Mad For The Ladies in the Room

WELL LOOKIE HERE, just the other day we were riffing on Seriocity's comments about female characters and how that is maybe influenced by women (or the lack thereof) in the writers room and along comes Mad Men. As Amy Chozik's Wall Street Journal Article points out -- Matthew Weiner's show about hard drinking sixties Ad Men has a writing staff that's mostly women -- a complete inversion of the industry norm. And how does that affect the storytelling? Read on:

On a Sunday afternoon the writing staff of hit drama “Mad Men” gathered in supervising producer Lisa Albert’s sunny dining room. Over homemade guacamole and a pitcher of mojitos, they debated whether Betty Draper, the fictional 1960s housewife of advertising executive Don Draper, should have a one-night-stand in a smoky Manhattan bar.

The men were against it. Betty would never compromise her integrity like that, consulting producer André Jacquemetton recalls saying. Most of the female writers disagreed. After all her husband’s infidelities, “how the hell is she going to take Don back if she doesn’t do this?” executive story editor Robin Veith argued.

Mr. Jacquemetton was outnumbered. From this discussion came a pivotal scene in the final episode of season two: Betty sleeps with the stranger. The writers will reveal what’s next for Betty when the show’s highly anticipated third season starts Sunday, Aug. 16 on AMC.

Behind the smooth-talking, chain-smoking, misogynist advertising executives on “Mad Men” is a group of women writers, a rarity in Hollywood television. Seven of the nine members of the writing team are women. Women directed five of the 13 episodes in the third season. The writers, led by the show’s creator Matthew Weiner, are drawing on their experiences and perspectives to create the show’s heady mix: a world where the men are in control and the women are more complex than they seem, or than the male characters realize.

Mr. Weiner says he didn’t set out to hire female writers. That said, he likes what he describes as the writers’ emotional honesty. It influences the freewheeling nature of the writers’ room, he says.

H/T to a few people, but Peter Rowley's the one I read it on first.

Meanwhile, just in case you're thinking "oh, how much has changed since those heady Mad Men days" -- uh... yeah. Right.

TV Series Scripting: Part Two: The Outline

FOR PART ONE in this series, click here.

AFTER THE PITCH to the network is approved, the outline is the first attempt by the writer to order the possible beats into a workable structure. The idea is to suggest locations, action and drama that will tell an interesting story, and also to hint at character beats that will tie into the series as a whole.

The outline is a reductive document, which is to say it tries to distill the many lofty ideas that might have come up or come out during the process of breaking the story and tie it down into a logical progression of beats. Rarely does this involve thinking in more than a cursory way about where those beats will be shot. The best you hope for when you write it up is to have a vague sense of whether you’re in the ballpark. Do you have a rough split of location/in studio sets shooting? Is there too much action? Not enough? Where does the pacing of the story lag or where might need the most work? Is the progression of the story logical? Is the emotional content of the scenes sustainable and workable? Do the act outs provide sufficient “oomph” to carry a viewer through two and one half minutes of selling soap?

At this point, the major audience and sales target for the document is not production: it’s the network. The idea is to get them into and enthusiastic about the upcoming story. Consequently, outlines sometimes have a more ‘sales-y’ than practical read to them. They will also include some bridge phrasing that papers over some stuff that still needs to be figured out. We call this ‘handwaving.’ The more handwaving there is in the document, the more the writer has to figure out in the first draft. (Which is why you don't want to fall to putting too much of that in: you'll pay for it later.)

There is extremely limited utility to other departments in reading the outline. It may give casting a rough idea of characters who may show up in the draft (though those characters are subject to great change and even excision;) props might get their first clue as to what sundries might be requested. Locations can get thinking about possible locales that might be called upon. But all of this is fluid and at such an early stage, with so many asterisks beside it, that you run a strong risk of doing a lot of thinking and planning for naught. With locations and props especially, everything is up for grabs until a later script stage. To the AD’s, an outline is practically useless, unless they enjoy feeling anxious.

