March to The Geminis, 2009 Edition

SO THIS MORNING the nominees for the 24th Annual Gemini Awards were announced. The 758 Awards, recognizing excellence in Canadian English Language TV, will be handed out over something like 17 nights in October and November.

The list of awards is truly astounding, and odd (I mean, what is the distinction between Best Lifestyle and Practical Information segment and Best News Magazine Segment? And really, considering the crash in the MOW and Miniseries market in the last couple of years, can we really field TEN nominees between two categories to warrant a prize? Shouldn't the choice be hard?) Anyway.

I won't torture you by listing all the awards, but if you're so inclined you can browse them here. Below is a list of the craftier awards that should be of interest to writerly types:



Best Dramatic TV Series

Being Erica
p. David Fortier, Aaron Martin, Ivan Schneeberg, Jana Sinyor
(Temple Street Productions)

The Border
p. Peter Raymont, David Barlow, Brian Dennis, Janet MacLean
(White Pine Pictures)

Flashpoint
p. Anne Marie La Traverse, Bill Mustos
(Flashpoint Season 1 Inc., PINK SKY ENTERTAINMENT INC., AVAMAR ENTERTAINMENT INC.)

The Tudors
p. Sheila Hockin, Morgan O'Sullivan
(Peace Arch Television Ltd., PA Tudors II Inc., TM Productions)

ZOS: Zone of Separation
p. Paul Gross, Mario Azzopardi, Malcolm MacRury, Andrea Raffaghello, Frank Siracusa
(Whizbang Films, Sulari Productions Inc.)


Best Comedy Program or Series

Less Than Kind p. Phyllis Laing, Marvin Kaye, Ira Levy, Amy Marcella, Mark McKinney, Jan Peter Meyboom, Kirsten Scollie, Chris Sheasgreen, Peter Williamson (Breakthrough Films & Television, Buffalo Gal Pictures) Rick Mercer Report p. Gerald Lunz, Rick Mercer (Island Edge Inc.) Testees p. John Morayniss, Suzanne Berger, Kenny Hotz, Amy Marcella, Michael Rosenberg, Jonathan Walker (Blueprint Entertainment) This Hour Has 22 Minutes Series XVI p. Michael Donovan, Mark Farrell, Jack Kellum, Susan MacDonald, Jenipher Ritchie (Halifax Film, a DHX Media Company) Three Chords from the Truth p. Henry Less, Steve Cochrane, Phyllis Ellis, Sissy Federer-Less, Adriana Maggs (Henry Less Productions)

Best Dramatic Mini Series

Burn Up
p. Tom Cox, Stephen Garrett
(Seven 24 Films Inc., Kudos Film and Television)

Diamonds
p. Jennifer Kawaja, Liz Jarvis, Phyllis Laing, Philo Pieterse, Julia Sereny, Carrie Stein, Simon Vaughan, Nick Witkowski
(Sienna Films, Rough Cut Pictures Inc., Rough Productions Litd., Love Reigns (Pty) Ltd.)

The Last Templar
p. Michael Prupas, Robert Halmi Sr., Robert Halmi, Jr., Irene Litinsky
(Templar Productions (Muse) Inc.)

XIII
p. Jay Firestone, Thomas Anargyros, Edouard De Vesinne
(Prodigy Pictures, Cipango)

Best TV Movie

Celine
p. Laszlo Barna, Steven Silver
(Barna-Alper Productions Inc.)

Elijah
p. Blake Corbet, Gigi Boyd, Kevin Eastwood, Christopher Leeson, Lisa Meeches, Mary Anne Waterhouse
(Anagram Pictures Inc., Eagle Vision (Manitoba))

In a World Created By a Drunken God
p. Kirstie McLellan Day, Larry Day
(Pyramid Productions Inc.)

Of Murder and Memory
p. Ilana Frank, Semi Chellas, Daniel Iron, David Wellington
(Thump Inc., Oasis International)

The Secret of the Nutcracker
p. Joe Novak, Matt Gillespie, Shirley Vercruysse
(Joe Media Group Inc.)

The Terrorist Next Door
p. Pierre Sarrazin, Suzette Couture, Richard Lalonde, Susan Murdoch
(Sarrazin Couture Entertainment, Forum Films Inc.)


