The War Inside

WE ALL FACE IT. And now Slate is taking it on, fullstop.

A special issue and series of articles on ... procrastination!

That should be good for hours of fun, huh?

(Hey, don't look at me. I finished my draft.)

Pro·cras·ti·na·tion. How fitting that the word is lengthy and Latinate, taking its time to reach a conclusion. Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson once wrote that procrastination is "really sloth in five syllables." And yet the word denotes so much more than mere sloth or indolence: A procrastinator meticulously organizing a sock drawer or an iTunes library can't exactly be accused of laziness. Likewise, procrastination is not simply the act of deferral or postponement. It implies an intentional avoidance of important tasks, putting off unpleasant responsibilities that one knows should be taken care of right away and setting them on the back burner for another day.

The promise of "another day" is the key to the word's origin. It derives from the Latin verb procrastinare, combining the prefix pro- "forward" with crastinus "of tomorrow"—hence, moving something forward from one day until the next. Even in ancient Roman times, procrastination was disparaged: The great statesman Cicero, in one of his Philippics attacking his rival Mark Antony, declaimed that "in the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful" (in rebus gerendis tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est).

Mmmm. Delicious!

Tomorrow Afternoon: 90% Chance of Locusts

SO WHEN I arrived at the Filmport Border offices today, there was a giant sculpture of fruit. Kind of a "sorry we poisoned your entire production" bouquet.

That's fine. I, like the next person, enjoy a nice piece of fruit now and again. I like it even better when the preamble doesn't come complete with nausea and vomiting.

So it was somewhat surprising when Boy Wonder -- who eventually came through with a few pens, but not nearly enough, thank you very much -- suddenly piped up around 4:30,

"Does anyone smell that?"

I did notice a slight feeling of light headedness.

"Yeah, it's... propane. Or Gas."

"Yeah. It's Gas."

Boy Wonder picks up the phone and calls the Proper People. He explains what's going on, the very strong, strong smell we're all sensing at this moment. He's asked, quite calmly, if it "smells like Rotten Eggs."

"Dude, it smells like A GAS LEAK."

It's about this time that I notice that my eyes are burning a little. New Writer walks out of his office and leads the charge.

"I'm getting the hell out of here."

Intrepid Fellow Writer, next door, is only two pages from the end of her revised outline. And I'm on the last scene of my second draft.

But, you know, my eyes are burning.

I head for the door and Intrepid Fellow Writer squeaks, "I'm almost done!" and we think for a moment the sillies have gotten her and we might have to drag her out.

But no. Sense prevails. And as we stream for the exit, we see the faces of all the other recently poisoned, tar-nauseous denizens of The Border production team, all wearing their best, "Are you fucking kidding me with this bullshit again?" expressions.

And so it comes to pass that the last scene of Episode Two, Season Two of The Border was written thusly.

Gosh, I hope it's still in English and the brain damage hasn't got to me.

Hell of a time to purge a gas tank, boys.

I hope tomorrow's fruit basket is delicious.

Contempt of Parliament

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be simple. Just like Sarah Polley, just like the other pros, Director David Cronenberg was going to go before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday and say what he knew about Bill C10, and why it was bad policy.

Instead, it turned into farce.

Senator Goldstein: I have a point of order to raise. It takes precedence for the moment. I attempted to raise this question during Question Period in the chamber earlier this afternoon, but the Speaker ruled that it should be raised in committee. I am doing so now.

I understand that this morning the CBC broadcast news that the chair of this committee had so arranged the situation so that there would not be television coverage of our hearings this afternoon. Later this morning, we the Liberal members of the committee, forced the re-establishment of the coverage as soon as we discovered that it had been countermanded.

Colleagues, this witness, Mr. Cronenberg, will be addressing the issue of government censorship. What I just described is a further manifestation of censorship by this government, attempting to prevent the press and the people of Canada from hearing opinions and ideas which do not reflect the opinions of the government.

Now the government is attempting to censor a public hearing that deals with the attempts of the government to censor the arts in Canada. So much for transparency and honesty."

What followed was a pretty predictable and generally despicable back and forth. But the question remains open -- The Chair, David Angus, denied bitterly that he tried to pull the plug. He said that, in fact, he was the guy who tried to get the cameras in, once he found out there were no plans to televise David Cronenberg's presentation.

But another Senator came back and agreed the whole thing was fishy, since in a year and a half on the committee, this was the first meeting he'd ever heard of that wasn't planned to be televised...

Democracy - 1 , Conservative Playbook - 0

The partisan back and forth the rest of the day was equally predictable. Senator Tkachuk continued his weird attempts to justify the bill by saying that it had already been effect since 1995. He was corrected several times, and Cronenberg, trying to move the discussion along, patiently explained to him that whatever political point he was making was irrelevant. (As it has been every week, when he tried to raise it with Polley, the WGC, the DGC and everyone else. An industry with over 100 000 people is on the brink, the guy wants to parse "who's bad.")

Cronenberg wouldn't let him do it. He pointed out patiently that the outcry now, the situation now, the fact that NOW the Royal Bank is on record as saying it would reconsider gap financing films was the issue.

It is not a pretty thing, seeing laws made. It's terrible to see old people argue back and forth about something that has such a deep effect on your life, and demonstrate with every word from their lips just how deeply fucking out of touch they are.

It's enough to make your head explode.

Speaking of which, when he finally got to speak, Cronenberg was, of course, eloquent as hell. Excerpts of his testimony follow:

I went to Telefilm Canada 40 years ago, when it was the Canadian Film Development Corporation initiated by Judy Lamarche, I believe, to see about obtaining funds for an underground film I was making.

In the 40 years since then, there has never been a pornographic film made with government money. There has never been a criminal film made with government money. There has never been a hate film made with government money. Therefore, why is this happening now? I do not understand it.

The mechanisms that were always there in the Criminal Code and in the mandate of bodies like Telefilm are in place now as they were then. They work. They filter out all of those possibilities.

Those bodies are not allowed to fund projects that contravene the Criminal Code. Therefore, what is this really all about? I do not get it. I do not think we need it and I do not understand it.

Having said that, if it did not do anything negative or cause any problems, then you might say okay, let it go through. Let it become law. It will not change anything. Unfortunately, it has significant repercussions that perhaps the original framers of this clause were not aware of and that we are now all aware of. I am on the advisory committee of PEN Canada. PEN is an international organization that protects writers and journalists, et cetera. They are very upset and disturbed by the implications of this clause. It is not a bunch of hysterical, overly sensitive artists who are running around overreacting.

