Let A Thousand Corners Bloom

FROM THE "Way It's Supposed To Work" file...

Time was that the talented would find the scary truth of Canadian TV -- getting your first break wasn't the problem ... sustaining a career was. Too often "breaking in" meant finding that there was no second or third job down the road for a TV writer or actor. No matter how good your notices or scripts or work was, the smallness of the hatbox industry & the tendency to "spread it around" meant that the mid-career stall often drove you down and south. (To L.A.)

But then Corner Gas changed everything.  By training a stable of writers, CG has made the unlikely tenable -- the chance to think of having a comedy writing career in Canada, if that's what you want to do.

So that show's six season run trained a group of comedy writers; and follow up opportunities allowed those people to stay, so that the next generation of Canadian scripted comedies don't start over from zero. Again.

Already upcoming is Hiccups, CTV's next series from Brent Butt, starring his wife, Nancy Robertson, and Dan For Mayor, a charming little show starring Fred Ewanuick (Hank from CG), created and written by three generations of CG Showrunners -- Paul Mather, Kevin White, and Mark Farrell.

Now today from CBC comes the next drop of the shoe:

TORONTO -- The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has picked up a sitcom from E1 Television based on the popular Canadian curling movie "Men With Brooms."

The TV adaptation follows an earlier pilot written by Paul Mather ("Corner Gas") about four regular joes who hang out at the local curling rink. 

Canada's public broadcaster also picked up a second half-hour comedy, "Insecurity," from Verite Films and produced by Virginia Thompson. 

Virginia Thompson also produced Corner Gas, & Insecurity's creator is Kevin White.  Sounds like Kevin & Paul will be busy for the next little while.  Of course, Mark Farrell I think is also back involved with 22 Minutes... slackers.

Now all these shows won't be clones of Gas, to be sure.  I've known Kevin for 20 years and he's one of the funniest guys I know. It'll be interesting to see the nuanced differences in each of the shows. Still, from one successful training ground spawns four shows -- and those shows will train more writers, and actors, and maybe more producers & directors who understand how to make half hour comedies -- one of the hardest genres out there.

Sniff. It's almost like we have a merit-based industry all of a sudden.

So thanks, Corner Gas.  Whether you were a fan or not, it's the gift that keeps on giving by giving people the chance to do what they love without automatically becoming expatriates.

Oh, The Ennui

FOR SHEER LAUGHS in the morning, the combination of designed-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives living spaces & existential regrets -- well, Unhappy Hipsters, I salute you. I really do.

Reverse Simulcast, Meet CTV's Olympics Eyeballs

"REVERSE SIMULCASTING" was the catchy phrase coined when the first of the "made in Canada, broadcast in the USA" shows, FLASHPOINT, hit the scene after the end of the last WGA strike.


Over the years, the Canadian practice of tying their schedules up in pretzels to try and air the U.S. shows at the same time as the U.S. network (so they could block out their cable signal,) had become fraught.  The age of downloading meant that the other practice that went hand in hand with simulcasting, pre-releasing, (where the Canadian net that couldn't simulcast because of a conflict would sometimes air the show a day or two earlier than in the USA) went out the window.


So Ivan Fecan's coining of that phrase held a certain swagger to it -- now we were going to be able to have one of our shows on at the same time as in the USA -- and we'd have the control.


Except, of course, it didn't work out that way.


Flashpoint first season episodes were held back because CBS wanted to bench them for a few months.  CTV went along.  That created some difficulty for the writers in that an ep that wasn't meant to be a finale had to serve as one, and an ep that wasn't meant to be a premiere had to serve as one.


(Non writing producers have an easy fix for this. They say things like, "every episode should be made so it could be a premiere! OR a finale!!!"  Wow. What a great idea! <glish>  (Glish, by the way, is the sound that results when every writer who's ever written an episode of TeeVee rolls their eyes at once.)


Anyhoo, the Flashpoint fun continued with the second season split up the same way. Though produced all at once, the 2nd season was aired in simulcast, with CBS holding back on scheduling the back half episodes.  They held them back, and back, and back, and to this day they're still holding them. And finally CTV gave up and aired the episodes here first and held their breath, and lo and behold, over a million people watched because Canadians actually like Flashpoint. So yay Flashpoint.