Best Animated Program or Series

Jibber Jabber p. David Bowes, Jim Corbett (Jibber Jabber Toons Ltd.) Life's a Zoo.tv p. Adam Shaheen (Cuppa Coffee Studios, Teletoon) Rick and Steve, The Happiest Gay Couple in all the World p. Adam Shaheen, Christine Davis, Jaelyn Galbraith (Cuppa Coffee Studios) Rollbots p. Jonathan Wiseman, Chantal Ling, Sheldon Wiseman (Amberwood Entertainment Corp.)

Best Children's or Youth Fiction Program or Series (man that one rolls off the tongue, don't it?)

Instant Star 4
p. Linda Schuyler, David Lowe, Stephen Stohn, Stephanie Williams
(Epitome Pictures Inc.)

The Latest Buzz
p. Steven DeNure, Neil Court, Kevin May, Brent Piaskoski, Beth Stevenson
(Decode Entertainment Inc., DECODE/Buzz Productions Inc.)

Life with Derek
p. Christina Jennings, Daphne Ballon, Jeff Biederman, Suzanne French, Scott Garvie, Laurie McLarty
(Shaftesbury Films Inc.)

Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series

Mark De Angelis, David Guy Mackenzie, George Westerholm
The 29th Annual Genie Awards

Adam Reid, Max Reid
Billable Hours
A Manson for All Seasons

Matt Alden, Dana Andersen, Sheldon Elter, Jeff Halaby, Howie Miller, Ryan Parker
CAUTION: May Contain Nuts - Season 1
Episode 3

Mark McKinney
Less Than Kind
Careers Day

Kenny Hotz, Derek Harvie
Testees
Memory Loss

Best Writing in a Dramatic Series

Mark Ellis, Stephanie Morgenstern
Flashpoint
Haunting the Barn

Lori Spring
Murdoch Mysteries
I, Murdoch

Floyd Kane
Soul
Fathers and Daughters

Brad Wright
Stargate Atlantis
The Shrine

Michael Hirst
The Tudors
Episode 205


Best Writing in a Children's or Youth Program or Series

Richard Clark
Grossology
The New Recruits

Victor Nicolle, Sandy Flanagan, Dennis Heaton
Jibber Jabber
"Night of the Werewolf"/"Enter the Jelly"

Sean Jara
The Latest Buzz
The First Impressions Issue

Jeff Biederman
Life with Derek
Just Friends

Steven Westren
My Friend Rabbit
Frog On A Log


Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Mini Series

Donald Martin
Celine

David Vainola
Diamonds

Tony Marchant
Diverted

Blake Corbet
Elijah

David Wolkove
XIII
Day of the Black Sun

Best Writing in a Documentary Program or Series

Robert Cornellier, Paul Carvalho
Black Wave The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez

Sheona McDonald
Capturing a Short Life

Tracy Deer
Club Native

Araz Artinian
The Genocide in Me

Larry Weinstein, Harvey Sachs
Toscanini: In His Own Words

Congrats to all the nominees.

UPDATE - but on a personal note - boo to whichever juries handled the Best Comedy and Best Comedy Writing nominations. Shutting out Corner Gas -- a well made show that's both critically and popular with Canadians, in its final season, doesn't really help the cause of, you know, making us seem very in touch with the Canadian psyche.

Every Day's a Good Day for a Comedy Wank

JAIME WEINMAN, with his usual delightful minutae, analyses the various joke-telling styles employed on The Colbert Report, calling attention to the departure of the Executive Producer, an article in Vanity Fair, and eventually tracing it back -- as any good fan of modern comedy will -- to the Marx Brothers. An excerpt:

Silverman described a typical Colbert Report day in this recent interview excerpted in Vanity Fair, which also includes a great discussion of what she calls “status shifts” in a comedy scene: how a lot of the comedy comes from who is in control of the scene, and how a good sketch can transfer control (and with it, power) from one character to another and then back again, instead of just sticking with one relationship (straight man/stooge) through the whole scene.

I once wrote a sketch on Late Night With Conan O’Brien that I liked because it dealt with some issues that were on my mind at the time.

The sketch started with Conan returning from a commercial break and saying something to the effect of, “I’ve got to tell you, sometimes being a talk show host makes me feel a little guilty. I could have been a lawyer or a doctor—that would have been way more valuable to society.”

