Hindsight Week Reprint: My New Favorite Show

THIS IS FUN.  It's been up and down for some people, but I still maintain that the greatness of Mad Men was all on display in this pilot.  This is the kind of script that gets you a staff job on The Sopranos.

 It's also interesting that three years later, and with Breaking Bad continuing the example, that so few Canadian channels have picked up the baton of trying to come up with the brand-establishing, iconic original series.

HOW GOOD is AMC's first foray into original series programming, MAD MEN?

Well, it's not just the art direction and acting, which is impeccable. It's not just the presence of clutch actors like John Slattery and Elisabeth Moss, or the very fine Jon Hamm & Christina Hendricks.

It's not even the nifty tag line, "where the truth lies."

What sets Mad Men apart is from the moment it unspools, creator Matthew Weiner paints a world as indelible and interesting as that first blush you had when you saw The Sopranos, and thought, "Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a mob story like this before."

And not to steal from Golick's gig, but I think that the Pilot of Mad Men is an absolute textbook evocation of how to manage your audience's expectations.

There's a lot that works thematically about MM. Setting the show in 1960 really does cry out for you to recognize the watershed between then and now. This is America at its most righteous and confident. The biggest industries aren't those who leverage things, or cut costs, they're people who make things and buy things. In this zippy, confident, post-war New York City, JFK is just on the horizon, but Vietnam is not. Advertising types pooh-pooh research, they don't swear by it.

Much has been made of all the red meat eating, highball drinking, smoking in every scene (including a gyno exam) -- but what's ingenious from a story standpoint is how much you're filled in about the world of the show just by the simple needs and wants of the main characters.

Don Draper, our main guy and hero, just wants to come up with a new slogan for Lucky Strike, cause they can't claim their product is healthier than other cigarettes anymore.

Peggy, the new secretary, simply wants to negotiate this new world of work, and maintain a bit of dignity.

But in that world there are a number of tough-sell elements for a modern audience.

The smoking, of course, is simply astounding. But so is the sexism and the casual racism, too. Peggy endures being talked about openly and lewdly. When she gets a prescription for the Pill, the doctor -- in the most demeaning way possible -- lectures her, basically wagging his finger and telling her not to become a slut.

How do you make anyone in this world sympathetic? (We're going to get into spoiler territory below. You're warned.)

Well, right off the bat, they do it by putting Don Draper in the arms of a woman named Midge. Midge is a character that you're apt to recognize from our time. She's independent, self-employed, strong. "I don't make plans and I don't make breakfast," she says to Draper first thing in the morning. He muses they should get married. She makes it more than clear that that't just not going to happen.

That buys you a lot of room to have other people carry the water when it comes to the sexism in the piece. Draper, such a good guy, apologizes to his new secretary for some of the boorishness of the other men in the office. Okay, you think. Okay.

Then, just as you're comfortable, they start taking the rug out from under you. "I'm not going to sit here and let a woman talk to me this way," says Draper, our enlightened hero, when challenged by a new client -- the female president of a large Department Store.

And Peggy, too, our ingenue, isn't what she appears to be. Early in the episode, she's told by Joan, the seen it all and sexy as hell Queen of the Secretarial Pool, "find out what your boss likes so you know what kind of girl to be." The job's described to her as somewhere between a mother and a waitress. So, maybe it's not so shocking when she makes a play for her boss -- a play that he turns down right away. But the ending -- where she invites the drunk, soon-to-be married letch who humiliated her earlier into her bed -- well...that's just...

Why would she DO that?

But there's one more surprise coming. Just as we think we've gotten used to Don Draper's quirks -- he redeemed himself with the Department Store lady, after all -- he heads home. To his house in the suburbs, with his waiting wife and two kids.

Who we haven't heard about before.

And now we think back to that early scene with Midge, and we're thinking very differently about Don Draper. Very differently indeed.

The brain-scratching WTF of John From Cincinatti is one thing...but this is pitch-perfect writing and storytelling. This might be the next great, thoughtful Drama series. And I get the strong feeling that just like all good sci fi is about the present, well, the world of Mad Men may purport to show us 1960 -- but around the edges and in the cracks, I think it's really all about us...not about how much things have changed, but really about how little they've changed.

We just don't smoke and drink and say it all out loud anymore.

That, and the best presentation since Adult Swim. They got me to sit through every commercial break, simply by value adding info to each commercial. Genius.

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Hindsight Week Reprint: Rock'n'Roll, Cancon, & the Salt Eaters

I REMEMBER SEEING this play like it was yesterday. And the cultural battle talked about here is still worth fighting.  We still have to get back to the ordinary meaning of words like "culture."

