Where Do All The Funky Prairie Boys Go?

I GOT A NICE piece of news this morning, that filled me with a bit of melancholy in the way that only good news about the Canadian Film & TV industry can.

It's bookended with a bit of bad news I got last night.  In between there are a bunch of links & information about other matters.  There's also going to be a bit of talking about some players in the Canadian TV biz without specifying who those players are.  That's the tightrope I'm walking in this post, so if you don't like it, stop reading now.

It's raining like hell in Florida this morning.  And maybe that too has something to do with my mood. But there are birds chirping sweetly outside the window, almost like they're trying to conjure a better day. And in the end, though this post is going to start with good news & end with bad -- I'm hoping that there might be a bit of room in there for a few insistent chirps.

Anyway.  I opened up my email this morning and received this message:

 Mr. McGrath,


In 2004 I wrote a short film script for your screenwriting class at Ryerson University, called "Funky Prairie Boy." You ended up giving me an A for the final draft. It was my first script.

Emboldened by your praise, I entered script in the Worldwide Short Film Festival's Screenplay Giveaway Prize competition. The script went on to win the prize of free goods and services from likes of Panavision, Kodak and Deluxe. Last year, five years after first writing the script for your class, I finally finished the short.

"Funky Prairie Boy" has gone on to play festivals in Australia, Italy, Austin, D.C (where it won an audience choice award), Vancouver and more. Next week, it's finally coming to Toronto, the city where it all began,  as part of the ReelWorld Film Festival's shorts program.

Appropriately enough, the semi-autobiographical short features real Canadian FUNK music from the late 60s and 70s taken from the Light in the Attic Records release "Jamaica to Toronto."

Here's a little trailer for the Toronto screening. I hope you'll come and check it out on either Friday April 9th at 4pm or Sunday, April 11th at 2:30pm (I'll be there Sunday!).

Couldn't have happened without you! Thanks for the encouragement way back when!

It's always great to get an email like this. And here's a confession. I can't really conjure  the writer/director, Mike Schultz's face.  And I don't really remember the details of the script.  But I do remember that title. You don't forget "Funky Prairie Boy."  And I remember exquisitely the joy, and the admiration and the excitement I felt after finishing that script. It is always a thrill to discover a new talent, somebody who can put words together in a way that no one you've read or seen before can do.  It makes you want to encourage those people, and help them on their way.  Many of us who achieve some degree of success in this very difficult industry do what we can to do just that.

That's what causes you to try and pay it forward, and give back.  In April, I'll be doing some more of that.  For instance, the Canadian Film Centre has announced a couple of workshops that will be going on, doubling as information sessions on the CFC's programs. I'll be doing the workshop in Toronto on April 13th, and an incredibly good guy, and great writer named Alan McCullough (Stargate, Sanctuary) will be doing one in Vancouver on April 10th.  I think I'll also probably be going to Winnipeg to do one later in April.  Details about those workshops can be found here.

And I'll also be guest moderating the April 7 installment of Lift Out Loud.  Lift Out Loud, sponsored by the Liasion of Independent Filmmakers Toronto, is a bi-monthly reading series where Actors read out new works -- in this case a couple of pilot scripts. Details for the April 7th Event can be found here.

My appearance at that event is actually a testimony to the organizer -- Brenda Kovrig.  Here's a lesson in tenaciousness for you...Brenda's been chasing me to do this moderator thing for a year now.  A full year. Every few months I would hear from her -- but I would be working busily on this thing or that.  She didn't give up, and clearly from my schedule it looks like this April is do-able. (Although between the CFC, this, and WGC stuff later in the month I'm doing an awful lot of 'rah rah' stuff and not a lot of 'make your rent, dummy' stuff. Hmm. Should look into that.)  So anyway, that's how perseverance can pay off.

Also, and I'm sorry I'm late on this, but RIGHT NOW, today, the National Screen Institute is holding an online information clinic on their Facebook page, for anyone who's thinking of applying to their Totally Television program.  Totally Television's alumni include my friends Marvin Kaye & Chris Sheasgreen, creators of the acclaimed Canadian comedy series Less Than Kind.

Meanwhile, I've been monitoring the news and want to congratulate my friends at Ryerson University & especially the tireless Karen Walton, who spent the weekend exchanging tips & inspiration at the Writing in Dangerous Times conference.  And just this morning comes this good bit of news -- Shaftesbury Films is partnering with the Etobicoke School of the Arts to bring investment & education to that high school's new film program.

All of this is good, and worthwhile.  It's hard to develop talent, and it's great to see people give back.  I wouldn't do these kinds of events if I didn't think that they were worthwhile.

But.

I'm going to warn you.  Here's where we turn toward the rocks.

My thoughts keep coming back to all the Funky Prairie Boys out there.  Because at some point Funky Boys become men -- and that is where the trouble starts.

If you're not a resident of Saskatchewan, you may not yet be aware of the latest doom n'gloom in the Canadian TV industry.  In short, last week, Saskatchewan's only true local station, SCN, was shut down.  In addition, the government has pulled way back on subsidies and tax credits to the province's film industry  the government refused to increase subsidies and tax credits to the province's film industry to help it keep up with other provinces, and an equipment supplier who'd set up shop in Regina is pulling out.

Basically, the entire film & TV production industry in that province is imploding.  This is an industry that was built up through a bit of service work, and mainly on the back of Corner Gas.  But with that show shuttered, the dollar high & times hard, everything is tumbling together at once.

In Canada, it seems, it is ever thus. 

In fact, it's the very nature of the industry that promotes this kind of on-the-edge life.  Because there are tax credits & subsidies involved, the desire is to spread the industry around a bit.  So rather than gather in one place, a la L.A., there's dribbles in Vancouver, Toronto, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Winnipeg, Montreal, Halifax & other places east.

When the jelly's spread that thin it means that one or two series going in and out of production can devastate the industry. Vancouverites, for all the service work in the province, has started to notice that that doesn't mean a lot of work for writers or even Directors.  (Crews yet, Actors maybe -- in smaller roles; but writers?)

This weak regionalism means a boom and bust cycle that prevents true expertise from taking root.  Crews & artisans build up a certain level of expertise, the work dries up, those people are forced out of the business, and a few years later the cycle starts all over again.   This is nothing new.  You go back to Seeing Things, and apparently all the knowledge gained by people working on that show dissipated because most of the people moved south or got out.

What we have then, is an anemic industry that is forever on life support, where nobody ever gets better at hustling and the same mistakes keep getting made over and over.  And that's just at the production level.  No wonder the Tories look at Film & TV and think we're a bad investment.

Okay, now stay with me. Those few paragraphs were about the crew, industrial, below-the-line model. What about above the line?  What about the writers and directors?

It's worse.

Here is the dirty little secret of the Canadian TV industry.  It's the thing that I struggle to choke back when I do one of these workshops or information sessions; it's what I struggle not to tell the 4 or 5 people coming out of the NSI or the 10 or 12 people coming out of the CFC every year:


Getting your first job isn't the problem.

It really isn't.  The Academy has great shadowing programs that let you follow somebody around and be mentored. At the CFTPA in Ottawa, they had the Jump Start! program, where up-and-coming young producers get to meet & gladhand and present projects.  Everybody wants to meet the new CFC talents -- writers, directors. They can get meetings at the networks.  "Pitch us your projects," they say. "Come see us! Our doors are open!"

Roads in to things like the Canadian Animation industry remain open for an enthusiastic young writer looking for a break.  If you have talent, you can get that first contract.  That's not where the problem is.

The problem is that, exactly the same as on the industrial & crewing side -- is the next steps up the ladder.   Every year 10 or 12 more people are shot like cannon fodder into an industry where they're fine so long as they're the new thing. But try getting the fourth job. Or the fifth. Or the sixth.

Instead of building upon knowledge gained and excellence, of improving skills, of moving forward & getting a little bit better every time... of building on expertise that comes through experience, through learning what works, through time in a story room crafting show after show and seeing it through production...instead of having a second time feature writer who understands the process better than a new writer -- no matter how talented -- ever could...we continually start over.

Why?