Creatively, most writers try to keep their outlines free of dialogue (because if it’s in the outline, it will seem “tired” to the network by the time they read it for the third or fourth time in the production draft; conversely, they may get attached to some piece of “outline dialogue” that was obvious and never intended to survive. )

Writers often try to “undersell” the amount of action in the outline, because they know that it’s so fluid, and changeable, and subject to real-world concerns, that beats will probably be combined and eliminated, and you don’t want the network to get the sense that there are things they bought in the outline that are dropped for the draft. If you get the note, “what happened to XXX from the outline?” that is actually a pretty good indicator that you’ve overpromised in the outline.

Outlines can run for 10-15 pages for an hour, or they can run slightly more detailed at 20-25 pages, (though these are the outlines that are most likely to suffer from over-promising, and might challenge a writer trying to get the full story into the script at first draft stage.)

If you were to count the number of suggested scenes in an outline, it would likely give you a massive heart attack.

Next: the first draft

TV Series Scripting: Part One: Setting the Table

IN MANY WAYS, the process of writing specs and scripts to get you hired as a writer couldn't be more different than the actual process of production. It's a hard thing to get for the uninitiated. When you're trying to break in, you might spend months on your original pilot spec, or episodic spec, polishing it just so, getting it to the point where you feel you can submit.

The day-to-day reality of the job on an ongoing series is that you'll rarely have that kind of luxury. Which is why it appeals to a certain type of writer, and why development doesn't really prepare you for the production line that is series production.

In the traditional series production model used in the USA and Canada, one of the reasons you employ a writers' room is to be able to compensate for the short timeframe between greenlight and the start of production. (If you have a long, long timeframe, you could also develop all the scripts ahead of time, but that takes much longer, so it's generally not done.) It's like the difference between single processors and multiple, linked processors in supercomputers. If you have one story engine, coming up with stuff takes one amount of time -- if you have multiple engines, and the right person directing them, you can solve problems, and challenge concepts as you go along -- and what comes out the other end will be stronger, having been tested and challenged as part of the process.

What does this mean for you as a writer? It means that you have to be somebody who is comfortable defending your ideas. You have to be open to challenge in the story room, and flexible enough to incorporate and recognize good and bad suggestions. Ego and experience (as you gain it) help you to define and sort these choices as you roll along. It tells you when to incorporate and when to challenge. This is a sophisticated high-wire act -- and it's what we're really talking about when we say, "best idea wins." When you think about it, there's a lot that has to go into that phrase: 1) You have to be flexible about your idea. 2) You have to be able to incorporate changes that are good, and that make that idea stronger, even if it changes things about it that you were attached to. 3) You have to be able to recognize when the ideas of others are taking you down the wrong path. To some extent, as a writer, you're insulated from that last task by your showrunner -- but it's still a good sense to hone on your own. The closer you get to being able to take and incorporate room ideas while staying true to the core of the story you want to tell, the faster and more effective writer you will be.

The reason I keep saying "fast" is because it's important. Traditionally, there's an idea that you get two weeks to write a first draft. I can't remember the last time I've had that when I was in production. A week is more normal. [All of these timeframes I'm talking about are Canadian timeframes. U.S. series have more resources and are most likely quite different, though with every staff having shed one or two writers this year, they're starting to meet in the middle.]

I've also written a first draft in two or three days (from a really good outline -- and that's the key.) I've done page-one rewrites overnight. I've done "Frankenwrites" -- where you're writing Act One and Two, say, while another writer works on the back half simultaneously.

You might scratch your head and say one of the following:

"uh, that doesn't sound like much fun."

or

"Oh my God, how do you do that and not come up with a pile of crap?"

These are both good questions, and the answer to them both, though incomplete, hint at the challenge and the psychological makeup you need to be a good Television staff writer.

Because for most of us, having to work that fast -- though never the ideal, and never something that you can do for very long -- is incredibly exciting. We get juiced by it, and we miss it when we're not doing it -- in those long stretches in development. It's not like pondering over and turning over an idea for months; the exciting thing about it is that it's like very well paid improv or slam poetry or something -- at some level you're writing this from your gut. You know that it could change; and you write it from a place that keeps you loose, connected and immediate. You can be influenced by what's going on in your world, your life, your environment -- you bring the immediacy of life and the working environment to the work, which gives it zip and energy.