JAN: How many voted for the Communist party, Max?
MAX: About two-tenths of one percent. It’s called the parliamentary route to socialism.
JAN: You got the strange gods vote: Marxism, Fascism, anarchism, kept on the side of the plate like a little bit of salt to bring out the flavour of English moderation. A thousand years of knowing who you are gives a people confidence in its judgment. Words mean what they have always meant. With us, words change meaning to make the theory fit the practice. We eat salt.

-Tom Stoppard, Rock N’Roll

ROCK N’ROLL is Tom Stoppard’s story of the life and times of several characters from shortly after the end of the Prague Spring in 1968, to the end of the “Velvet Revolution” which brought Vaclev Havel to power in 1989.

The show unfolds the stories mainly through the eyes of two protagontists. Max, played by Brian Cox, is one of the last unreconstructed Soviet-style British communists. Jan (Rufus Sewell,) starts out as one of Max’s students as Cambridge, but returns home to Prague to look after his mother.

But what Rock N’ Roll is really about is the intersection of culture and politics. It also, at the margins, tells the story of the Czech band “The Plastic People of the Universe,” whose persecution in the 1970s led to a sensational trial, and Charter 77 – a manifesto of sorts that for Havel and other dissidents, started the reclamation of their society from the Communist jackboot.

The love Jan has for music transcends politics, which is precisely what the above passage is about – it’s what makes it so dangerous. Through his thirty year journey, Jan, who starts out politically agnostic, is gradually pushed into dissidence simply because his desire to be left alone, to listen to the Plastics and music, can’t be accommodated.

Rock N’Roll is ultimately about so much more – the wilting promise of the sixties, paganism and freedom of thought and expression; a love story, a lament for Syd Barret (really). It’s meaty and provocative and vibrant and moving.

I’ve never been to Prague. I know very little about Syd Barret, pitifully little of the writings of Vaclev Havel – but such is the power of culture that I’ll be seeking each of these things out now.

For those of you drilled to think this way – there’s even a Canadian connection; Paul Wilson, the translator of much of the writings of Havel that Stoppard leaned on for the play – is Canadian. He was also a member of The Plastic People of The Universe. So there. There’s your angle!

I kid. That reductive, “what’s visibly Canadian?” angle is actually part of the problem. But that's another story for another time.

The true power of culture, of course, is when it can take a story like this one, a story that’s specific to a place, and time – and make you relate it immediately to something local and familiar. That’s the reason we’ve read Shakespeare’s “history” plays for five centuries. I guarantee you that there’s nary a soul anywhere who gives a toss about Henry Bolingbroke; and what does it matter that Richard III was actually a pretty decent monarch? Culture elevates us all. It makes us think. It tells us who we are, as it breaks us down and makes us look inward and outward at once.

And like it or not, the primary delivery system of culture today is television.

Now, let’s talk about words.

The passage I quote above – the argument between Jan and Max, sent a chill down my spine when I saw it on the stage of the Jacobs Theater last Thursday night. Because of course it (admittedly, with lower stakes than Russian tanks and secret police persecutions) echoes wonderfully the ridiculous masque that unfolded at the CRTC hearings into the Canadian Television Fund last week.

“Culture” and “Commercial” there were the buzzwords. The ostensible reason why the mechanism for funding domestic TV production could only be improved by splitting the current fund in two – each following one of those elusive, ephemeral definitions.

There were submissions through the week, by the creative unions, by the DGA and WGC and ACTRA; by creatives, by the CTF itself – which strongly disputed the idea that this differential was in any way meaningful. These unions came armed with Data: examples of shows that succeeded though they had 10/10 Cancon points – shows that were not as successful though they aimed for the 8/10 threshold that is the new savior proposed by the CRTC.

But unlike Jan’s words to Max above, we don’t have the confidence of a thousand years of knowing who we are in this country. Quite the opposite. As a nation that defines itself largely by what it is not, we tend to eat a lot of salt.

Or maybe salt’s the wrong analogy. Let’s call it… cheeseburger.

It’s good cheeseburger. The best in the world. American Cheeseburger. Very popular. Very tasty. I can haz American Cheezeburger. There’s simply no question that Canadians like the taste.

The reality is that this distinction the CRTC is currently peddling – “cultural” versus “commercial” – that’s a very U.S. way of looking at the problem.

In the U.S., “culture” is often used to connote the high-falutin – classical music, intellectual or literary novels, jazz, yup – theater too…things that are not designed to appeal to the mainstream. Culture is often to be suspected – part of a peculiar strain of anti-intellectualism that has always been at the core of American cultural life.