There's a lot of reasons.   But a whole lot of it is due to the fact that there simply is no incentive to really get better.  Many producers are just working for fees, on project after project.  You don't have studios, with a long track record of producing product.  A producer who gets a second drama or comedy series off the ground is a rare breed.  No, no, the idea is to spread it around, you see. To give others a chance.  To maybe correct the regional imbalance. It's been a few years since the Vancouver industry died, maybe it's time to greenlight a series there.  There's talent in Yellowknife that could use a boost.  Halifax has had a good run...maybe let's shut'em down.

Meanwhile, here are a series of uncomfortable meetings going on in Canada right now:

• Somewhere, a writer who's worked on four or five series and dealt with network notes on all of them is in a meeting with a production company who's gotten their first series. They have all the power, because that's how it works. The writer can see the freight train of disaster coming months away, but cannot do anything to stop it.

• Somewhere, a writer who has twice as much experience as the writer in the last example, is being passed over for the job of running a new series that a Canadian network is really excited about.  She won't get to run the series now.  Oh no.  They will turn to her in four months to come in to save the show, by which point it's too late, and what we'll have is another Canadian show that gets to 'okay' by episode nine, long after the audience has recoiled in boredom or horror.
  
• Somewhere a network is putting a Showrunner through the ringer on hiring the story coordinator for a show, making them jump through hoops.  After that meeting's over, they will greenlight a show to someone who's failed twice before and doesn't do good work because they're connected through what would be a clear conflict of interest in any other industry.

• Somewhere, an American network executive is wondering why they can't talk to the writer of this Canadian co-pro they're involved in and why when they talk to the non-writing producer none of their notes ever come through quite right.
• Somewhere a writer is listening to a bunch of newbie producers talk about how much Canadian TV sucks and how their show is going to be so very awesome, while she thinks back over the last week and recalls how the producers made every mistake she'd seen the producers make on all those shows that turned out kind of sucky.

• Somewhere a bunch of writers are pulling their hair out, not being able to do their jobs because the brilliant salesman who can sell anything also thinks they're the true creative talent, and that the way it works is that their ideas are golden and given to people to just make the words pretty.

• Somewhere a production company is meeting to figure out how they can get their latest projects classified as Canadian without using any Canadian writers at all.

• Somewhere an actor is getting a writing deal for a show that will grind through two years of development without ever showing a lick of craft.  It will get made or not depending on the tax credits. Everyone will praise it openly, and behind the scenes talk about what an awful piece of shit it is.

And finally...

• Somewhere, a writer who's worked on three series, been nominated for a Gemini or two, maybe won a WGC award, is sitting down at a kitchen table with his wife or partner.  They're having a tough talk about whether they really can take the risk, and get out, and go to L.A.  The writer curses the industry he's in, because there seemed to be no trouble getting those first few jobs, and he got lulled.  Now he's got a wife & mortgage, and a kid on the way, and why NOW?  It would have been better to get out before he had all these strings tying him down. 

Hart Hanson did an interview years ago where he talked about how hard it was to pick up and leave Canada. He'd been a successful writer here, having worked on Traders & a bunch of other stuff. He had kids, he had a wife, a life -- but the opportunity in Canada just wasn't there anymore.

He went south, and of course Judging Amy begat Bones and maybe now Pleading Guilty.  (Which I'm excited about -- probably the most perfect of the Scott Turow legal books from a TV adaptation standpoint.)

And once you rip your life up like that (not to speak for Hanson, whom I don't know, and who seems like a pretty nice guy in every interview I've ever read) you don't look kindly on the people who made you do it.  Come back and help out? Sure.  Sure.  Now that you forced me to become an economic expatriate, you want me to come back.  Typical.

There are a whole bunch of things wrapped up in this post.  None of them suggest easy or simple solutions. But I truly believe that they all spring from a common cause, which is this:  we do not have an industry that values talent.  We value the deal, because it's hard to make.  We do not manage talent.  We do not support talent, except for "up-and-coming" talent because that looks good in a press release and is politically saleable.

But it's irresponsible to push up-and-coming when you know they won't be going anywhere.  Except south.  Until we figure out a way to build on success, and stop starting over on every project, or in every city every few years, there will be no 'next step.' All our successes will be happy accidents, and our failures will reinforce the idea that we're just not very good at this.

Everywhere I look, there are seasoned, talented, smart creators doing the equivalent of standing on the sidelines saying, "Aw, put me in coach! Ya Gotta! I know I can do it!"

But we're too busy scanning the bleachers, looking for a kid who'll be easier to push around.

Just to keep this from being a "writers are misunderstood" post...don't get me wrong. There's plenty of criticism to go on our side, too.  Bad communicators, people who don't know how to take notes or manage the network relationship -- and people who won't upgrade their skills.  In just a few weeks, there's going to be a Toronto Screenwriting Conference. The whole event, two days' worth, is about a third of the cost of something like Prime Time, the Producer's Conference I attended in February. The whole thing is pitched toward working writers -- sessions (a couple of which I'll be hosting) are meant to convey real, practical, nuts & bolts, on the ground crafty advice not for new people, but for established writers looking for a little professional development. Yet I bet you anything when I look out at the crowd, I'm going to see mostly network & production company people, students, and producers -- and the working writers I know will be thin on the ground.  "I have seen the enemy," Pogo said, "and he is us."

Finally -- one more thing.  It might not be fair to tag this onto this post.  But it's been the thing that's been sitting there on my shoulder all morning so maybe it's appropriate.

Last night through tweets & interwebby chatter, I learned that a comic named Eric Tunney had died at the age of 45.  Some may remember Tunney as the host of a CBC show here, or as one of Ed The Sock's human playthings.   But I remember Tunney from the Toronto comedy scene in the very early 1990's, when I was going to see standup a lot.  He was impeccably dressed, with swagger and an ever-present cigar as a prop.  His delivery was confident, muscular.  His material was wry, and smart, and infused with the stuff that comes only from a perfect fusion of inspiration and craft.

There are parts of Tunney's routines I remember fifteen years later.  He was a tremendous talent -- and there's a whole generation of Canadian comedians who will cite him as a big influence.  Tunney was a comic's comic -- one of those people who get praised and damned by the phrase that he was sometimes, often, "too hip for the room."

This is not an easy business. The road is always uncertain, and the odds are supposed to be long. And being good is no guarantee. And all of us who toil in this business understand that that's what we're signing up for.

I went online looking for Tunney bits on YouTube last night.  There's nothing, really.  Nothing because he never really made it in the USA, and that's the only time Canadians get excited about one of their own. So there are no Eric Tunney web pages and nobody put his stuff up on YouTube.

But would it interest you to know that Tunney was part of the 1995 HBO New Comedians special?  You know who else was in that special? Dave Chappelle.  Dave Attell. Anthony Clark. and Louis C.K.

He was in that class.   Here's a link to Tunney's Comedy Now special. Ironically, I'm in the USA right now, so I can't see this. It's GeoBlocked.

Well. The rain's stopped and the birds' song has gotten louder & happier.  A salamander just ran across my foot.  You would think that would be gross but it's actually kind of neat.  The squirrels are going crazy here jumping from tree to tree.  I have a series pitch I'm working right now that would be pretty nifty for one Canadian network.   Later this afternoon or tomorrow I'll hit the Library and do the research for that U.S. series pitch I'm cogitating.

I wouldn't say I have one foot in and one foot out yet, but I would say I've laced up a new pair of sneakers.   And maybe I'd feel a little differently if I'd found just one tribute to Tunney from a Canadian site with a little bit of tape.  Anything other than a dumped-on-the-web and forgotten Comedy Now.

But I guess that's what we do.  We make it. We dump it somewhere.  And we start over from scratch, every time.  It's great if you're making spaghetti.

But it's a hell of a way to make TV.


EDIT:  Writer  & Friend of Sticksville Brent Piaskoski has a warm tribute to Eric Tunney here.

Strangely Enough...

THESE PEOPLE COULD all probably get work promoting Canadian TV.

Spec Addendum

BELOW, WHERE I link to a post outlining what the current "good" Drama & Comedy specs are, I also made a comment that personally I feel The Good Wife & Modern Family are solid spec choices.  That prompted this comment from reader Dan:

Always thought the rule was not to spec a show unless it's got 2 seasons in the can. Is that no longer the case?