There was an actor in the audience who piped up, “Excuse me, Conan. I am a doctor, and I just wanted to let you know that you couldn’t have become a doctor, so just stop worrying about it. You just don’t have the skills to be a doctor—or the intellect!” The “doctor” then injures an audience member and demands that Conan prove that he actually could have been a physician. Conan manages to treat this “patient” brilliantly.

It starts with a switch: At first, Conan is in charge and says, “I could have been a doctor.” The doctor says, “No, actually, I am in charge, and you couldn’t have become a doctor even if you’d wanted to.” And then it switches once again.

She discusses this in reference to a Conan O’Brien sketch, but it’s very applicable to the world of The Colbert Report: part of the fun of a good segment is that even when he’s alone at the desk, he bounces back and forth between having and losing control.

For the full article and Weinman's contention of why the Marx brothers did it better, click here.

Are You Ready?

THE EVENTS OF recent days have me more convinced of this than ever:

Eventually, it will come down to a war. A bloody, hand-to-hand, no-holds-barred, unprotected, bare-knuckled, no condom-wearing, scratching permitted, all out rhetorical, sartorial, chemical, biological, and nuclear war between Homo Sapiens and Homo Solipsis.

You know them as Reality Show Stars/Contestants.

Every day their ranks grow.

There won't be time for Marquis De Queensbury rules, G. We're talking about the very survival of the species.

And that's one Immunity Challenge humanity can't afford to lose. While you're out there fretting over the possibility of a zombie apocalypse, the real threat goes unchecked.

I say we start the culling now. Who's with me?

New Routines & No Surprise Mondays

I REMEMBER when I used to be surprised by movies and TV shows. Something that I tuned into thinking it would be lame and awful would turn out to be delightful. It used to happen a lot.

Now, I used to go see a lot more movies in the theatre, granted. And I'd even take a chance on movies that I thought would probably suck. It's been forever since I did that.

I was a little surprised the 2009 reboot of Star Trek was as good as it was -- but I wanted to see that movie, and I was rooting for it to be good. So that's different.

But that sense of delightful surprise, of really discovering something special, tends for me now to be restricted to shows and films I've never heard of at all. It's easy to be surprised by something when you have no preconceived notions about it. But overcoming that jaded, Spidey sense? Not so easy. It's like years of plaque has built up on my joy receptors. If I think it's gonna be crappy -- it's usually crappy.

Which is why recently I was so surprised, and delighted by I Love You Man.

I have a certain low-level, seen it before expectation from that Apatow school of movie. Forgetting Sarah Marshall had a few great laughs, but wasn't as good as Superbad, etc, etc.

So I was shocked watching I Love You Man to see that at its heart, it's actually a pretty elegantly told story. And it made me think that maybe the key to subverting the expectation of the jaded, seen-it-all viewer is to not swing for the fences on the big twist -- (that's soooo 1999) but just to subvert constantly, through little choices you make at every point in the plot.

I Love You Man does this in a dozen different ways. (Mild sort-of-spoilers follow.)

(space)

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(Bruce Willis is dead from the beginning)

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Okay. Andy Samberg's gay brother is more macho and guy-guy than Paul Rudd. Rashida Jones finally gets to play a character in one of these things that isn't a type, or a cardboard cutout. You're with her in every reaction. In fact, one of the nicest things about the film is that there's not really any bad guy. You can understand the choices made by every character, and most are acting not out of any crazy movie-logic, but as a real person might in that situation. (Sure, there's Favreau and the rival real estate agent, but even something about the two

of them stops short of the usual "bad guy" trope in a film like this.)

Jason Segel isn't unhinged. He's not crazy. And the central idea -- a romantic comedy where the object of affection is not the romance, but the bromance, well, hell. Never in a million years did I think that was going to work. I thought that was going to be Baby Mama lame.

But it wasn't. From the dorky Rush jokes, right down to the failure to find a nickname, the slappin' the bass riffs, and ... uh... Lou Ferrigno.

I'm just blown away by how much I really enjoyed this movie, and thought it was well written, funny, and true.

So anyway, there you go. Every once in a while the old dog sees a new trick.

Have you had a similar experience lately?

