The Fresh, The Familiar, and The Impossible Trick

TODAY WE'RE going to geek out a bit about process and psyche here, and it will be insidery and not necessarily pretty. You've been warned.

Friend of the blog blueglow waded in a with an interesting couple of comments in the post below, where I talk about the upfronts. Here's a taste of what he had to say:

This is a little off topic with regard to the body of your post, but it's something I've been thinking about since i started reading the various blogs about writing and screenwriter and since I am currently in full procrastination mode... what the hell...

I have no idea how you guys do it.

If I was ingesting the amount of info about the biz and the trends in programming you do on a daily basis I don't think I could write a word...I know when I have tried to pay attention to shows of a similar ilk to the ones I'm working on it stops me dead because it makes me feel like there in not a single original thought in my head so why bother...How do you manage to navigate thru a story when you are so aware of all the other stories and series that in development or are going on around you -- obviously you're able to do it (you're working tons right now) but I know if I was paying as much attention to the media as you do I would feel like there was little point in adding to the clutter....the question I guess I am asking (because people work in different ways) is, do you take into consideration all the other shows that are being kicked around or are on the air when you work at the most fundamental elements of plotting and characterization?

The short answer is Yes -- not necessarily the shows that are upcoming (not in any real organized way) but certainly shows that have come before that have a similar area.

This answer is going to be a rough mix of process and the much muddier psychological whys. (I was trying to lay out one then the other, but I can't figure out how to do that because they're so mixed.)

Though I completely understand your approach, and I understand everything you're saying, the thought of working the way you do terrifies me, because how would I know if I was doing something that a similar show had already done? If you don't know what else people have done and are doing in the genre, how can you possibly know when you're being original? See, same question, same neurosis, opposite entry point.

I tend to go into things for television from a craft entry point anyway, because that has so much with how I view the idea of originality on TV.

Simply put, I think when we talk originality on TV we're using a different mixture, or recipe, than when people talk originality in art or in the novel or even the movie. Originality in TV to me is more akin to originality in popular music.

When you hear an unbelievably catchy song on the radio (these days, if you're talking a new song you haven't heard before, I'm probably talking, on the satellite ratio) the thing that gets you is that most of the time it pulls off an impossible trick: it simultaneously feels and sounds fresh and familiar. Maybe there's something about the bassline or the chord progression, or maybe it's built upon a sample from an earlier song you liked...but to me the pleasure comes from feeling that it's both new and familiar - both receptors in your brain go crazy, and that's why some songs you hear for the first time and go, "that's amazing!" and you love it right away.

I think that's kind of like what we do in TV. TV is about constantly pulling off the impossible trick. When you drag people out to a theater (and I'm talking about viewers here who aren't 18 year old boys with no sense of history) you have a bit of a higher burden on creativity -- it needs to not be something you've ever seen before, or if it's even the slightest bit pastiche, it better be great pastiche, like The Departed. Same is true of a good novel, I think.

But at home you're competing with laundry and the kids and pilates and dinner and the effing cat, and most of the time you really need to draw in your viewer quickly or they'll choose one of their other 278 entertainment options. And of course, because your timeline is longer -- rules of characterization are completely different. Imagine trying to paint a character like Tony Soprano in 2 hours and 30 mins.

When I sit down with a series idea, my entry always is 1) Okay, what's this like? 2) Now, how's it different? 3) What am I going to give the audience that surprises them -- something they haven't seen before?

And I go from there. When I'm writing off a bible I didn't create, it drills down to the episode level. What's the shorthand of this ep? Is it a Frankenstein story? Is it the Telltale Heart? (genre room, now) or What's the obstacle here: (action show, now) ticking clock bomb, secret that can't get out, etc. etc. I can't speak for my compatriots, but when I was on Blood Ties, I was very aware of Buffy and Angel, and would often when bumping up against something, think, "how'd they do this?" to actively try to go in another direction. (I didn't much consider Forever Knight, since I've only seen maybe a half dozen eps of that show, and it was long enough ago now that I think the statute of limitations has run out on story-messing.)

The thing is, I enjoy working this way. When I see a series that's cross-pollinated two genres, I'm delighted and giddy to see if it works. When I see a refinement of an idea that's out there already, I love it. Raines, to me, was kind of genius-y because it took that Medium/Ghost Whisperer vibe and gave it a secular twist that men and women could watch equally. I'm not gonna watch Medium because I don't really buy the whole psychic mom thing, and the less said about Ghost Whisperer the better. To me, Raines was that idea 2.0, in that because he knew his conversations were all in his head, you were automatically off the hook in believing in heebiejeebie, and it was also a great extension and twist on the defective detective area Monk introduced a few years back. His vision/conversations told you about him and revealed his character, not just plot. I'm constantly looking to do something like that. I want to pull off the impossible trick.

I also have this need to figure out when a show fails, why it fails, beyond bad timeslot or poor promotion. I'm not as good at that, but I think I'm getting better. But. But. I worry that more and more of the shows I find fresh and original don't catch on. I'm not quite at the point where I'm second guessing my own tastes yet -- not really -- but I can see that being a potential problem in the future.

Some people might look on my way in as setting the bar lower, but, fine, let them go off and get work then, I couldn't care less. Working my way cuts me a little more slack because the boulder you still have to roll up the hill is huge, but at least you've got all those giants who came before helping you push. I tend to think that execution of an idea is all.

(Nothing makes me angrier than a great idea poorly executed. Seriously, I can't understand for the life of me once you've caught the tiger by the tail and have a great idea that you don't do the work to make it good. Arrrrgh.)

Let's face it, TV only has a truly 'revolutionary' show once every few years. And the revolutions are constantly being re-fought, because people have no memory. All In The Family made certain topics OK for tv, and now they're not again. Hill Street Blues gritted up the drama. E.R. amped the pace, made jargon and complex research okay, then de rigeur -- and The Sopranos signalled that Cable was now the tastemaker. Most of the stuff that is really groundbreaking (Hello, Twin Peaks) burns bright and out fast. Those shows leave marks on us all as creators, without necessarily re-shuffling the landscape.

Now a bigger question is: why am I this way? Well, I've got a theory.

I'm in the first Sesame Street generation. That show, The Electric Company, and even Mr. Rogers -- those shows were made for me.

Those were the last shows that were made for me.

I don't want to back and refight the great and stupid GenX-Boomer culture war, but the truth of it is, when I was growing up, I and most people my age were cultural refugees. We'd come home from school and watch Three's Company and M*A*S*H, shows that were in NO WAY aimed at us. (Seriously, could you imagine a 10 year old today watching reruns of West Wing? I know they watch Friends, but Frasier? Not so much.) The culture was obsessed with boomerdom. I watched the old SNL and watched the cast change to the Eddie Murphy SNL, and then the ringer years where the old boomers came back. But it wasn't aimed at me. Letterman was aimed at college students when I was still in high school. Parents were watching Carson. I watched and appreciated them both. Because I wasn't locked into stuff that was aimed directly at me, I surfed and cadged a lot more from various places. I discovered jazz early, and my parents were quite puzzled when I got hard into Sinatra at 15 or 16. To them, that was their parents' music: but to me, it was all the same. All culture talked about events that happened before I was born, or referenced things I had to go look up. That's just the way it was. I didn't give it a second thought.

While this was going on, the whole pop culture ascendancy came in, too. Entertainment Tonight came on the scene. 24 hour news became a factor. Then MTV and Muchmusic -- which was the only part of the culture that I felt aimed at me, and even then, for only about eight minutes. Weekend box office totals started making the papers.

By the time I got to University, cultural marketers had started to finally cool on the boomers in order to go after their kids. A Young Market was identified and people started actively going for it. The entire concept of 'tween shows' still freaks me out a little, because, man, where were those shows when I was that age?