As in everything else when it comes to writing or creative arts, it's more important to know what the "rule" is and why people refer to it as such, than to follow it slavishly.  A certain amount of subjectivity is always part of the writing process.   (I used to sum this up by saying ee cummings knew what the rules of punctuation & capitalization were; he didn't break them lightly...then stopped when fewer & fewer people seemed to know who ee cummings was.)

Corollary to this rule, too, is one about notes: it's not always that you should take the solution the note taker is giving -- in fact, that's rarely what you should do. But you need to respect the bump. Figure out why they've got a problem there, and come up with your own solution.

So, then, what is this idea about not speccing a new show, or a show that has less than 2 seasons in?  What's that about?

 1) The Show May Not Yet Be The Show

Shows often take awhile to find themselves.  Look at Flash Forward or V.  Both of those shows have gone through creative direction changes, and their fates are therefore uncertain. If they right themselves & become hits, then you'll have a better idea what the spec should look like.

Characters & actors, pacing, shooting style, emphasis, tone -- all of these things can radically change in the first season of a show -- especially if it's a splashy pilot. It's one thing to make a big splashy pilot, it's another to figure out how to do a satisfying show week in and week out, 22 weeks a year.

Parks & Recreation is a fine example of a show that started out a bit sketchy but has now settled nicely into what it wants to be.  The characters are better defined, they're about to make a character change that will pretty much solidify the core of what's working.  If you'd watched and deconstructed the first few episodes, you'd have no clue how to write the show -- because the show was not yet the show.

A couple of years ago when they did the Bionic Woman reboot, they ran like 7 shows there in 7 weeks.  There was no pattern.  Imagine if you'd tried to spec that.  Besides being cancel bait, you would have torn your hair out trying to figure out the story engine.  They didn't figure it out. Why should you be expected to?

I also recently got a box set of a nifty USA show called In Plain Sight.  Witness protection show. In the first season, they try to do a "light" episode about a wedding. It's painful.  Really stands out.  Sometimes you stretch to see how far you can go in your first season, and you might have some weird, off kinds of episodes.  It's all part of the process.

On the other hand, and here's where the 'rule' as guideline thing comes in -- some shows never go through those growing pains. Or at least they don't leak onto the screen. Frasier was Frasier from Day One.  Funny Pilot, Great first season. 

I think Modern Family & The Good Wife are like that too. Both shows roared right out of the gate. Their early episodes are structurally, emotionally, tonally very consistent with what's come after. They know what they're doing.  I don't think you'll learn much by waiting another year to do a Modern Family.  And if you do a good one, you might be among the first to get out there with one, which would be a plus. Better that than the spec everyone's sick of reading already.

2) The Wunderkind Doesn't Always Work Out

Heroes, first season. Who knew?  A few years ago, I knew somebody who wrote a really great Joan of Arcadia spec at the start of her second season.  Then the show fell off a cliff.  When she started writing it, it was a buzz show getting good ratings.  She got about 2 months out of the spec and then it was dead, dead, dead.

3) You Wrote a What?

People making TV are busy.  And a lot of the time they don't have time to watch as much TV as you do.  Also, the more "cable" you get the more you run into the chance that some show's idiosyncratic tone might not appeal to the reader.  Before they decide if they like you, they really have to like the show.

Shows with a couple of seasons under their belt, you're betting that more people will have seen them.  In this fragmented TV world, that's not a guarantee by any means, but it's just a little bit more pad to let you come up with something that can circulate widely.

By 2nd season too, you get a sense of what the polarizing shows are.  You don't want to do one of those because what if you get someone who hates it?  True Blood is a polarizing show.  Sons of Anarchy, polarizing. Weirdly, Community -- bit polarizing.


There's always going to be a balancing act between how early can you spec a show so that it's still fresh, and not everyone's doing it, and has it really established itself in both the zeitgeist of your readers, and as a replicatable  template. 

In the end, you have to arm yourself with as much knowledge as possible by reading the trades, keeping your ear to the ground, and being realistic.

And I'm also a firm believer in: never spec your favorite show.  You have to like the show (there is no smell more stinky than someone trying to do a show they think is beneath them) but -- especially if you're new -- you need to be dispassionate about the show's weaknesses and strengths.  You want a calling card showing how well you can replicate a voice -- not a piece of fanfic.

Hot Housing & The Scribbles

WHOO THAT MIDDAY sun.  I'm frying.

Anyway, I would love to push a couple of interesting links at you, if you will accept being so pushed.  First, take a look at thehousefly.ca.  It's very strange that right now I'm in a place where I regularly drive by condos that are going for 60K, abandoned power-of-sale properties and bungalows with five bedrooms going for under 200K, because I'm used to Toronto, where Real Estate has gone insane again, and friends I consider sensible are getting into bidding wars for tiny 100 year old houses.

The Housefly tracks an overheated market and all the emotional ups-and-downs that go with it in an engaging style.  Take the edge of Real Estate porn & hew more to the sociological side of things -- and you'll find an incredibly engaging read.

Secondly, there's Canimation.  Canada is a very big producer of children's animation. It's one of the under-the-radar, chugging engines of the TV industry.  Canimation is a fascinating peel-the-layers, look behind the scenes of animation writing in Canada.  A great resource & starting point for anybody hoping to break into that kind of writing.



 

Specca Decca Doo.

I KNOW OTHERS have posted this, but it's very useful if you're looking to write a new spec, and if you're new (ie: not produced yet, or one sale) you should ALWAYS be looking to get crafty and write a new spec. 

And I also post it because it comes to me courtesy of Karen Hill, who has a big brain & is a total babe besides.  Bow down before her, earthlings.

For my 2 cents -- there's no way I'd write a 30 Rock right now...  The Good Wife is solid & a great choice, and if you're a comedy writer, cranking out a Modern Family is a must.

Tv-calling.com's Spec Guide.

Digging Deeper's Always Justified

FROM TIME TO TIME, I get goaded into fights with my Canadian friends about the American sensibility.  It's a time honored sport -- Canadians watching Americans. They get pretty good at it, with the complete domination of the airwaves & multiplexes and all. 

But as we all know in our non-lizard brains, the media rarely gives you the full story.  It doesn't even necessarily serve you up the right pieces.

A statistic that has not changed since I was fifteen:  about 90% of Canadians I know who I would describe as somewhat to very Anti-American who for reasons of career, education, love, or money -- find themselves living in the USA, become much, much less anti-American. This holds true for bros, classmates, college friends, ex-girlfriends -- everybody.  What that has always said to me is the terrible limitation of observing from afar, & how you can never really see the full truth underneath.  Not unless you're willing to dig, listen, and set aside your assumptions.

That's a great lesson for everybody, of course.  And it's also, coincidentally, one of the biggest problems in crafting Canadian English programs that ring true.  People have that American signal clattering around their fillings all the time.  Under those circumstances, what does an honest appraisal even look like?

Being in the USA at this juncture, during the last gasps of the healthcare debate, has been eyeopening for me too.  It shows me how deep and true the philosophical & political divide is in this country, and also how much the stagecraft only serves to make it all worse.  Seeing what plays out on the TV night after night makes it hard for me to reconcile that some of the nicest people I've ever met are Texans, and how many times I've met people who I fundamentally agree with on just about every issue, yet despise personally.

Americans live big lives. There is no doubt about that.  And there's a tremendous fissure running through this nation between forces of progressvism, forward looking thought, and conservative, fear-based isolationism.   The sense of American exceptionalism magnifies both of these strains, to the point where it makes it very, very difficult for an outsider looking in to come to a true, honest bit of insight.

This isn't universal, of course. I mean, it does happen.  I remember reading de Tocqueville as a teenager and being fascinated by how much one 19th century Frenchman got right in describing Americans I knew & recognized.

Now look at this article and grok on the Anti- de Tocqueville -- British officers during the Revolutionary war who reveal through their letters the huge, gaping gulf of understanding that made compromise impossible. They literally did not understand what the Americans' problem was.

“Killing seems to me a very unnatural trade, but these people are beyond nature as well as reason,” Strachey wrote to his wife after the British won the Battle of Long Island in August 1776. “They might at this moment have peace and happiness, but they insist upon having their brains knocked out first.”