America, of course, needn’t worry about things cultural, since there is also the rubric of “entertainment.” And the U.S. is better at “entertainment” than just about anybody out there.

In other countries – countries like Canada, with real first world economies and everything -- this essentially American overlay of what “culture” means is not the understood meaning. And the results of this difference can be staggering.
In Great Britain, culture is Keeley Hazell and Page 3 and it’s also The War of the Roses and The Proms. People argue over the relative merits of this part of the culture and that part of the culture. They might even call it high, low, and middlebrow – but they won’t deny that it’s all culture.

There’s also a general recognition that supporting culture is good for building the nation. Why are all those British actors so goddamn good? Because they come up through a system of training in theatre that’s heavily subsidized. The British Film industry has its ups and down, but also has spates of being able to turn out films that run the gamut from challenging (anything by Ken Loach) to fun and still trenchant (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Full Monty.) Comedies that are aggressively, specifically British still export – whether it’s types satirized in Little Britain, or the all-offense fest of Catherine Tait.

In France, there are very serious political consequences to not protecting the French culture. And yes, that culture includes some very silly comedies. And some very decidedly non-commercial dramas – both of which can become “hits.”

In fact, if there’s been a shift that Canada (the English speaking part, at least) has not been part of, it’s the rise of the domestic program. Other countries used to have an insatiable appetite for American shows, too. But somewhere over the last few years, from Germany to Italy to France and beyond, the populace has gotten a taste for their own cop shows, lawyer shows, medical shows. Nowhere was there a discussion or an argument as to whether it was cultural or commercial. There was a recognition that it was all culture, and that it was worthy of support. Most of these countries, to varying degrees, have the same challenges Canada faces – it’s a difficult playing field to compete against the American product. Because it’s difficult, it’s generally recognized – even as a point of national pride – that it’s to be supported. It’s good for the culture, which means good for the country.

This is also true in Quebec, by the way. It’s all well and good to put it down to the language barrier, but that doesn’t tell the full story. Les Boys is as worthy in their eyes as La La Human Steps. Which is as it should be.

But here in English Canada, culture comes smacking up against industrial policy.

And make no mistake, there’ s an industrial element to this, too.

When one country sells a product into another country at a cut rate, it’s called “dumping.”

If I have more cuttlefish than I can possibly eat in my nation, and I sell you my excess cuttlefish at a really cheap price, it’s good for me because I’m getting rid of it.

Of course, often, that means the cuttlefish industry in that country never gets going. That’s why tariffs are put in place.

What we’re in the middle of here is the side effect of an ongoing skirmish that concerns the industrial dumping of U.S. shows on Canadian channels. The system in this country is set up to allow for that. Simultaneous substitution practically demands it. The networks profit handsomely from it. They argue and lobby to keep their commitment to indigenous production low, as low as possible, to preserve it.

Adopting the U.S. definition of “culture” fits into this. So does a number of other things: getting people to run down the CBC, and question Canadian successes when they do happen. In order for all this to work, we have to keep alive that idea of “culture” having that slightly nasty, metallic, American definition to it. That way nobody notices what you’re doing. Nobody will rally to your cause.

Another component of this, and in many ways its most shameless part, is exporting and shipping off all your homegrown talent.

Ingrid Bergman was a star in Sweden before she went to the U.S.A. South Africa has a star system. UK bands always break at home first. Movie stars arrive from other nations with an adoring crowd in tow back home. But time and time again, a writer, or a director, or a star turns up in California having never really done anything or gotten anywhere in Canada.

And then if they are successful, then we claim them. It’s perverse.

Jim Carrey toiled for years here. There are still oldtimers here who, if you track them down, will run down how deeply, deeply Carrey was humiliated and ignored as he tried to make it in TV here. It’s not that he didn’t try. He did. He may occasionally mention his Canadian roots. But you notice that Carrey never comes back – never does a project here. Why would that be, exactly? There’s darkness in there – and memory of what it was really like.

Substitute Carrey for a lot of Canadian talent and you’ll hear a similar tale. People who couldn’t get anywhere here who left, and suddenly found out that driving 2000 miles south made them brilliant. Some will smile and wave and play the game and wear Leafs jerseys on Letterman. But don’t be fooled. Deep down, they know. They know.

It’s shameful. And we’ve been doing it to talent – both behind and in front of the camera – for decades in this country.

