this:
I'm not going to be writing too much about the CBC anymore. I don't think it's right to take their money and criticize them -- even constructively. The CBC has had a rough few years, and now I want to be proactive. There will be those of you who roast me for this. So be it.
This is the only way I know how to be. You wanna roast me, have at it below. Or better yet, start your own Canadian TV blog. And be sure to use your real name when you do. (Yeah, right.)
I might ease off the throttle a bit about the Canadian TV brief too. I feel that I've said much of what I felt needed saying. I think maybe it's time to hear from some other people on the subject. Who knows? Maybe you.
I will stop to praise...there's one of those coming in the next week -- a new Canadian show that I have a big super duper fan crush on. I will gush. It will NOT BE PRETTY.
So this blog is going to evolve again. We'll see where it takes us. Thanks for reading and for enriching my life. I hope to be able to keep on keeping on for a long time.
Now stop procrastinating and get to work.
Sunrise, Sunset
SO THE beach is closed. Falcon Beach, the teens and wakeboarders opus recently on Global, will end after two seasons. In coverage of the cancellation, people around Winnipeg Beach lament that the show's loss is going to take a toll on tourism -- because people did come to see where the show was shot.
--*little Canadian Media 101 aside here -- interesting to compare CBC's negative spin on the tourist thing with the SunMedia spin. Hmmm.*
Bottom line, this gets me thinking....Canadian TV tourism. Cogitate on that a while. Could we missing a whole range of exploitable opportunities, here?
People, where are the Molly's Reach pubs? Why can't I get a Wojczek shaved beef sandwich?
Where's the Road to Avonlea Walking tour? Why are there no Wind at My Back hoodies? Bring on the Jeff Ltd. courier bags (the better to store your ego!) In the hot hot summer, why not slurp on a Cold Squad icee treat? I mean, c'mon, how long did it take them to release the Hockey Night in Canada theme on Itunes? Let's get on the stick here, people...there's money to be made!
You could have The Collector change purses. Or Blood Ties handkerchiefs. Or heck, we could always take Train 48 out of mothballs and charge people for the interactive Tony n Tina's wedding experience of their lives. Now there's an alternative revenue stream!
Yes, sure, there's a King of Kensington statue in Toronto, but how come nobody's offered a Chuck and Olivia line of scented Street Legal bath beads?
Seriously.
I was very amused to drive down Pacific Drive on one of my last days in Vancouver and see the Stargate there. Oh sure, my companion said it was actually a piece of public art, but you and I both know it was the Stargate.
Ancillary products, boys. Let's get on that.
***
Of course the cancellation of Falcon Beach is not surprising, since it kind of always had that problem that a lot of Canadian TV copros get into -- which show was it? Was it a nighttime soap? Was it a show for teens? There was a lot of back and forth and rumors seemed to indicate that ABC Family and Global wanted different shows. When that happens, it always ends in tears.
I just hope that this doesn't mean that no one tries another broad appeal, fun show for another nine years. Let's all move on and chipper up. Winnipeg Beach, you still have those waves. And somewhere, Paige Bradshaw's bikini lives on.
Probably on Ebay.
***
On the other hand, a nice surprise in the pickup for Robson Arms. It's a show of many charms. Like a series of short stories about the denizens of the titular apartment building, the in-and-out weave of narrative grows on you. I would not be the slightest bit surprised if this show caught on down the road. You have to tune into its wavelength, but the more you do the bigger the rewards become.
I really hope CTV gives it a good slot this fall. It did good numbers in the first season -- which is now available on DVD, so maybe with a protected slot, proper promotion, a couple more stunts like casting Leslie Nielsen, RA will rise again.
Monday, April 23, 2007
DMc on the Ray-dee-Yo, Today
And speaking of punditry, just a reminder I'll be on CBC Radio One today, on the new program "Q" discussing (what else am I qualified to do?) TV.
You can read about the show and see the schedule for your area (Canada) here. On the same page there's also a click through where you can listen to the show online, if you're outside Canada and so inclined. I don't know if they archive it, so you'd probably have to listen to the stream at the appropriate time for the local area.
Canada has five time zones.
Five.
Man.
You can read about the show and see the schedule for your area (Canada) here. On the same page there's also a click through where you can listen to the show online, if you're outside Canada and so inclined. I don't know if they archive it, so you'd probably have to listen to the stream at the appropriate time for the local area.
Canada has five time zones.
Five.
Man.
NextMedia gets more Interesting, BBC-style
An announcement in my inbox this morning says that Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, will be accepting an award of excellence for BBC at the Banff World TV Festival.
The more interesting part is that he'll be taking part in a Q&A at the close of NextMedia, the sister festival of Banff TV, which closes the same day the TV fest opens.
There's no question that the BBC has been generally more forward-thinking with their vision of digital content and especially, user-content sharing. Canadian and American nets both have much to learn from the BBC's approach. Should be an interesting session.
As for plain old vanilla Banff...I see they've added Paul Abbot to the roster. I have an absurd talent crush on Abbot just from the excellent miniseries State of Play. Banff's also added Chuck Lorre -- who as the creator of Two and a Half Men has the dubious distinction of being the last guy to create a viable sitcom for the major networks. Now there's a guy I want to hear from on the whole "death o' the sitcom" front.
Details of the Banff Festival at their site.
The more interesting part is that he'll be taking part in a Q&A at the close of NextMedia, the sister festival of Banff TV, which closes the same day the TV fest opens.
“The BBC continues to successfully push its boundaries, championing TV on the PC, radio and video podcasting, video streaming, and producing content for mobile and other wireless handheld devices,” says Mark Greenspan, Executive Producer, nextMEDIA – The Future of Digital Content. “Mark Thompson is the perfect choice to close nextMEDIA 2007. His insights on the BBC will resonate with our delegates.”