Eric Foner, the Columbia University historian, said the Strachey letters “offer a vivid firsthand account of on-the-ground British sentiment as the War of Independence progressed.” He added: “The British seem unable to understand the principles or ideals that motivated the Americans. They see the demand for independence as lunacy and cannot imagine that the colonists have legitimate grievances. Over all the letters offer a good indication of why a peaceful settlement wasn’t possible.”

Does that sound at all familiar to you?  Like anything you might have seen recently?

When I watch British dramas like Spooks/MI-5 (love it)  and Jekyll (love it til the end)  I'm more than amused by the degrees to which British dramatists default to easy, lazy characterizations of Americans, which drag down the otherwise excellent drama by robbing the story of a better character.  (Americans, of course, more than return the favor -- see any British stereotype in Yankee TV as well as any Arab character you've seen in the last fifteen years.)

Chuck Klosterman did a piece on This American Life not so long ago called "Stereotypes Uber Alles"  that traced, hilariously, the distortions that come with Germans' fascination with viewing Americans through the "cowboy" mirror.  That link above is well worth listening to -- actually, the whole show, "Got You Pegged," is particularly juicy for a writer trying to create characters who transcend national or even personality types.

And to circle back to the Canadian angle, you can see John Doyle today give full flower to one type of easy American characterization in his review of the new Jamie Oliver show on ABC.  He admits that, yup, it's reality and so heightened -- but seems to be doing everything he can to link health care to American attitudes to say that "Americans are really like this."

Sidebar:   We all know that Americans love the classic hero narrative, ie: the person who has an inner and outer goal and who triumphs against adversity both external and internal to arrive in victory at a better place.  That's a powerful myth that's drilled into Americans' psyche.  A few years ago, Doyle posited in an article for an American publication that the Canadian narrative was more about forebearance:  the little person might be steamrolled in the end, and Canadians like stories about how well someone suffers the indignities with the deck stacked against them.  Interesting theory. (And it also could be interesting theory badly paraphrased, so account for that.)  End Sidebar.

All of these things: Canadians myopic view of Americans, Germans' weird fetish for cowboyization of the American experience, and the British view with its own inherent distortions that come from differences of class, perspective and attitude smack up against an America that has always been more heterogeneous in its intellectual and emotional makeup.

What's different, and new, is that we now have passed fully out of the window in history where Americans were more or less of the same mind.  Yes, with Howard Zinn & all I'm not saying that Americans were ever united.  What I am saying is that as content creators,  it's our bad fortune  that the medium of TV, TV storytelling and much of what we think of as American mass market entertainment came out of what now looks like an anomalous time -- the post WWII era of middle class conformity.  Even the "counterculture" of the 1960's were still rebellions predicated on familiarity with that way of thinking.

Glenn Beck is definitely an idiot, but it's really interesting watching him try to wage this war on "progressivism" in the American soul; just as it's more than a little interesting to see that Texan schoolboards want to demote Thomas Jefferson because he coined "separation of church and state."

There have always been these duelling Americas, marching beside each other, fighting and swatting and roiling for dominance.  But as media becomes ever more targeted and we find less and less to say to each other, it begs the question, "how the hell do you tell if anything is authentic anymore?"

Which brings me to FX's latest show, JUSTIFIED.  This program, which has aired two episodes in the USA. (It won't show up in Canada til later this year.  I think on Super Channel.  You've never heard of Super Channel?  I'm not surprised, but that's another column.)

Based on an Elmore Leonard story called "Fire in the Hole," it is about as close as you can get to a 21st century interpretation of a western.  Timothy Olyphant is as great as he was in Deadwood as Raylan Givens, a U.S. Marshall who, thanks to his trigger-happy ways, finds himself exiled back to Kentucky, where he grew up.

One of the things American TV often gets wrong is the South. Not surprising, since the industry's in Los Angeles, and all those East Coast Harvard writers like to go out and hang their shingles. There's a lot of talk about the midwest and what the flyover viewer thinks, but not a lot about the South.  What makes Justified so utterly compelling to me is the way in which it explores things that we've seen rendered as cliche a hundred times before -- coal miners, white supremacists, minutemen types, and America's fascination with the gun. Somehow Justified manages to upend all that stuff, tell great stories, and at the same time give you a glimpse into a life, an attitude, and an America you've never seen.  Two episodes in, I am so addicted to this show, I can hardly believe it.   And I'm not the only one.

Justified is what you come up with when you dig a little past the easy view and drill down a little deeper -- upending your assumptions, your expectations, and your own well held myths. 

There's a sneaking part of me that thinks that when this show finally does come to Canada, it will play really well in the West, and maybe nowhere else. It will be interesting to see if that plays out -- and then decide what that means for those of us trying to connect with the audience above the 49th parallel.

Oh, yeah. One more thing... Justified comes from Writer/Producer Graham Yost.  Son of Elwy.  Canadian.

Hahahhahaha. Oh, so typical.

The CRTC Wades In

WHERE YOU END UP depends on where you start.

That's the most important thing to remember as you parse the decisions released yesterday by the CRTC.  The decision on Consumer impact is a hoot too.  We're going to have a lot of angry Canadians, quietly seething in their quiet, seething Canadian way.

Time to buy the entire nation a mouth guard, methinks.

The brief they had to consider was simply massive -- revisit the entire framework of the Canadian broadcast system & figure out how the business needs of the various players should be balanced. 

Ignore people who talk about "market-based" this or that, because that's a canard.  Like a lot of industries in Canada, broadcasting has always been very managed and protected.  There's always been a thumb on the scale in one way or another.  The problem is that the last time the CRTC changed the weight of the thumb, the domestic TV industry kind of died. Whoops.

A lot of other things have happened in the 11 years since the CRTC shuffled the deck.  The rise of the Internet offered a whole new way to distribute programming -- much (not all) of it illegally.  Cable's power rose, as did the number of specialty channels, who profited from two revenue streams -- traditional advertising and subscriber fees -- carved out dimes & nickels on your cable bill tha flow back to the companies that own them.

Broadcasting used to be a great gig in this country -- a "license to print money," they called it.  That's largely because of the CRTC.  The CRTC had rules in place that allowed Canadian networks to substitute American signals with their own so long as they showed the same program at the same time. This simultaneous substitution -- "simsub" -- was very profitable, and also locked Canadian private networks into the same kind of mindset you see from a zombie computer during a phishing attack; freed from the need to think or create, they became addicted to going south twice a year, buying whatever U.S. product they could, and showing it at the same time.

The problem is that while all this was going on there were warning shots on the horizon that presaged big changes coming.  The U.S. networks they bought all their product from started to see that their future as middlemen was tenuous -- and so they got more into owning and developing the product that they showed.  Time was, 70 or 80 percent of the shows you saw on U.S. Tv came from independent studios like Warner Brothers.  Now that's down to about 20-25%.   Add in the internet, streaming, cable channels' growing audience base, and the shrinking relevance of the advertising model, and there were all sorts of canaries in the coal mine.

But for the most part, the Canadian private nets were blissfully unaware of this. They'd outbid each other for shows -- sometimes even paying to put a show on the shelf so that a rival wouldn't get it.

So the economic tsunami that hit in 2008 hit the Canadian networks way worse than their U.S. counterparts.  They'd gotten used to being easy middlemen. They didn't bother to care about having anything new and different of their own -- viewing homegrown programming as a "tax" and an afterthought.

Over the same period, Cable became far more profitable and powerful. First there were all those cell phones that they were overcharging you for. Then there's the internet pipe that threatens that Broadcast model, and all the VOD and sweet sweet Porn money that comes with it...

Twice before, hearings at the CRTC were consumed by the fight between Cablers (called BDU's -- broadcast distribution units) and Networks. Networks wanted fees for their signals like specialty channels get.  Cable said 'hell no.'   The same fight happened in the USA by the way, but there the channels had a much stronger argument -- local news was a strong profit centre at most stations, and each of the networks had a passel of shows that millions of people like to watch.   In Canada, the nets had to invent the whole "Save Local TV" thing to paper over the fact that a) they'd pretty much dismantled anything local over the last two decades and b) they didn't really have much to offer beyond the same U.S. shows that Canadians got from the U.S. network feeds already on their cable dials.   By not diversifying, or reading the signs that a model was going away, these nets were fast becoming the first victim of that model.

At the same time, Cable co's like Rogers & Shaw got nice and fat, first by having protected monopolies in certain regions, and then by being protected from foreign ownership.