I'd look at SNL, and Sandler and those guys came in and I sometimes found them funny, but not all the time. And the boomers clucked "Saturday Night Dead" and how bad it was, while the people a few years younger than me were getting it. And for a while it was, "wait a minute...where's our cultural moment? Oh, don't tell me it was that fucking TIME magazine article, the Coupland book and Reality Bites...C'mon...I'm gonna fucking kill somebody!"

The came Britney...

And...

Oh..oh man. These people behind me...they're not going to be cultural refugees, are they? Hmm.

Part of having to spend all those years parsing things that weren't meant for you made my brain work in a way where it kind of always stands apart and analyses. Very rarely do I ever get fully immersed in a story or a movie or a TV show. I'm always clocking where they're going, and what they're doing... Once upon a time I thought this was just the famous GenX cynicism, but I've come to understand that that's merely a symptom, not a cause. It's not so much cynicism as it is distance. A distance that comes from spending those big teenage years not as the focus, but on the outside of a culture looking in.

So it is any wonder that now that I'm making culture that I feel comfortable working that way?

I don't know how it's going to work for those coming up behind me. Because I have to assume that the marketers klieg light is going to shift again. Now we have the "Most Praised Generation" entering the workforce, and there are hilarious articles like this, all I can think is, "what's going to happen when these guys find that the experience they've had all their lives is shifting? How will the people who've had stories aimed at them their whole lives react when they have to tell stories for someone else?

I guess we'll see.

I'm gonna keep my head down, clock what's out there, and keep on trying to pull the Impossible Trick.

Somebody's Gonna Buy a House

MY INTEREST in the annual orgy of money and hope against hope known as "The Upfronts" waxes and wanes from year to year depending on whether or not I'm working, and on what.

This year, my interest is dulled a bit by starting a new job. I'm paying attention, but not really paying attention. When the dust settles at the end of next week, however, I'll be more interested, because who gets picked up and who gets cast might have a bearing on one or two things I'm working on.

No, not in that way. No, I'm not getting a job down south. I'm still a lowly Canadian TV writer. Bathe in my neurotic inadequacy, damn you! Bathe in it!

This is a very tense weekend in L.A. and environs. I'm sure the phone calls are flying fast and furious, as gym chatter is taken as gospel or blasphemy, depending on the listener/gossipers body fat index and glucose level. Lunches and their seating plans will be dissected like chicken bones in some fucked-up santeria ritual. There are a lot of people who were working who, come Friday, won't be. There are people who are writers, who, come Friday, will be series creators. The industry will realign itself along a new power centre.

And then in the Fall, the audience will get a chance to weigh in and some (most!) of these new Masters of the Universe will be unceremoniously given the bum's rush.

Though I've found it lackluster in general this year, the nagging subplot that's held the most interest for me on Entourage is the upcoming premiere of Johnny Drama's Ed Burns-created Pilot. I really hope it's a hit, just because I'd like to see Johnny dealing with fame again -- especially if they do the requisite thing and show Vincent's fame starting to cool without a new project. That would be awesome.

Back in the real world, though, I may bloviate on the radio about season finales, but like most writers, my mind's already more in next season. What will the new trends be? What's going to break new ground? What will be the freshman show that everyone will be spec'ing one year from now?

Diane's got a funny little link-story about how anything you read this weekend is bogus. Til you get the tap and are told you're flying to New York, anything goes.

After all, as Bill Carter pointed out in his highly entertaining Desperate Networks, you never know when Phil Rosenthal is going to drop by a meeting. If not for him, no CSI-inspired forensic porn, no cash cow falling into Alliance Atlantis' lap, and maybe -- just maybe -- Tony Danza would be a bigger star than ever.

Here in the North, far from the klieg lights of big money American TV, the Canadian Upfronts -- such as they are -- happen in a few weeks, once the U.S. place their bets. Canadian execs go down and make deals and CTV comes back with all the best shows.

Ooops. Did I say that out loud?

Canadian Upfronts are funnier and sadder. They're more like sales parties. They occasionally import two of the lesser (less Desperate?) Housewives, a minor Soprano or two, or the young guy from that show that nobody's heard of yet.

They also forget to invite the creators of their homegrown shows. I'm not kidding. It's happened more than once.

Of the early American calls, I'm pleased about Friday Night Lights. Pleased because I never watched it. Now, not only do I finally have a series to catch up with on DVD, but it's coming back. Score! Personally, considering the fact that most of my favorite shows are currently on NBC, I'm sorry for their troubles, but not that troubled, you know? Desperate times leads to creative risk, and maybe the next TV revolution. A guy can dream.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, The Bionic Woman from David Eick, Chuck, Journeyman and Life have all been told to staff up.

There's enough nostalgia in me to hope The Bionic Woman goes somewhere. (And considering how often super, asskicking Lyndsey Wagner got patrontized, it will be interesting to see a post-feminist or third wave feminist take on the idea.) If it's good in any way, I think it's gonna find an audience, and it'll be the genre spec next May. We'll see, though. And since Glen Morgan's on board, could this mean a return of a certain mythic writer geek godhead figure? Hmmm. Hmmm.

Just as long as they "re-imagine" the fembot fight:



Mmm. Fembots.

I'm fairly Meh on Chuck, but I do loves me the Kevin McKidd, and the fanboy in me likes Journeyman's premise. (think Quantum Leap.)

I would like to try to explain to you how fast I hope ABC's Caveman show goes down, but...words fail. If it's a big hit with the American public, I'm going to invite the Chinese to invade now, and just get it over with.

I have high hopes for Action News, the Kelsey Grammer/Pat Heaton sitcom for Fox, as well as the cop show set in NOLA. Strangely, the thought of seeing Sarah Connor week after week doesn't thrill me.

As always, these suckers will surely disappoint. Most of em. Maybe you should hold off on buying that house.

Otherwise, to the new Masters of the Universe I say, "Congrats." Good luck nailing your template.

As always, if anybody has copies of these pilots in script or other form, I'd love to see'em. Daddy writes in Canada, and Daddy writes on the interweb. Daddy is not an insider.

Ratings, Shmatings

JOHN DOYLE, it seems, is almost owed a co-write for this column of late.

For the record, I've met Doyle but I don't really know him. We're slated to be on a panel together in Banff, though, so I'm fairly excited about that. I will make certain to ask him about the Brother, his cat, and his current choice for Most Irritating Canadian (Television Division.)

For now, though, I simply want to quote a bit from his column yesterday and make a couple of points:

An Associated Press story that ran in numerous newspapers in the past few days begins thus: "In TV's worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show."

Well, "statistics show" is the key phrase. The statistics come from Nielsen and, frankly, they are dubious. As the AP story acknowledges after offering hair-raising stats on lower viewing numbers for the networks, about 17 per cent of U.S. homes now have personal video recording devices such as TiVo. They can watch TV whenever they want, with ease. It's simple to set your TV to record all episodes of your favourite show and watch the episodes later, individually or in a marathon. The thing is, the Nielsen numbers reflect only a tiny fraction of viewers with PVRs and then document a show being watched only if it is viewed within 24 hours of originally airing.

In Canada, the Nielsen numbers are even more peculiar. The sample is small, the margin of error is huge. Nobody is going broke in the TV racket. Viewers are not abandoning TV in droves. They're watching what they want, when they want or when they can get to it, just like me.

I've got a couple of points here, one expandable to North America, the other mostly Canadian in nature.

1. The advent of PVR timeshifting is the time bomb that won't go away in ratings measurement.

When I was living in Vancouver earlier this year, I kind of stepped back into the 1970's. I didn't have a working PVR or VCR. So if I wanted to watch a show, I had to watch it when it was on the air. If I wanted to watch two shows that were opposite each other, I had to choose one.

This was really, really weird. It's completely alien to how I (and a vastly growing number of TV viewers) now experience TV. I have the Movie Channels on Pay, and I will occasionally graze them, but the ON DEMAND channel is why I subscribe. I never worry about missing a Sopranos if the PVR cacks up. I know it will be there for me the next day.