Mark Thompson was appointed Director-General of the BBC on 21 May 2004, after being Chief Executive of Channel 4 since December 2001. He took up his appointment on 22 June 2004. Thompson had previously worked at the BBC for more than 20 years, becoming Director of Television in April 2000, responsible for the management and running of all BBC network television channels.
Scheduled for June 8-10, 2007, at the Fairmont Banff Springs in the Canadian Rockies, nextMEDIA is an intimate three-day event that will present the brightest and most promising industry leaders in the digital sector. nextMEDIA is scheduled just prior to the Banff World Television Festival. The two events are dedicated to the innovation and development of television content creation and will feature synergized programs and linked schedules to capitalize on the harmonies between the traditional and advanced media sectors.
There's no question that the BBC has been generally more forward-thinking with their vision of digital content and especially, user-content sharing. Canadian and American nets both have much to learn from the BBC's approach. Should be an interesting session.
As for plain old vanilla Banff...I see they've added Paul Abbot to the roster. I have an absurd talent crush on Abbot just from the excellent miniseries State of Play. Banff's also added Chuck Lorre -- who as the creator of Two and a Half Men has the dubious distinction of being the last guy to create a viable sitcom for the major networks. Now there's a guy I want to hear from on the whole "death o' the sitcom" front.
Details of the Banff Festival at their site.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Sci-Fi Podcast Ho!
THIS IS unfortunate, because I really should have plugged this before, and now it seems like I'm just trying to be self-aggrandiz...(Ed: Stop being So Canadian.)
Right. Sorry. Sorry. (Ed: Really, quit it.)
Ahem.
Space: The Imagination Station is Canada's Sci-Fi/Fantasy Channel. I helped get the station off the ground as a Producer almost ten long years ago now, before I started writing professionally. This week, they invited me back to talk about my personal experience on Blood Ties and this posting on this old blog.
John Llyr and Mark Askwith are both friends of mine. Between them, they know just about everything there is to know about Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Star Trek, Comics, and all things genre.
Awhile ago, they started doing the HypaSpace Podcast, as a web complement to HypaSpace Weekly, SPACE's weekly wrapup of Sci-fi news and wackiness.
What's great about this podcast is that it's not just two guys yakking about sci-fi. The podcast runs down the latest news and rumors, to be sure, but it also plays clips from Space interviews with celebrities, artists, performers, writers -- this is stuff that never appears on TV, so it's pretty much exclusive stuff. And it's free.
So you should check it out. And if you check out this week's edition, you get to hear me yak, and then at the end they've even dug up a really cool interview I did with Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) when I was at the station. I think you can even subscribe to the Podcast via RSS and on Itunes.
Thanks to Mark and John for making coming back so easy, and for picking an interview question where I don't sound like a total tool.
Right. Sorry. Sorry. (Ed: Really, quit it.)
Ahem.
Space: The Imagination Station is Canada's Sci-Fi/Fantasy Channel. I helped get the station off the ground as a Producer almost ten long years ago now, before I started writing professionally. This week, they invited me back to talk about my personal experience on Blood Ties and this posting on this old blog.John Llyr and Mark Askwith are both friends of mine. Between them, they know just about everything there is to know about Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Star Trek, Comics, and all things genre.
Awhile ago, they started doing the HypaSpace Podcast, as a web complement to HypaSpace Weekly, SPACE's weekly wrapup of Sci-fi news and wackiness.
What's great about this podcast is that it's not just two guys yakking about sci-fi. The podcast runs down the latest news and rumors, to be sure, but it also plays clips from Space interviews with celebrities, artists, performers, writers -- this is stuff that never appears on TV, so it's pretty much exclusive stuff. And it's free.
So you should check it out. And if you check out this week's edition, you get to hear me yak, and then at the end they've even dug up a really cool interview I did with Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) when I was at the station. I think you can even subscribe to the Podcast via RSS and on Itunes.
Thanks to Mark and John for making coming back so easy, and for picking an interview question where I don't sound like a total tool.
Will and His Landlord
YEARS AGO I was in a series of bizarre Hallowe'en promos for Canada's music video channel, Muchmusic. In my favorite one, you saw me screaming at an assailant who was throwing, hurling pumpkin after pumpkin at me, against a huge wall festooned with the Muchmusic logo. As the pumpkins got closer and closer, exploding seeds and viscera on me, I screamed my head off, taunting my assailant, screaming, "is that all you got? is that all you got?"
CUT TO:
The creative director's toddler son, sitting amid the pumpkins....crying.
I was there. I got pumpkin all over me. But even knowing how it was made, seeing it cut together, I still watched and thought I was a heel. And that made it all the funnier.
I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to post this, but I don't care. Will Ferrell mines the same joke, but way better. And for the comedy scholars out there, let's review an important comedy rule:
EDIT: I took the video off because it was doing that weird thing of loading and playing whenever anyone came to the page. I don't know why. You can still find it at 150, 387 other places on the net, I'm sure.
CUT TO:
The creative director's toddler son, sitting amid the pumpkins....crying.
I was there. I got pumpkin all over me. But even knowing how it was made, seeing it cut together, I still watched and thought I was a heel. And that made it all the funnier.
I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to post this, but I don't care. Will Ferrell mines the same joke, but way better. And for the comedy scholars out there, let's review an important comedy rule:
- Making jokes about kids being drunk = always funny
- Actual drunk kids = never funny
EDIT: I took the video off because it was doing that weird thing of loading and playing whenever anyone came to the page. I don't know why. You can still find it at 150, 387 other places on the net, I'm sure.
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