And the players in the system reinforce it. Shaw may say that what it wants is to be able to control investment in “Commercial” programming. But that’s not how he makes his money. He makes his money by being protected – by NOT doing exactly the thing that he accuses Canadian talent of not being able to do -- compete. Shaw, Rogers, CTV, Global – they all make money by bringing in U.S. signals. Shaw, in fact, instigated his brawl with the CTF soon after his request to bring in additional U.S. channels was turned down. This is not a coincidence.

Everybody in the system has a vested interest in making the U.S. definition of “culture” – ie: not for the people, not fun – stand, because that way they can continue the lock on the thing that makes them money, which is the industrial dumping of U.S. product into Canada, unfettered and unencumbered by limits.

Pushing talent away works for this, too. It’s better to have talented Canadians go south and learn to tell U.S. stories than it is even to keep them here to do a few things first – even if their ambition would eventually lead them to the bigger pond. If you don’t expand and encourage the talent pool, you see, then programs don’t get better. If no one can build on success, and move up the chain, and hone craft, and take that first staff writing gig or first feature script and go on to something better and get better – if in fact you can reinforce the idea that “if you’re any good you don’t stay here,” then you get to keep making your money off the dumped cuttlefish.

You can have truces. CTV, for instance, is so flush with a good run of successes that you do see them doing a bit more for Canadian homegrown material. They’re the best we have. Could they be doing more? Absolutely. But they still mainly make most of their money off the dumped cuttlefish.

The bottom line is, if too many people start watching Canadian shows, you have to say that the numbers don’t matter, and compare them to CSI or HOUSE.

And if shows strike a chord, like Trailer Park Boys, you have to figure out a way to run them down, too. Because getting a popular toehold in the culture and recognizing that might muddy that tidy split of “culture” and “commercial” that you’re trying to sell.

And if the CBC starts making you look bad by running way more Canadian shows – you have to go after them, because nothing can stop the forward momentum of the meme that Canadians don’t want to watch Canadian shows. Everything else depends on that, you see.

And you also have to make sure that the coverage the companies get when they go before the CRTC and talk about the “broken system” gets far more play than the voices of the creatives – because then you hope the people will hear “broken system” and swallow the lie.

And you have to make sure that it’s hard – too hard – too hard to stay if you’re blessed with actual talent, because if you were able to stay and train up and get better and have access to great actors here, if, in fact there was a whole bunch of talented people who could work regularly and advance both their expertise and craft without having to go to L.A. (like the class of Actor and creator who chooses not to leave Great Britain, for instance) then those empowered voices might juke your whole rotten system – and poke it for the sham that it is.

And if the result is that generations of Canadians think the crime rate is higher than it is, or that abortion is a third rail topic, or that you can plead the fifth here, or that racism is out of control in Canada, or that the War on Drugs is a noble and not an idiotic fight, or any one of a hundred other values that are not borne out in the Canadian reality are, in fact, real, then that’s a small price to pay, right?

And if you control all the papers and can reinforce this view, then that’s good too, right?

And if you can influence the regulatory body that’s supposed to oversee you, and ignore the experience of other nations, and just accept that American definition of the split between “culture “ and “commercial” well then that’s the best thing of all, right?
Sure, there’s a strong undercurrent of philistinism in the character of the nation that makes this possible. You couldn’t do it if there wasn’t already a glee to be had from chopping down all the tall poppies.

But still – you do need all these things marching in concert to maintain the status quo. Especially when shows start selling elsewhere, or the New York Times writes a good review, or you’re getting a million or a million two viewers a week..

There’s a moment in Rock N’Roll, quite near the end of the play where Jan comes home from being imprisoned. The secret police has been to his apartment and his records, which lined one wall – have been smashed. He looks over the terrible mess, and it’s at this moment that the friend who accompanies him remembers – he borrowed a record while Jan was away. Jan unwraps it and takes it out. It’s Pet Sounds. He puts it on and the two of them listen to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” It’s beautiful. It’s unbearable. It’s wonderful.

And it’s in music that I know that I’m right about everything I’ve written above.

For we were here before. With all the same arguments. With all the same hatreds coming from the audience who said, “we don’t want to have crummy shows rammed down our throats.”

Except that the shows were songs. And the medium was radio. And then, in the late 1960’s, the regulatory bodies – led in a large part by Pierre Juneau (for whom the Junos would be named) held firm and said, “no, we will carve out a percentage for our own material.”

And the result today is a cultural music scene that is vibrant and groundbreaking – successes at home and ambassadors to the world.

Cancon worked. And nobody made distinctions between “cultural” and “commercial.” The only distinction made was between doing it half assed, and really, really committing to it.