It is a real issue and it matters not only in terms of the theory of democracy and freedom of expression, but also in dollars and cents. Those of us who work in the film industry have to be tough. We have to have our feet on the ground because it is a business as well as an art form. A lot of money is involved in movie making. Youhave to balance your artistic aspirations with the realities of international finance, distribution, artistic awareness, et cetera.

The people who are being upset by this are telling you something that is real. It is not a hypothetical thing that does not matter. It is something quite substantial. I will assume these implications were not properly understood by the original framers of this clause. That is the way I prefer to think about it.

Having said how tough and down-to-earth artists are, I also like to think of us as the frogs of the ecosystem. Biologists are always looking at frogs because they breathe through their skin. They are the first to absorb any toxic elements that exist in the environment and they react by becoming quite deformed and die.

Artists are like that. That is our job. We have these antenna and we have this thin skin. Therefore, in certain circumstances, we are the first to become aware of dangerous toxic elements in the environment that other people may not be aware of as quickly.

I have read letters to editors saying these artists go to the government for handouts and now they are complaining that the handouts they should not get anyway will be cut off.

The film industry is a business. I have had the experience of being censored, first by the Ontario Censor Board. That was at a time when you could go to jail for five years for putting the pieces of your film that the censor board had cut back in your film and showing it. The projectionist could lose his licence and also be put in jail. One of the implications of this clause is that it is not easy to censor in a democracy. It is not easy at all. The mechanism of censorship is quite complex and difficult because, basically, you want to filter out the subjective. You want to filter out the idea that one person or three people in a closed room will look at your film and say, “I just don’t like it. So let’s suppress it.”

That is antidemocratic. It is not anything that I think anyone really wants.

However, it is what would result from this clause coming into law.

The issue is this: The government investment in most films is the foundation. All filmmaking in Canada is independent filmmaking. I do not mean student filmmaking; I mean independent filmmaking. By that I mean you do not have major Hollywood or Canadian studios that have their own source of financing. All Canadian films are independent films and government funding is the platform; it is the solid, security platform upon which all of those productions are built. I cannot think of one that was not built that way.

This clause would make that platform very earthquake prone. It would take away the solidity of it. That is why the bank has said that it could not accept that. They have loaned money to you based on the tax credit that they expect. Knowing that it could be pulled after the fact, why should they take that risk? As I said, there are no guidelines that can make that risk reasonable enough that a bank would take it. The film business is risky enough as it is. It is like a house of cards with the tax credit as the basis. You pull that out and the whole thing falls apart.

Therefore, this makes it very difficult for any producer. The whole structure that has been in place and has worked, as I said, for at least the 40 years that I have known and benefited from it will be destroyed. In essence, this clause negates the existence of Telefilm and the existence of the Canadian Television Fund. They might as well not exist. There will be nothing for them to invest in because everything will be seen as too risky.

A lot of money is involved. Once again, you have heard from producers of all kinds: Television and movie producers. This is not a hypothetical thing. This is much more real than the threat that I think is quite imaginary. The imaginary threat is that there will be the embarrassment of government funds somehow put into a film that is pornographic and contravenes the Criminal Code. That is a threat that has not existed for 40 years. However, the threat I am talking about is very real.

More on Why Reading Scripts is HARD, Damnit!

JIM HENSHAW has his own take on that Koo-Koo for Cocoa Puffs article I wrote about yesterday:

I've written a dozen pilots for US networks. Six made it to series. And the path from concept to final cut was always far from a smooth ride. William Goldman's Hollywood adage "Nobody Knows Anything" is never truer than in manufacturing a television pilot.

In some cases, the budget changed and key scenes had to be scrapped, shot more economically or completely re-imagined. Desired Actors became unavailable or were replaced after scene tests and the material had to be reworked to play to the strengths of the replacements.

Once or twice a secondary cast member shone and additional scenes were added to enhance their presence. Once or twice the reverse happened when a lead didn't live up to expectations.

From the first moment you watch dailies, the writers and producers become involved in a balancing act attempting to steer the pilot back to its original course and at the same time directly into the teeth of anything new and positive that's coming to light.

And from production designers to editors to composers, unforeseen elements were contributed to the vision or failed to deliver the desired result.

Of course, all of this was always accompanied and/or complicated by network notes. A development exec would be uncomfortable with a line reading and question an entire story arc. A VP of programming wouldn't like the lead actor's hair and demand some alternate choices. The company president might catch the latest blockbuster on the weekend and want a change in tempo or tone.

Once or twice somebody's kid would say something cute or hook into a new trend and we'd have to work that in.

The creation of a pilot is not unlike the gestation of any other living creature. The initial concepts of the participants are combined like strands of DNA. The nutrients of the talents consumed in the process begin to shape it, revealing its faults and strengths. Additional revisions are made to mend the missteps and facilitate what's working.

Even when the creatives and their network supervisors are "finished", the shaping of a pilot is still not done.

I was writing a pilot for CBS and meeting with my development exec on the afternoon they screened "Due South" for the first time. He was late getting back to the office and was obviously troubled. I asked what was bothering him. They'd liked the show, but some in the room had voiced concerns that the concept might insult Canadians. I'd already seen the pilot and didn't understand how that was possible.

"We make fun of all these Canadian institutions," he said, "The dog's named after one of your Prime Ministers." I assured him we'd find that funny.

I doubt my vote of confidence was a deciding one in getting "Due South" on the air. But given his uncertain mood that day, I've always wondered what would have happened if I'd suggested my countrymen would be offended.

Crazy, man. Who could be offended by Diefenbaker the Dog?

Q Looks Back on the Season That Wasn't

I'LL BE ON CBC Radio's Q today doing Tube Team duty talking about the end of the abortive season of 07-08, where all the viewers have gone, and why season finales have become insufferably lame.


Q airs at 2pm on CBC Radio, and again at 10pm. My little monkey dance with Tara Thorne should be on about halfway through the show.

No Joy In Mudville

TODAY AT THE FILMPORT OFFICE, home of the Season 2 Production Offices for The Border, they are tarring the roof.