Problem was, CTV also had another cop show in the can that was a co-pro intended to be "reverse simulcast" -- but their U.S. partner wouldn't commit.


So, the "savior" that is the new Canadian-U.S. partnership fatally shows its limitations. No matter what, no matter how cost effective they are (pay $400 000 an ep, and get control because the Producers are so gosh-darn happy to please you!) these shows are always going to be treated as filler by the U.S. network. Because they ARE filler.


And you know that old saw about, "how much are you gonna love somebody who'll take anything from you, who'll change anything about themselves to be with you, because they just want you to love them, damnit!?" Geez. Sounds to me like the CFTPA should be packing copies of "He's Just Not That Into You" into the Prime Time Gift Bags this year. Glish.


Anyway, what do you do if you're CTV, and you paid a jillion dollars for the Olympics, and you know you're going to have massive eyeballs and you have all these series you want to promote -- well, you schedule them right after Olympics, right? I mean, that's the smart thing to do.  Except oh. Right...one of them, "The Bridge," was supposed to be one of them reverse-simulcast thingies.


Well CTV decided to do something smart. They said "Eff It":

Toronto– CTV announced today it has strategically scheduled three new Original Canadian series to debut next month, immediately following the conclusion of theVANCOUVER 2010 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES. The three series will benefit from weeks of promotion during what is to be one of the most-watched television events of the year.

First, CTV’s hit Monday night comedy block expands to two hours on March 1, the day following the close of Vancouver 2010. At 8 p.m. ET, Brent Butt is back in HICCUPS, starring CORNER GAS’ co-star Nancy Robertson as children’s author Millie Upton. Then, at 8:30 p.m. ET, CORNER GAS alumnus Fred Ewanuick stars as a hapless electoral candidate in DAN FOR MAYOR. Both comedies join Top 10, smash-hit, laugh-makers TWO AND A HALF MEN and THE BIG BANG THEORY, which follow at 9 p.m. ET and 9:30 p.m. ET, respectively.

Later that week it’s the much-anticipated premiere of CTV’s newest one-hour original drama series, THE BRIDGE. Starring BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’s Aaron Douglas, THE BRIDGE is an authentic and unique twist on the police procedural told through the lens of a charismatic police union leader. The series debuts Friday, March 5 at 9 p.m. ET with a special two-hour series premiere before moving to its regular Fridays at 10 p.m. ET timeslot beginning March 12 on CTV (visit CTV.ca to confirm local broadcast times).

So it's certainly not the death of the reverse simulcast idea...but maybe it's more of an "eyes wide open" teachable moment in the Canadian network game.   

There's no guarantee that any of these shows will be hits, of course, but CTV is doing the right thing by serving them up when there are lots of eyeballs to watch.  That's a good thing.

And there's plenty to be excited about, too.  Both of the comedies have a Corner Gas pedigree, CTV's highest rated original show til Flashpoint came along.

If you're interested, the WGC recently held a special screening & discussion for members to get a sneak preview of Dan For Mayor.  The podcast of the discussion with two of the Creators & Producers, Kevin White & Paul Mather (Mark Farrell was out of town) is available here.

And again, if you want to program your PVR's, the CTV premieres are:

Hiccups & Dan For Mayor -- March 1, 8 & 8:30, before Two and a Half Men & Big Bang Theory

The Bridge -- March 5, 9-11, before moving to its regular slot the next week, Fridays at 10pm.

State of the Digital Nation

WELL FIRST OF ALL, I have to say I am tremendously relieved.  I have often thought that the only thing LOST was missing was an inscrutable Japanese guy trimming a bonsai tree.

The other program I watched last night managed to both not live up to, and exceed my expectations.  The Frontline doc DIGITAL NATION was excellent. And lo and behold, if you didn't manage to see it, you can watch it online at the PBS site.  And lo and behold Canadians, this means you, too.  PBS does not geoblock its broadcasts.  Thank you, public television!