And so today we have Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene and Stars and Blue Rodeo and the Hip and K-os and Sum 41 and Holly Cole and Barenaked Ladies and Feist and Black Mountain and….and….and….

Toward the very end of Rock N’Roll, Jan finds himself back in Cambridge, and in a raucous dinner party, returns to his old argument with Max:

JAN: …All systems are blood brothers. Changing one system for another is not what the Velvet Revolution was for. We have to begin again with the ordinary meanings of words. Giving new meanings to words is how systems lie to themselves…

Amen to that. Funny how it took a play by a Czech-born British playwright seen in New York city to make a New York –born Canadian writer see that.

Or maybe it’s not so funny.

Maybe that’s exactly what culture is for.

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Hindsight Week Reprint: If Da Bunk Can Do It, So Can You

LAST YEAR, BEFORE anyone got a chance to see Treme, I wrote about the actor Wendell Pierce working to bring back his community.  My community is Canadian TV, and I've done -- and continued to do -- everything I could to make sure that there is traction for all of us.  I did a bit of soul searching recently about whether to continue on the WGC Council, because to tell you the truth -- there's a lot that comes out of those meetings that just makes you feel hopeless & distressed. There are just so many forces in the Canadian business that really look to do harm to writers.  But I decided that the old "if not you, who" thing wins in the end.  Same reason I keep on doing what I do here.

I would have kind of wished to see a few other strong writers, with voice and passion, rise up in the last year and join the fray. I'm encouraged  by the signs that our animation writers are becoming more engaged. But to read this piece now, my wish for help still stands.  I meet people wanting to start out every day, trying not to be discouraged...and I'm running out of stuff to tell them.

But I'm still watching Treme... and that situation seems hopeless, too...

IF YOU EVER watched THE WIRE, you were probably mesmerized by the performance of Wendell Pierce as Bunk, the long-suffering partner of McNulty.

So -- you at all curious as to what he's been up to lately?

Turns out, according to this nice little profile in the New York Times today, (article by Stuart Miller; photo by Cheryl Gerber) he's been in New Orleans, filming a roll in a David Simon pilot called Treme.

But he's been doing a whole lot more than that. The N.O. Native has thrown himself into the community rebuilding effort, trying to bring his historic neighbourhood back after Katrina:

In late 2007 Mr. Pierce discovered another project, this one in his own backyard. Pontchartrain Park, according to its neighborhood association, was created in 1955 by white politicians looking to maintain segregation. The neighborhood provided stability for working-class blacks, with ranch homes, wide curving streets and 200 acres of green space, including a golf course and later a Little League ballpark and tennis courts.
Before Katrina 92 percent of the neighborhood’s residents owned homes (nearly double the city’s rate), and only 10 percent lived in poverty (versus 28 percent in the parish of Orleans). Those who grew up there include Mr. Pierce; the trumpeter Terence Blanchard; Marc Morial, a former mayor; and Lisa Jackson, now chief of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But the neighborhood had the city’s second-lowest rate of posthurricane return. Many older, long-term residents couldn’t tackle rebuilding projects themselves.
“There were people talking policy at a 40,000-foot level, and everything was held up by policy conflicts,” Mr. Pierce said. Worse, he said, this desirable territory “was in the bull’s-eye” for developers. He fretted that they’d co-opt the area for wealthier (and likely white) residents. “My parents’ generation gave us this great upbringing, which is the foundation of our success. It would be sinful if we allowed this neighborhood to just go away.”
Mr. Pierce undertook a crash course, meeting with experts and sitting in on governance and technical sessions. He rattled off acronyms and figures, explaining mortgage credits or geothermals loops. “I’ve always been a quick study,” he said. “It’s part of being an actor, understanding the world I’m trying to portray.”
The redevelopment authority’s request for proposals received 15 responses, but Mr. Pierce’s was the only local group. Over three years his nonprofit corporation plans to build 350 homes, each likely to cost between $200,000 and $300,000; subsidies will reduce mortgages to as low as $125,000. Geothermal and solar heating and cooling will lower costs and earn mortgage credits.
“His folks lost a lot of memories there, but he is not just rebuilding; he is turning a page forward to what this place can really be,” said Irvin Mayfield, who’s on the board of the redevelopment authority. “It is hard to describe the amount of effort and time it takes to do something like that.”
Richard Monteilh, the executive director of the redevelopment authority, said that a celebrity frontman can accomplish a great deal, praising Brad Pitt, whose Make It Right Foundation has rebuilt six homes in the Lower Ninth Ward. But he added that Mr. Pierce is a more hands-on president.