So we're sitting here in the story department with headaches and the acrid stench of hot tar burning the hairs off our nostrils. The door to my office is closed. You can-NOT go in there right now.

I came out and observed to my fellow story 'fugees, "It smells like the Michelin Man's ass" in there.

But in a room full of writers, there is always an alt. A chance to 'plus.'

"...The INSIDE of the Michelin Man's ass."

Yeeup. That about covers it.

So whilst I wait for the meeting to end after which hopefully I can strike out somewhere to set up my laptop and actually get some work done free of crushing toxicity, let's take a moment to deconstruct a COMPLETELY HILARIOUS Globe & Mail article in the business section today.

No pilots, no actors, few scripts, and bidding starts now

GRANT ROBERTSON

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

May 14, 2008 at 3:31 AM EDT

Picking the next big hit has always been a gamble for TV programmers. But this year they'll be doing it blind - placing multimillion-dollar bets on several unproven series without even watching a single episode.

As Canadian TV networks head to Hollywood this week to buy new shows for prime time, they are bracing for what could be one of the strangest years yet for the industry.

Rather than settling into darkened theatres to screen pilot episodes of new U.S. sitcoms and dramas, Canadian executives will instead find themselves doing much more reading than TV watching.

Not even one in five new TV series being pitched to the Canadian networks in Los Angeles this week will be more than a script or a concept. Some may only be rough ideas sketched out on paper.

OH MY GOD! Do you mean to tell me that Canadian Networks might have to make a decision on ... just a script? You mean...like a... like a...

NETWORK DOES?

It goes on.

Networks usually like to see at least a finished pilot to get a feel for the cast and the story before they invest what amounts to tens of millions a year in the rights to such programs.

"We were offered some shows last week but they were based on kind of looking behind door No. 2, so we passed," said Suzanne Boyce, CTV's president of programming. "TV is an emotional experience. It depends on the writing, it depends on who's casting. So much can go wrong."

Oh yes. So much can go wrong.

The reality, of course, is that plenty can go wrong after the pilot, too. And does. Frequently.

The only way a show clicks and becomes successful is if the hardworking crew, the cast, and the writing team all gel. The writing department has to lock in and find a template for the show - and the only way to do that is by breaking story, shooting, and doing the work. You can pre-plan and try to take the random creative thing out of the equation...but the random creative thing is, in fact, the juice. I know it's scary if you're a bean-oriented person. But that's the gig. That's the business you're in. Wear a cup.

Most long-running, successful shows can point to a rough patch in that first six to eight episodes where hard lessons were learned. Sometimes that leads to a change in cast, or in writers, or other types of retooling.

In fact, separate and apart from the WGA strike, the other shoe that's dropped in the place where Networks actually make television is a reflection of the limitation of the very process the Canadian network execs quoted in this article pine for: the pilot process.

The last few years have seen tons of money shovelled to ever-more expensive pilots, which are produced at budget levels way in excess of what they'll be able to do weekly. Then, someone has to figure out how to make a show that looks vaguely like that flashy pilot, but on an episodic budget. That's gotten harder and harder to do, as the one-upmaship of flashy pilotitis has gotten worse.

So, in fact, even without the WGA strike, the move to fewer pilots and more series-off-script orders is forcing the executives down south to judge the material, and weigh the team - and then understand that even with all that in place -- it is still a crapshoot.

Three words. Back. To. You.

The good news is that maybe, just maybe, this is going to be a chance for executives who are "good with material" to shine, and catch the ear of the powermakers in their corporate boardrooms. That might help us all down the road.

It's easy for those of us who always have to start with a blank page and a vague idea to look at this article, shake our heads and snigger, but there's also an interesting hole or opportunity here for ... sigh ... Canadian networks, too, if they're daring enough to utilize it.

If you now have to judge projects before they're made, well, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that an awful lot like what your development department does?

So wouldn't it be an interesting thing if maybe you recruited some executives from, oh, I don't know, places where they read scripts? Stopped ghettoizing your own development people? Search afield, maybe even to other countries where they've made their own TV for some time now, and don't necessarily find the idea of judging material off the script, so daunting?

There's a silver lining here where you might wind up with Canadian execs who can actually judge material, with real life critical taste and sensibilities that mean that maybe reading a U.S. script and judging it, might help you in picking some stuff that, you know, maybe you could make too!

Or maybe it'll just be the same old thing. You know...aim low, do the minimum, and if you get into trouble, whine to the CRTC that your business model is imploding.

You gotta wonder when even the new guys sound an awful lot like the old hands:

Rogers, which bought CITY-TV last year and is making its first trip to the U.S. screenings, said at its annual meeting recently that the company intends to be "a significant competitor" to CTV and Global in the bidding for new shows. However, Tony Viner, chief executive officer of Rogers Media, noted that he wasn't sure how Rogers would evaluate new programs that are pitched only on paper or in meetings with the U.S. studios.

"It's going to be an interesting and challenging year, because of the writers' strike," Mr. Viner said. "It always sounds better when they describe [the show] than when you can see it."

So it does, man. So it does.

It's not just the tar, right? This actually actually ran like this? In the Paper?

Heh heh.

Funny old business.

Not A Good Year for Bloodsuckers (At Least, Ones Not Affiliated With the AMPTP)

SO, CBS HAS shitcanned Moonlight. I always thought the show was a bit half-baked. (The only vampire who can go out in the day time is Blade, and even he eventually got nailed by the silver bullet of tax evasion.)

But it does raise an interesting point, especially with True Blood waiting in the wings at HBO. What is it about vampire stories that makes them so appealing to a small audience, but not sustainable to a larger one?

(Remember, with due respect to the Legion of Whedonistas out there in the hills, neither Angel nor Buffy was ever really a hit, per se.)

Still, I only had tears to shed for one vampire tv series, and those tears are all done gone now.

But I will say this thanks to another media vampire...

Mazel Tov, Britney, for that How I Met Your Mother renewal!

A Certain Measure of Success, I Guess

SO, I'M ACTUALLY a little surprised at this -- not just because it happened at all (which I consider to be a good thing) but because it happened twice in the same week through two different emails.

Whether I've come out and stated it as fact on the blog before now, I've been working these last few weeks on Season 2 stories for The Border. We're currently prepping episode 1 in Toronto. We start shooting the end of the month and we'll be back on CBC in the fall.