Been surprised by a film or a book or a TV show that you were convinced was going to suck, but actually turned out to be enjoyable? (And not in that shameful guilty pleasure kind of way -- I've watched Showgirls with the commentary on, too.)

Have at it in the comments.

I'm back into trying to get a new routine going -- in preparation for getting into my new office next week, so I don't know how much I'll be blogging this week. We'll see.

Again, anybody want to try a guest post, email me and we'll talk.

Comedy Wank Fridays!

JAIME WEINMAN'S minutae-chewing dissection of the type of "comedy writer" jokes he hates on the Simpsons is just too good not to call attention to here.

BTW, a good friend of mine -- and you know who you are -- is both a comedy writer, and a shameless whore for these kinds of jokes. And when he says them, mostly I laugh. Because I have weak sauce.

Getting CanTeeVee Cheesy

SIMON HOUPT is a sharp writer for the Globe & Mail, and it looks like he's starting a new gig that sounds a lot like the beat I used to cover lo those many moons ago on media television: he's the Globe's new Marketing and Advertising reporter.

In his first dispatch, he runs down a bit of the particular challenges of making Product Integration work on Canadian shows. I have to admit, I'm a lot less worked up over this than I used to be. Call it attrition fatigue -- but of all the things that are stacked against us here, product integration is pretty far down the list.

Today, viewers who objected to the ham-fisted wedging of these ads into their favourite shows just a few years ago largely shrug off the commercial placements, not only on reality shows like Survivor, Top Chef, and American Idol but also on Emmy-winning fare like The Office and 30 Rock.

When Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, left the network last month, he did so to join up with Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp for a new venture that will create branded entertainment: television shows seamlessly blending advertising into the content.

Canadian advertisers say that's a game they can't hope to play. Marketers here note that deals securing placement of a major brand on a U.S. network are struck between multinationals who have no time to worry about the concerns of a branch office in Toronto, which may believe a different creative approach is required to appeal to Canadian consumers.

The article touches on several of the unique problems of growing this revenue stream in Canada. For my money, you can toss a coin to see which is more of a challenge -- the general conservative nature of Canadian advertisers, or the very real fact that placements for 20K are often more trouble than they're worth. If a placement buys you an extra day's shooting, great. But if you're going to keep three people running around for weeks for something that's not even going to buy you a day - ehh. not so much.

Interesting fact that jumped out at me, that I didn't know -- the network takes up to 60% of any revenue deal. Man! Sixty damn percent! There is just no end to the vise-like problem of raising a budget here.

Brrr.

Whenever I feel sorry for Canadian Producers, it's like an angel walks over my grave... :)

...and for the record. I'd be happy to write in Advil. Sweet, sweet Advil. Advil Blue, I love you.

Critical Regulatory Tipping Catastrophe

ONE OF THE big arguments of history is what drives human history more -- great events or great people. It's a fascinating argument. But an equally interesting little eddy is how critical mass is achieved for an idea. When Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point, he sort of put into words something that most of us sensed, or knew from our own lives. We're taught that things change slowly. But they don't. Not really. Things kind of tend to stay the same, and then something happens and suddenly there's a critical mass and whooosh, change happens faster than you could possibly imagine.

The Soviet Union and communism had been on the ropes for awhile, but when that Wall fell, it was game over. We heard about subprime mortgages in crisis for a long time -- but Bear Sterns went down, and suddenly the whole financial system quickly imploded and we plunged into recession. The British Colonists had been grumbling and complaining for years, but when Great Britain passed the Intolerable Acts, the tea went into Boston Harbour and British North America began to unravel.

Canadians are a largely complacent people. A little smug, and not prone to rash displays. There might be some people who get a little bent out of shape about subjects like media concentration and taxation levels, but very few people are actually moved enough to do something about it.

So we have the situation we have today. Cell phone service in this country is some of the most expensive and least robust of anywhere in the industrialized world. On Text messages, the industry markup is 4900 percent. Cable and satellite services for most people have gone up something like 30% since the sector was largely deregulated a few years ago. The big three or four companies control most of the pipe money -- delivering tv and internet to the majority of the country. They've made record profits over the last few years, $2 billion last year -- off you and me, while enjoying robust regulatory protection.