The second part is trickier. And if you're not as experienced, it might be more terrifying. But it comes from having seen the process work, and knowing how each piece results in the final product. If you take the burden on yourself of writing the perfect first draft, one that tells the story elegantly, is totally produceable within the schedule, balances the in/outs and locations and day/night splits and everything else, you're going to be on a stretcher to hinky town before you say, "boo."

But if you have a sense of which each stage is designed to accomplish, you can do what you need to do to accomplish any huge task: break it into manageable bits, so that you're always moving forward and never feel overwhelmed.

Now, what I'm going to be going over for the next several days is my impression of the scripting process -- from start to finish, on an ongoing television series -- and how and when the writer balances the concerns of production and the concerns of creative. This is subjective, my thoughts only, and should be read as such. I'll be more than happy to hear different impressions from fellow scribes below in the comments. Seriously. Have at it. Feel free to disagree with my categorizations and offer your own impressions.

First things first.

Every story starts with a card. An idea spun out, mulled over by the group. From that, the next step is the pitch. In most cases, the network gets to approve the idea before you go to outline. Sometimes this is done verbally in a phone call, sometimes the pitch will be delivered in the form of a one-pager -- a document that's got a lot of handwaving, but gives a general idea of the action and emotional action in the episode, maybe hints at twists and what's cool about the story, and gets you hyped to see how it will develop. You might have a couple of cool turns at this point, but the idea is still very fluid, because you don't want to invest too much time in it until you've got signoff. (This part of the process is very much the same when you're in development.)

Once the pitch is approved, you break the story and prepare the outline.

Which we'll talk about next time.

XX and XY on TV

KAY REINDL's Seriocity is always a good read, but she had a particularly sharp piece today on what's happened to the writing of female characters --

All I see on network are female characters created the way men think they are, rather than the way they really are. And it's not like I'm saying only women can create female characters. That's obviously bullshit. But why are so many of the female characters created by men just exactly the same? Where are the male writers who can create those wonderful female characters? And where are the FEMALE writers? Nobody seems able to grasp or understand the myriad internal lives of women. Instead, they graft quirks onto them, quirks that usually involve their wombs in some way, and always end with the unimpeachable fact that these women are FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. I just don't buy these women. At all. But the problem is that if you're pitching a realistic female character, you're talking to executives or producers who have come to believe in the quirky ball-buster who's just looking for the right guy. Women don't have to be whores or former strippers. Their hurdles don't all have to be sexual.

And because these people are the gatekeepers, a real, honest portrayal of a female character is going to have a tough time getting on TeeVee.

The whole piece is definitely worth a read, and a further muse. I've got an original sample for a series I had in development a few years back that I still send out with a young, female protagonist. I tried my damnedest at the time to make the character as complex and non-stereotypical as possible. At the time I guess I wasn't quite over my dating actresses phase, and suffered through a lot of moaning about "the wife and girlfriend parts."

Then I went and did Across The River To Motor City, whose central relationship was between a man and his adult daughter.

One of the pilots I have on the go right now features a female protagonist, who I'm really trying to invent out of whole cloth as a flawed construct that doesn't rely too heavily on traditional female tropes. I draw most of the time on the wealth of strong female role models I've seen up close -- sisters, my mother, grandmother, and several of the teachers I had along the way, too. And yeah, I shamelessly steal from female friends and former girlfriends -- I'd like to think only the good parts -- but it is a tightrope. And I definitely find myself writing those characters with more -- awareness -- than the instinctual way I write other kinds of stories.

This devolution of the female leading role is kind of puzzling, since, of course, during the same time frame the viewership of TV has continued to skew ever more female. It makes you wonder who these stock characters are trying to please. The female audience is the bedrock of TV. The data I've seen says they're more reliable than male viewers, more apt to try something new, and since they aren't afraid of scenes where two people have a conversation for thirty-two seconds without something blowing up, they tend to be more cost effective to reach, as well.