But this fight -- "give us fees"  vs. "stick it" -- never got anywhere. Both industries acted like Children and refused to come to a deal.

That's past as prologue.

Back to where you end up depending on where you start --


Employees at CTV got a terse email last week informing them that the "decision on Value For Signal was expected Monday."  This is pretty funny, in a gallows way, because it shows that although the decision was much wider in scope than that, and encompassed much more -- that's the only thing that they cared about.  When the decision came down -- essentially, the CRTC punted on this point, referring it to the Federal Court and telling the two sides to negotiate a fee, which has really worked well so far -- most of the broadcasters reported the news like their little part of it was the only thing that happened that day.    If you're actually, really worried about local TV, and continued vibrant reportage -- that should worry you a bit.  One of the most disturbing things through this whole period has been watching how the Broadcasters had no compunction blurring advocacy and editorial.  The idea of "journalistic independence" does not apply.  It's the biggest growing trend in Canadian broadcasting -- and it's actually pretty terrifying. But I think I'll wait for my friend Howard to examine that part of it and do it justice.  Oop. Look. Them retired folk are fast & crafty -- he's already up with his take.

The Cable companies, too, kind of got handed a bag of flaming poo yesterday.   They face the prospect of angry customers getting mad at them not just because their cable bills are going up, but because now they're going to have to figure out a way to block out broadcast signals on the U.S. nets if the nets show a show at a time other than when the Canadian rights holder wants to show it.  Simsub has been transparent for the viewer, mostly -- that's why the CRTC only gets complaints every year when people realize they can't see the Superbowl commercials.  Just wait.  Now you're going to have blue screens of death all over the dial.  An audience who is moving to a "TV Everywhere" model is going to see more restrictions placed on how and when they can watch -- restrictions that go against what they've had for 40 years.   The audience reaction to this is going to be ugly.  If Rogers wasn't Rogers and didn't so totally suck, I'd almost feel sorry for them.

As for Canadian Creatives?  Well.  That's a more complicated stew.  First, I think it bears repeating that one of the problems in the past has always been that the Canadian nets have never really wanted to make Canadian programs. That's why they came up with photocopies of Entertainment Tonight when the rules allowed them to do that.  That's why they ran cheap, low quality crap like Train 48 that nobody watched or cared about.  That's why they used to whip CanCon shows around the schedules, promote it poorly, and throw it on Saturday night at 10.    Corner Gas became inconvenient, as did little cable successes like Trailer Park Boys, because they seemed to suggest that maybe there was a market for homegrown -- just as there is in every other Western country in the world.  (Western country? Geez, check out "Nollywood" sometime.) 

There's stuff in the decision that shows that the CRTC is at least trying to incentivize spending on domestic stuff.  There's a push for 5% of revenues to be spent on a very narrowly designated set of programs -- drama, kids, documentaries -- and it looks like cheap and cheezy magazine shows won't qualify.   There's a closed loophole where nets won't be able to count money they get from the Canadian Media Fund as part of THEIR contribution -- so they'd have to spend more.   There's also something in there the Broadcasters wanted -- some of the money they spend can be on stuff they produce in-house.  Get off the teat of that U.S. programming, they say.  Diversify, at least a bit.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls too.  A reduction in CanCon levels.  Removal of spending requirements for Specialty channels (instead, each "ownership group" ie: Canwest, CTV -- will have their revenues & homegrown spend calculated across all their properties.)

Seeing as the nets in the past have done everything they can to get around rules, and use every loophole, the worry is that there's a whole lot here to find ins and outs.  Maybe the problem was too complicated to solve, but the solution as proposed is byzantine.  So though ACTRA was confident enough to come out and blast it right away.  (God love them emotional actors!) the WGC posted a more cautious, "Ummmm..." response on their site.   There's a lot to parse here.

And one of the worst parts of it is that there's now another one-year push as people figure out the rules.  Hearings will happen next year.  Which means that no changes will be concrete til 2012.  Which means that by that time the Domestic TV industry will have endured about 5 years of complete violent uncertainty.  I don't know if there's anybody who can hang on that long.  I'm in Florida right now, and four people in the last two days have emailed me Real Estate listings in Southern California.

Ha ha.

Where you end up on this depends on where you start.  What about the observers, then?  Well, a generation of viewers who have felt entitled to getting any program when they want it, where they want it, on the screen they want it, are probably going to shrug and keep doing what they're doing.

Banks who have been tougher about gap financing Producers trying to make TV product, I don't imagine are going to get much looser.  It's not a confidence-building decision for them.

Anyone who's been sick of the "Save Local TV" "TV Tax" B.S. is likely to get a whole lot sicker. Goodbye "Old Spice, I'm on a Horse" guy, we hardly knew ye.

And then there's professional observers like John Doyle  at the good grey Globe & Mail.  He writes a pretty on-target analysis of his own about the decision.  But you can see ample evidence in the article of where he starts, too.  It's seemingly from a place of real fatigue.

Part of Doyle's schtick has always been as a bit of a crankypants and occasional scold.   That's been cut with a true & trenchant insight into the good of our homegrown TV -- what we do well, what we don't.  If you read his book A Great Feast of Light, where he started becomes ever more clear -- an Irish immigrant for whom TV was both a window and an escape. There's no question that his love of the medium comes from a deep and honest place.

But in the last year he's also curdled.  You can see it in the way he takes a swipe at "creatives" (his quotes) every time they come up.   Example from the latest article:

At the same time, it has to examine the interests of the unions and guild representing actors, writers, directors and producers of Canadian programming, those groups who like to call themselves “the creatives.” The cable and broadcasting bosses don’t have a monopoly on egotism, believe me. The Canadian TV racket is shark-infested waters, and somebody has to regulate.

Can someone please send this man a cookiegram?

You can see it in the way he returns to certain subjects over & over like a monomania -- the position of women in the TV racket (most of what he writes here I agree with, but it's like every third column now,) and a certain fealty to certain voices that have led to a few weird reviews that seem to be going out of the way to not say something bad.  Surface praise, dark waters underneath -- followed by a review that just goes completely over-the-top.

I have sympathy for this.  I stopped writing about shows here that I didn't enjoy because of one too many weird and whiney emails.  So I try to do the positive sell now when I like it, and go by the golden rule of not saying anything at all when I don't. But then again, I'm also directly engaged in the same biz.  I expect what I write here -- even when it's critical -- to be read through the filter of an insider's view, not a dispassionate critic's.

I guess Canadian TV will eventually drive you insane.  There's no way around it.

Doyle's second book, about soccer, "The World Is a Ball," drops in a few weeks, just in time for World Cup Fever.  He's an excellent writer & I hope it's a real hit, because I think he's looking for a way out of the TV writing ghetto. And really, who can blame him?

The thing is -- I don't want to chicken little here -- but I think we should probably all follow his lead a bit.  Got a book in ya? How's that knitting?  I hear Green Roofs are a big grower.

Not saying it's the end of anything.  But not saying it's not. Welcome to the age of uncertainty.  Try to look natural.  Smoke'em if you got 'em.

EDIT: 6:20 p.m.  Bill Brioux covers a part that I left out -- the effect on the CBC.  Personally, I think CBC was wrong to join in actively in the carriage fees debate just because politically it makes it so easy for the anti-CBC wingnuts to accuse it of "double dipping" -- Boy, those guys get a whole lot of fucking complaining for their 37 bucks a year, don't they? -- but he stresses too that the most devastating aspect of this is the "hurry up and wait"-ism of the slow, slow, slow bureaucracy at work:

by dithering on a CBC decision, he will end up punishing the people who write, produce, act and everything else associated with Canadian television at the one network that actually makes Canadian television. CBC--hit as hard as the other guys in advertising revenue during the deep recession--admitted they were short some $60 million a year ago when they started cutting back on show orders. CBC president and CEO Hubert Lacroix said yesterday that "one thing is clear: this will force us to cut programs and services, and our ability to fulfil our mandate has been compromised."...

The CRTC decision has probably doomed one or more of these shows and will likely mean shorter seasons for some of the others. While they were busy finding a way for Canadian cable and satellite subscribers to pay for CTV and Rogers' Olympic party, found money that bails out a decade of reckless, unchecked spending on U.S. imports, the CRTC burns the one guy with a schedule full of Canadian shows. Von Finckensten may have honestly thought he was protecting the CBC, but he really is punishing the network and anyone in the business of doing the one thing the CRTC was supposed to protect--making Canadian television. 