Anyway, in the midst of breaking and writing scripts, twice in the last week I've gotten emails from people who started to "pitch" me episodes of The Border in the body of an email.

I say "start" because the moment I discerned that's where the emails were going, I deleted them.

Because I had to.

Writers are constantly getting pitched -- in cabs, in elevators, at barbecues... "You know what would make a good story?" people say. Mostly it's completely innocuous.

Unless you're a massive dickweed, you try to be gracious about it. People being genuinely interested in what you do is a nice (and rare) thing. And sure, maybe there's a long way between the story that your taxi driver thinks would be a good story and, well... Taxi Driver, but if the only thing you're giving up is your attention for a few minutes, hey, I'll take the human contact and learn from it.

(at left: "put down the story idea and step away from the brad...")

Where things get dicey, is when you're working on a show and someone sends you an email or tries to pitch you an idea for that show. Because if you're on staff for a show, you don't own it. The underlying characters and situations aren't yours. You may be hired to generate story ideas, and new adventures for the characters; and, in fact, you do have some ownership and copyright in that underlying story -- but not the overall world.

One of the first things you do when you're hired off a pitch to a TV show, is to sign an episodic contract. These are big, unwieldy, scary legal contracts that are thick like the phone book and just about as impenetrable. But somewhere in there is a clause where you have to affirm that what you're writing is going to be your own work. 100 % your own ideas. Yes, you might be using their characters, but what they do -- that's out of your own head.

So when someone out of the blue sends you a story idea it sets off all sorts of alarm bells and the only thing -- the ONLY thing you can do -- is immediately delete it.

Because yes, ninety nine times out of a hundred the person is totally reasonable and earnest and has no designs on you whatsoever and would never think of suggesting that somehow you stole their idea; or worse, they might even just want you to HAVE their idea -- for FREE -- because they like the show!

But there is that 1 out of 100 who doesn't think that way. And that 1 out of 100 can ruin a writer's reputation.

As we found out in the Great Fanfic Contretemps of '07, there are enough, shall we say charitably -- enough people lacking in perspective out there to look at it exactly the wrong way, which is why (aside from all the slash weirdness) that many writers like me are a bit skeeved out by Fanfic.

TV is about establishing a world, and the rules of the world, and coming up with characters to populate that world. The funny thing is that most good TV is meant to be a mix of the familiar and the new -- but you actually need both. You want Dr. House to always act like Dr. House, but you don't want to see the same case you've seen before. The dynamics of his relationship should be the same, bu they should still develop...ie: not remain completely static.

Because there are patterns in TV -- that mix of familiar and new -- it's often quite possible for someone who's watched the show to anticipate what comes next. We all do this. A lot of the times we're wrong, but sometimes we're right. That's part of the fun. (I'd even say that the shows that you wind up liking most aren't the ones that you can NEVER predict; and certainly aren't the ones you can ALWAYS predict; but the ones that you can only SOMETIMES predict.)

So if you're a fanfic writer, or even somebody who wants to say, "hey you know what would be a good episode" of X series -- it's quite possible that you'll come up independently with an idea that the story team comes up with -- because the elements are all laid out for you to build on. And the more history a show builds up, the more you can build on. So, ironically, the closer you're likely to get to what the real writers come up with.

Baby Writers who are coming up with their first spec scripts (which are kind of like audition scripts -- professional fanfic, if you will, I know, I know -- it's complicated) are often dismayed to find that just as they've broken their story, lo and behold, the real show does that very idea.

I always tell 'em "Good! That means you're on the right track."

Well, I tell them that after, "Wow, that sucks, and yes you have to start over."

For a couple years, I was caught between my love for HOUSE and my feeling I could write those characters and my utter hopeless lack of medical knowledge...and the one sliver of an idea I had was that HOUSE had to deal with an aphasic patient. And then, lo and behold, HOUSE did the aphasia episode. Of course they did. It was too good an idea not to do.

Why am I using HOUSE here? Because in the middle of battling the Fanfic types last year, an episode of HOUSE written by Doris Egan aired. And lo and behold, not a day later, some nut somewhere who had written a fanfic on the same theme and posted to a group, or it might have even been to her blog, "OH my GOD, do you think she read my idea? Do you think she STOLE IT?!!!!!!"

The short answer is no. We don't read your ideas. We don't steal them. We don't want to read them, because we don't want to open ourselves up to being brained in the head with that fifty pound contract we had to sign saying we weren't going to be dirty rotten plagiarisers.

Once upon a time, before I started writing professionally, I wrote a spec script of THE WONDER YEARS, and actually got the Exec Producer to read it -- only AFTER I signed a three-page document acknowledging, in fact, that I waived any and all claims on the material. Ie: the "I'm not a crazy person" piece of paper.

I'd like to say, "I'm sorry" to the two fans of the blog who sent me story ideas for THE BORDER. I'm sure you're fine, upstanding citizens and would never dream of causing trouble for a hardworking TV writer. (Or even a reprobate like me.)

But I just can't take that chance.

So please, no ideas, 'Kay?

(This is the same reason why I can't read your spec scripts for The Border, which has been another request from a couple of readers. Sorry.)

By the way, I do recognize that the fact that there is that interest means the show has struck a chord. And yup, I think that's way cool. But I'm afraid this is just the way it has to be.

Blame the lawyers.

They ruin everything.

And if you're a lawyer and now you're totally offended that I...you know what...screw it -- you're getting paid by the hour!

In other Border related news, here is the schedule that CBC has finalized for repeating the Border's first season this summer. (There's only 9 weeks, so not every episode is being repeated.)

16-Jun-08 Eps. 101 1001R
Pockets of Vulnerability

23-Jun-08 Eps. 102 1002R
Grey Zone

30-Jun-08 Eps. 103 1003R
Bodies on the Ground

07-Jul-08 Eps. 106 1006R
Physical Assets

14-Jul-08 Eps. 107 1007R
Family Affairs

21-Jul-08 Eps. 108 1008R
Enemy Contact

28-Jul-08 Eps. 111 1011R
Civil Disobedience

04-Aug-08 Eps. 112 1012R
Grave Concern

25-Aug-08 Eps. 113 1013R
Blowback

All repeats 9pm ET/PT

The Border returns with Season 2 this fall.

