Delay of Game

FURTHER TO THE FRUSTRATED rant I posted yesterday, David Kinahan of the Writers Guild of Canada sent out an email blast to members today (and most members probably ignored it. :)) that expresses the same issues in a clearer, and more evenhanded fashion.

There's still no way to categorize this as other than a farce. Fee For Carriage has now been discussed at the last three or four hearings. Fee for Carriage will do nothing to help you as consumers or TV viewers. It's corporate welfare -- and the fight over it is nothing but a fight between two spoiled interest groups who have made millions from CRTC protection. But the CRTC, it seems, does not work for you and me. I know it's supposed to, and all. But it doesn't.

Anyway, here's what the WGC had to say:

You have all heard by now that, in response to Bell’s filing to the Federal Court of Appeal over fee-for-carriage, the CRTC TV Policy Review has been postponed from September 29 to November 16. The CRTC notice of postponement noted that the re-scheduled hearing will now include, yet again, the issue of fee-for-carriage. With that, Bell has said it will now withdraw its Federal Court application.

The initial public notice for the hearing was issued in early July, giving us just one month to prepare our submission. This was an enormous amount of work, involving coordination with industry partners, numerous meetings, the hiring of outside consultants and lawyers, commissioning a research firm, and working through vacations. In smaller organizations like the WGC, preparations for hearings such as this are a tremendous drain on resources, human and financial, and to have it derailed like this at the last minute is extremely frustrating.

This is particularly so given the importance attached to this hearing and the length of time we have been waiting for it. This was to be the long overdue TV policy hearing that would chart the course of TV production in Canada for many years to come. It was at this hearing that the CRTC was to redress the drop in expenditures on Canadian drama through new policies and regulatory obligations concerning Canadian programming, framing the parameters within which the broadcasters will operate when they renew their licences next April.

Now that fee-for-carriage – a huge point of contention between the BDUs and the broadcasters – is once again part of the discussion, we are concerned that our issues about quality Canadian programming may be marginalized. Canadian creators and TV viewers are being caught between these warring factions.

The delay means everything remains for a while longer in a state of uncertainty. The September hearing was to decide about levels of Canadian drama, documentaries and children’s programming, and look at placing a brake on spending in Hollywood. Until we have those conversations and get clarity around broadcaster obligations, the situation remains precarious. And this delay surely will mean further delay down the line, pushing further out the ownership-group licence renewal hearings scheduled for April 2010. This will in turn affect the production cycle. It will also delay our collective bargaining process around our IPA agreement which expires at the end of this year – negotiations were to take place after the hearing.

There is very little we can do about this except be vigilant and, when the conversation is being dominated by the broadcasters and BDUs squabbling over revenues, remind them that providing Canadians with the ability to choose quality Canadian content is the sole reason they exist and their primary deliverable for the privilege of operating in a protected environment. So talk and Twitter, comment on online news articles, write letters to the editor – remind people not to forget about content.

We will of course keep you informed as things on this front develop. We will be posting our submission on (for now) September 14

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Storm in the USA

YOU KNOW WHAT I like about the United States? Sometimes when a stupid idea comes up, and everybody says it's stupid, people back down.

In Canada that takes months of parliamentary committees to achieve, and even then the next idea they come up with is usually worse.

Now, if you take a simple idea that works everywhere else, like, oh I don't know -- public run universal health care -- the U.S. is Hopeless at incorporating that. The downside of the "we're number one" myopia.

Killing the homegrown dumb ideas? Check. Implementing the best from elsewhere? No dice. And what about importing the really, really, really dumb ideas from elsewhere, like, you know, America's Got Talent and Authoritarian Fascism?

Jury's still out.

Hey, Now, what's that Sound?

IT'S YET ANOTHER crack in the musty, lazy old Canadian TV business model.

An exclusive deal between the show's Canadian distributor, Maple Pictures, and Apple iTunes Canada makes Mad Men the first top-rated TV show in history to bypass Canada's conventional TV protocols – pay TV, network television and/or syndication – as a paid digital download.

Of course, anedotally, let me just say this: people at CTV were quite surprised when it aired Mad Men last season and it didn't get big ratings. Why were they surprised that a show that draws 1.5 million viewers a week in the USA didn't get boffo ratings here?

Um, I don't know...

..they don't know their business very well?

Ya got me.

Still, this is a crack in the dam -- that's for sure. I'll be traveling this weekend, so they'll get my money for Ep 1, at least...

Tv Series Scripting: Part Three: The First Draft

Earlier in this series: Part One. Part Two.