If I PVR a program, I will usually not watch it that night. I'm busy. I have three weeks of The Office and Lost on the PVR right now. I'm hoping to get to them this weekend. My Vancouver 'forced appointment viewing' only resulted in me abandoning several of the shows that I watched regularly: gone were 24 and Prison Break, and others. Shows that I quite liked, like Raines, I never really watched more than a couple eps, because I wouldn't bow to the tyranny of planting my ass in the seat when they wanted me to.

The whole PVRs only-count-if-you-watch-in-24-hours thing masks a bigger problem: commercial skipping. Everyone does it. I now pause a show at the top even when it's live so I can fast forward through the ads.

And I work in television.

They've started to discover that there are heavily PVR'd shows where, if you count the later viewings, the show 's ratings can be up by 17 or 18 percent. That's huge. But...

...those people aren't watching the ads. What to do?

It's a ticking time bomb that even Jack Bauer couldn't fix.

• The games played with ratings in Canada are part of the reason why they don't release ratings here.

As Doyle points out, in Canada the sample size is very small. The way statistical sampling works, if you have a properly selected sample of 1000 people or more, the margin of error is quite low.

But the more you go down, the more distorted the numbers get. And -- here's the real trick -- the smaller your numbers are, the more distorted they are.

So in other words, if the sample size is only 600, and your ratings are 2 million, you can be pretty sure that those numbers are pretty close. Not as close as if the sample was 1100, but close.

But...

Most shows in Canada don't do 2 million.

If you have a rating of 180, 000 -- and that sample is only 600, then those numbers could be plus or minus tens of thousands of viewers.

If your ratings are under 100 000, throw a dart. Seriously. It's about as accurate.

Add to this the fact that Canadian stations regularly add together a number of airings of the same program, and report that as, "X people watched this show," and it muddies the water even further. All this because Canadians are used to U.S. style numbers talking about 10, 12 million people watching a show. They don't understand the smaller market and what it means. And I actually kind of support stations not releasing their numbers, because I've seen with U.S. shows how the data is used by people who don't understand it to support some boneheaded point they're making.

And I'm not even talking about bloggers here. I'm talking journalists.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: point is, it's all another symptom of how the whole system's rotten. If you're basing your decisions on numbers and numbers alone, especially in Canada, you're showing a remarkable lack of intestinal fortitude - and you may just be being foolish.

The barn door's open. The cow's gotten out. The sky is falling.

Wheeeeeeee!

DMc on the Ray-dee-Yo: This Time It's Personal

I AM going to be on CBC Radio One again today, on Jian Ghomeshi's Q show, talking about TV season finales.

I think my point of view is: Weddings, meh.

I know. Really original.

I gotta work up some material. Check the local radio listings on CBC.CA to see when Q airs in your market.

EEeeevillll!

I FORGOT to append to my last post that another movie-derived musical opens in Toronto this weekend. EVIL DEAD: THE MUSICAL started right here in Toronto, at the Tranzac Club. It went to NYC, became a sensation, and now it's back. The songs are pretty bad, but that's not the point, is it? If you're in the first three rows -- the "splatter zone" -- you get covered in fake blood.

I ask you, what is not to like?

Read about it here.

I Am Reliably Informed...

THAT THE room we've moved to today is the very same office which used to be the story room for TRADERS. Hart Hanson may have very well sat where I am right now.

I'll take that mojo.

Top Gun: The Musical, And The Photocopy, and the Parody, and the High Horse

SOMETIMES THINGS to write about fall into your lap. Out of the rubble of the great fanfic contretemps of '07 (Still no caps, but yes, they're still coming, and yes, they're still pissed) I wrote a week or so ago about ideas, and how they spookily sometimes seem to be snatched out of the ether by different people at different times -- and how it sometimes happens at the same time, too.

But what about when you're working with "provided materials?" An angry commenter on the original fanfic post apparently doesn't like my high horse. Which is funny, because I happen to have bought a piece of artwork called "The High Horse" from NY illustrator Molly Crabapple. I have to go get that framed.)

Alison, in part, wrote:

while you rant about people not writing original work, you are being paid to use someone else's characters in a world that you did not create, using the rules that they setup in regards to that world. How original can that possibly be?

It isn't. It's professional fanfic. Any writer who writes as a freelancer or on staff of a show that he or she did not create is a fan fic writer.

Though she plays a few rhetorical games in her comment [like insulting the show I worked on in an attempt to insult me...heh heh. Yeah, like that stings. -- go read it if you want the full flavor] Alison raises an interesting and provocative question: (the answer to which she wouldn't get, but we're writing for pros and would be pros here, chickens, aren't we? Yes, we are) How can you claim any originality in work that's based upon something else? And how does that work separate out from... fanfic (shudder)

To an extent I think this is a question that all writers wrestle with. It's wrapped up in the whole, "am I a hack?" question. You can be glib, and talk about there only being seven stories, or everything's stolen from Shakespeare and the Bible... but finding the original idea -- even in a world that's not your own -- is one of those things that separates out the pros from the amateurs. (For the purposes of this post, I'm including any of you spec monkeys who haven't made a sale yet. Because that's how you have to think of yourselves: pros who haven't made a sale. Yet.) It's what separates the writers from the fanfic writers.

Which brings me, Brothers and Sisters, to Top Gun! The Musical.

If you happen to be in Dallas, Texas starting this weekend, you can (and I hope you will) go down to the Dallas Hub Theater, pay your 20 bucks and sit down and watch one of the most fun things I've ever written.

I've written a bit about Top Gun! The Musical before. It came out of a rant about musical theater and how crappy it was that the only properties that rated the musical treatment seemed to be Disney shows and bad movies. (I think it was the Urban Cowboy musical that popped my cork, though I'm sure someone will write in and tell me that the brand new, Legally Blonde musical is "OMG...rilly good!"]

Anyway, in the spring of 2002, I sat down with a great composer and musical director named Scott White, and started banging out songs for TG!TM. We talked about Sondheim, he played me tracks from Company, and we hashed out what we wanted to do, starting from this ridiculous premise: somewhere, a big-budget megamusical based on the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun, is in rehearsals.

Scott and I decided to go in a few directions fairly early:

We decided we didn't want to tell the whole story of the movie.

This was mainly from me. The more I looked at Top Gun, the more I realized that the plot basically (forgive me, father) ran out of jet fuel at the point Goose died. Top Gun was the first MTV movie, and as such, it was slow and choppy because nobody had gotten that newfangled style down yet. The meta-commentary on the gay subtext of the film was way more interesting that anything that was going on on the screen.

We decided that we wanted to show more of the rehearsal than the movie.

The more we talked, the more we realized that Top Gun was really a metaphor here, a placeholder. The story we wanted to tell, like Chorus Line, was the story of the performers in it, and more than that: the entire idea of the creative process, how fragile it is, and how difficult. We focused quickly around the Director of the piece, who is desperately trying to tell himself that he's doing something artistically worthy (even though the audience knows that's bogus.) From there, we sketched in a few other characters: we had our Director, Billy Palmer, sleeping with the actress playing Charlie (the bitch,) while his long-suffering stage manager, Wendy, carried a torch for him (there's your love triangle.) Then we had some stock characters: the actor playing Maverick was dumb as a post (and insisted on being called "Maverick," at all times,) the actor playing Iceman was "gayer than anything in that Will & Grace show," and Goose...well...we made Goose a chick. We always knew that the heart of the piece was killing Goose, and it seemed to flow better that she was a woman. Also, let's face it, the real Top Gun didn't have much room for women and in a seven person cast we wanted more females. When we clocked the script, we realized that between book and songs, the amount of material that was actually from the musical-within-a-musical clocked in at about 30-35% of the show.

We didn't want to steal.