On the broadcast side, well, if you've read this blog before, you know the drift of that. They've done more to spend money on U.S. programming, while consolidating, and cutting local TV coverage to the bone. My part of the industry has suffered a lot. And the broadcasters spent huge amounts of money gobbling each other up, and made, again, hand over fist profits, until they latest downturn where they decided the sky was falling -- and brazenly turned around and said that the active strategy of consolidation that they'd been pursuing for years, wasn't the reason that local TV had become so anemic. Nope, apparently everything was fine until Bear Stearns went into the tank, and GM pulled the plug on advertising.

We've been treated (okay, I concede, it wasn't much of a treat, and you probably weren't paying attention anyway) to an ugly squabble for the last couple of years between the cablers and the broadcasters. It's over money, as everything is. The broadcasters want to get paid for their valuable signals that duplicate what you already get on the U.S. networks, and the Cablers say they shouldn't have to do anything to support the system, and if they're made to pay into a fund that saves local tv or promotes Canadian creative drama, or buys pony rides for sick kids, well, that's a tax and they're just going to pass it on to you and me -- like they've passed on those massive increases over the last few years, for substandard service.

Oh there's other neato stuff around the rims, too....like the fact that they want to be able to shape internet traffic -- so they'll sell you on blazing hot speeds and then cut off the faucet when you try to get what you paid for. They also want to set rates that favour their businesses -- specifically, usage-based rates for internet pipe that makes it very difficult for the 20% of the market that isn't one of those big five Telecommunications behemoths to try and offer better service to Canadians.

In any case, with all those regs in place that mean you can't seek out a real competitor, (I mean, wow, I can choose between Rogers and Bell? Lucky me. Now, for my next choice, I get to choose between death by hanging or drowning, right?) aren't we all lucky that we have somebody watching out for us?

Who am I talking about? The CRTC, of course.

Except, of course, they don't. They never have. The CRTC doesn't work for you and me. They're a bureaucratic organization that's basically bought and paid for by the industries they regulate.

Little brushfires over things like net neutrality might have started the ball rolling, but a few recent, very tin-eared decisions and processes have stripped the veneer away from the game. First, there was that wonderful case in the last broadcaster hearings where they went behind closed doors and then erased the redacted transcripts of what was said. Then there was the screw up of the Do Not Call list, and the fact that now the CRTC is going behind closed doors AGAIN, in order to PROTECT the companies that have violated that list.

That's what they do. They protect companies. Not you. And not me.

In classic netgeek fashion, it's the internet decision last week that started an ugly ball rolling. A very slick, quite professional campaign to Dissolve The CRTC. When the light is shone upon the dark recesses of the commission, it's pretty hard to argue against the point that the commissioners are clearly too close to the industries they regulate.

But yesterday, the other crying baby, the broadcasters -- were served up a slice of failure pie that takes that grassroots campaign and elevates it to something else.

In the midst of a horrific local storm, with Tornadoes touching down all over the city, local TV failed in the most profound way possible to inform its citizens. If you ask "what am I paying for?" then based on yesterday, the clear answer is nothing. Nothing at all. As Jim Henshaw put it:

Since the lightning was now crackling the radio so much it was unlistenable and local television was in news hour mode, I went back to the TV to find out what was happening.

I learned that the Lockerbie bomber had been released, the Prime Minister was enjoying his trip through the Arctic and Hurricane Bill was threatening Bermuda.

Nothing about what was happening right outside my window and less than 30 clicks from where these broadcasts were originating.

To be sure, there had been a mention of Durham, where the first Tornado had hit an hour earlier and that there were “suspected” touch downs of funnel clouds in Vaughn and my hometown of Newmarket. But no details. No raw video from a courageous videographer. No field reporters ducking flying cows.

In the centralized model of Canadian local TV I’d predictedmonths ago but never thought might ever personally affect me, the two million people who live just beyond the Greater Toronto Area had no television service addressing the imminent threat they all faced.

Instead, I was treated to the same pre-packaged news segments, the same smiling meat puppets and the same banal “Sparky, what the heck’s happened to my Blue Jays?” banter.

People who grow up in Toronto are used to the frequent storm crawls and radar

messages that run on the Buffalo stations whenever there's a storm. Our local stations here couldn't even muster that much yesterday -- except in one case, long after the storms had already crested.