UNLIKE THE OUTLINE, the first draft is an “expansive” document. The first attempt to dramatize the beats in the outline through action and character voices frequently results in a script document that is talky, and missing some of the ‘visual’ storytelling tropes that will be important to board and get in the final shooting script. Though television is less visual a medium than film, (Most of the time, if you turned off the vis, and just followed the dialogue and music and sound fx, you could follow the story like a good radio play) it’s generally more visual than the first draft would suggest.

This is because in the first draft the writer really is figuring out and test-driving the story. He or she might figure out that two or three beats that were in the outline can be combined in the same scene; at the same time, you might find them going on a tangent to explore something interesting in the character dynamic.

First drafts can be rambling, they can be sloppy, they can be repetitive, poorly paced, any number of things. You may find in the writing of a draft that a subplot needs to be more or less prominent. You may find that the act outs that you thought were so perfect in the outline can’t work the way they do without giving you a four minute Second or Third Act. You may find that there is not enough story to sustain, or that there is another twist needed. You may also find that you have too much story and you’re on page 32 and still in Act One, in which case you need to go back and simplify the beats.

There’s a weird thing that happens when the characters start talking to you. Sometimes you need to follow it a little, see where it leads. That might mean going off the beam of the outline a bit; that’s why you have a good outline, so that you can always haul yourself back in if you go too far.

Writing a first draft is a negotiation with yourself. The more economy and clarity and succinctness you can bring to the beats and the story you’re trying to serve, the more fun stuff you can seed in. At this stage, you may have a vague, vague sense of in and out of studio but you might not have a clear sense of day/night, and how many story days are in your script. It’s at this stage you take a stab at figuring this out, but it may not be perfect.

All first drafts, no matter how accomplished the writer, or the draft, suck. They are not clear. There are things in them that will not quite line up. You may have a bit of a hangover from all that handwaving you did in the outline. Things that you need to hit once, you may find that you’ve hit three and four times. You may find that you’ve written the same scene twice. Or three times, with little progression. The only way you spot all this is to go into analysis mode, which is different from the mode that allows you to write the script.

Generally, first drafts are tabled to the Story Department first. They go through and make suggestions as to things that can be fixed quickly; clarity points, readability issues, things that just don’t work at all. Often the notes the story department gives will be tiered: ie, they will tell the writer, “here’s what you should fix now,” and “here’s some stuff to think about when we hear from Network and go to the 2nd draft.” It’s not uncommon to have “big picture” notes overall, that don’t point to specific things or lines of dialogue, but are general impressions that inform the writing of the 2nd draft. Most of the time, the dialogue notes you give at the first draft stage are surgical, and designed to make the draft read better: spell something out, offer a riff or a joke that will make the thing enjoyable. But if it's an emotional scene or something, I tend to want to hold some of that suggestion off till the 2nd draft -- the writer might need to sit with it awhile, too.

Once again, the focus at this stage is largely creative. The first blush of getting the story on its feet is not always pretty. There may be parts where character voice is off. There may be sections where the dialogue is a little on the nose. There may be other places where it’s a little too obtuse. The first draft also tends to run long. Sometimes as much as 5 pages longer than what will be the eventual script length. Again, the primary audience for this draft is not production: it’s the network, and the rest of the story department, to get them both thinking about ways to sharpen, refine, and figure out the story.

The danger of circulating the first draft too widely cannot be overstated. No writer wants their first naked attempts to wrestle the story to the ground to get out there. There will be scenes, and stagings, and approaches that will not survive to the 2nd draft in any way, shape, or form – so you don’t want to let Directors to get the draft because the next thing you know the first blush, imperfect idea is boarded and thought about; when really it’s not fully cooked yet. Obviously there comes a time when you're so behind that you have to break this rule -- but better to give the Director something better conceived so they, too, are suggesting things out of excitement -- not confusion or panic.

It’s also generally accepted that the first draft is the “writer’s draft.” The showrunner/head creative rarely rewrites a 1st draft too heavily unless it’s acknowledged that the draft is seriously in trouble, in which case the writer doesn’t proceed and it turns into a page one rewrite.

The reason for this is entirely practical – even a passed-first draft is still a first draft. It will need to be rewritten again. If the writer of record is not allowed to continue on and write their second draft, you’re either going to have a writer who’s afraid to try stuff in the first draft – and a cautious first draft is a problem in any show – or you are going to have a writer who’s intimidated to change anything that’s been added by the showrunner/head creative…which means that their flexibility and utility in turning out a better working story is seriously compromised.

At its best, the first draft is a big step forward in the creative. It should deliver on the best promises of the outline, while identifying problem areas that need to be massaged. It suggests its own streamlining, when careful reading and consideration identifies potential problems in pacing.