I do think that the most interesting and provocative parts were the earliest ones, where correspondent Douglas Rushkoff and Producer/Director Rachel Dretzin, broke down the reality of our distracted age -- the falling critical thinking skills of even our top students, the inability to write connected coherent paragraphs -- and the revelation that studies show that multitaskers suck at multitasking, utterly.  We all can agree that the scourge of texting while driving is bad, but it's notable and interesting to see how much our digital appendages are hurting us in other ways.

The other thing that got to me was the passage on video game addiction.  Not because of the subject itself. I've seen it, it's all rather played out for me -- but because they had this whole passage where a South Korean kid was sent to camp for a couple of weeks without the computer, and admitted that (while he seemed to be having fun) he was really thinking about getting back to the games.

I think back to my own childhood and the amount of unstructured play it contained -- running around in the woods behind my house in New City, New York, or swimming or riding bikes through the neighborhood in Orlando, or climbing trees & hide & go seek in Canada -- and I can't help but feel bad for today's kids.  I was never athletic, except for a couple years when I swam in Florida.  But in addition to bumbling my way through Little League games & Soccer -- there was just a whole lot of running around without a plan.  And I still managed to watch too damn much TV.  There's an image in the Doc of Dretzin in her kitchen cooking dinner, looking out at the living room where one son is on a laptop, her husband's on another, and the two younger kids play with her Iphone -- that's just a little bit heartbreaking.

But I should have known that with Doug involved, the balance would ultimately tip positive. And the Doc does a great job of telling that side of the story, too.  Failing schools in the Bronx that have reversed falling test scores through re-imagining the role of technology, better work environments through virtual spaces, and the continuing drive for community -- which is the part of it that fascinated me all those years ago when I was on MediaTelevision.

I write these entries quick and tend not to edit them too much, so they are usually first blurt. And sometimes that means I look back on the entries like the one I did yesterday promoting this Doc and think, "mmm, did you mean to be that negative?"   And I didn't. So I'm glad that the doc is ultimately balanced about what is gained and lost in the Digital Nation.

But the point that I made regarding the Social Media Week still stands. The worst sin of those promoting new media has always been the "throw the baby out with the bathwater" evangelism that assumes too much.  Like the fact that everyone is a great multitasker or will be, going forward.  What I took from the Doc last night was that the ubiquity of new communication tech has indeed changed us -- not always for the better. But the connections and stories we crave are still rooted in the same space.  It is, as McLuhan always maintained, evolution not revolution. One media does not replace or cannibalize another.

So I don't know where Television is going or what the thing we now think of as Television will be in a few years. But the people who insist it's going to die need to take a step back and separate the hype from the research of how people respond to creativity.

One of the most interesting things I think has come out of the digital space lately is the quiet realization that the technology can't drive it alone.  As games get more complex, game companies are starting to realize that yes, they actually do need writers to come up with stuff -- the designers can't drive the bus by themselves.

And as distractions mount and defeat us all, some of us have learned to seize back the ability to concentrate on just one thing at a time.  What is the Pomodoro technique if not that?  I've just had the three most focused days of work I've had in months -- truly exhausting days. And they were defined entirely by 25 minute countdowns where I couldn't check email or be distracted in any way, shape or form.

Anyway, Digital Nation is good brain food.  Again, everybody should watch it.

You're Not the Taskmaster You Think You Are

I HAVE SEVERE OUTLINE-head.  There is no way I'll be following LOST tonight. I wonder if that'll make it better?

But just a wee little program note to any and all of you cavorting through Social Media Week this week in Toronto...

Tonight at 9pm on PBS Frontline is a doc I think you should probably see.  A long time ago, back in my pre-writing, I like TV storytelling days, I was a producer on this forward looking, big buzzword show. I did a bunch of think tanks back in the SHIFT magazine days with a guy named Douglas Rushkoff. Great guy, wonderful writer, big enthusiast for the brave new digital world and how it was all gonna change us all and how we were going to be big old multitaskers...

In the early 1990's Rushkoff wrote regularly for Wired Magazine, and wrote books that chronicled the changing mind of the digerati.

Well tonight, he's participating in this doc, and throwing a bit of cold water. The pre-release hype for this doc has focused on one fairly salient piece of info: all that hype about everybody younger growing up being big multitaskers -- turns out to be bullshit. Not borne out by the data.  Turns out when you're doing nine things at once, you're not very good at any of those things -- no matter what your age or demo or how hip to the lingo you are.