What's even more puzzling is the fact that here in Canada, we have female network executives at the top of all the networks and close at hand in all the commissioning suites, but I'm not sure we're doing any better creating vibrant, three-dimensional female characters or stories. And we certainly also suffer many of the same overarching prejudices about women in the writing room.

We also do the "false reverse" a lot. You know this -- it's when you just flip it, and make the woman the aggressor -- put her in the traditional "male" role in the scene. Flipping a stereotype papers it over -- it doesn't really solve anything. Giving the role of sexual aggressor, tough girl, what have you usually just buys you comparisons to the Magical Negro. It doesn't solve anything.

I've been watching back a bit of the last season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD, and for whatever reason, even before Kay's article, what's getting me this time is the interesting work from all the female performers -- the incomparable Mary McDonnell, of course, but also Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck, Grace Park's different iterations of Number Eight and the extremely welcome return of Kate Vernon as Ellen Tigh.

Then there's Stargate. Caught an old rerun of SG-1 the other day and there was Amanda Tapping, doing solid genre work that managed to never skimp on the heroics or the humanity. Why are our popcorn shows doing a better job of writing females than a lot of serious dramas or highbrow comedies? I mean, has a woman on Entourage ever had anything to do?

Makes you wonder what Ronald Moore has figured out that so many others don't.

Makes you wonder if we'll get over whatever it is before our audience leak turns into a deluge.

Of course, not to play Devil's Advocate or anything, but somebody's watching all those Lifetime Movies. And it aint me or the guys I play poker with.

No solutions here from me, necessarily. Just things that make you 'hmm' on a Monday morning.

Further To John Hughes

MY FRIEND ALLI (and a few others, besides -- ah the internets!) hipped me to this -- simply extraordinary -- blog entry from a woman who was John Hughes' pen pal when she was a teen. It's simply lovely, and a little heartbreaking, and I don't want to excerpt any of it. Just go to her site and read it for yourself.

Flashy, but not too Flashy

BILL BRIOUX has a typically well-summarized account of the pickle Flashpoint finds itself in. As the man said, "An interesting problem to have..." but still:

On CTV, the police drama was a big hit, averaging 1.4 million viewers a week. On CBS, it did a decent job on different nights, finding a steady 10 or 11 million viewers a week and winning its Friday night slot.

Then came an opportunity for CBS to acquire a show it has more of an ownership stake in - NBC's "Medium" - bumping "Flashpoint" into mid-season status. Worse, CBS still has not made a decision to pay its share of production costs beyond the nine original unaired episodes it still has on the shelf.

CTV went out on a limb in June and announced it would order a third season of 13 episodes. But without a major American partner, there is some question as to what that show would look like and if it could even go forward.

"Flashpoint" may be a victim of the new TV math. A fifth season of "Medium" just has a bigger upside for CBS. They cash in on back-end revenues from future syndication and DVD sales. "Flashpoint" is three or four years away from cracking the magic 100 episode barrier.

CBS could ask for an extension on the decision beyond October, a delay which would allow them to more fully assess which if any of their new fall shows might fail. If that were to happen, having "Flashpoint" on the bench - a series that consistently won its timeslot in households and has already established a fan base -would be a competitive plus.

It is no plus for "Flashpoint" producers Mustos and Anne Marie La Traverse, however, to stick with CBS into November or December if CBS only sees the series a short-term solution. Its currency as a property to shop elsewhere goes down every month it stays off the air.

Mustos mused at the press tour party that the versatility of "Flashpoint" might actually work against it. CBS sees it as a proven if unspectacular draw it can slap in on any night to plug a hole. It is like the utility hockey player who can jump over the boards and win face-offs, kill penalties and doesn't come at a superstar salary. You'd rather have the player on your bench than on that of your opponents.

Tender.

I'M STEALING THIS from Will Dixon's Facebook. and I don't care.

If you're currently between 32, 33, and about 45 you already get it. But it's still hard to explain what John Hughes was and what he meant. Not because he was an auteur, but because he was an entertainer first. A chipper. He made it happen. And damnit if his stuff didn't have the resonance others lacked. Did John Candy ever have a better role than Uncle Buck? I'm not sure.