In an early, early, early way it can also suggest red flags about sequences that may be too ambitious, a too-generous complement of characters and/or locations. It’s also the document that sharpens both the story department and the network for where the real creative work begins, and largely concludes.

Next time: The Second Draft

Keep Your Eye on the Fix

UNBELIEVABLE.

Ten years ago, the broadcasters went to the CRTC and whined that "priority programming" was too restrictive, and they wanted "relief" on their obligations -- allowing them to count things like reality and magazine shows as "priority" programming, not just that nasty expensive comedy and drama.

The WGC, among other unions, said that would devastate the Canadian industry -- that Canadian drama would disappear overnight. "Don't be silly," said the broadcasters. "Flexibility!" We need it!

The rules changed.

The WGC was right -- everything they said would happen, came true over the next few years. Within two years, the number of Canadian drama shows dropped from 12 to 2.

We've spent 10 years struggling up from that floor. In that time, Canadian consumers were so well served by the system that they had to suffer the indignity of some of their broadcasters buying shows NOT to show them -- but to keep them on the shelf, out of sight, so that the competition couldn't get them. (This happened ALL THE TIME.)

These same companies let their spend on U.S. programming grow exponentially, while gobbling each other up, reducing competition, and gutting local television stations across the country for some mythical 'synergy' that never came.

Then the recession hit and they turned around and everything became about a fight between the rich cable and satellite companies -- the Bells, Rogers, Videotrons, Shaws, etc -- the top five so called BDU's that control about 80 percent of the Internet and TV distribution pipe in the country -- and the broadcasters, whose cushy regulatory pillows protected them from having to compete, and gave them nice fat profits from rebroadcasting American signals with little effort. "Give us free money!" The broadcasters cried. Later: "Give us free money or local news will die!"

The BDU's screamed back -- "It's a tax! A new Tax! And we'll pass it on to you! Yes, we have the one of the highest cost cell phone services in the world, with some of the worst service plans! Yes, our profits have been record breaking for years now! Yes, we're essentially protected monopolies! Yes, we charge you 15 cents a text for something that is essentially FREE to us, because of the way the technology works!"

And at every step, at every hearing, the WGC and the other creative unions traipse up and make their presentations and are treated like the annoying little children, and not the only people in the game who are, you know, trying to actually get all that stuff about the airwaves being owned by the people to be something other than a joke. And they fund studies, and commission reports, and prepare presentations -- and unlike the Bells and the Rogers who have phalanxes of lawyers and policy wonks, this involves a very few people toiling to make the deadlines.

And then what happens? Well, one group of millionaires sues another group of millionaires and suddenly the summer preparing for the big hearing is banged down into the fall.

Delay, slide, pay the lawyers, drag it out, sue the regulator, drag it down, wear out the people with the least reasources, and send the crazy artists away with a little old head pat.

Canadian TV's fate now delayed til November, or beyond.

I hope the CRTC's Commissioners are having a nice summer.

Cause the little folk are about to lose another whole season to the whims of the millionaires. A story now in its' 10th great year!

Corporate Capitalism triumphing over the good for the people is not a new story. But it's funny how in Canada, nobody even bothers to put a smiley face on it.

Eat it, Canadians. Eat it raw. In the end, you always do.

In the USA, where the media game is all about profit, at least everybody wants the same thing. The studios, the networks, the creative unions, the producers -- they all want hit shows -- because it makes them money. They might disagree about what a 'hit' is but, they're at least looking for the same thing.

In Canadian media, nobody wants the same thing. The BDU's want to perfect the game the broadcasters started -- they want to be able to charge you for pipe, take your money, own channels that get them free money, be able to prioritize their own stuff over anybody else's no matter how unfair it is, and no matter who tells them to stop -- and they want to do all this with all their myriad regulatory protections intact, without having to give anything back to you. Not money to support programming, not money to build an industry, not even an adequate service level for Canadians.

The broadcasters want free money to be able to buy cheap U.S. programming, and to be able to get away with funding as little domestic stuff as possible. They don't even care if it's particularly good.

Producers want to be able to make shows. Some of them want them to be good, some don't care, but pretty much all of them now have got it in their head that what they really need is a U.S. sale, so they want to be able to use their Canadian tax credits to hire American talent, because that's what they think will get them the sale.

Canadian writers want to work. They want to be able to create shows they can believe in, they can be proud of, that shows their best work, and speaks to an audience and entertains and tickles and amuses and maybe along the way says something true about people's lives that they recognize.

It's too bad nobody else really wants that.

What a crooked game it truly is.

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.