I point this out because I think one of the articles I read about Social Media week today said something about how all the people who watch TV will be dead in a few years.

Well, jinkies, I was there the first time we started talking that foolishness. Sometimes, hype is just hype.  And for those of us watching the CaseCamp Digital Media rah rah space from the "seen it before" seats, it's all rather...twee.  I know you think that makes us all haters, and out of touch. But then again, we've been talking about this stuff since you were trying to find out where babies came from.

Watch the Doc. See what you think.  If Doug Rushkoff can come to doubt the gospel, then man, you need to check yourself, dude.  Cause once upon a time...

Humbled

YOU KNOW the more I think about it the more I think that for the rest of 2010 at least, when I watch something scripted or try to judge whatever it is I've just written, the yardstick I'm going to try to resist reaching for is, "Yeah, but is this as enjoyable as Jersey Shore?"

I know it's one month down already, but still...it is going to be one looong year.

What Kind of Cheese?

ANDREW POTTER posted this first on Macleans.ca, but I'm fairly certain that a lot of you animals don't read the news. What's particularly odd about this clip is that the woman doing the demo -- at least through the degradations of the kinescope, at first glance kinda sorta looks like my Mom. Sorta. Eh...not really.

Except, uh, see, ahh, I'm pretty sure, coming up in The Bronx, that my Mom knew how to pronounce "pizzeria" -- and knew enough not to pronounce it, "Eyetalian." I didn't move here til the 1970's, so it's nice to see that in the 50's Canada was still coming through the '20's.

From this to JWoww in just over 50 years. There's progress for you.





Gosh, I hope everyone doesn't get too filled up. We're supposed to go skurfing later.

How To Make It America

SO I SPENT most of the weekend working long days grinding out outline stuff.  When it comes to those precious few hours you get before unconsciousness, you want to spend them right.  I got lucky with a pretty great Jon Hamm-hosted SNL this weekend... but it's the other thing I wanted to really crow about.

TMN sends me promo discs for its upcoming show sometimes, and so it was that I've managed to see the first few eps of a new HBO half hour comedy series called "How To Make It In America."

The show stars Bryan Greenberg and Victor Rasuk, was created by Ian Edelman and was Directed by Julian Farino. It comes to HBO from Mark Wahlberg's production company, and there are moments where it seems like they're going to try to promote it as a kind of east coast Entourage.

But it's not. It's not even particularly a comedy, though it's pretty funny.  From the opening titles, with its bold sans serif type & chunky early 70's soul theme song, How to Make it in America is HBO's announcement that it's right back at the center of the zeitgeist as tastemaker.

Everything about this show is tremendously appealing. It's about two guys in their twenties trying to make it as entrepeneurs in the fashion world in New York. But what gets me about it is that there isn't a false note anywhere in the show.  It cooks along as the perfect of the moment show about the difficulties and disappointments of the American dream -- even hinting at the darkness underneath, that behind that facade of you can make it with hard work and grit lies worlds and clubs and secret handshakes that stack the deck against you.  It's sincere but not naive, unsentimental but not cynical.

The top-flight cast includes Martha Plimpton, Sharyn Sossamon, Kid Cudi, and Luis Guzman.

This is a show where your unreliable friend still has your best interests at heart, where your Ex-Girlfriend isn't a harridan or simply a sex object; where people who other shows categorize as the foil or the antagonist can show a redeemable side.  Every character is appealing, their stories and struggles are engrossing, and the rainbow of people you see actually reflect the reality of a 21st century urban center. The reality of daily disappointments are counteracted by friends who cancel plans just to be there for you, and cut with the sadness of people who maybe lost a little too much, maybe even their sanity -- on their way to their dreams.  I don't know where they're going with the show, but I will follow them without hesitation.

As America freaks out over the jobless recovery, this -- not Hung -- is the show that puts HBO back on the map because it's about people you care about, facing challenges of achievement and ambition that are instantly relatable.  I found myself thinking about it all day today, suffering to think that it'll be weeks before I can see a new episode.  I don't think I've been this excited or charmed by a show since Mad Men. 