Jaime Weinman -- as usual, the #$@% smartypants, nails it when he says that Hughes was always really a writer first. (I link to his entry there, but I think that observation was one he Tweeted.)

And that's so. But ... still.

Would that 15 percent of the teen movies that come out now had as much heart as this guy's stuff.

I don't think I have yet - but if I ever do write, and see executed, a story as affecting and as real and as emotionally true - while being FUNNY, remember, as John Hughes, I will consider my career a great cracking success.

Oh, and VSL reminded me today about how awesome Whit Stillman was, too. But that's another story for another time.

You know who writes scripts with that kind of punch and heart? Elan Mastai. Hey. How's he doing?

Oh John, John, John, for all the respect you never got or awards you never received, there are we who are legion who venerate you and your output.

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.

Thank you. Rest in Peace.

UPDATE: I've got this in a separate post above -- but if you're looking for appreciations of the man's life -- this is the one that you need to read.

Are Canadian Writers Going to Continue To Be Able to Write Canadian Dramas produced with Canadian Tax Dollars?

NORMALLY ALEX is craft and I am wonk. But seriously, if I have to say something -- one thing -- about the CRTC or the CTF this week I'm going to go Clockwork Orange. So, uh... Alex explains the stakes here.

Next week, the WGC will weigh in, and I'll have more then.

Save the Cat and Celebrate the Screenwriter

I NEVER GOT around to reading Blake Snyder's Save The Cat, I guess because I've been working a lot since it was published. Ironically, it was on my to-do list for this month. But I've known enough people who did read it with joy, or who attended one of his seminars, to know that the guy was a force for positivity in this industry -- an inspirational figure who helped a whole lot of word jockeys roll the boulder up the hill.

So his sudden death from cardiac arrest caught me by surprise, same as everybody.

Here's the dirty little secret of teaching screenwriting. It's something that McKee or Snyder or even my buddy Alex can't put in a book in quite this way:

You can't really teach it.

Oh, you can give people tools, like Snyder did. You can instruct, you can talk structure or process to help people along, but the most important part of any working writer is what they have, themselves, in there -- the thing that can't be taught; the thing that's there from the first day they start -- that probably is there, quietly honing themselves through life's petty humiliations and triumphs until the day of that first sale. It goes beyond talent or will. It's the essence of being a writer.

I taught screenwriting at Ryerson University for about ten years. Probably, all told, to a little under five hundred students. And each year the ratio was about the same -- one, or two, or sometimes (rarely) three students had 'it.' That's in my estimation, of course -- and there were definitely a few who surprised me along the way. But only a few. Most of the people I read for the first time as callow nineteen year olds and said, "this person's got it," are writing professionally now. A few of them even made their first sales before I did -- my students' successes kicked my ass to overcome my own fear.

Seeing that rough diamond, and doing whatever you can to polish it, is almost a compulsion. It's just so rare, that you feel honor bound to try and do something to help the person along. The thing about Snyder is he seemed to do that in such a positive, effortless way. His impact in the few short years he was lecturing after his book hit big cannot be overstated.

Because here's the flipside of what I was talking about above: you can never really know for sure about 'it.' Sometimes people need to get past their shit before they can access 'it.' I've had people ask me, flat out, "do I have talent? Am I wasting my time?" And it's the question you can never really answer. Because you can never know for sure -- and who are you to crush somebody's dreams?

Nope. Better to be a force like Blake Snyder, however you can be. You hold in your heart the possibility that anybody really could make it -- even if you know that's not really true. And rather than rage at the "lottery winners" who don't deserve a success, and give in to that negativity, you do your part to bring out the diamond in the rough. Writing is hard. You work to make it less so.

In his last blog entry, Snyder started off with one simple sentence: "I love writers."

He proved it. Every day. "I love writers." Definitely not the worst epitaph for a man who did a lot to inspire people in our business. He'll be sorely missed.