Pilots, Cancellations and Upfronts

FURTHER TO MY post below, I've already gotten a couple of comments and a couple of emails, so I just thought I'd jump in and say I don't really do the comprehensive upfront thing. That's not my bag, really. Below, I commented upon what caught my eye.

If you want to follow more closely the details of the announcements of pickups and shove-outs, there are several wonderful resources I'd like to point you to now. These are the same ones I read.

First, for timeliness and scoopage nobody beats the Queen, Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily. But her reportage is sometimes a bit inside, expecting you to know the basics. If you don't, there are some good places to start.

Shawna Benson at Shouting Into the Wind always cooks up an exemplary writers' take on pickups and cancellations. It's excellent and less press-releasey than some.

In terms of journalistic forays -- I recommend the TV Decoder Blog at the New York Times, Maureen Ryan's The Watcher column is always a good read, (cause she writes from a 'regular American' perspective.) And, of course, there's The Futon Critic, which might just be the best TV related site on the web.

Any question you have about what's canceled, what's new, what's renewed and why will doubtless be answered far better than I could even attempt to do by these fine sites.

Happy surfing!

Let A Thousand Doomed Letter Writing Campaigns Bloom

CANCELLATION AND PICKUP notices are starting to flow forward now. The ones that have caught my eyes so far:

Eli Stone, very worthy in its freshman outing, gets a pickup for 13.

Life On Mars, the American version, finally gets a pickup.

The roar you hear from the Internet is the Whedonesque fans, now that St. Joss's Dollhouse has a series pickup.

And Back To You and October Road both got canned. Which just goes to prove, chickens, it aint the pedigree it's the execution that matters.

Anything else y'all are looking forward to?

Boys Keep Swinging

I'VE BEEN INTRIGUED by the concept of CBS's upcoming SWINGTOWN ever since it was first announced. The series seems to be such a trainwreck of weird collisions. There's the subject matter: mining for drama the licentious, sexually freer 1970's amidst the climate of today's much more restrictive TV landscape seemd like an outside bet. Doing a show that screamed cable on a major U.S. network seemed like even more of an outside bet. Doing a show like this on CBS -- a network where the charming Love Monkey was "too out there," seemed downright retaahded.



But in yesterday's NYTimes, the first major article I've read about Swingtown raised a number of other questions and maybe, too, a possibility or two.

What if it's not cynicism on CBS's part, premiering this series on June 5? What if they're actually courting the controversy, and looking to brand this as the "must see" summer show? It takes a lot to bring Americans to the set in the summer, but remember that it is CBS who broke through years ago with Survivor, the must-see summer show that nobody saw coming.

I know that it's extremely unlikely that I'll be watching much TV this summer. But then again, if you go back and look at last summer, that's when all these great, weird series -- including Mad Men, debuted.

The conventional wisdom says CBS is dumping Swingtown...just like the chatter around Toronto the last week has been how the Friday night timeslot for Canadian acquisition Flashpoint (starts July 12) is proof that that show is being dumped on the air too.

But what if that's not what's going on at all? What if the 52 Week season is real?

Remains to be seen, I guess. In the meantime, peruse the fine Times article on Swingtown here.

These Jackboots Made For Walkin'

THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG.

Keep in mind, Please, as you read the following story that Bill C10, has not, in fact, even been passed yet.

Canada Border Services officials recently held up footage from the film Love and Savagery, a tale of passion and longing set in Ireland and Newfoundland, because they suspected it was pornography, its producers say, and they blame legislation currently under review by the Senate.

The movie's producers shot scenes in Ireland last month, including some in a Catholic church, and had sent footage to Montreal for processing. The film was held for days by border officials at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

"All of a sudden this batch of rushes got held up day after day after day at Canadian customs," a bemused John N. Smith, the film's director, said in an interview from St. John's, where shooting on the Ireland-Canada co-production continues.

"There was a big kerfuffle and they suspected us of being involved in the pornography trade. They were insisting they were going to send it off to the RCMP lab to develop it to see if we were engaged in pornography."

Both Smith, who directed The Englishman's Boy and the award-winning The Boys of St. Vincent, and Kevin Tierney, the producer of Love and Savagery, suspect the menacing arm of Bill C-10 was at play.

The controversial bill, currently being debated in the Senate, would allow the government to withhold tax credits from film and television productions it deems offensive.

"There's now a kind of attitude that permeates the bureaucracy based on the signals they're getting from the elected ministers," Tierney said.

Niiiiiiiiiiicccce.

Kirk Shaw on Rewriting History

FURTHER TO MY earlier post about John Adams and the value of emotional truth versus strict historical truth, the writer of that miniseries, Kirk Shaw, has a very fine piece in the New Republic about what was changed for the miniseries and why.

The "truth" I sought to illuminate in the miniseries was emotional and intellectual rather than literal. With every historical project I've done, the next-day bloggers often make the assumption that filmmakers alter "facts" either out of ignorance or negligence. In fact, a good deal of soul-searching goes into every deviation from the record; nothing is arbitrary. Some changes are made deliberately from the outset, with an eye to the overall structure of the piece; others arise as a result of production exigencies. But all aim to further the broader goal of making "history" accessible in dramatic form.

A script must be fluid as it moves off the page and onto the shooting floor. Two weeks before we were due to wrap shooting in Hungary, where daytime temperatures often exceeded 107 degrees, one of the two soundstages on which we had built the interiors for Adams's house in Peacefield was consumed in a fire. As even a one-hour delay in shooting was out of the question, scenes originally set inside the house were restaged outside. Unexpectedly, without a single change in action or dialogue, the scenes played more autumnal, more elegiac than they would have indoors, greatly adding to the completed episode's mood and tone. (Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the set caught fire on July 2 last year, the same day in 1776 that the Second Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain, and the day Adams always thought should have been celebrated as our true Independence Day. I like to think of it as the ghost of John Adams encouraging us to strive ever harder for "truth, nature, and fact.")

Experience has taught me to listen to actors' and directors' insights and to be flexible as far as changes are concerned, especially when such precise actors as Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are involved. Bad actors often clamor for more dialogue; it is the good ones who understand the need for less. In the course of shooting, some 30 percent of the originally scripted "pillow talk" between John and Abigail fell away; at times--as in the reunion scene that opens Part 4--it vanished altogether. The characters' very inarticulateness said more about the awkwardness of their situation than any words possibly could.