A Digital TV Antenna...

...COSTS ABOUT EIGHTY bucks.  You can set up a PVR on your computer, or put it to your TV.  You get 12 channels uncompressed.  I can get 2 of the 4 U.S. nets from my window.

Just saying.

Texts Without Contexts, Authors Without Revenue Streams, Digerati With Doubts

FASCINATING ARTICLE in the Sunday New York Times this week that examines web texts, and the current noise and sturm and drang over David Shields' repurposed book that's much in the news.

But what really caught my eye in Michiko Kakutani's Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context, were the comments by Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of VR & the Web.  This is a guy I interviewed fifteen years ago, way back in the gee shucks days of the web.

An excerpt:

THE WEB’S amplification of subjectivity applies to culture as well as politics, fueling a phenomenon that has been gaining hold over America for several decades, with pundits squeezing out reporters on cable news, with authors writing biographies animated by personal and ideological agendas, with tell-all memoirs, talk-show confessionals, self-dramatizing blogs and carefully tended Facebook and MySpace pages becoming almost de rigeur. 

Kakutani goes to point out a 2006 NYTimes magazine article by Kevin Kelly that suggested a day where all text would mingle.  And it's here that the two most interesting points get made.  These are the central texts that bring together, for me, questions about Web 2.0 projects, Webisode storytelling models, and even the recent contentious fights over copyright:

As John Updike pointed out, Mr. Kelly’s vision would in effect mean “the end of authorship” — hobbling writers’ ability to earn a living from their published works, while at the same time removing a sense of both recognition and accountability from their creations. In a Web world where copies of books (and articles and music and other content) are cheap or free, Mr. Kelly has suggested, authors and artists could make money by selling “performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information” and other aspects of their work that cannot be copied. But while such schemes may work for artists who happen to be entrepreneurial, self-promoting and charismatic, Mr. Lanier says he fears that for “the vast majority of journalists, musicians, artists and filmmakers” it simply means “career oblivion.”

Then Lanier brings it home with comments on the mash-up culture...

To Mr. Lanier, however, the prevalence of mash-ups in today’s culture is a sign of “nostalgic malaise.” “Online culture,” he writes, “is dominated by trivial mash-ups of the culture that existed before the onset of mash-ups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.”

He points out that much of the chatter online today is actually “driven by fan responses to expression that was originally created within the sphere of old media,” which many digerati mock as old-fashioned and passé, and which is now being destroyed by the Internet. “Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn,” Mr. Lanier writes. “There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the Web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock.”

This is the central question that I have yet to see any of the digital polyanas -- or even the fair use, fair dealing maximalists like Michael Geist, deal with.   No one seems to be able to suggest how the current seed stock will be replaced.  It doesn't help matters when smart guys like Geist -- who work in the tenured worlds of academia -- pooh pooh things like collective licensing out of hand,* but don't really  engage on the question of how authors, screenwriters, or certain types of artists who don't have immediately monetizable revenue streams (or entrepeneurial mindsets) get to earn some gelt for their efforts. 

EDIT*(the crossed out section above represents what might be a too-harsh and not entirely accurate view of Geist's concerns about collective licensing.  However, I do feel frustration that like a lot of the fair-dealing expansion crowd -- he comes down on a very wide interpretation of use, while not engaging entirely on the mechanisms by which people like me will be able to, oh, I don't know, not have to work at Home Depot.)

A provocative article...and all the more interesting because the guys who I remember trumpeting the upside early -- Doug Rushkoff, Jaron Lanier -- seem to be the only ones who see the problems & wrinkles inherent in the mediascape that we're already inhabiting...

...never mind what comes next.

Thank You

MADAME SPEAKER, Mr. President, and the 216 + Congressional Democrats who voted for reform & what's right tonight, thanks.

Mr. Majority Leader, it's now up to you. 

Sunday Evening Coming Down, or Go Ask Alice.

A FEW WEEKS of hard work and bouncing from project to project has led me to this: a rainy Sunday in Central Florida, trying not to turn on CNN until the vote in the House is close at hand.

From time to time on this blog I might have talked about my septuagenarian father.  An industrial plant manager til a wave of downsizing in the 1980's,  my Dad & I spent several years on parallel tracks -- me trying to get established in a series of careers I found satisfying, him trying to cobble together a living til he could retire. 

Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but I found my footing enough to make a rough stand doing what I loved -- at least so far.  A lot of the values I've taken with me came from my Dad. He was the one saying as I was a kid that you had to get involved; that if you thought something was wrong, "you should write a letter."  He negotiated labor contracts as a manager and explained to me the pitfalls of unions & management excess.  He lamented about a change in the business culture he saw firsthand -- an MBA driven, winner take all mindset that did nothing to make people's lives better.

But at the same time, my Dad was a guy who loved shopping at Wal Mart.  He thought Jack Layton was 'shifty' and liked Mike Harris, the paleo-conservative golf pro who ran the province of Ontario for a while. 


My Dad also still gets visibly angry at the mention of Robert McNamara's name, and can't watch a Jane Fonda movie.  He can't forgive her for being "Hanoi Jane."


My Dad's an Irish Catholic guy from the Bronx, born just before the 2nd world war.  His Dad died when he was a teenager. He got his Accounting degree in Night School at the City College of New York -- and reminded me that the whole time he was there he was aware that there were 3 or 4 guys waiting for his seat.


I told my Dad yesterday -- as he fired up the grill on a gorgeous, sunny warm spring Florida day -- that one of the most profound things he ever said to me --something that I've thought about a lot through the years, at a lot of different junctures -- was that he was seventeen before he realized he'd grown up poor.

He grew up in a time when everybody around him in the South Bronx had pretty much what he had. The idea that that wasn't a lot wasn't important. And it also wasn't fed back to you every day through a culture that was obsessed only with wealth.  Lucy & Ethel worried about money.  Ralph Kramden drove a bus.  I think I remember one time hearing that my Mom & My Dad went on a date to Dr. Zhivago. That gives me a good laugh, thinking of these two Irish Catholics from the Bronx, educated by nuns -- with parents who worked on the Railroads and what they used to call, "in service," -- seeing a movie with the sweep of Imperial Russia.

My Dad got successful in his career and went further than his parents dreamed.  And that career took him so far out of his comfort zone -- out of the City, through the adventures of home ownership and moving, and living in another country.   Both my parents show their aggresively NOT Baby boomer bonafides by talking about the 60's as a "terrible time."  My mom once told me that she thought I was the only good thing that happened in 1968!

But my Dad also took the same journey of thought that many of his generation and background took... he drifted toward a more conservative way of looking at the world. He voted for Reagan enthusiastically, bad-mouthed Gore.  We'd argue ferociously about politics when I was a teen and in my 20's.

I happen to even think that the ups and downs and the work struggles I watched my Dad go through in the 1980s made me a much stronger, even-keeled person when it comes to dealing with uncertainty.  If only I'd picked up more of my Grandparents' frugality through the Depression, I might really be somewhere.

Anyway, all this ramble is background to a funny little story that shows how lives change and where things go.  My Dad and I stopped arguing about politics a few years ago.  He moved; I didn't.  Part of it was living part time in the USA again, I think.  He really saw how little Americans got of a balanced view of information.  The bleating of the Liberal elite tag really does not do justice to how profoundly conservative the slant is in most media outlets. 

Anyway, this morning, my Dad got up and got dressed and went to church.  And I stayed in and worked and loved listening to it rain like hell outside.  My Dad went to the Supermarket after church today. One of the things he likes to do is cruise the aisles and sample all the various samples.  Did I mention he's retired?

So it was somewhere over some wonderful shrimp thingy, that my Dad, a naturally garrulous sort, got talking to Alice.  Alice (not her real name, but go with it) is a thin little woman, very slight, very small.  She works putting out those samples in the supermarket seven days a week.  Never takes a time off because she needs the money.  She's got a sick son. 

And so my Dad and Alice talked a bit about the NCAA. She's supporting Kentucky.  She's got a bit of money on it. 