How to Make it in America premieres February 14th.  Do whatever you can to see it. It's an absolute winner -- with great Direction that makes New York come alive, note perfect casting and acting -- and an easy, genuine, and sincere writing style that is just unvarnished goodness from top to bottom.

Good tv makes me happy, and this show did that in spades.

And Jesus Was a Crossmaker

GOOD OLD ALEX EPSTEIN up there in Montreal there is giving it the good fight, trying to figure out new ways to have difficult conversations.  In this case, how to communicate the old, "Uh, no, I can't polish your niece's script because it's not really a script, y'see" problem.

This is the real groanworthy stuff, and there's not a pro writer out there that doesn't have a miserable time when they find themselves taking one of those jobs because you need the money.

But why, specifically, is it such a pain in the ass?  Well, Alex takes a stab at explaining it with a nifty carpentry metaphor:

A dialog polish is like slapping paint on a cabinet or dresser. It makes it look better. But it doesn't make it work better if it's not working right. If it's not working right, you have to take the thing apart, usually all the way, and recut or replace some or all of the pieces, and then put the whole thing back together again before you paint.

Likewise, if an aspiring writer asks if I'll write with them, then the answer is almost always "no." I'll consult, or I'll do the writing myself, but I can't co-write with someone who's not a pro writer.

I find that once you start using carpentry metaphors talking to producers, they start to understand better why you can't "polish" an amateurish script, or "co-write" with an amateur. Try using this metaphor yourself, let me know how it works out.

Whole piece is worth reading; and it has a nice takeaway that may or may not work the next time you have to have an awkward conversation about doing a "polish" on something.

The Bully Pulpit & The President of the United States

WOW. YOU DON'T see this often in America. You don't even see this very often in Question Period in Ottawa -- and it's supposed to be a part of our political system in Canada. Contrast this with prorogation of government business and it looks even more notable.

It will be interesting to see how the media screws this up. But for now, here's one of the most astonishing exchanges I've seen in recent American politics. The President of the United States went to Baltimore to meet and answer questions from GOP Congressmen -- and he just spoke plain truth.

Will anybody have the guts to pick up the glove he just laid down?

Not if Rush & Bill & Michelle have anything to say about it, I'm sure. But what happens on CNN the next time somebody goes off the reservation and starts talking socialism and "death panels?"

Guess we'll see.



...At its core, if you look at the basic proposal that we've put forward: it has an exchange so that businesses and the self-employed can buy into a pool and can get bargaining power the same way big companies do; the insurance reforms that I've already discussed, making sure that there's choice and competition for those who don't have health insurance. The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and, certainly you don't agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that's not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that's how you guys -- (applause) -- that's how you guys presented it.

And so I'm thinking to myself, well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist -- no, look, I mean, I'm just saying, I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans -- is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.

So all I'm saying is, we've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything, whether it's on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you've been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America.

And I would just say that we have to think about tone. It's not just on your side, by the way -- it's on our side, as well. This is part of what's happened in our politics, where we demonize the other side so much that when it comes to actually getting things done, it becomes tough to do...

 ...I mean, we've got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together, because our constituents start believing us. They don't know sometimes this is just politics what you guys -- or folks on my side do sometimes.

So just a tone of civility instead of slash and burn would be helpful. The problem we have sometimes is a media that responds only to slash-and-burn-style politics. You don't get a lot of credit if I say, "You know, I think Paul Ryan is a pretty sincere guy and has a beautiful family." Nobody is going to run that in the newspapers.

2040Haha

GREAT ARTICLE in Huffington Post (by Omri Marcus) about what's going to be funny in 30 years...(further to the below, I guess.)  I'm not going to excerpt because you really should go read the whole thing.  (H/T to Jill Golick via Twitter)

On the other hand, here's an article that really isn't very funny at all.  What, now, 52% of the population, and 58% of the TV audience or something?

Oh, and the delightful Jude Klassen passes along this link that goes very spicily with the article above.

What Ipad Tells Us About Writing in the Instant Age

WITHIN FIVE SECONDS of Jobs' announcement Wednesday, the jokes started flying on Twitter & the other Social Networks.


Yes. Ipad. We get it. Like with Menstruation. 