The process of screenwriters, academics, and popular historians, I think, is much the same. We make our choices from the historical record to tell the story that best suits our purposes. The line between "history" and "drama" is a fine one, indeed. It is in the intersection between those two different, but not always mutually exclusive, realms that our John Adams miniseries exists. Hopefully, our viewers will utilize it as another tool to construct their own vision of our founding past.

This is an important subject, and needs to be discussed both by creatives, and historical advisers. There is a prissy tyranny about these days that surfaces any time a "based on a true story" comes out.

It's the kind of pedantic, plodding thinking from nitpickers and historical accuracy Nazis that would deny us the pleasures of Richard III because, say, he weren't no hunchback. (And was actually a pretty good king, too.)

H/T to Jaime Weinman

Nine Inch Nails and the Mad Pulp Bastard

FROM THE DEAD THINGS MAILBAG:

Bill Cunningham writes:

Since this whole Story2Oh Facebook debacle, the whole argument made by the "new media" types was that "people want transparency so they don't feel like they are being used to sell things."

To that, I have to point every last stinking one of them to this:

http://www.42entertainment.com/yearzero/

This is 20 tons of cool that is wrapped in both the digital and real worlds. Interactive, intriguing and oh yeah, calls "bullshit" on the whole transparency argument. I am going to have to study this further. It could take my espionage series to a whole new level of "story."

Absolutely, spot on, Bill. I remember bumping up against some Year Zero stuff in the last little while, and not knowing exactly what it was, but knowing it was really cool. It works on a level beyond. Kind of like that weird spate of Val Kilmer face graffiti that appeared on walls around Toronto last year.

The convergence of art and new media is going to happen. It's just probably not going to happen anywhere near Toronto, or with many who attend CaseCamp.

The cautionary tale remains, creatives: before you get into bed with some marketing type, be sure to kick the tires. You don't want to wind up having 2003 arguments in 2009/10...

World at Six

I'M GOING TO be in a piece on the World at 6 today on CBC Radio in a story commenting about this.

EDIT: The helpful CBC Radio producer called back. Apparently the health of the Canadian broadcasting industry doesn't rate the 6pm slot. Denied!

The story will air either at 6, 7, or 8am tomorrow on World Report.

If you're up at that hour, let me know if you hear it. I sadly, will not be listening at that hour. CBC News before coffee makes it very difficult to get out of bed. (Not just CBC News..pretty much any news.)

I'm getting notes now. The pen situation is unresolved.

Care And Feeding of the TV Writer

SO, IMAGINE THE SCENE:

A Story Room. A windowless space with bad carpeting, dusty and flaky corkboard walls, and an oval conference table. It's morning, 11 am, say, and we are in full swing. There was a bit of jockeying over the "good chairs," and some settling before optimum coffee placement was achieved, but there's also a deadline to be met -- the First Draft of the new season is being tabled. It must be vetted and punched up so it may go out. The crew is waiting to prep.

So the notes come. Dialogue tweaks here, and there. Discussions of characters' intent and motivations. Various alts proposed, considered, tweaked, dropped. You grind on through page and scene.

It's collegial and professional. Sure, there aren't the flights of fancy -- the digressions and dissections of midget porn, Filthy YouTube Videos, or Ass Babies that might grace other, more ... shall we say ... fithily fecund story departments... none of that obtains, but everything is proceeding at an average, brisk pace.

And then Boy Wonder, the Story Department Coordinator makes a fatal mistake.

"So," says he, with his loping, deer like eyes, "we're putting in a STAPLES order and we wanted to figure out, uh, maybe, the pen thing."

Eyes light up.

There is a silence.

And then, a ten minute, animated, digression explosion of joy and engagement.

"The stabilo Gel writer! In black!"

"We need RED, too, don't forget Red."

"What's that one there? Right there?"

"That's the Unibal Signo."

"How much are a box of those?"

"Fifteen"

"We need them. In Black."

"What about Blue?"

"Blue, really?"

"I like Blue. I like the way it contrasts on the page."

"Freak."

"We need the Red, too, don't forget about the Red."

At about this time, Boy Wonder, all sideburns and furrowed, massive brow, starts to back away. But there's nowhere for him to go. The standard, Red Paper Mate Ballpoint Pen is picked up, menacingly, and waved about -- the standard of an advancing army; the harbinger of a fate worse than... well, making coffee.

For these Red ballpoint abominations dot the table. Fistfulls of them. They are the ill-fated, rotten fruit of an earlier order. Unused, unloved. They are the retarded, redheaded stepchildren of the International Brotherhood of Writers. The offending pen is fired at Boy Wonder with a vicious toss.

"Not these. Not this limp, unsatisfying, cromulent piece of shit!"

"That pen is like ASHES IN MY MOUTH."

"Stylo! Stylo!"

"Okay, so is it decided? The Uniball Signo in Black, and the Stabilo Gel in Red."

"Wait, wait! The black there is .5"

"What?"

"It's the .5. Most people prefer the .7!"

"Now that you mention it, I prefer the .7."

"Me too."

"Yup."

"Okay then."

There is sweat.

There are flushed faces. Breathing is steady and deep, eyes focused and ready.

Arms are coiled for further action. The table pulses with bursting, crackling creative energy. We have never been so goddamn alive.

See, the sad truth is that there are topics that will energize any writing room. That will pick it up, tip it on its axis and spring it forward with a burst of supernova like intensity.

These subjects generally tend to be ranked in this order:

1. What's for Lunch.
2. Pens.
3. Sex.
   
   (Yes, yes. Sex is #3. Don't judge.)
   
   
4. Printers/Computers/Writing Software
5. Moleskin Notebooks
6. The Complete OED (Online version or 2 volume Complete version with magnifying glass)
   

There are other slots, too, but I leave those open to you to fill on your own, as they are subject to regional variation.

Boy Wonder has flown very close to the sun this day, and in the glow, and the heat of the Pen Discussion, he senses his wax wings starting to melt. Perhaps it is this which causes him to swallow, and say the following ugly, nearly suicidally self-destructive thing:

"Uh, I'll see what we can do. But...No guarantees."

Oh. Oh. Boy Wonder.

You have opened Pandora's Box this day.

Woe betide you if you don't deliver the goddamn pens.

Nerds Are People Too!

YOU KNOW HOW I know this? (Well, besides the fact that I probably am one?)