And then Alice asked my Dad about the Health Care fooferal and my Dad said he hopes to God they finally pass it today -- and she shook her head violently and said she hopes they kill that bill because it's so expensive and there's no way to pay for it -- and anyway she's against the government taking over healthcare and going all socialist.

And my Dad as nicely as possible, gently tried to explain that she can't believe that stuff...that she's the very kind of person that will benefit, and that just like Medicare, somebody in her position who parrots the fear tactics and fact-free bromides that masquerade as "responsibility" is being duped. 

Alice couldn't believe my Dad was for the bill -- and my Dad said if he could he'd jump up and down and shout and wave his arms and make a scene if it would help it to pass -- that's how important he thought it was.

The Republican Party used to be a party with several wings.  The idea of small government was actually an idea.  So was fiscal responsibility, and encouraging individualism.  There were socially progressive Republicans.  And there were pragmatists...there were even Liberal Republicans...like Nelson Rockefeller & Jacob Javits from New York.

But when the history of today's Republican Party is written, it will be that their real brilliance was in convincing people like Alice, through fear or religion, or wedge issues, or out and out lies and repetition -- to fear and vote against what was best for them.

Time was in business, and in life, people who'd been lucky enough to earn so much, to do so well so long would vote slightly against their interests to make our society a little better.

But that was before we started going to war without paying for it, and at the same time as we lowered taxes on rich people; before we sent poor people off to fight and busted up families through stop-loss & then abandoned them when they returned.  When the idea of plutocracy and shareholders usurped citizenry & sacrifice. 

The United States is a country so schizophrenic right now that the Census can be a huge flashpoint fight. The Fucking Census.

I don't know what I'm even trying to say here.  Maybe nothing.  There's a whole lot of crumbum stuff that's going to be announced that affects the Canadian TV industry in the next week.  Most of it tomorrow.  The Usual Suspects will say the usual things.  Networks will say it's all about fee for carriage or money for manatees or whatever it is called now; but it's not.  And things might get better for Canadian creatives, but it will probably stay about the same, or get a bit worse.  And if you want to read some interesting context on that, may I suggest here and here?

But as I sit here typing this rambly thing, and hear my Dad tell my sister on the phone -- for roughly the hundredth time -- that "though he never really liked that Nancy Pelosi, he's really come around to respect her now"... I guess what I'm thinking about is Alice and her samples and her day 7 at work.

And I guess I'm just glad to have a Dad who surfed the changes in his life and grew more flexible and agile and caring as he aged -- who bequeathed to me a feeling that one ought to speak one's mind when one believes something, and that there's no shame in evolving your opinion as you go.  I'm glad I have a Dad who worked hard to make things better for his kids, who worked with my Mom to insulate us from hardship when circumstances changed; who showed us a greater world that allowed us to have more open minds, who models curiosity and the joy of speaking to others every day -- even though it was really embarrassing for a while there when I was a teenager.

And I'm glad he'd wave his arms and shout and stamp his feet to help Alice. 

I know it won't do any good.  But a vote in a few hours just might.  And Great God Almighty, I'm glad for that too.

And for bonus points -- there's my Mom, who I think is just relishing the fact that when it comes down to a street fight between Catholic Nuns and Catholic Bishops -- she gets to side with the nuns.

But how THAT side of the stew got me to how I think about stuff -- well....I guess that's just a different story for a different day.

Pass it. Sign it. And get back to it.

Writer Ear Candy: Oh, Zooey.

DOESN'T HELP YOU if you're one of those "must work in silence" people.*

But if you're like me, and spending another day staring at the same chunks of guide-prose willing them to make more elegant sense, there's probably not a better soundtrack than the delightful new album by She & Him.  Volume Two is now being streamed as a preview here on NPR.org.  

And unlike many goodies available to the U.S. domestic market where they don't have universal health care and coloured money, this link works from Canada.  Enjoy.






*Freak.

Day Job Night Job

A PLEASING AND suprising profile of Donald Glover, "Troy" from Community, in today's New York Times. I read with some surprise a few months ago that he'd spent two seasons writing for 30 Rock, and I remember Bro Rape with fondness and guilt...


But what strikes you most, or should, as you read Megan Angelo's profile is the breadth, depth & tenacity of Glover's efforts to develop his talent.

“In Hollywood people are risking a lot of money on your weird ideas,” Mr. Glover said. 

“They’re trying to make money, and so they should. It’s an expensive business. The vision will always be a bit corrupted, and I’m really fine with that. But online, hopefully, will always be like the Wild West, where anything goes.”

Even with a steady day job on “Community,” which NBC recently picked up for a second season, Mr. Glover made time over the past year to spoof boy bands and Tiger Woods, to help distribute Derrick Comedy’s first feature film, “Mystery Team,” and to hone his stand-up at casual shows in New York and Los Angeles.

But nothing underscores Mr. Glover’s commitment to self-produced content as much as his decision to depart the writing staff of “30 Rock” because the job was keeping him from his other endeavors.

That was nearly a year ago. Yet much of the buzz surrounding Mr. Glover still concerns how he came to “30 Rock.” David Miner, an executive producer on the show, was searching for writers when he found Mr. Glover on the Web site of the comedy troupe Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz (hammerkatz.com). In a rare instance of reverse cold calling — from producer to unknown writer — Mr. Miner reached out to Mr. Glover and sent him to meetTina Fey, the star and creator of “30 Rock.”

“All he had was a packet of sketch comedy pieces,” Ms. Fey said in an e-mail message. “One was about going on a date with a girl and slowly realizing that she was a Fraggle. She ate furiously, like Cookie Monster, and food fell out the sides of her mouth. That sketch made me laugh.” 

In a fragmented world it's not enough to have 'a couple things' on the go.  Nor is it good enough to sit around and whinge that no one is discovering you.  The time has passed where you can hide your light under a bushel.   I imagine if you're a young writer, or writer-performer, you'd read the article and be inspired. Or at least I hope you'd be.

There's one caveat to this, of course. (There always is.) Once you hit the section about the 'reverse cold call' that led Glover to his writing staff job on 30 Rock, one has to admit that, based on the evidence, that part of the equation is well and truly missing in Canada. Commercial casting directors may troll the local Toronto Second City show with one eye half open; but the reality is that very, very, very few people at the network, casting, or development level are really looking for new talent in Canada.

Twas ever thus, though.  More dispatches from a colonized culture.  More's the reason to book that ticket, find a floor, and line up at the UCB theater.

The Pacific: Terrific, Horrific

A COUPLE OF weekends ago, feeling a bit under the weather and worked-out, I did a very stupid thing.  I watched all ten hours of the new Tom Hanks/Spielberg miniseries THE PACIFIC in one sitting.

Now there's a whole bunch of reasons why this is a bad idea, but one of them certainly isn't quality.  In short, The Pacific  (HBO & HBO Canada, April 14/9pm)  is very, very, very good.

The follow up to the enormously successful Band of Brothers, The Pacific may ultimately lack the cohesiveness of that series' tracking of Easy Company, but that's merely because of it staying true to the template established by Brothers...don't embellish & keep it close.

Like the earlier series, The Pacific accomplishes its depiction of the bloody, four-year long hop from island to island by focusing in on some real life material.  In this case, the real-life figures are Sgt. John Basilone, Pvt. Eugene Sledge, and Pvt. Robert Leckie. All were with the 1st Marine Division, but each was not present at every battle.  Basilone was celebrated in accounts at the time, and Sledge & Leckie, the material comes from their published memoirs.

At the end of the series, which tracks the men returning home, one of them is dropped off by taxi. The driver, a former army man, who, in a nod to Brothers, served in the European theatre, refuses to take money. "I got to see London & Paris at least. You guys in the Pacific..."

And that's probably the best way to describe the show. It's great, it's compelling, and as it goes along it's very, very, very difficult to watch.

My knowledge of the Pacific war was limited going in... I knew placenames, some of the battles, and the idea that it was tough.  It's a tribute to the guys making this series (in Australia) that they managed to make all the islands look different.

They also don't skimp on either side of the story.  They show the heroism, but also the madness.  The U.S. marines are not always portrayed in the best light.  You see people do terrible, terrible dehumanizing things. The Okinawa episode, which comes 2nd last, is almost unbearable.