Playback Sets The Showrunner Table

PLAYBACK's new editorial direction may finally be taking flight. I was pleasantly surprised in the latest issue to read an article by Etan Vlessing that evenhandedly examined one of the issues that's currently bubbling around -- whether to relax the rules to allow American writers into story rooms. (Which to me begs a simple question of fairness -- is this going to mean that Canadian writers can go to U.S. producers with lots of experience and a great track record to realize their ideas -- and still qualify for CTF/CMF funding? If not, why not? This is the problem with opening Pandora's Box -- you never know what will fly out.)

Anyhow, this all leads to a larger question, and a bigger series of posts that I'm going to pull together for a few weeks from now: a look at the current state of creative in the Canadian TV racket.

For now, the Playback article's a good primer about where things sit now. Playback has a pay firewall, so I'd encourage you to pick up a newsstand copy if you want to read the full thing, including interesting clarifications from Maureen Parker from the WGC, and Christina Jennings from Shaftesbury.

A short excerpt:

E1 Television president John Morayniss praises Canada for its TV writers and showrunners. But he argues the classic TV writer/producer - someone who has the vision of a series in their head and can oversee every stage of production - is a product of the American studio system. So when Canadian producers pitch their series in Los Angeles, talk turns quickly to who's the showrunner, as opposed to Canada where non-writing producers tend to stick-handle productions after writers complete scripts.

"The networks are putting up a lot of money and they [Americans] want someone they trust," Morayniss insists. He adds the Canadian system can benefit if funding rules are tweaked and American talent can lend its expertise to Canadian writing rooms.

But former Columbia TriStar and Paramount TV executive Tom Mazza, now executive vice-president of worldwide television at Cookie Jar Entertainment, sees no need for a host of passports in Canadian writing rooms.

"You don't have to bring people from different places to make something better. There's great talent in Canada. I'm excited about tapping into that [Canadian] talent, and working with them," Mazza says.

Recent debate over possible changes to funding rules for 10/10 dramas began in Banff, and gathered momentum after recent comments by Shaftebury Films CEO Christina Jennings that Canada faces a shortage of local showrunners (Playback, June 22).

The WGC's Parker insists Canada has more than enough showrunners, and further questions Jennings' claim of a shortage given that one of her series, The Listener, had a revolving door of showrunners and head writers on its first 13 episodes.

Will We Choose Liberty, or Will We Choose Tyranny?

THIS IS HOW tangential we get on this blog now. Ready? Ok. Here goes.

This was brought to my attention by @badlady, who's a hell of a writer even when she's flu-ey. She got it from Semi Chellas, who is another ... writer.

That's it. That's what I got.

But man it's funny.

People In TV Aren't Invincible

WELL, IT SEEMS like the CBC has more or less broken the story now, so I guess it can be told:

Swine flu has suspended the production of a CBC Television series in St. John's.

Two cases of H1N1 influenza have been confirmed in people working on The Republic of Doyle and shooting has been put on hold.

My thoughts and concern, of course, are with the hardworking crewmembers and my colleagues who have taken sick. It's a nasty bit of business, and I hope everyone's hale and hearty in short order.

(CBC has the story but is trailing in the numbers; but perhaps that's a function of 'official' and 'confirmed.')

Did you know the H1N1 test took two days to come back?

I didn't.

So...here's the part where I tack on and bury the footnote in the lead of the much bigger story:

In the first few weeks of Production, I saw a crew who worked flat out no matter what. From the A.D.'s to the Art Department, to Locations and Props -- some of the nicest, most hardworking people I've ever had the pleasure to work with. But, after three months that were alternatively thrilling, tiring, and frustrating, I left the employ of Republic of Doyle about 10 days ago, (weirdly, just before all of this started. And no, ReGenesis fans -- all thirty-eight of you -- there's no connection.)

In my time in St. John's, I oversaw the breaking of about ten stories. I also kept the promise I made to have drafts of six scripts done before we started production, so I feel pretty good about that. And I've got one more script to write from here, from my home in Toronto.

I've had friends say to me for awhile now that even when we don't talk, they feel they're caught up by reading the blog, and suffice to say this is one of those situations that put the imperfections to that little theory.