A couple days back I wrote about Wendy Crewson, using her celebrity to try to bang the drum for indigenous work at a difficult time. Before that, I ran down the amount of Special Pleading that was likely to be at work in the cases made for "broadaster relief" at the CRTC and Heritage and elsewhere.

There are times when you can't let the developers have the neighborhood, and there are times when you can't expect the celebrities to do everything.

Driving home from a dinner party last night, I got into a conversation about the cycles of the business. My passenger and I both lamented a bit from the Toronto and the Vancouver experience of how when the U.S. crews are rocking the service projects, everyone thinks the party's never going to end.

And it always does, and people are left scraping. Now, the sheet starts showing a trickle of shoots coming back, and there's a powerful pull to forget how bad things have been, how recently. But that's a sign. It's a sign of what happens when you don't control your fate.

Of course, writers in Canada don't have that luxury. There is no 'service' work for us. If Canadian produced shows go down, we go down.

I know there are lots of writers who read this. And lots of producers besides.

Today I'm asking you to read of the example of Wendell Pierce, who saw an untenable situation threatening his family's home and neighborhood, and rushed in to fill the gap.

Today should be the day you fill the gap. Spend a few hours, find your MP's number. Call the constit office and ask for a meeting. Draft a letter outlining your concerns. Send an email to Charlie Angus on the Heritage Committee... explain to him why you think giving "broadcaster relief" from their CanCon obligations is a terrible step that's an overreaction to the problem that exists. Crib all you want from the Canadian TV posts here.

Most of all, today is the day not to sit back and let someone do your fighting for you. There is nobody else. There's just you.

Be the change.

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Hindsight Week Reprint: Don't Ask Me About My Tv Series, Kay.

YET ANOTHER PIECE where we see my growing unease with the audience-approach I wrote about in depth with the LOST finale.

ALAN SEPINWALL has a very interesting interview with Battlestar Galactica's Ronald Moore over at his digs. Moore is one of the writers that noobs really should be tracking, just because in all his podcasts and interviews, he's just so refreshingly open about the process. That kind of openness can sometimes work to a writer's detriment, especially in the case where they use it in the endless "there's a plan," "no, they're making it up as they go along," argument.

The problem with that argument is that the answer is: they're doing both of those things. But that nuance, and the reasoning behind that nuance, is not something that's ever going to translate to the mostly-wisdom free province of the internet message board.

Moore is the guy who admits mistakes in the writing while watching the show for a podcast. He's posted long recordings of discussions from the Writers' Room, for heaven's sake. And in Sepinwall's interview, here's the key exchange about the whole, "planned out" aspect of series writing:

In terms of "Galactica," how long have you known how you were going to end it?


In general terms, over the last year and a half, somewhere in the middle of season three I started asking, 'What's the shape of the ending? What's going to happen at the end of the show and what's going to be the case when they meet up with whoever they meet up with?' As we got into season three, I started thinking of it more seriously, and last summer, almost a year ago, we had a writer's summit up in Lake Tahoe and said, "It's going to end here." But a lot of the pieces didn't fall into place until I was sitting at the computer writing the teleplay that I realized exactly how the cards were going to fall for different characters.


One of the things I find interesting is, on "Lost," Cuse and Lindelof have always claimed they have a master plan and know where it's all going, and fandom has been skeptical at times and said, "Yeah, right." Whereas you've been pretty candid about the fact that you'll throw stuff out there and figure it out later, and yet people assume there's some cohesive plan to "Galactica." How do you pull that off to make it seem like there's a plan?


To me, that's the job. The job is to figure a way along in a story but make it all feel like it's seamless, to make it all make sense. Hopefully, if I've done my job right, when all is said and done and the story's been put to bed and you've got the entire set of DVDs before you and you watch them, that it feels like a cohesive narrative -- that stuff we just threw up and decided to take a flier on without ultimately knowing where it would pay off, when you look at in hindsight, that it all tracks. You're painting this large painting on this big canvas, and you may not know what it's going to look like at the end, but when you're done, you want it to feel like it's a cohesive vision and makes perfect sense.


So, for instance, when you decided who four of the Final Five would be, how much thought did you have to put into it before revealing it in "Crossroads," and how much was, "Oh, we'll say this and figure it out over the hiatus"?