But the psychological map painted, almost essential so that it's not the fog and noise of dirty, bloody battle in every episode -- shows the cost paid in full by the "Greatest Generation."  People of my vintage grew up thinking that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is something that came out of Vietnam.  The Pacific sets that record straight, once and for all.

It's hard to watch as these fine young men are slowly ground down by the horrors they witnessed, but it does make you realize that the rose-colored way we view WWII as maybe the last "good war," is about as meaningless a distinction as can be made.

A few years ago CBC tried to do a doc called "The Valour and the Horror" which suggested and postulated a version of bombing in WWII that was not entirely heroic.  Veterans groups got so up in arms that the documentary was shelved and not reshown, and the CBC apologized.

Now most of the veterans with the first hand accounts of The Pacific are gone.  To view a series like this, and to see that experience, what they went through, warts and all -- doesn't make it seem less heroic to me.  At all.  It makes it seem more human. And tragic, and awful.

It sounds like I'm warning you away from this show.  I'm not.  It's important. It's well made. It's very compelling and enjoyable. There are wonderful love stories in there, and performances that are revelations, particularly James Badge Dale as Leckie and Joe Mazello as Sledge.  But there's also a very strong guest performance by an Australian actress, Claire van der Boom (the name fits) in Ep 3.

Hats off to Hanks and Spielberg on this one.  It's great to see someone using power to make something that's important.  As a document of sacrifice & horror, The Pacific is simply required viewing. Any politician that rattles sabres should be strapped in a chair and forced to watch it exactly as I did.

But without the breaks. And rewinding certain parts.

There are plenty of historical backgrounders on the HBO site too. They're well worth watching.

2nd Week Lucky

WELL, LOOKS LIKE not a lot of people wanted to drink out of the other side of the glass or try to hold their breath, & I guess they like the look of that young whippersnapper Dan For Mayor.  Because both of CTV's new comedies came back with very respectable 2nd week numbers  -- over 1.1 million viewers each.

And that is up against a new episode of HOUSE, which is, or flirts with, being the number one scripted show in Canada.  Yes, yes, House demolished them. But owning any piece of that podium in a highly competative slot is reason to celebrate.

Congrats to both shows!

Dan, Dan, Things I Don't Understand.

FIRST THINGS FIRST. Got to see a preview of tonight's Dan For Mayor (CTV, 8:30 and it continues the genial promise of the pilot.) Do watch.  It's preceded by Hiccups, at 8, which I didn't like quite as much but enjoyed more than I thought I would. I look forward to seeing it improve as it finds its feet. And I'm more than happy to watch a Vancouver-based sitcom.  I think that city's nutty enough to host about three comedies.

Next, here's a blog post of a vintage I just don't get, but which is endemic to Canadian TV coverage.

The number of successful hour-long dramas in the history of Canadian television can be counted on one hand: Street Legal, Da Vinci’s Inquest,North of 60, Road to Avonlea, and Due South. The latest attempt, the 13-part, Toronto-shot series The Bridge, is up against long odds.

First things first -- what exactly is the yardstick we're using here? Does successful mean loadsaviewers? Then how is The Beachcombers and Seeing Things both off the list?  And, ahem...Littlest Hobo? How about Artistic triumph?  Well, then I'd say you've left out Slings & Arrows & probably the show that was so cool it was WAY ahead of its time, Wojeck.

Currently, Flashpoint & Heartland both connect seriously with huge viewing blocks by modern standards.  Being Erica is a critical darling with a passionate fan base both here and in the USA.  When you get your lead on Oprah for some praise, something is being done right.

Beyond that there are dirty little industrials that nevertheless sold like stink all over the world... Relic Hunter.  Psi Factor.  La Femme Nikita. There's Traders, which managed to cater to a devoted audience for five years up against the number one show in TV, and counted both Hart Hanson (Bones) and David Shore (House) among its alumni.

What's more likely is that there's somebody else making the pronouncement of God to put forward the same bullshit thing that due to journalistic laziness, becomes the dominant Canadian narrative.  It's the same reason why reportage of ratings numbers are so deadly here.  Nobody puts out the full picture, so there is no real context.  God forbid we'd have somebody like The Programming Insider actually parsing what things really mean.

Then again, in Canada, sometimes things go away for utterly arbitrary reasons.  Intelligence gets canceled for low ratings because they weren't looking for that critical audience that year. DaVinci is called a hit even though its numbers slid so badly by the end of its run they weren't all that much greater than Intelligence.

Did it matter to the quality of either show?  Hell no. They were awesome and Haddock's a genius.

Now John Doyle thinks the CBC's going for light fluff and that's great. Except when Intelligence got canceled a few years ago, when it was a tragedy.  Got it?

Blood Ties got canceled due to "low ratings" despite the fact that it did better than what preceded and followed it on both Canadian and U.S. channels, and sold everywhere in the world.

In Canada, the why's are rarely parseable down to one, dispassionate reason. Such is the curse and the burden of a system where fiat and political considerations trump entertainment value most days of the week.

Woe betide the person who builds the list of "the only successful one hour dramas" in Canadian history. It's a fool's errand, because the metrics aren't equal and the judgement is entirely subjective.

And since it's all bullshit anyway, let's just raise our glasses of sherry, toast the sunset, and hope there's a beer ad that comes along soon to tell us what it means to be good and proper Canadians.

Hmm

IS IT WORTH noting that the two winners in Screenplay at the Oscars last night, HURT LOCKER, and PRECIOUS, were both works where the collaborative nature of film was celebrated, rather than trying to cram it into a "Director is King" narrative -- or leaving your co-writer or creator frozen out there, flapping, uncomfortably?

Nah. Probably not.

With Glowing Hearts

I THINK I just more or less came to the conclusion right now that I won't be watching the Oscars tonight. I have a party to go to and everything.  But I won't be going.  I probably won't even watch.

Why?  Because as is the way of the freelancer, I've had meetings and work pushed so that this whole weekend & the next few days are about a desperate attempt to turn around an outline and a draft for two separate projects before I smack into a long-arranged time commitment for a third.  Such is the way.  I don't have a spare 3 hours to spend on ephemeral movie-stuff that isn't  that important to me anyway.

Quite a change from a week ago, when I and everybody else in Canada, it seems, couldn't tear our eyes away from the TV -- the Gold Medal Final in Hockey and the aftermath meant that I even found myself watching the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics - if anything, under normal circumstances, an even lamer live event than your average Oscar telecast.

Just because that's kind of how my brain bubbles, I of course managed to relate it back to Canadian TV.  Others here did the same thing, musing on what the Own The Podium mania meant for our particular, colonized culture.  So here, in one place, a few ruminations on what could be with our domestic TV.  Enjoy the Oscars.  I'll be pounding the keyboard, sweating blood onto the keys.  And no one will likely ask what I'm wearing.  Track pants, if you must know.

So be it.

From DTOS:

Why the Giant Beavers & Flying Moose Mattered.  - What the iconography of the closing ceremonies signals about the shifting winds of Canadian Storytelling.

Gold is Everywhere. - How a quest for excellence might look if we bothered to carry it into domestic TV & film, and why the chimera of importing Americans won't save us.

Prospectors take note.  - In which a Canadian network finally brags about its homegrown show besting someone else's homegrown show -- and why putting those two shows head to head puts  the lie to the "Canadians won't watch Canadian Tv" canard.

From Will Dixon's Uninflected Images Juxtaposed:

Will weighs in on maybe where that prejudice comes from.

From Jim Henshaw's The Legion of Decency, he asks you to stop blaming the actors.

Note to MP's, or CRTC commissioners:  If just once we saw evidence that maybe some of these arguments were at least in your wheelhouse of understanding, you might just gain a few people who know how to craft a narrative. That's kind of a useful thing in politics. Just saying.

But instead, we hear that there's a National Digital Strategy, but it doesn't really consider any thought of how film & TV production -- which has been shown to be extremely effective in stimulating communities in just about every independent study ever done -- fits into it.

But you know, at least the Culture minister has a Twitter account.

Awesome.

HEY GUYS,  let's do a little PR on the internet lesson, shall we?

Today's word is, "Shill."

Read this thread.  Seriously.  I've been Howling over this for about an hour.  When I was a wee little bean and dreamed of growing up to be a corporate communications whore, I at least imagined I'd do it with a bit of panache.

Dude.

#internetfail