They make the same dumbass mistakes as the rest of us.

When last we spake of Jpod, CBC's ill-fated adaptation of the Douglas Coupland book, it was canceled, the producer blamed CBC for not (yawn) promoting it properly, and the show's tiny fan base vowed to fight on for a second season.

It called to mind that moment I had a few years ago at an event celebrating new CBC Comedy Pilots, when the creator stood up and said, "we wanted to make a show for people who don't watch TeeVee!" And I thought, "Um, shouldn't you master the people who are watching first?"

Jpod was a troubling exercise for the CBC from the beginning, suffused with plenty of good and bad.

The Good: it did have an appeal to a younger audience
The Bad: they don't watch CBC

The Good: the fan base was passionate
The Bad: they were tiny

The Good: they pointed out that Jpod was one of the most heavily bit-torrented shows on the Interwebs
The Bad: Why the fuck would CBC or any network consider the fact that a huge audience chose to illegally pirate the show and not watch it on air a good thing?

CBC did try tinkering -- they moved JPod to Fridays and swapped it with MVP. Interestingly enough, though the fans complain that move killed the show, the numbers which were dropping like a rock actually ticked up a bit on Fridays. Evidently not all nerds are cool and stylin out on a Friday night. (After all, isn't that Friday death slot where X-Files became a hit. Oh yes, it surely is.)

Anyway, it was all too little too late.

(And some of the too little too late was also creative: the strongest shows that Jpod did were the last few -- the ones that few people saw. Also, you could strongly make the argument, I think, that Jpod was never, ever, ever a show that should have been an hour.)

So now we're left with the inevitable fan campaign to Save Jpod. Officially, I'm thrilled by this campaign. Because, damnit, it's a fan campaign to save a Canadian show!

That's awesome.

But there is the part of me that feels oogy, because, hey, what do you know...the nerds of Jpod are out there committing every fan campaign mistake in the book.

Evidently, they've chosen May 19th to send all sorts of Lego figures to CBC people who could (but won't) bring the show back for a Season 2.

Sigh.

There's all the other stuff in there, too. All the stuff that I wrote about in my Emily Post's Guide To Save-Our-Show Campaigns.

• They vastly overestimate the size of their audience (the selection error problem)

• They vilify and talk about how stupid the CBC is and how they'll never watch it again.

• They focus their efforts strictly on their internet and Facebook audience -- failing to grow their efforts beyond that to an audience that will actually increase their impact and make it wide-ranging.

• They overestimate signs of "success." (Ie: the fact that you're being streamed on "the new WB.com!" doesn't mean you are loved. It means you were dirt cheap to buy.)

And on, and on, and on. Yup. Nerds is smart. But they're not so smart that they can't make the mistakes of every other TV fan.

There's something comforting in that, I guess.

*Oh, and if you're at the CBC and you get a whole mess of Lego, may I humbly suggest figuring out a way to send it here?

C10 Goes To The Show

SEE? WHEN I'M heads-down in a script I miss an awful lot.

Jaime Weinman at Macleans Magazine tipped this morning that the contretemps over Bill C10 in Canada made The New York Times over the weekend, complete with a nice fetching picture of Sarah Polley:

Josée Verner, the heritage minister in the Conservative government, said during an appearance before the Senate committee that the measure was not an attempt at censorship but simply a way to block subsidies for films that are “potentially illegal under the criminal code, such as indecent material, hate propaganda and child pornography.” Ms. Verner did not explain why current guidelines that ban makers of pornographic films, among other things, from even applying for grants were inadequate.

A key point. And remember: the big amendment that Liberals and Creatives are pushing for the contentious clause is something that the Conservatives, if they really are genuine in saying they're not trying to pull a fast one, should have no problem with:

Simply amend the clause to specify that the review, and the potential pulling of a tax credit, will only apply to those films or TV shows that contravene the criminal code.

In explaining the controversy to an American audience, the explanation of why Canadian film and television is partially supported by government is divorced from the ideological pissing that goes on every time the subject comes up in this country. Instead, Polley's matter-of-fact summation is allowed to stand:

“I have heard it suggested many times in response to our attacks on this bill that we are free to make whatever film we want but with private money,” Ms. Polley told the committee. “It is a suggestion that, unfortunately, has absolutely no basis in reality. Every Canadian television program and film that I and any of us have ever been involved in has involved some public financing. When you tell artists to use private money, it is essentially telling us to leave the country.”

So the fear of many creatives is here. The more this story circulates -- especially once it gets beyond the USA -- the only country where the state, in fact, doesn't have a huge investment in protecting homegrown cultural product -- the more we risk ping-ponging back to the days of The Tin Drum, where Canada was viewed as a prissy little backwater. We also risk throwing our lot in with the very cultural forces in the United States whose influence (finally) seems to be on the wane. Gotta hand it to Canada, we do find new and creative ways to be slightly behind the times.

The idea that the Conservatives will bring this to a confidence motion is almost too ridiculous to contemplate. The votes they will gain on this issue are miniscule -- it's red meat to their base, sure, but it's not like there are more votes to be had in the West for the Tories. And the one place where they actually DO care about culture in this country, Quebec, is the other place where they hope to pick up votes.

Again, though, what's important to remember here is that this is a tax policy bill. The way the bill is projected to work, is not the way that it will work in reality. The Conservatives are being disingenuous and they know it.

In theory, the bill will allow the Minister of Culture to review films after they're made, and if they're deemed not suitable, withdraw the tax credit.

In reality, no bank will gap finance any film or TV show where the tax credit might eventually be questioned. So anything with edge will not be able to get gap financing. (Unless it's not Canadian, in which case, they can shoot here and get the credit, another element the Times pointed out, in their usual understated way, as "curious.")

The Conservatives know that coming out in favour of anything approaching censorship would be politically disastrous in Canada, a country where a majority of the people are socially left of their party's stated positions.

That's why these provisions, this is idea of an extra level of review, are not being proposed, say, at the Telefilm or CTF level, before projects get made.

This is the Tories' Hail-Mary attempt to get the same effect, without having to take the political hit for being in favour of censorship.

That might be an arcane thing to explain on the campaign trail. But try us. I Young People Fucking Dare you.

What every person who makes their money on cultural stuff in this country needs to understand is that this is that moment. Your government is telling you that you either play their way, or you leave. If you don't want to spend your days working under the table in the Southland, or if you're not ready to give up making money in an industry that supports tens of thousands in this country, then maybe it's time to suit the fuck up.