The impulse to do it was literally an impulse. We were in the writers room on the finale of that season, always knew we would end season 3 on trial of Baltar and his acquittal, the writers had worked out a story and a plot, they were pitching it to me in the room. And I had a nagging sense that it wasn't big enough, on the level of jumping ahead a year or shooting Adama. And I literally made it up in the room, I said, "What if four of our characters walk from different parts of the ship, end up in a room and say, 'Oh my God, we're Cylons'? And we leave one for next season." And everyone said "Oh my God," and they were scared, and because they were scared, I knew I was right. And then we sat and spent a couple of hours talking about who those four would be. Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard to lock in who made the most sense and who would make the most story going forward.

To an element of the fanboy crowd, that is going to always be a maddening answer, because the only way to grok it is to think of it fully formed and ready to go. Which is weird, of course, since nobody bats an eye at artists' sketches or tests or studies for major paintings, or thinks that a demo of this song or that with different lyrics spoils the cohesiveness of the work. But there it is. You'll always be fighting the don'tgettits out there, who think that the ability to say, "this sucks" is the highest form of intellectual jousting.

But if you're trying to find your voice and your way, the combination of risk and doubt that suffuses every interview with Moore shows you he's the real deal. I learn something from every podcast he's done, and that's why, ultimately, despite off episodes and the occasional flaw, Battlestar Galactica is the show teaches me more about what I do than anything I currently watch.

Oh yeah, and the title of this post, I'm just being silly. I thought it was funny that he had the big writing summit for BSG up at Lake Tahoe. You know who else hung out at Tahoe...

EDIT: Hilarious. I go and write this post, and look what the VERY FIRST COMMENT over at Sepinwall's place is:

As much as I love this show, it really is frustrating to hear how RM just decides on a whim such major plot points as "let's make 4 main characters find out they are cylons". It really does call into question some of the earlier narrative and choices made by the writers and actors.

I appreciate Moore's honesty, but honest to Pete, maybe David Chase's "the work speaks for itself and I'm not explaining it" F-you is the right approach. Something to ponder...

To comment, please click through to the original post here.

Hindsight Week Reprint: I Was LOST But Now I'm Found

I GUESS THIS post doesn't exactly "add" anything to the "did they know the ending or didn't they?" debate.  If you didn't like the LOST ending, I mean. But I'm satisfied, anyway.

AT THE RISK of setting major bad precedent, in the comments section of the previous post on the NYTimes article on J.J. Abrams, a commenter named Chris had this to say:

I call bull. They have changed Lost so many times it is now a confusing mess, too many questions left unanswered and to say they always knew what they were going to do, is crap.

I answered him and tried to contextualize a bit what the article was going for -- but Chris was not appeased.

Saying "knowing the goal posts but being able to move them" is a copout. They have zigged too many times for me to believe them anymore. One example, 'Ben' was supposed to be a 3 eps role. Now he has spent two seasons as the main bad guy? I agree the flashforwards were a brilliant idea, but I know for a fact that was not planned at the beginning, therefore changing many storylines. I think I'm pissed off because I loved Lost so much I feel cheated.

I found Chris' comment interesting on a few levels -- and started answering, and at some point the comment became so long that I thought, "hey, free post!" So don't feel singled out here, Chris. Thanks for sparking.

Chris, you have me at a disadvantage here because I don't really know anything about you.

But based on your take on this I'm going to make the bold prediction that you're not a working television writer.

This blog, and just about everything in it, is written from that perspective.

So while I understand the fan point of view that might think that being able to "move the goalposts" is a cop out, the primary audience I'm talking to understands that it's actually an on-the-job necessity. The only way around it would be to know at the outset that you were guaranteed 48, or 88, or 102 episodes and out. And the business just doesn't work that way.

And your point about Ben, in fact, is the thing that delineates most clearly the wide gulf between the way a writer needs to approach a show, and the way a viewer approaches a show.

See, to a writer working on LOST, seeing those first dailies come back on Ben had to have been the most satisfying, electrifying experience imaginable. Because so often it goes the other way. You cast someone for a key role, and they don't really deliver -- a combo of they messed up and you messed up, or maybe it was just one of those things beyond everyone's control. Anyway, when that happens, often you have to junk the whole plot. Which is why threads get dropped and friends disappear on shows.

But sometimes, a great actor steps up and surprises you.

On The West Wing, Janel Moloney had such chemistry with Bradley Whitford, that what was supposed to be a minor role was bumped up - and an actress that was supposed to be a major part of the show got shuffled out.

And when they saw those dailies come back on Ben, I bet they whooped -- and chattered their way back to the story room full of high-wire excitement. "Oh My God," they said. "How do we write more for this guy?" "What if, what if..."

See, Drama TV is a quirkly little art form. The only thing I can think to compare it to is writing a story in serial form for print, which doesn't happen very much anymore. That's how Charles Dickens wrote most of his books, which is why his stories have such well-drawn and memorable minor characters.