After ten minutes, just about every piece of low-hanging fruit had been picked -- multiple times -- from quips about wings and flow to musings about how clearly no women worked at Apple, etc, etc, etc.


Aside from the icky quaintness of it all (one female friend of mine sniffed, "are these people straight out of Mad Men? I've seen a pad like, twice,") I found two things monumentally numbing and depressing:  1) how quickly it all went down, and 2) how many people reached for the same, unfunny, instantly stale observations -- and how proud everybody was to make them.


The democratization of punditry sure aint pretty.


By mid-afternoon, the only joke I'd laughed at, even a bit, had grown stale -- the one about how people from Boston were going to have trouble telling the difference between the "Ipad" and the "Ipod."


Not a great line, to be sure...but at least it went a different way.


And that's where we reach our teachable moment. 


See, even in the age where everyone's potentially a publisher & a content creator, the relationship between wheat & chaff exists.  Digging up a two-year old MadTV sketch that anticipated the Ipad -- and played out every single possible funny permutation of the joke -- before it was news -- just drove the point home.


Just because we all use pens & computers, and can tweet our thoughts, doesn't make us wits ... or, for that matter, writers.


Even in abundance, there is scarcity. For the scarcity comes from those who can make truly original observations about things -- be they events, or trends, or even just the reality of life.  In the dark days of the 1980's, when comedy clubs with red brick walls sprung up like kudzu all across North America, the very embodiment of the lame, hack comedian was doing jokes about airplane food. 


Flash ahead to 2010, and you don't need to have your tray table locked and upright to see that true wit, or an original take -- isn't really any more common than it used to be.


Lame Ipad jokes will always die beside fresher comic takes, like this one from The Onion on Apple Mania.


The comics I worshipped in my youth -- George Carlin, Richard Pryor -- got to where they were because they made the connections no one else made.  Someone once described George Carlin as the guy who pointed out stuff you already knew, but forgot to laugh at the first time.


Now, comedy burns out fast sometimes.  Anyone watching an archived Lenny Bruce set might have trouble getting their head around why he was so groundbreaking. He doesn't even seem funny.  Steve Allen is another one.  I can appreciate contextually why he was so important, but time has not been kind to his routines.


Then you look at a guy like, say, Michael O'Donaghue or Bill Hicks, and you think, "wow, I'm not sure society's ready for those guys even now."


I found sitting on my ON DEMAND channel a couple of days ago, a 2006 special from Louis C.K.  And he has routines about his four year old kid, where he calls her an asshole for being so selfish. And it's terrible and it's wonderful, and it's laugh out loud funny because it's just so original and fresh a take.


And as a writer, that's what your "brand" is. That's what you get paid for.  Your "take."


Now, from Dane Cook on down, there's any number of examples that prove that there's plenty that get somewhere without that original a take; but the writers were the ones looking at the low-hanging fruit in those immediate post-Ipad announcement moments and thinking, "uh...no. Not funny...lame."


(What's more, one of the more interesting conversations I had on Wednesday afternoon was actually quite meta, about how Twitter's 140 character limitation actually encourages the hacky-joke rhythms of an earlier time.  Thanks to @julie_bush and @weinmanj for that. Although there are still some writer friends who consistently make me laugh on Twitter. And no, I'm not saying who.)

Civilians will often get quite shirty when you point out that the idea they just expressed is lame, or not very original. (Which of course you don't do unless they make a deal of it. Psychic self-preservation demands they be the asshole, not you.)  Writers do so in a much lower percentage, because there's always a gut-check going on, an internal voice asking, "is this lame?"


One of the best pieces of advice I ever received about identifying and eliminating cliché was this: "Do you find yourself asking, "Is this a cliché?" Then strip it out. It's a cliché."


The second guesser's version of this, of course, is plugging a line you've just written into the Google.  Less than three hits?  Congratulations -- your line may not be funny, but it's at least fairly original.  Ten thousand hits?  Wow? Really?  Did I just say that out loud?  Wow, that went well. I guess you better talk to the hand, then.