Wayne and Shuster: 50 Years Since the Rilly Big Shoo

ONE MORE THING I missed when I was pounding out pages yesterday: a genuine TeeVee milestone. Yesterday marked 50 years since Wayne & Shuster first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Their popularity was massive, and from a time when the subject of Canadian Television was yet to get wrapped up in every other ridiculous regional conflict that roils Canada.

It's way before my time, and most of the W&S I've seen were in archived bits when I was at Ryerson, or in the CBC Archives, or at the Paley Center. Their comedy material, being kind of vaudevillian, does not hold up well. But nevertheless if you want a proper appreciation, truck on over to Bill Brioux's site.

Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster were quite simply the biggest Canadian TV stars of their day. Wayne was brash and outgoing, all eyes and ready grin; Shuster looked like a banker or a lawyer. He may have been more dialed down but this team did not really have a straight man, more like two comedians playing at different speeds.

Their long-running comedy/variety show was top-rated at CBC. But it was as Sullivan's "good friends from Canada" that they really made their mark. If Sullivan liked you, you got put into a six week rotation along with other comedy acts like Allen & Rossi and Stiller & Meara. And you became very, very famous overnight; just ask Paul McCartney and Ringo Star what Sullivan could do for your career.

I was a year old when the duo had their Sullivan debut. I remember many of their subsequent appearances; my parents would always remind me that they were from Canada. People took plenty of pride in their success.

Wayne & Shuster became our comedy ambassadors, representing Canada to a vast American audience. But it wasn't just that they were Canadian that set them apart. More important, probably, was the fact that they were college grads, two fellows from the University of Toronto. Most of the big TV comics back in the '50s, like Red Skelton, Milton Berle or Jackie Gleason, were from the school of hard knocks.

• Brioux's full appreciation is here.
  

R.I.P. Old Tv Habits

YESTERDAY'S NY TIMES had an interesting appreciation by Ginia Bellafante for the NBC show MEDIUM. In a piece called "Terrifying, Not Unlike Your Real Life," she makes a number of observations.

Created by Glen Gordon Caron (and existing at a significant tonal distance from “Moonlighting,” his other great contribution to television), “Medium” can be genuinely hard to endure, especially at home, alone, late at night (it is shown at 10 p.m. on Mondays), without wondering whether you should check behind the bedposts for sadists and other wack jobs.

Something terrible has always just happened, or is about to, and the viewer bears the apprehensive weight of Allison’s foreknowledge, having witnessed the violently detailed dreams that disrupt her sleep almost every other nocturnal hour. (No one has ever needed a regular prescription of Ambien more.) Sometimes Allison’s forecasts can keep a rape or a killing from occurring. Mostly, though, Allison receives random images in the night — a woman, for example, fighting with her husband in a hotel room in France — only to learn, usually the next day, that someone who looks like the person she dreamt about has disappeared, which propels her toward the evidence that allows the authorities to solve the case. The woman in France, Allison intuited, had been abducted by her embittered ex-husband and then psychologically tortured in a re-creation of the honeymoon suite in Paris that the couple had stayed in years before.

“Medium” borrows from the conventions of classic horror the idea that real nightmares result from arbitrary or misplaced trust. The camera lingers on the faces of victims in waiting as they put their faith in attackers whose malevolence they cannot yet see. An episode early this year revolved around the killing of a little boy, supplying the single most chilling moment on television in quite a long while: a smiling child watched as a man, shot from the waist down, slowly kicked off his shoes and danced to “Rapper’s Delight” in front of him. The little boy had followed his kidnapper out of a toy store, lured by a marionette slung over the man’s back and lost to his father’s distracting business call on his cellphone.

Medium is one of those shows I remember watching three or four episodes of a few years ago and then never troubling myself about again. Patricia Arquette, to me, seemed a soft heroine, and I could never quite get the image of Alabama from True Romance out of my head, which kind of made me want to go back and watch that film instead of Medium.

But one night a few months ago I found myself at my parents house and saw a few minutes of the show. I was interested to see that apparently, a character who had been a prosecutor was now a defence attorney. That kind of flip always interests me. Now with the Times article, there's also the notion that they're actually one of the few shows on American Television playing out the true economic anxieties of most Americans:

Work, on “Medium,” has been implicated as a distinctly dangerous pastime more than once. At the end of last season Allison’s husband, Joe (Jake Weber), an aerospace engineer, and his colleagues were held hostage at gunpoint by a fired employee who, dying of cancer, demanded millions of dollars in compensation for the loss of his health insurance and other benefits. “Medium” is so committed to the grim realities of middle-class life that it is a paranormal show that very often doesn’t feel like one. This season Joe has no job at all: it’s a tough economy, and he has found it impossible to find another. Allison’s credit cards are declined at a grocery store; her eldest daughter hasn’t gotten her allowance in weeks. Indian call centers operating on behalf of lenders phone the Dubois household constantly, and the bills keep falling, one on top of the other.

So, okay. Bottom line (and this is why articles like this set the NYTimes Arts coverage above most other papers) is that I guess I'm gonna go give Medium another chance.

Which brings up the issue of viewership patterns generally. Since the settlement of the WGA strike, and with the possibility of an Actors strike a real going concern, I know that some data has indicated that viewers have returned. But I haven't. Not really.

These days it seems that my only true "must-sees" are House, 30 Rock, The Office and Battlestar Galactica. I'd like to be watching LOST, but I fell behind and now find it difficult to catch up.

Instead, when I turn to my TV I find myself drawn in by different fare ranging far afield.

In Treament, which caused a brief stir when it premiered, among my peer group seems to be the first series that has arrived in the On-Demand era. I devoured that show in great swaths of five episodes...and judging by the level of conversation I'm hearing about it now, as opposed to weeks ago when it was on -- I think a lot of people are doing the same thing.

I've also kind of fallen in love with the British show Skins, which I'm finally getting a chance to see.

I'm not burning to see a new Knight Rider. And as I slowly start to get my hands on some of the pilot scripts of the upcoming season (if there's no Actor's strike, that is) I can't say I'm actually all that impressed.

So then, to you -- do you have a Medium in your bunch -- a show previously dismissed that you've given a second chance to? Discuss.