Interestingly enough, I have to say that I was out on the road yesterday, listening to my Ipod, and had no idea how really bad the storm was, until I got an email alert on my phone -- from CBC.CA. That's right. The poor, maligned, complained about CBC dropped an alert in my inbox that said Tornadoes in Toronto and spelled out the severity of the storm in dire enough terms that I immediately found a parking garage and waited out the deluge.

Go read Jim Henshaw's justifiably livid accounting of the utter failure of local TV during the storm. Better yet, print it out, mail it to your MP with a big red "WTF?" written across the top. Remember, this is local TV in Toronto, a city of TWO MILLION people -- not Regina or Red Deer or Saint John. Ask yourself if you think Michel Arpin and the merry band of CRTC commissioners are sweating yet?

A big bowl of #fail with sadness sauce. And maybe, if we're very lucky, and people keep the heat on-- a tipping point.

I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down

OH CANADIAN SCRIBE, I see you out there, reading this bathed in the cathode ray glow. You've kept silent, so silent, saying nothing as the sands shift around the sinkhole of our little industry. "Better to stay under the radar," you think. "Besides, I'm probably just going to go to the States anyway."

Really?

Well, read a couple of recent articles from Variety first:

Recession shrinks writers' room. An excerpt:

One unfortunate casualty of the recession that may not receive as much attention as the slow sales of homes is the shrinkage of the writers' room.

Those containers of creativity haven't physically gotten smaller across the television production landscape, but they're slightly emptier these days. Rough financial seas have produced tighter ships.

"I definitely feel as if there are (fewer) jobs out there," says Damon Lindelof, exec producer of ABC's "Lost."

"Whereas new shows from pilots that got picked up used to have 10 to 12 writers -- that was the size of our staff in 2004 -- we're just eight now. In late winter and early spring of this year, when the recession was rearing its ugly head, everybody was hearing rumors about the ramifications, that nobody was immune and that we had to make compromises."

"For a show like ours," says Lindelof, "or 'Dexter,' that only does 15-17 episodes but is very serialized and complex and hard to do, it's almost impossible to generate those shows with writing staffs of less than six to eight."

For the immediate future at least, some shows might have to find out the hard way if that's true.

"I don't think anybody really knows, because we're only now finding out what the new shape of the room can do," Rotko says. "We'll have to see if the story is working, if the procedurals are working. This may be the framework: a smaller, slightly condensed room.

And:

TV credits constrict with job market

Experienced showrunners and senior writer-producers who would have easily landed full-time staff slots just a few seasons ago are now taking on consulting producer gigs, thanks to the much-diminished number of scripted series ordered by the major nets for the 2009-10 season.

The rise of consulting producers is definitely a function of market conditions, but that doesn't mean that it's automatically a horrible situation for writers. Seasoned scribes who have reached the exec producer or co-exec producer level say they'd much rather work as consulting producers than take another title that would indicate they've taken a step backward -- and make it harder for them to command exec producer stripes in the future.

"It is a manageable, win-win situation for everyone involved if (a consulting gig) is properly put into place and constructed," says Thania St. John, a drama vet who is a consulting producer on Lifetime's "Drop Dead Diva."

"Nowadays you have a large group of very talented (writers) who have reached a certain level in their career. At some point there's just not going to be that (top) job available, but you still want to work. It makes sense to be a consulting producer."

The consulting producer role has become commonplace on comedy and drama series during the past decade. It typically involves an experienced hyphenate working one to three days a week on a series -- helping to break stories and outline arcs, offering rewrite and punch-up services and general troubleshooting advice.

(Posted using ShareThis)

You've got no Green Card. Things are tough all over. And the Promised Land has lots of experienced scribes with a 323 or 213 area code who've got nothing going on.

So, uh ... maybe, oh, I don't know -- maybe now's the time to actually get off your ass and try to make things better for you and your fellow creatives here, hmm?

I mean, it's better than just stressing out, right? That stuff's good for nobody!

Respect the audience, and the process -- and be prepared. There's a lot of tearing down coming. You want to pick up a hammer and maybe plant a flower or two? Or are you gonna keep being the passive character in your own life story?

Point of No Return

NICE ARTICLE in The Walrus this month that sets the table on the current problems in Canadian drama. Anderson does a good job giving the history of the medium in this country, and how it comes to find itself in its current parlous state.