There's no dirt, nothing really to say, except for perhaps the larger truth made self-evident to me in the last few months. In the USA -- the system that still produces 85% failures for 15% worth of successes -- the Showrunner is the Quarterback of the creative vision of the show. It just doesn't work as well any other way. And there simply wasn't the time or the inclination or the creative trust that would allow me to do the job effectively.

The worst thing you can do in series TV is to get into a disagreement about how variant and competing processes would lead to a final product. So I got out of the way. And now, the task of Showrunning falls to the Co-Creator/Lead Actor/Executive Producer of Doyle. I wish Allan Hawco and his Producing team the best, and wish them all creative success -- just as soon as they get through the really important task of getting their team well, and back up and running.

Fingers crossed, and all good wishes to my Newfoundland friends and colleagues. I enjoyed your company so much, and I hope you all get well, stay well, pace yourselves, rally, and pull together to make great TV in the months ahead. I'll be rooting for you.

Get well soon!

Bitchslapping The Emmys

NIKKI FINKE's got the letter and the story.

Just so it's clear to everyone that it's not all in a vacuum. Y'know, people here will be quick to jump on writers being whiny, but the Emmy fracas proves that the devaluation of the writers' contribution to the process of Television is not exclusively a Canadian phenomenon.

Maureen Ryan at the Chicago Trib has a particularly cogent (and angry) reaction at her digs:

The fact is, if the Emmy people were worried that viewers wouldn't know about or care about those eight categories, why didn't they have the courage of their convictions and just exile those categories to the technical awards ceremony?

But no, their proposal is this jerry-rigged "solution" which will please almost no one.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming. The Oscars are undergoing a similar crisis: It was recently announced that in future there will be 10 Best Picture nominees. The thinking appears to be that if more popular fare gets nominated or celebrated, more people will tune in. Sure, that will work out great when some drippy, formulaic romantic comedy gets nominated and makes a laughingstock of the ceremony.

The fact is, this is a niche-ified world. Desperately scrambling to fight that tide is not going to work, and all the Emmy folks have done is alienate people who make TV and those who follow it most passionately. In other words, the people who would be most likely to watch the Emmys in the first place.

Craig Ferguson Comes Up With The Grand Unified Theory

AND AS FAR as I can make it, it's pretty airtight.

What Are You Trying to Say...Exactly?

YOU KNOW, the occasional network type aren't the ONLY ones who'd like things made, you know, a little clearer.

Shmubtext.

McFerrin & The Audience: Music Meets Plot Prediction

AH TWITTER, HOW you serve things up to us in the dead of night in bite size portions.

I can't take credit for this -- I got it off the insanely great KH -- @kazza323, but also I think, @badlady was all over this too. Point being - this is from Boing Boing, with all their attendant usual goodness.

It makes an important point about the audience, I think.

It makes an important point about the audience that Canadian Producers, Writers, Development and Production Executives would do well to heed.

The audience?

They's smarter than you think. They see patterns and shit like that.

And with that, take it away Bobby McFerrin:

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Sometimes Writers Can't Help Being Twits

WRITERS, AS THE saying goes, write.

The funny thing is that writing tends to be so all consuming that one finds oneself in the need of a diversion now and again. Many writers who work a lot develop different kinds of hobbies. I know many who are obsessed with Golf (yawn.) And others who become serious, like, CRAZY serious foodies. There was a bit of a vogue a few years back to go heavy into the scotch realm -- which carries its own dangers, the personality being what it is and all. Poker caught many a fancy a while ago.

But there are a sad subset of us that just can't let go no matter what. I know writers whose hobbies are to write novels. Andy Borowitz made so much money off Fresh Prince of Bel Air that he has the enviable position of having the greatest writing related hobby of all time: he writes humour columns in the New Yorker. Others dabble in playwriting. I wrote the book and lyrics for a couple of musicals - but that doesn't count since it was before I was really getting heavy dramatic writing work.

It's too late and my fingers are too clumsy to entertain notions of the guitar. I bought an expensive camera at Christmas and I'm still taking stupid baby steps on how to use it.