If Top Gun was a metaphor, and if people recognized the tropes, then, I very quickly decided, there was no need to stamp all over it. We wouldn't be using Danger Zone, or You've Lost That Lovin Feelin. We were going for fair comment, cultural criticism and parody, and we didn't want to be accused of plagiarism. It became very clear to me that there was no need, in fact, to use any dialogue from the movie. Even the situations could be turned around a bit. So in the show-within-a-show bits, we didn't take any lines from the movie. And you know what? It was easy. Because it really was about the experience of the movie more than the movie itself. It was about us, the audience. Trippy, eh?

We snuck in every theater in joke we could think of.

Which meant stuff like, though Goose's character was now female, that change wasn't really reflected in the rewrites, and the actress was suffering through having a non-existent characterization. We made our Charlie a little-bit-past-it actress to deal with neurotic issues, and to humanize her a bit. And we decided that we wanted a larger-than-life producer to enter at about the forty minute mark.

Why?

We wanted to change things up and get subversive.

We wanted the show to be about seventy, eighty minutes so it wouldn't outstay its welcome. And after about forty minutes, we wanted to shake it up -- by then all the in jokes about theater and creativity would be familiar, and everybody would know our characters, what their deal was and where their relationships sat.

Enter The General. The General is one of my favorite ever character creations. His dialogue, when I wrote it, poured out in a torrent, and most of what's in the show is first draft. Whole speeches came unbidden from his lips. The General is an ex-military man who's turned to theatrical producing, and just as you think you know what's going on in the show, he torques it another way. Because the General sees this show not as an artistic piece, and not even as a cash cow: he sees it as an example of American Cultural Imperialism, a way to win the hearts and minds of the world, through Musical Theater.

The General...in short...is batshit insane.

But he's a ton of fun. And then, just as you get his deal -- that this guy sees this show as an instrument of war by other means, we "show him" the 11'oclock number -- "That Goose Is Cooked."

Top Gun! The Musical did extraordinarily well for a modest Fringe musical. It was completely sold out. People scalped tickets. Seriously. We remounted the show the following summer and did well, receiving two Toronto Theatre Award nominations (called Doras) for Dmitry Chepovetsky (who played Maverick) and Best Musical. The cast was stellar and top notch. We took the show to the New York Musical Festival in 2004, and there have been other productions in Halifax, and Houston. We still get inquiries about it all the time, which is how it's going up in Dallas this weekend. (If you want to read an interview of me whoring the show, click here.)

When I went down to Houston to see the U.S. premiere in 2002, it was an important moment for me. Because it was the first time I'd seen something I wrote performed by people who I had had zero contact with. They only worked off the script. Also, the deep heart of Texas is a very different place from Toronto. Would the show play, and would the jokes land?

They did. The differences were intriguing. The General, a part that I saw as a savage indictment of the parts of the American psyche that scared me, was cuddlier down south. That's to be expected, I guess. But all in all, it was ... great. And now it's flying again. Yay!

So what to make of this?

In searching for stuff on the Dallas production of TG!TM, I came across info on a Chicago production which just closed in April 2007. There it is, folks. It's Top Gun, the Musical.

Am I upset? Not even slightly.

Because you can't copyright an idea. And as Alison would be quick to point out, deciding to do a musical based on Top Gun isn't original. The only way, in fact, to mine any originality is to see what you do with it.

Now, in mine and Scott's Top Gun! musical, our thematic targets were really the artistic process, and how do you know you're a hack, and how your dreams for something never quite live up to the reality. And it was also about hope, and longing to be part of something good and not knowing if you measured up. And it was about propaganda, and how culture can be used to sell wars, and all manner of nasty stuff. And it was about gay subtext becoming text. And it was about eighty minutes.

What's intriguing, of course, is that in the five years between TG!TM and this version of the Top Gun musical, the U.S. is in a very different place. We made dark jokes about Iraq that were yet to come true. The kind of jingoistic, TG swagger sits in a different place in the American cultural mindset now. The other thing that changed, of course, is YouTube came along, which allows me to show you this:




Interesting. See, they chose to go with the Danger Zone, interp dance route. Funny, but more of a sketch than our opening number, "We've Got a Plane to Catch." Looks like they made Goose a girl, too...but a girl in drag. Funny. Different way to go.

Poking around, it doesn't look like this Top Gun musical got very good reviews. Some of the commentary seemed to indicate that there was no there there -- that once you got over the initial joke, it wasn't saying anything. Which is exactly the litmus test we put up to our TG musical: it had to say something different than the movie. It had to stand on its own.

And interestingly, that's basically the legal argument as to what constitutes a derivative versus an original work -- how much is you, and how much is the thing that you're parodying or commenting upon? In our case, the heart of the piece is not TG, it's making art, and how difficult that is. And that's what made the difference, I think, in the affections of audiences and critics both.

Of course, both Top Gun musicals rely and are informed by a very funny sequence in an otherwise forgettable movie called Sleep With Me. (And interestingly enough if you believe the scuttlebutt, old Quentin isn't being too original himself here.)



We never did too much more with TG! It's a seven person cast, which is large for a small cabaret style show. It's got swears, and you kind of have to have an 80's sensibility (ie: Top Gun has to have been formative for you) to get it. So the commercial appeal is limited. But the rights are still available, should you want to do it in a theatre near you.

To the cast and crew in Dallas, I say, "Good Luck." Now, back to my high horse.

Idiosyncratic and Wildly Original

TWO WORDS that maybe don't get associated with TV enough. Though you could also argue that people, in their homes and hearths, tired after a long day of doing whatever they have to do to make money, aren't always looking for that, so much as a little comfort. Hmmm.

I'm still adjusting to the new job, so not much from me today, either. Sorry. Luckily, Will Dixon over at his place has just posted a thoughtful little profile of one of the ubergeek writer crushes of the 1990's -- Darin Morgan. He was very idiosyncratic and wildly original -- but at a price.

Eccentric and reclusive, he's oft been described as the Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) of television due to his knack for turning formulaic TV on its ear.

Two out of three ain't bad, but he's also, apparently, notoriously slow.

A self-proclaimed couch potato, Morgan reluctantly joined the staff of The X Files in the third season (via his older brother Glen Morgan) and made a splash over the next two years with four memorable episodes: 'Humbug', 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose', 'War of the Coprophages', and 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space' (Final Repose actually won an Emmy).

Then he joined the staff of Millennium for a season, and wrote and directed 'Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense' and 'When Satan Got Behind Me', two of the funniest and cleverest screenplays you'll ever read. These were great TV series scripts, but not necessarily great model scripts for those looking to break into series TV.

Go hang out with Will. If you can, bring brownies. Tell him I said 'Hi.'

Otherwise, if you happen to be reading this from the nation known as Canada, tonight is your chance to finally see the buzz show of the spring. The first show that maybe has had the ambition to take that "Sopranos" crown and dust it off. As John Doyle put it:

In January, when I was in Los Angeles for the midseason TV critics press tour, I had one of those magical moments when all the dross that arrives suddenly seemed irrelevant. I was in my hotel room, typing away at a laptop, trying to make sense of the CBS schedule, or something equally frustrating. The TV was on because new series from the networks and cable channels are shown continuously in the hotel for the critics.

As I wrote, I was vaguely paying attention to the first few minutes of a show I knew nothing about. Then I stopped typing. And then I sat down in front of the TV and watched, entranced. By the end of the program, I was awestruck. I watched the closing scene. Darkness fell on a suburban street, the camera caught a few isolated figures and there was Bob Dylan's voice singing, "In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm./ "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

The Riches (Showcase, 10 p.m.) is what I was watching. Made for the Fox cable channel F/X, it came unheralded and as a complete surprise. The opening episode - the one I saw in L.A. and airing here tonight- is astonishingly ambitious, serious, entertaining, funny and moving. It's one of those exercises in TV drama that demolish any suggestion that what's shown on TV is empty-headed nonsense.

