This is the continuation of
my first Parallel Intersections post.THE THING about movies that succeed or fail in the American marketplace, artistically or financially, is that they're allowed to rise and fail on their merits. Each success or failure is about that project and that project alone. It doesn't have to carry the burden of what it means for the industry.
There have been those movies that have done just that.
Heaven's Gate will forever be a movie that sunk a studio.
Cleoptatra, before it, was the standard bearer for a level of Hollywood Excess.
Yet in Canada, in English Canada, anyway --
every single film is subjected to this scrutiny. It leads to impossible heights that no project can meet, and a self-fulfilling cycle of failure. It also exposes faultlines that speak to something odd and wanting in the Canadian character -- the need for American validation (when something or someone does well in the USA, it's always news) and the grandiosity of purpose leads often to a certain type of producer fronting projects that are meant to be "so much more" than entertainment.
When we haven't even gotten the entertainment part right, for the most part.
***
The thing about that group of writers at lunch is that they all shared the best quality that writers can have besides wit: Doubt.
I've always believed that the best television and film writers aren't defined by their assuredness. It's quite the opposite. The writer who says, "it's brilliant!" when he or she looks at a finished script is never going to be as effective as the one who doubts. An agent friend of mine was relating the story of a top who he was thinking of representing. Keep in mind, this is a writer who was currently employed on a show that was a ratings success. "I don't even know why you'd want to represent me. I still have so much to learn." Of course the agent looked at him and said, "that's why I want to represent you."
That has profound implications for the issue of talent management in this country. Knowing that this is how writing talent thinks should affect the way that you deal with that talent. Yet it doesn't. From network executives to executive producers to publicists -- the Canadian industry is extraordinarily bad at managing and dealing with writing talent. The
WGC has horror stories a mile long of writers being berated for taking jobs when they weren't under option; of being asked to create shows out of whole cloth and then give the created by credit to a producer who came in with a napkin.
In order to move forward as writer, at some point you're asked to make bold choices. But you do so wrapped in a cloth of always having that other, questioning voice wondering if you're doing the right thing.
A producer who finds the way to support that voice and bring it out; to hold it up and to allow it to find the right path is someone who will be successful in helping to birth artistically sucessful productions.
But unfortunately, far more common is that the creative writer who has a lot of doubt runs up against the producer who has way too little.
And those producers will often shake their heads and bitch that they can't find good writers.
While the greatest writing room Canada never had sits at brunch divvying up the check.
But the doubt that can be useful in creation can be harmful out here, checking the reaction to work.
There are shows that are overpraised, yes, which don't deserve it. But also, just like in the first example, there can also be an element of voracious devouring of one's own. There are a lot of people out there who will insist that they are judging the Canadian work they see fairly, when they really aren't. They're looking for it to be bad, to fulfill this strange need Canadians have to savage their own -- until such time as they're validated down south.
Now, which is it in each circumstances? Is it fair critique of something that isn't very good, or is it something being judged to an unfair standard and not simply allowed to be?
Sometimes it's both.
If you're a creative person, with a creative person's doubt, that can be hard to take.
***
I've always been a sucker for American history. I just love it. So I was tremendously excited at the prospect of seeing
The Patriot. But I should have known better than to go see it in a Canadian theater.
From almost the moment the lights went down, any moment that nudged up against American mythmaking, there were snickers. And groans. The grabbing of the standard -- a rousing moment in any war movie, elicited over the top groans and catcalls.
Canadians' favorite sport was being played out in the theater -- the razzing and ridicule of American patriotism or sentimentality about their roots.
I had to finish watching the movie on video months later because after a while I couldn't follow the plot. The audience and their reactions were getting in my way.
Now the thing is, there's a large portion of the Canadian audience that doesn't just do this for American stuff. They do it for Canadian stuff, too. If there's a Tim Horton's cup in a scene, it's pandering. If the cop uses a Canadian place name reference, it's distracting.
English Canadian culture, because it has largely learned to define itself by being "not American," presents an incredibly difficult target to someone who says that they just want to tell a good story. Because part of the audience is always going to be looking for some element of Canadian-ness and seize upon it as an example of "trying too hard," or "Pandering." If you do an American style action hour, you're trying too hard to be American. If you put in Canadian stuff, "look at that, they're doing it!" It's like that audience at
The Patriot. They're not even looking at the story. They don't want to get past the trappings.
Quebec audiences, watching their own sitcoms and silly shows and serious shows, and loving them, don't really engage with the material this way. They're just looking to watch tv and enjoy themselves. So they do. And the people making the shows don't second and third guess whether they're going to be cited as being too this or not enough that. They just focus on the work.
***
The root of my friend asking about the rituals of the Catholic liturgy came out of his own dissatisfaction with the kind of experience he'd had in his church.
Not having ever been to most other Christian churches, I guess I had the Catholic's view of Protestantism, that it was all about getting rid of the worst parts of Catholic excess, streamlining.
Not so, said my friend. The key is right there in the word: protestant. In opposition to. Often, it seemed to him, a whole lot of things were done not because they thought about the traditions and what would actually work best in terms of a service, or a celebration of faith, or an exploration of that faith; no. What was done was done in terms of how different it was from how the Catholics did it.
There were a lot of arguments in his church, he said. Arguments drove protestantism -- all the splits that happened down the line. Baptists who would argue and take stands on the issue of, if the person isn't fully immersed in the water, are they truly baptized or are they going to hell?
As this culture filtered to the day and day, he wondered if all the arguing really got in the way of doing what the thing was supposed to do: which was be a celebration, a service designed to get the congregation to think about how they felt about God, and what was said in the scriptures; what that meant to put into practice in daily life.
That's why he wanted to know about what I got out of church, when I went to church. And I surprised myself, when I started talking about it, with just how much actually I had gotten out of it. The brief sermon, the codified sameness of the Catholic mass, the fact that it was set in stone with the feast days tied to the calendar, which made themeing a homily easy -- all of that made for an hour a week where I thought about spiritual conduct, moral and value choices. Lessons of humanism and helping your fellow man -- all the things, in fact, that you were supposed to be thinking about.
Now, this is one highly subjective conversation. Never in a million years do I want or plan to get into a discussion of the merits or values of one Christian religion over another, or even the notion of religion itself.
What struck me about it was that all the arguments that my friend seemed to be talking about --they were all over the wrong things. They took us away from talking about what was really important.
Back in my secular world, I guess that's how I feel about the Canadian TV industry at this point, too. We're all arguing about the wrong things. There's arguments that have nothing to do with content -- like the portion of the audience that will inject into every single discussion their contention that the CBC is too this or too that, or run by commies. There are the people who will discuss the ratings, and what do they mean, do they mean this or that, should we be creating this kind of show or that...
...you've got cable moguls who want to throw fits and make the issue their personal taste. Along the way, if that means denying successes like
Trailer Park Boys or even
Corner Gas, so be it.
Swirling, swirling around, as I dive back into development, it's with the knowledge that as much as I want to just focus on creating a compelling world that people will want to watch...well, the conversation in Canada always seems to be about all the other things first. I'm as guilty of it as anyone.
All these intersections, all these implications. I'm not sure what any of it means. I don't know what the future of the internet is. I don't know if there should be one fund or two, or if broadcasters should be mandated to run drama or not. I don't know.
I just wish we talked about story more. And I wish there was a place in Canada where they encouraged that.
Cause there isn't.