With Quotes from Janet MacLean (co-creator/Executive Producer, The Border,) Chris Haddock, (Creator/Exec Producer DaVinci's Inquest, Intelligence) Bob Martin (co-creator, Slings & Arrows) and Mark Ellis & Stephanie Morgenstern (creators of Flashpoint.)

I'm working up a series of State of the Nation posts for a couple of weeks from now. Let's see if Haddock is right, and it's my turn to get pushed off the cliff. For now, read what Anderson has to say:

Walrus Magazine » Point of No Return » By Jason Anderson

(Posted using ShareThis)

Reprint: Thanks, Mr. K.

CAUSE IT'S MY BLOGAVERSARY, I'm posting a couple of pieces from the first month. This is where I finally revealed what the title of the Blog was about.

originally published 9/12/2005

Okay: so here it is. A thousand years ago, when I was still a journalist, I was interviewing an author. Doesn't matter who, but this was a writer I admired greatly. While the tape was changing, I peppered him with questions for my own interests' sake: "how did you make the leap to professional writer?" and things like that.

He smiled for a bit and nailed me with a glance. He saw what I was asking without me even asking it. He laughed and said,

"getting sick of the treadmill?"

And I smiled, too. He caught me out. This was certainly the first time any of my interview subjects had showed the slightest interest in the guy asking the questions. He paused for a second, like he was weighing saying something, and then he said,

"You'll get there. If you really, really want to write, you'll find a way to do it, and you'll find a way to make money doing it."

"Okay, I've got speed."

That's the cameraman telling me that he's ready to keep going; to resume the interview. So the last part of what the author said was the first thing I saw when I screened the tape back to cut my story together.

His face changed for a second there. Just a wisp of darkness crossed, and then was gone, as he settled back into interview mode. And before I got off my next question, he said,

"Just don't expect it to solve all your problems. At a certain point, you're still in the corner at the party, staring out at people; bewildered, munching dead things on sticks."

So. Now you know.

Reprint: His Master's Voice

IT'S MY FOUR YEAR BLOGAVERSARY, so I'm reposting a few nice pieces from that first month of blogging.

Originally published 8/20/2005

A few years ago, in a previous life, I was a television producer at a hip TeeVee station. I would do the kinds of stories where you talked to authors, people plugging their new book, videogame, pyramid scheme -- things like that. I didn't do many musicians - there were other people for that. I did lots of people who were big in advertising and marketing. Though I was tangentally related to that field, mostly the act of interviewing those people made it utterly clear to me that, boy, was I ever glad that I had not sought out a career in advertising and marketing.

Being an interviewer and producer was a strange gig, especially at this place where there was such high turnover; that kind of low level info tv is a factory -- you churn out one story after another, each one as disposable as the last. I was always an "off-camera interviewer." It meant that you tried to keep your questions short, and leading. You were constantly trying to get people to expound - not to have a conversation with you, but to talk for posterity, like they were communicating directly with that audience of one, watching at home. If you do it long enough, you start to feel like a ghost. You become about process, ever aware of the camera and the clip. It got so I could hear when we were coming near the end of the tape, because of the change in the whirring of the camera motor. I would always get my camerapeople to turn out the red light, and tell them to start rolling early, and just ease into the conversation. People got less nervous when you did that. While they were talking, you became the master of not interrupting, of feeding back signals of response that weren't verbal. A whole lot of smiles, and nods, and hand motions - everything short of speaking so that your voice wouldn't be heard on the tape. You learn to listen in clip. As you followed the conversation, there would be a dispassionate part of you that said, "bing. there's my opener. bing. that's a closing clip. bing. there's the clip I need to bridge the piece." You were simultaneously of the moment, deep in the conversation, and utterly apart from it.

Rarely in this life do people get to talk, really talk, as long as they want to. Conversation demands that you follow along, that you engage the other person; that you cede ground and give and take. An interview isn't like that at all. You could always tell the media-trained people, who spoke in soundbites and never veered off the mark. But with other people, civilians, the same pattern would always emerge. People can talk on one subject for about twenty seconds. Sometimes as much as thirty, but usually not much more. After that amount of time, they either go off on a tangent, run out of steam, or start repeating what they've already said. Try it sometime. It's uncanny.