We meet a family, the Malloys. It turns out that they are "Travellers," a large, connected clan of grafters and con artists who exist outside normal society, travel the United States in their RVs and sometimes gather together in some remote place to celebrate their own, unique community. They have an elaborate hierarchy and despise those who live normal, settled lives. They don't have social security numbers and the kids are schooled by the clan in thievery and cons.

When we meet the Malloys, dad Wayne (Eddie Izzard) is engaged in an audacious con, which he pulls off with aplomb. Then the mission is to meet mom Dahlia (Minnie Driver) as she is being released from prison. Dahlia looks ravaged by the prison experience. She needs the bosom of the clan and, when things go awry, the Malloys flee.

What happens next is probably the best setup for a series I've seen in years. If you have any pretensions toward writing at all, The Riches' pilot deserves to be closely studied. Showcase, 10pm.

Dane Cook: Serious Actor?

Busy at it, so not much today.

What does it say that I'm actually really, really rooting for him to be good in this? I always like comics who go dark. But a guy who I don't particularly like as a comic -- yet -- I'd love it if this hype paid off.

Is that petty or anti-petty? Or is it Tom Petty? I'm so confused.

From The NYTimes summer movie pullout:

Dane Cook is a successful stand-up comic with a burgeoning film career in pop comedies like "Employee of the Month" and this summer's "Good Luck Chuck" (Aug. 24). There's nothing funny about his work in the offbeat thriller "Mr. Brooks" (June 1). The movie stars Kevin Costner in the title role, a wealthy, upstanding business executive with a secret life as a reluctant, puritanical serial killer, and William Hurt as Mr. Brooks's mysterious alter ego, who eggs him on with chilly glee. Who in his right mind would want to compete against those two? Mr. Cook does, and when he's on screen, you can't look at anyone else.

His character isn't just nasty, he's the apotheosis of vile. A voyeur with a zoom lens, he enjoys taking naughty snaps of a lusty couple in the high-rise across the street who don't believe in closing the curtains. Unexpectedly catching Mr. Brooks in the bloody act of bumping them off, he proceeds to blackmail him, but not for money. What he really wants is to get up close and personal with Mr. Brooks's murders, and demands to be taken along for the thrill.

When he instructs Mr. Brooks to call him Mr. Smith, he looks smug, savoring the pleasure of being able to dominate this dangerous man. But he also radiates an irrepressible adolescent excitement at the prospect of the adventures ahead; it's as if he were seeing himself as Robin to Mr. Brooks's malignant Batman. Mr. Cook makes his character a sort of savage baby, pouty, impulsive, underdeveloped, utterly lacking in moral brakes yet seething with an urge to punish.

The power of the performance lies in Mr. Cook's ability to make his character horrendous but ordinary, even familiar, and thus more appalling: a grandiose, macho nudnik with a raging ego and a hair-raising sense of grievance. Playing off Mr. Costner's cool, meticulous killer, he's a wild mess, arrogantly braying at Mr. Brooks while secretly shooting him anxious glances, freezing in fear at decisive moments, then cackling in borrowed triumph over foul deeds well done.

Reminder: Durham County

TONIGHT, TMN 9pm. Check the time for MOVIE CENTRAL.

On Can-Comedy Shows Generally & Jeff Ltd In Particular: Why These Pretzels Aren't Making Me Thirsty

WILL DIXON came out recently as a Jeff-hater. That's not exactly fair. If you read the post on his site, what it actually says is:

...Jeff Ltd. is a pretty tough watch.

But Mr. Dixon doesn't stop there. He delves a little deeper exploring the inexplicable comparisons some have made to Curb Your Enthusiasm:

You see, Larry David is a little petty and narrow-minded for someone who essentially 'has it all', but in the situations that arise, he generally has good intentions. And so when things blow up in his face...hilarity ensues. On the other hand, Jeff is just so...I dunno, unlikable? He's intentionally smarmy and lecherous and he seriously tries to nail chicks and scam people...and yes, it generally blows up in his face (like a trick cigar, according to the CTV site), but because the blow up is expected, and because he doesn't really have good intentions...the show, Jeff Ltd. is just not that funny. Or if there's hilarity ensuing, it's not for me.

I sure there's a good comedy 'do and don't' rule in here somewhere, but my little scifi/paranormal action adventure pea brain can't seem to articulate it.

Coincidentally, while Dix is suffering the low blood sugar in the explaining-things confidence, he's actually pretty dead on the money. I've been talking with several people I know who write comedy. Some have toiled in the thankless ghetto of stage sketch comedy, and they seem to be consistently frustrated because, in their estimation, there's a few people on the scene who always get laughs who just aren't that funny.

I'm redacting all the names -- but the truth is, the people talked about, indeed, probably aren't the most funny stage comics I've ever seen. But I laughed like a drain when I saw them onstage. Why? Because they had a likable persona that you just wanted to laugh at -- or with. They made you enjoy yourself.

This is a part of comedy that doesn't get talked about a lot -- at least in the circles I run in. But when you look at those shows that stay on the air for years and you don't know why -- likability is a factor. The guy on King of Queens is likable. So is Leah Remini. According to Jim cruised through a bunch of seasons because, for whatever reason, some people found that character redeeming and likable.

This likability factor is not something that always crops up for standups. There are standups out there who have met with great success by essaying an abrasive, obnoxious, or even unlikable comic persona... from Louis Black to Louis C.K. to Mike McDonald... you can definitely get laughs behind the microphone without being someone people like.

But the moment you transition to something character-based, either in sketch or in narrative comedy like TV, likability becomes a factor.

The most successful comics to make that transition from stage to soundstage always have help. Big help. Jerry Seinfeld counted on Larry David. Ray Romano had Phil Rosenthal. I don't know who did the yeoman's work, but though Home Improvement might have been based on the comedy of Tim Allen, I've heard plenty enough stories to know that it's not Tim who you credit for making that show fly.

Comics, like other actors, can sometimes be their own enemy. I was watching the new Larry Sanders boxset a week or so ago and an old ep with Brett Butler came up. And I went, "oh yeah!" I had completely forgotten about Grace Under Fire. There's a show that had incredible promise, which flamed out because the star didn't know what was good for her.

Vide: Roseanne. The Lottery. Seriously.

Comics come from that cutthroat world where any moment they might have to take out a heckler. So they're prickly. They need someone to tune that sensibility for TV.

In the USA, this happens naturally because of the writer/showrunner culture. If you're a comic and you're really great in comedy, well, the hell with you, we're still not letting you have a show without having a showrunner in there. From there it's a delicate walk to glory or disaster. If the show hits, then maybe the balance of power shifts, and maybe there's producer clashes. Or maybe it's a fruitful collaboration that lasts for years.

I bet you anything that there were times when Ray Romano was doing his supposed "breakout" live action film Welcome to Mooseport, where he wished that Everybody Loves Raymond co-creator Phil Rosenthal was around to tell him why his bid to be the next Jimmy Stewart was sucking so hard.

But in Canada, because the writer-showrunner platonic ideal isn't fully recognized (We're working on it, Chester, we're working on it) we very often get comics trying out their own series hands without having anybody else really behind it. They'll give actors shows here, they'll give comics shows. Yes, comedy is in decline everywhere, but in Canada it's in decline for a very specific reason:

The shows aren't funny.

I'll give the standard caveats here: Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys (where the writers are actually working in deep concert with the onscreen talent.) I have high hopes for the second season of Little Mosque.

And while comics with development deals have trouble making that transition from fearsome commander of the stage to likable living room guy, actors often have the opposite problem.