But there's one funny bit of community that keeps popping up every few days on Twitter. It's one I embrace with glee. The first one I noticed was #firstdraftmovielines (a # tag before a subject on Twitter makes it an easy search term or something.) This was people deliberately mangling or rewriting movie lines. I think the one I came up with that I liked the most was "No Luke, I am your paternal Uncle."

Not highbrow, by any means, but fun. The great thing about Twitter, of course, is that it's all a great big mess. You follow people and they follow you and if you want to search a #hashtag you can see a whole bunch of people you don't know posting on the same subject.

Memes like these are interesting because the quality of the professional writers' output isn't always as inspired as some random thing that somebody else comes up with. And the greatest cultural "props" you can get is someone RT (re-tweeting) your message. That's when they pass it on to everyone on THEIR "follow" list. Imagine a big internetty version of that old shampoo ad: "and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on..."

It's also like that long-ago game I remember when people would try to come up with the best porno-title for a then-popular movie. (I still have nightmares about "Terms of En-rearment".) But like everything else in our globalized, capitalist world it seems, that died the the Adult Entertainment Business soon found it couldn't afford the entendre. There's no room for subtlety there anymore. No, no. If you want to stand out, you better be plain and clear. No room for wordplay anymore -- it's "Teenage Toesuckers#18" for you, bub.

But I digress.

Anyhow, the latest meme to fire up the Twitosphere and take my fancy yesterday was #failedchildrensbooktitles. I read a few that made me guffaw -- some real cleverness out there, both from my writer peeps and from the civilians on my list besides.

To give you a flavour for it -- this simple dash of post-internet chuckling, here's a few of mine that got big retweets:

Anne of Gangrene Gables

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Mercury Poisoning

Where The Sidewalk Ends in a Hail of Gunfire

A Wrinkle in Tim

Aladdin and the Relentless Carpet Bombing

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Thatcher

Bob The Builder Who Doesn't Show Up

Horton Hires a 'Ho

The Tragic School Bus

See? Not exactly Leacock Medal level humour here, but undeniably fun. And it was also kind of a trip to remember some of those books I loved as a kid. I also think one of the reasons why I find it so fun is because in a weird way it's a lot like a story room. That's what you do in a story room: you toss out idea after idea after idea.

You try to make people laugh.

Some ideas are dumb and die slow deaths of silence, (usually punctuated by some variation on 'hahhaha yeah, fuck you guys!) and some hit.

And that's why it's a joy being around story rooms when they're on.

So if you've ever wondered what the story room thing was like, get on Twitter. Every once in a while, a meme breaks out and the boundaries between the pros and the people fall.

And yes, it's been pointed out, there's something a little sad about writers in their off time procrastinating from their paid writing work by trying to write for free to make a bunch of strangers laugh, but hey, it's better than stalking, right?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go buy a new lens for my Nikon. There comes a time when a man must put away Twitter things and get a real hobby.

Get The Most Out of Your Telly

FAT-PIE.COM's David Firth shows you how. (NSFW)

Take Back The Art

I MISSED THE specials. Didn't watch. Didn't watch the memorials, barely glanced at the coverage, kept my head down and kept working. Because at the root of it, I knew I couldn't think about the hagiography and the excuses, and the simplifications for the troubling, troubling legacy - both of what he did to himself, and finally, maybe, murkily, to others. But that route, the route of totally ignoring it, solidifies its own kind of poison in you, too. Not participating seems to take a stand -- even if taking a stand was the thing you wanted to avoid in the first place.

That's why this little clip, from Montreal, is so powerful to me. It restores what was good. It makes me smile. It reminds me once again that whatever trouble may dog or stain or ultimately destroy the artist, the point is, the art endures.

In a culture that seems to value that so little, where programs in the schools are the first to be cut, and governments play politics with the vulnerable and disguise it through bogus talk of fiscal responsibility and not ideology, it's important to remember, finally, finally -- the work endures.

I hope this finds you as it did me. Enjoy your day.

Ah, the Shining Promise of Youth...

VIA CHARLIE BROOKER, that is.

You were warned.