Over the course of a few years, I probably interviewed close to five hundred people. Just the ghost in the chair listening to clip as the camera motor whirred. A couple of times in my social life, people would grow cross with me as they caught me "interviewing" them. They would call me on it, and ask me to stop. One woman put it best, when she said to me, "I'm not sure I like you when you do that. You go so far away."

Looking back on it, I realize that job for was perfect preparation for what I do now, though my life couldn't be more different. Then, I'd meet fourteen new people each week. Now, I spend most of my time alone, and the people I try to make speak, are entirely fictional constructs. Though some of those advertising types would give them a run for their money on that score.

What's remained is that separateness, that apartness. Part of actually being a writer, a working writer, is having an ability to disengage from the world, and from the people around you. To take that step back; to listen for the clip, the line, and notice the inflection and the rolling cadence of how people talk. Sure, it's artificial. But when you saw my interviews on the TeeVee, they were naturalistic, and you believed them. And that's just what I'm striving for when I write a script. It takes an awful lot of craft, and stepping back, to make things seem natural. To create a believeable world, one must sometimes take yourself out of this one.

For a long time I thought those years spent talking to people as an off-camera interviewer were wasted years; an unfortunate eddy that I'd followed for a while. For a long time, I saw that time of my life as a man who knew what he wanted to do, but lacked the courage to do it.

Now I'm not so sure. Though those interviews became tedious near the end -- I knew I had to get out when I found myself with a pasted-on smile listening to some guy talk about his new Molson ad thinking, "I could reach across right now and poke out your eyes, and you'd probably keep on talking about the breakthrough creative of your cheesy beer ad," -- I gravitated toward that job for the same reason as I settled into this one: because it suited something in my personality. I never wanted to be the centre of attention: not at work, anyway. But I did want to pull the strings.

I can hear the camera motor. I'm almost out of tape. And to think, I started out this entry wanting to explain what "Dead Things On Sticks" meant. Ah well. I'll get to that.

Driving Casting Mad

HIDDEN AMONG Bruce Handy's enjoyable Vanity Fair feature on Mad Men's new season is a little tidbit that actually serves as great crafty advice:

Another role came up, a twentysomething adman described as “blond, doughy, British.” Carrie Audino, one of the show’s two casting directors, raised an objection: “That really limits us. We can do 20s and British or doughy and blond, but all four is tough.” Weiner thought for a moment, then offered a poetically succinct summation of the character: “I want him to be one of those guys whose only attraction is his accent.” Now they had something they could work with. (The original character description had been “too limiting,” Audino told me later. “A doughy British guy who’s blond, in his 20s? There are two of them—maybe—in L.A.”)

The thing to remember when you're writing a TV script is that -- as I talked about in the series last week -- everything's happening fast. Including casting. You never know who's available at any time. You may think that you have the perfect picture in your head of what someone should look like, or be like. But how many stories have you heard of an actor who came in, and ultimately was iconic in a role, but who wasn't at all who the writer pictured going in?

All writers write specific types in sometimes, and you never know what the casting director is going to come back and say is difficult or limiting. On The Border, we would often get into trouble when we tried to find actors within specific ethnic groups that maybe for cultural reasons don't have a deep pool of actors. (First generation immigrants, for instance, tend not to have too many sons and daughters saying, "Mom, Dad, I want to be an ACTOR!" and finding unqualified support.)

It's also that combo of traits -- accent, look, etc, that dices and slices your choices. Casting Directors will try to go off the beam a little, to show you contrasts. They may ask if a part can be cast color blind, for instance. (I don't mean the actor is color blind, I mean that any ethnicity will do.) But they generally do try to hew to what you've written.

But Weiner's solution in the excerpt above is quite elegant, because rather than frame the part in terms of externals and their own mind's eye (physicality, appearance, cadence of voice, accent) it frames the part in terms of what the impression the audience should be left with.

It's a little mind shift, but when you're squeezing in those two description lines to bring a character to life, it's worth considering what the effect of the character is meant to be -- and rather than describing externals, conjure a feeling. Write what the first impression should be for the viewer.

Because if you do that, the casting director can come back to you and say, "Yeah, but what do you see in terms of height, weight, accent, hair color or age?"

Sigh.

It's a funny business.