They assume that they're likable, so anything they do will be likable. I kind of think that's what's going on with Jeff Ltd. I think Jeff Seymour's a really interesting actor. I think the screen likes him. I have no doubt he could be a big hit. But in his eponymous show, he was smarmy and incredibly unlikable. His personal charisma didn't translate. And because he was the producer, the final say, the guy who worked without a writing staff (except for a writing partner) -- only Jeff's judgement ruled. And it resulted in a product that wasn't really very funny at all. It had its moments -- but nothing that pulled you through and kept you watching. It seemed narcissistic, not in a funny, "Larry Sanders" way, but in a creepy "Don't Hassel The Hoff" way.

The other conversation I had with a pro comedy writer the other day comes into play here, too. If Canadian comics, developers, and network people could realize one thing, please, please could it be this:

The cast of Seinfeld were not unlikable.

That's what gets said, constantly. "We want this to be like Seinfeld...or Curb...you know... unlikable."

Which is a desperate misread of the history of that show, and of the entire Larry David sensibility on display in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The cast of Seinfeld for the first few seasons of that show were VERY LIKABLE. You don't get applause for Kramer's every entrance because people don't like him. Elaine was sassy, and didn't take the boys' guff, George was a lovable loser. Jerry was bemused, sure, and shallow about dating women, but the point was he was the guy who would get dragged to see the baby. He was the guy who would give up the perfect apartment. He would let his friends inconvenience him. He didn't shove Kramer up against a wall when he came into the apartment and raided his stuff.

Yes, it took a while for an audience to find the show, because it was smart. Cheers took a whole season and a half to find an audience, too. But once that bond with the audience was there, it allowed them freedom. Freedom to start pushing the boundaries. Seinfeld pushed them pretty far. To some people, too far. (Including me. When George's fiancee died, I wasn't exactly on the program with George anymore.) But the point is, you can't push those boundaries with someone who you don't care for. If you don't care for the characters, why would you ever return, week after week?

People go back to Dog River because they like the people in Dog River. They want to spend time in that Trailer Park because behind all the swearing and dope smokin, those guys are pretty decent, eh?

This likability is intangible. And you can definitely overdo it. The things that make the characters likable should also make them funny -- so stop sharpening those pencils saying, "we need more heart here," Mr. or Mrs. Network. Giving dramatic scenes to comedy characters will not solve your problem. It will simply take all the air out of the supposed comedy.

Larry David in Curb gets into situations he doesn't want to be in because he's trying to be polite. (Aw, how likable,) but he's cantankerous and doesn't want to put up with the bullshit niceties (funny!) He just can't help himself. You accepted transgressive behavior from the cast of Seinfeld because these things were being done by characters you already liked.

You found them likable because they were funny and you found them funny because they were likable. And that very simple thing is what's missing from so many scripted comedy shows in Canada, be it Jeff Ltd, or...

...well, I'm certainly not going there. As always, YMMV. Think I'm full of it? Have at it below in the comments. And while you're at it, how about listing some more examples of TV comedy characters where what makes them funny also makes them likable?

Review: Why Durham County Rocks

For whatever reason, it seems, Canadians have a dark streak. Dark and a little perverse.

It's not something we talk about. We're generally far more comfortable looking south to the USA and tut-tutting at every school shooting and eruption of crazed murder and mayhem. "There," we tell ourselves. "There is a nation on the brink; we're fine."

There are cracks in the firmament, of course. Years ago, the CBC did a very successful miniseries about Colin Thatcher, a popular prairie cabinet minister who went to jail for killing his wife. Here in Ontario, the scars are still fresh from the horrible Karla Homolka-Paul Bernardo murders in the 1990's. Out west in Vancouver, people I worked with were split pretty evenly between those who couldn't tear their eyes away from the Robert Pickton trial, and those who simply didn't want to know anything about the whole sordid business.

Being Canadian means being a questioner. We see the larger American culture next to us in a fishbowl. Now and again the glass of the fishbowl distorts, and to paraphrase Nietzsche, as we stare into the abyss we find the abyss staring back at us.

I think that's generally given Canadians -- at least the ones in the cultural realm -- a serious case of the Heebie Jeebies. Canadian film is generally dark and odd, and though many will deny it, I kind of think that a lot of that comes from looking at the prevailing American view of the hero, and heroic figures, and seeing it as a whole lot of bullshit. That makes you want to go poke the body and roll it over and see what's underneath.

We tend not to trust heroes in this country -- unless they're simple and sanctified, like Wayne Gretzky and Terry Fox. We put our trust in institutions more than individuals. You can find it all in the dueling mottoes of both nations: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (which, as you students of history will know, was a last minute change from the more honest, but less soaring, "pursuit of property,") versus Peace, Order, and Good Government.

The problem with our cultural warriors: Canadians like to be entertained, too. And Lord knows those simple hero narratives the U.S. churns out by the flatload fill a nice, cheeseburger sized hole in us, as well.

The Americans manage to make heroes of Tony Soprano and Scarface. When you witness the American Dream 24/7 but don't really buy it, how do you make a hero narrative?

Durham County serves us up a hero, and then muddies the waters right away. As those waters grow murkier, the choices you're forced to make as an audience, the value judgements you're forced to generate -- are never pre-digested and easy. This is a show that keeps you involved by continually forcing you to evaluate how you feel about what you're seeing.

Mike Sweeney is a hard-boiled cop who's moving his family from the city to the burbs. Sweeney's had his share of kicks, lately. His wife has just come through a harrowing battle with breast cancer. His daughter is a moody and depressed outcast. And, we soon learn, his partner back in the city went down right before his eyes in a hail of bullets.

Mike is good hearted and righteous, but clearly struggling. As we peel the onion, we reveal guilt, infidelity, and a long- suppressed penchant for violence.

The other pillar of Durham County is Ray Praeger. Back in the day, Praeger and Sweeney were best friends. Something went down, over a woman. There was an accident, and Praeger's promising hockey career was cut short. Sweeney disappeared.

There's one other detail about Praeger that's important.

He's just become a copycat killer.

That's not a spoiler. One of the fascinating things about Durham County is they let you in on what's going on pretty much right away. Like the British Crime Drama CRACKER before it, or even old COLUMBO episodes, this is not a series about figuring out who the killer is.

The other standard way to go is to make the crime so byzantine and complex that it becomes a "how the hell is the hero going to figure this out?" story. Durham flirts with that, but ultimately, that's not its real target, either.

The show's been described elsewhere as a 'whydoneit,' and that descriptor is probably the most apt. What Durham County really wants to do is examine the issue of violence and our response to it. Part of the comfort of the American view of violent hero narratives is that the violent criminal is always the 'other.' They're fascinating to watch, but they are not us. Durham County doesn't allow you that luxury of distance. In fact, as the narrative unspools, the role of hero and villain flip and get twisted all about. As action piles upon action, you never quite lose your sympathy for the hero, but neither does he do himself or you any favors.

It's notable and interesting that Durham's entire top creative team are female. Notable because this particular view of violence -- male violence -- is full of arguments and counter-arguments that never seem to pierce the shell of a similar U.S. story. Mike Sweeney is a caring father and a bastard. He's a loving husband and a distant betrayer. He's a cop and a man outside the law. The women, interestingly, are not as complex as the men -- with the exception of Sweeney's daughter, Sadie. (Laurence Leboeuf) The familiar roles are here: unattainable object of desire, victim, mom, harridan... the women of Durham County struggle against these roles, but ultimately find it difficult to overcome them, because no one is being honest. They seek breakthroughs that are ultimately unknowable, because they don't know the secrets we do. I've seen plenty of narratives where the male characters were allowed to be emotionally stunted without consequence, and the female roles were sketchy and reductive (the daughter, the wife, the girlfriend.) I've seen the reaction against that -- where the female characters are all complex and interesting, and the male characters are either female-wish fulfillment figures, stereotypes or ciphers. But this is the first time that I've ever seen a story where a connection is made. A lack of honesty between the sexes -- the inability of the men to express their desires and thoughts not only drives the drama, but also renders the women in their lives incapable of helping them, or even helping themselves. Pretty provocative stuff.