So for the thousands of people who are funny at parties, to the cab drivers who have great ideas for movies, to so and so who causes you to smile tightly at a party when they joke, "you gotta watch this one, they're writing everything we say down," thanks for the reminder that the struggle to mine from a different place, to offer something new and different and not a retread of what everybody's already thinking, is not a vain pursuit.  Well that's not exactly true. It's pretty vain.  One of the raps that writers get is that we can be elitist.  To which the only possible answer is, "OF COURSE we are elitist. We actually think you should listen to what we say! We make money off our thoughts."


In an age of ubiquity, I guess it's just kind of nice to remember that it's not so easy to join that club. 


Especially since, for most of the writers I know, it was back to self-loathing by Five P.M. Wednesday, anyway.


Now where's my Ipad?

Salinger.

“I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetary. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”




Well, I guess at least now he'll finally get left alone. 

Thanks for the books, man.  You sure were right about girls.

"That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are."

Death Porn! Death Porn!

THE MAKERS OF cra$h & burn are clearly feeling the pre$$ure of the old Canadian TV, "can it be more like..?"

...They're starting to crack, methinks.


cra$h & burn tonight at 10pm on SHOWCASE.  I have it on good authority that $hit blows up good.

Damnit.

SIGH.

Iwant.

Ask A Stupid Question...

THE TORONTO STAR yesterday was all over a new study by Ad Agency Bensimon Byrne that should have nervous nellies all through the Canadian TV biz making dookie in their shorts.  Too bad the thing reads as a shoddy retread that's been pre-debunked.


Among the 'revelations' in Dana Flavelle's article:

People are twittering and on the computer and not paying attention to the ads.

Um, you know. Which is different than, uh...getting up to make a sandwich or take a leak or any one of the number of other things people have been doing to avoid ads since, oh, I don't know...the birth of television.


And advertising, as we all know, in the world of pre-Twitter & the falling sky, was always designed so ads only ever aired once, because it's entirely a new, 21st century, post cell phone and computer phenom that people are distracted during ads and might need to see them several times before the message gets through.


Elsewhere in this crackerjack, methodically bullet-proof study, as re- typed by Flavelle:

Just over half of PVR owners use them to record the majority of the shows they watch and eight in 10 report that they fast-forward through the commercials, the study found.

"report" is the key word here. If you asked me in a survey, I would probably say that I always fast forward through the commercials, too.  So howcum when I played HOUSE back on PVR late Monday night, I saw about 3/4 of the ads?  Because I forgot to FF, or a commercial caught my attention, or ... I just didn't.


Studies that actually look at the DATA collected from Peoplemeters have long since refuted the conventional wisdom.  More than a year ago, one study showed that The Office was one of the least fast-forwarded programs...and that programs that caught a well-heeled audience tended not to be skipped as much.  Then last fall came the news that, based on the actual data, people weren't skipping as much as they thought.  (I'm not going searching for the links here, but both studies were widely reported at the time, and I believe I blogged about these findings, too.)


So why this report now?  Well, maybe  it's the latest hit of the "Canada's two years behind" phenom. 


Or maybe it's just that one dying medium (newspapers) likes to deflect the pain to another "dying" medium (TV) whenever they can.


In a related story, I'm sure that Bensimon's Byrne's next study will reveal that nobody is affected by advertising, they report -- but they totally think everybody else but them totally is. 


Totally.


You think they have a new media advertising department? Oh wait. They do?


Quel Shocker.

Death & The Shuckton

SO EP3 of THE KIDS IN THE HALL'S "Death Comes to Town" airs tonight on CBC at 9pm.

I found the first episode funny, but last week's left me a little flat. Seems like the ratings also flattened considerably, which have -- in that oh so Canadian way -- inspired a weird level of glee in certain quarters.  (As opposed to Glee which inspires a certain level of Canadian to play quarters. (Seriously, two points for Sue, & while you're at it, take a drink every time the fashion-forward gay kid changes outfits.))

Well, CBC was nice enough to send me a screener of tonight's episode, and I'm happy to report that there's plenty of weird, great laughs -- including a funny autopsy, a fine use for a garbage disposal, and what's rapidly becoming my new TV favorite -- RAMPOP!

Again, this show is very much in the vein of the Little Britain/League of Gentlemen  (and can someone out there remind me of the other British one where two people play all the characters in the town?)

If you like the Kids in the Hall kind of anarchy, it's well worth your while.

And if not, well, Glee is now available on DVD.