All six episodes, scripted by Laurie Finstad Knizhnik ripple these themes out in an ever-expanding circle. The direction, especially the first four episodes by Holly Dale, are lush, moody, and beautifully composed. But there aren't the scenes you see in a lot of Can Drama -- where nothing happens but some character stuff. Here, the character stuff -- even the moments of stillness, always advances the plot. And the plot does advance, and twist. Characters make decisions that will hang them later. Choices have consequences, and the story advances, slowly, surely, and then finally at a breakneck clip as the various threads all come together - and the noose grows tighter. Drama is story. Story, story, story....It's such a simple thing, but a thing that so many shows in our country get wrong.

In the end, that's what Durham County has that so many other Canadian shows I've seen lack -- you are pulled from scene to scene.

Part of it is the brilliance of the casting. The daughter, Laurence Leboeuf, is exceedingly good. Hugh Dillon gives the performance of his career. He's finally managed to take that rock star intensity and pull it down to simmer: he's never less than interesting to watch. And Justin Louis as Ray Praeger takes you from sympathy to revulsion to pity and back again -- his portrayal of a damaged, dark everyman with shattered dreams and control issues makes you tense, and disturbed...it gives you that good heebie jeebie feeling.

These are interesting people who you want to spend time with. That gets you halfway there.

Without revealing too much, by the end of the six hours, you've reached a conclusion to the narrative that still leaves many, many threads open. There are plenty of places to go should TMN, Global, and Movie Central choose to return to Durham County. I hope they do -- it's definitely worth the trip.

Durham County premieres May 7 on TMN and Movie Central. Check your local listings.

Niiiiice

APPARENTLY, over on the Lifetime board for Blood Ties, they're working out the details of the Blood Ties Drinking Game.

Every time Henry tries to put a lighthearted move on Vicki, slam one.

Every time Vicki takes off her glasses, take one sip.

Every time Mike flirts with Vicki, slam one.

Everytime Henry goes vamp with black eyes and teeth...

or how about everytime Henry mentions dear "old" dad take a shot

Etc..

Yes, my pretties. You do good work. Yes.

Canadians Want Drama

JOHN DOYLE is on fire again this week. With his column in the Globe this morning, one can't really seem to shake the feeling that he's writing very pointedly to a group of CRTC commissioners sitting in a conference room in Gatineau, Quebec.

I realized something interesting last night, post-last post: I actually do want the CTV Globemedia - CHUM Merger to go through. I mean, in a perfect world, no. But now it's in motion, and the assets if the merger didn't go through would be less valuable. And if CTV was forced to sell some of the CityTV stations, then what did they pay money for? Obviously those are the big assets. That thought made my head hurt.

CTV has also been the best of the Canadian privates when it comes to the cause of indigenous programming. That praise is dubious, but it's true.

But Doyle picks up the baton this morning and goes somewhere else with it, by going back to those articles last month, the study that showed that Canadian networks spent way more on buying U.S. imports than they spent on producing programs. Doyle takes it a step further and points out that they even spent more money on supposedly "cheap" U.S. Reality programs than Drama. Ouch.

Last month, some figures were released by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. They showed that, as usual, commercial Canadian TV broadcasters have been spending more on buying U.S. drama than Canadian drama, but for the first time ever they are also spending more on rinky-dink reality and entertainment programs. The CRTC figures indicate that in 2005, about $101-million was spent on reality TV, talk shows and entertainment-news programs, while only $71-million was spent on Canadian drama.

As several interested parties have pointed out, this situation was created by the CRTC itself. Its 1999 decision to change the definition of "priority programming" has meant that "priority" now includes entertainment and reality shows, and that let broadcasters off the hook for making and airing one-hour Canadian dramas. Since then, the reality-TV craze waned and the most-watched, talked-about shows have been dramas. When most Canadians watch TV, drama is what they want to watch, and the majority of the most-watched programs in Canada each week are dramas. But we're not making any.

Perhaps, as the CRTC attempts to regulate all the takeovers and manoeuvres, it could take a look at its own record and do something positive for the makers of Canadian TV, not just the executives. It could demand more drama be made. Its own figures, and the situation in the U.S. market, make it an obligation.

Doyle also points out that in the current season, all the U.S. nets are feeling a squeeze from audiences. Everybody's down but FOX, and that's just cause of Idol. In fact, the only thing working on the U.S. nets besides Idol, is drama. Funny dat.

So while the Gatineau boys gavel, where are our players re: Drama?

• CHUM (soon to be CTV) has Across The River To Motor City and Blood Ties in the can, waiting to be scheduled. Also has Murdoch Mysteries shooting, or about to.
  
  
• CANWEST GLOBAL About to bow The Best Years; various other things in development (About to swallow Alliance Atlantis, which between their "drama in permanent downturn" past and "CSI:NY is History Content!" Present isn't looking very rosy right now.) Global is also pursuing a "it needs to have a U.S. sale" strategy before they'll greenlight a show. Practical, but it couldn't save Falcon Beach.
  
  
• CTV - Whistler season 2 in the Wings. Rumors said they were going to pick up another drama, but instead it looks like they may order a couple pilots. Which means they weren't sure. Also, Ivan Fecan is very involved. Pilots = a good step. We'll see.
  
  
• CBC - Slate of 3 new dramas announced, trying to go for broad appeal stuff. Will bow over the fall.
  
  
• ASTRAL/TMN/MOVIE CENTRAL - About to drop Durham County, which is at least a creative home run. Other stuff in development.
  

Will the CRTC step up and reverse the 1999 decision? Remember that instituting quotas isn't enough. We'll just go back to dumping Canadian dramas in bad slots with no promo. Apparently Canadian networks need to be saved from themselves...they're going to need more than a nudge to get them to back away from the cheap U.S. programming crack pipe, and no amount of whispering "Corner Gas, Corner Gas, Corner Gas" is going to get them there.

So is the CRTC going to extract from CTV the first plank in a new drama committment? That's what Doyle seems to be calling for. That would be great.

A girl can dream.

And There You Have It!

From Bloomberg News:

``This deal is done,'' said Stuart Langford, a commissioner with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. ``It's highly unlikely that anyone would tolerate us just saying no.'' He spoke at a hearing in Gatineau, Quebec.

``We are not in the business of killing deals,'' Konrad von Finckenstein, the CRTC's chairman, said at the hearings in response to a request to postpone a ruling on the acquisition until the CRTC updates its rules. That would cause a ``tremendous loss of value.''

Please sir, can we have some more? (money for Canadian programming, I mean.) 50% of the advertising market should come with a price, n'est pas?

Nobody Ever Tells The Writer

HEY HIVE MIND, I've just spent a few frustrating minutes trying to get some details about when a few episodes I wrote might be airing. But the schedule information for Canada, like most TV P.R. information in this country, is sorely lacking. And I've reached my attention expiration date for the activity.

So here's the deal. Two series, both shown in Canada on Teletoon.

The first is called CARL SQUARED. I really like the animation and the goofiness of this show, and enjoyed writing for it. Good premise: slacker teen has clone who does all his dirty work. I wrote two episodes, "Night of The Living Clones" and "Lights, Camera, Carl." I can't be sure, but I'm reasonably sure that the images I've got here are from these episodes.

The second show is called SKYLAND. I wrote three eps -- "King For a Day," (which I've seen,) "The Book of Worlds" and "Infiltration."

According to Wikipedia ( three of the most frightening words in 21st century English,) both the latter eps of Skyland have already aired. The eps of Carl Squared are listed on the website, but there's no episode breakdown to show when they'll be on.

If you see them listed, if you flip across one of them, do me a favor and drop me an email.

If you can help me out, great. If you want to speculate on the strange circumstance that not even the writer can access easy info about when things he's written go to air, well, speculate away.

Kisses.

EDIT 05/04: A very dedicated member of the audience relations department at TELETOON, name of Julie, wrote to tell me that the two Skyland eps in question won't be re-airing for a while. However, she also had this to say:

I have much better news for you regarding Carl Squared! You can catch “Lights, Camera, Carl” on May 17 at 12pm and 5pm (et/pt). As for “Night of the Living Clones”, this episode is scheduled to air this Sunday, May 6 at 5pm (et/pt).

Well, Geez. Thanks Julie! And Thank You, Interwebs!

Reaping and Sowing

I'VE HAD two conversations with people who I consider to be smart, thinking individuals in the last week who think that Rosie O'Donnell was fired from The View because she's part of the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement."

I happen to think that all of the conspiracy thinking I've heard about 9/11, from "Loose Change" on down, is softheaded, paranoid, and ridiculous.

But it has incredible traction, because everyone now knows that the United States Government lied to get America into Iraq. They opened this door.

The media has a lot of credibility to rebuild. They need to be a lot tougher on this government. And I think the Democrats should continue to refuse to engage with FOX News. It's time to call it like it is.

I read two front page articles in the NYTimes this past Sunday. One was an unlikely success -- how American troops are gaining traction in an area of Iraq where locals have finally entered an uneasy truth because they feel homegrown terror is a bigger threat. (The big caveat: it's a homogenous region without a lot of Sunni-Shiite interfighting) But on the same page, the story that U.S. rebuilding projects are already in disrepair and crumbling.

The pendulum is swinging, and if we don't really go hard at the truth, people are going to start to believe the really wacky stuff. Time to rip the bandaid off.

Save us, corporate concentrated media! Save us!

Ooooh...it's Out There

TODAY WE start the long process of once again backing slowly out of the room where all the babies are. (That's a Simpsons reference...Homer in a room with thousands of babies gathered just like The Birds...and he slowly pushes Bart and Lisa behind him and out the door without a word. Priceless.)

Reading Will Dixon's measured response to the great fanfic contretemps of '07 (no caps deliberate, let's all be clear about the status of this argument -- on both sides...ie: very small tempest, very small teacup) got me thinking about ideas and their expression, and it's sparked something that I think is interesting; something that writers deal with all the time.

Will touched on it yesterday in his post about a new CW pilot called The Reaper directed up in Vancouver by Kevin Smith. On the surface it would seem to be very similar to both The Collector and Brimstone -- and I bet others could come up with half a dozen other movies, from Constantine on down.

This is why copyright law does not protect ideas, but the specific expression of those ideas. If I do a vampire show, I am not copying anyone. But if I were to suddenly start writing a show about a female private detective who partners with a vampire and who also has a romantic triangle with said vampire and her ex-partner, a cop -- well, then I would expect some very nasty lawyer letters from my former employers, and an aggrieved book author.

Part of the interesting thing about creative works, especially ones that are ongoing, like a TV series, is that once you set the table (write a pilot, introduce characters, establish template and basic premise) the ideas that can spring from that aren't limitless. There are only so many threads you can pull. Sooner or later, you pull all of them.

It might take seven seasons. Or you might be a show like The O.C. One of the reasons why The O.C. burned out so fast was the rate that they chewed through story. Arcs that would take a season in other shows, that show threw away in four eps. They literally ran out of story.

When you set the table, and you have a room full of writers, there really are basic parameters of where you're going to go. You can be cagey about it. The example I remember well is that in the Pilot of The West Wing, you heard about Bartlet's daughter and granddaughter. Then, in the first season, they introduced Bartlet's youngest daughter, Zoe, as a character. It was a couple of seasons later when suddenly, Ellie, the middle daughter, showed up.

Now -- up til that point, Bartlet had only had two daughters. He'd only mentioned two. (You wouldn't meet the first daughter, Elizabeth, until Season 5) But if you tracked it back, they'd been very careful to never mention that he had only two. There was no reason they couldn't have a third.

It's said that Joss Whedon had the idea to give Buffy a sister in season two...but didn't wind up using the idea til a couple seasons later.

The point is, sometimes the turns and the twists can be sleight of hand, but most of the time you need to hide the ideas in plain sight. (You mention that Wilson has three ex-wives on House, you're going to meet one eventually.) In both West Wing and Buffy, they had to do some gymnastics to get their ideas in there. (West Wing, Ellie is estranged -- that's why we haven't seen or heard too much about her before; Buffy, there's hocus pocus and Dawn, Buffy's sister has a magical origin.)

When you hide these plot filaments in plain sight, it opens the possibility that other people are going to pull on them first. Because ideas and the expressions of them are funny that way. The more you build about characters and backstories and such, the more logical it becomes to go in a certain direction. As a writer, you can write toward that, or, if you're perverse, you write away from that.

Spec writers discover all the time the perils of the logical idea. You're trying to write a sample to get a job, and you're halfway through your draft or your outline and suddenly you turn on Smallville or House or Supernatural and there it is: your story. Or something close to your story. Every writer has this happen to them. And when it does, I say, you just gotta take it as encouragingly as you can: see? You do get the show. It's a badge of honor!

Now go back and start over.

I had a West Wing spec for years that got me work. I wrote it at the end of season one. By season five, they had done two or three of the plots in my script. Years and years ago, in my first attempt to become a TV writer (which I chickened out on) I wrote a Wonder Years spec script about Winnie running for student council president. They did that plot by the end of the series.

The thing is that this sort of thing happens to writers all the time, and there's an element of it that's boring and prosaic, and an element of it that's spooky and weird.

The previous examples were the prosaic ones. Here's the spooky: I was out yesterday afternoon with my friend Mark Askwith. He told a story of back in the day when the legendary comic writer was about to retire and give over his first comic series. And Mark was one of the guys they asked to pitch a story for it. There were four people in contention. Mark slipped his story to someone who was mutual friends with one of the other contenders, the guy read it, and freaked, and said, "You guys have to talk." Mark and this other guy had apparently independently written the same story. Then they found out that a third writer had written his story, and it had a few similar elements. The guy that got hired for the gig was the one who went in a completely different direction.

That's what happens, folks. How? I don't know.

Years ago when I was in University I was in a comedy show. We wrote our own sketches. I wrote a lot. A lot. Three days before we opened we went to see Second City, and saw the show. And three of our sketches -- the concepts were up there big as life.

There were a couple of people who were convinced that someone, somehow had copied us. But I never thought that. A couple of the sketches were topical; about stuff that was in the news -- so even though this was my first example of this happening, instinctively I knew that what we had here was just two people riffing off the same event and coming to a similar comic premise. One of the other sketches was a little weirder, though. I mean, it was a really out there kind of character piece based on a quirk that someone had told me about their days working in a restaurant.

And then the Second City show did a sketch with a remarkably similar thing....even some of the same jokes.

How did that happen? Beats me. To this day, I know for sure it wasn't a case of someone stealing from someone else. But there in the room, you would have to at least entertain the notion that somehow they'd gotten ahold of student written scripts and....I mean....

Naahhh.

In any case, I'm pretty glad that I never thought that Second City was copying me, because the talented guy in that show -- the young kid who I'd been seeing in Second City for a couple years, every week when I went to the post show improvs? Mike Myers. Whatever happened to that dude?

Sometimes ideas are just out there. It's the collective unconscious. I don't know. What I do know is through the years, I've seen many, many examples of people completely independently coming up with the very same idea, at around the same time.

It happens in science, too. The untold story of a lot of inventions, from the telephone to TV, is that people working completely separately on opposite sides of the world make discoveries at the same time. They come to the same conclusion. Who gets the credit is sometimes a matter of luck, sometimes a matter of chicanery. Philosophical concepts spring into being out of multiple mouths. Medical researchers at competing labs try the same thing at the same time, and wind up having to share the credit in the AMA Journal. Astronomers discover something on the same day.

So when you notice that Grey's Anatomy consistently does the same medical case two weeks after House, it aint copying, folks. It's kismet.