If I Twittered your Facebook, Would You Stumbleupon Myspace?

FRIEND OF STICKSVILLE Cathleen MacDonald is part of an interesting venture that also includes the Writer Mafia's own Jill Golick -- Crushing It.. a ... oh heck, I'm going to let the release explain it.

People will be following, participating in, and sharing stories when the comedy series, CRUSHING IT, unfolds in real time on social media from February 1st, 2010 through to February 5th. That’s the topic of a panel discussion to be presented as part of Social Media Week at the Rivoli Theatre, Toronto, on Thursday, February 4th, 3:30pm.

Jill Golick be doing the panel on the project at the Rivoli on Thursday February 4.  

For more info on Crushing It...  on Social Media Week ...

Or to find out more about the panel, email Cathleen here.

Spartacus: Blood & Sand & Tushie

IT'S A LITTLE bit difficult for me to figure out what to say about SPARTACUS: BLOOD & SAND. (TMN, 9pm) the first two episodes of which I caught via screener.


I have to say off the bat that my love for the sandals & swordplay genre has been pretty well sated now. After Gladiator & Rome, & the passing-interesting 300 & my long-ago memories of I Claudius, I'm not sure what there is to say.  


And that's where bias gives way to the headshake of pragmatism.  Of course, there's nothing really to say -- it's all about show now, now that those nifty slo-mo ramp shots and lovingly gross splattery blood effects can be made on a TV budget. And that's when I start to drift off and put on a different hat.


But first, the basics. This is indeed the retelling of Spartacus -- a warrior consigned to slavery after betrayal by a weaselly but ambitious Roman commander,  and ripped from the bosom (oh yes, literally) of his extremely hot wife, only to be reborn as the greatest of gladiators. 


The script is a bit stiff, written in that "heroic adventure" patois that makes this very 2010 series feel almost old-fashioned. After the wit and realism of Rome, it's a bit disappointing. (Although there is gusto in coming up with scatalogical curses involving not very-flattering terms for parts of the human anatomy.)


There's life every time John Hannah and Lucy Lawless are on screen, but in between that it's a whole lot of blood spatter in slo-mo and -- did I mention -- a whole wack of nudity, of both the male and female stripe.


Spartacus: Blood & Sand is an original series from the Starz! cable network in the USA,  produced in New Zealand by Rob Tapert -- who's partnered with Sam Raimi, who of course is no stranger to either blood & guts or shooting in New Zealand. It's deliberately shot entirely against greenscreen -- so there are no sets, which makes for a heavily CGI look.


The look, again, is one of those things you're either going to go with or not.  At least until the crazy technology of Cameron's Avatar filters down to the TV level, heavy CGI shows are forced to make a choice -- deploy the tools to try and get as close to real-looking as possible, knowing that the matching might occasionally -- on a TV timeline -- not quite work when lined up against the real elements, or just embrace the artificiality.


Spartacus opts for the latter route. The whole thing is lit and shot in a way that's meant to evoke the graphic novel experience.  So the transitions are flashy, and the frame is always full, and instead of realism everything looks stylized and painterly.  You're either going to go with that or you won't.


Did I mention there's nudity?


Anyway, as I was sitting there trying to figure out what I thought of the show, I found myself thinking about it as example, as product -- as example for what's getting made out there, and for what it might teach us about where the market goes next.


And from there it's a lot easier to see the show's appeal.  Attractive cast...lots of violence, story always moving forward, good visuals, bunch o'sex and fight scenes. It's diverting, for sure, and it's pretty well paced.  But the true test of the show was when I put it on again while I was playing cards yesterday, so people could see what it looked like.


The show very clearly reverses the TV usual of being dialogue-driven, or at least demanding that it be listened to. This is a show that's probably destined to do very well internationally because you can watch it, hear nothing, and figure out most of the story. It's that visually driven.  I suppose that's smart when it comes to export.  It's an interesting exercise watching how they choose to tell the story visually rather than through dialogue at almost every step.


So in the end, personally, there's more to admire in Spartacus than necessarily enjoy.  It looks gorgeous, it's competent popcorn entertainment -- and if you're working in TV you should probably watch it, because shows like it may just be your bread & butter over the next several years.