Before I seriously turned to writing, while I was still in high school, in fact, Rolling Stone Magazine serialized an early Draft of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of The Vanities. I read it chapter to chapter, and then immediately devoured the book when it came out in Hardcover. The differences between the two forms were illuminating and incredibly interesting, both from the point of view of the art, and from the point of view of the craft. It upended the usual process of a reader reading a book in its finished form. Because the finished Bonfire was quite a bit different than the serialized, publish as you go version.

And yet in another way, it wasn't that different at all. Wolfe knew where he was going, if not precisely how he was going to get there.

In metaphorical terms, it's that thing that drives women crazy sometimes when the guy in the front seat next to them insists they're not lost. In his mind, they're not, because he knows the direction they're going in, and roughly where they are, and where they need to be. And the woman's POV is "do you know exactly where you are RIGHT NOW? No? Then we are LOST."
(Gentle readers, I'll stipulate the stuff about this being gender stereotyping, ok? I got to watch about 25 years of this from the back seat, and have experienced roughly another five or ten from the driver's seat. I'll agree that I'm stereotyping, if you agree that we're just gonna let this one slide by and not get bogged down in a sidebar, k?)

Now, Chris -- you're the woman in this scenario.

(I think I just heard about 40 thousand Hillary Clintonistas snap their pencils in half. heh heh. I am such a bad, bad man.)

Anyhoo, the great, high wire act of TV is that unlike film where it's all done and in the can, and posted and release dates picked out and whatever, whatever -- most TV is on the air at the same time as later chapters are being made. It makes for a radically different level of engagement, and it requires a radically different type of writer. You have to be someone who can let go of what was in your head if you see something that's better. You have to know how far you're deviating off the beam, and when to bring it back. The LOST writers have been more candid then most about when and how they got off the beam. (Pablo and whats-her-name?) And in our shark-jumping age, the coolest thing is seeing people through the work, find the rhythm again and bring it back.

Hopefully HEROES gets to do something similar. I've said before that my favorite part of the BSG podcasts is how freely Ronald Moore cops to when a mistake was made in the writing.

TV series are invented beasts, made as you go along by craftspeople, all who you hope are working at the top of their game. But it's also a machine, and that rolling, 25 or 50 million dollar machine makes compromises along the way. The best shows seize on their happy accidents, and hopefully find a way to bury and overcome their shortcomings.

In a way, Chris, what you've stumbled into here is the other side of what I was talking about a long time ago when I talked about how what happens in the room has to stay in the room, and how writer/creators need to stay out of fan forums, no matter how tempting it is to go there. (And no matter how many times you may slip and do it anyway. I was raised Catholic, so hell -- you confess and say a novena and vow to do better next time.)

Just as the fan reaction to stories and to shows should be pure -- and overlord writers shouldn't wade in there and try to tamp opinion or blunt it by "sharing their knowledge," fans who take craft points they don't understand and use them to justify why they didn't like something can seem foolish, if they're not careful. Just because someone says they have evidence that we never walked on the moon or that men walked with dinosaurs doesn't make them, well, credible.

In a way, we were all a little bit better off when it wasn't so easy to see the man behind the curtain. Which is exactly the implication of what Abrams was saying in the Times article.

The moment in that article where I reeled back and realized, "wow, so much really HAS changed" was when Abrams was talking about Star Wars. I haven't thought about it this way, but yeah, back then we really did wait three whole years to find out if Darth Vader was telling the truth about being Luke's father. That boggles the mind now, in the era of 24/7 spoiler sites, where I can have instant access to Lindsay Lohan's dental records if I want them. No wonder the complexity has amped up.

And yet, and yet, and yet -- all this knowledge doesn't lead to happiness. You knowing that Ben was supposed to be in 3 episodes didn't make you like the show more - it in fact did the opposite.

That's why those who manage the information flow about projects like masters -- and Abrams is definitely in that realm -- have my undying admiration.

Of course, you're free to think that LOST sucks, and you're free to say it here. Just don't be surprised if people like me disagree with you. It's not that we don't respect your opinion. It's just that we look at it in a very different way. You think LOST is lost -- and we know that getting a little lost is just how you find your way to the final destination in your head.



To comment please click through to the original post.

20/20

SO, I JUST finished up a very fast four weeks in a wonderful story room -- the third season for the much-admired (even by me) Less Than Kind.  Besides offering a chance to work with people I've long admired, like Mark McKinney (Kids in the Hall, Studio 60, SNL)  and Brian Hartt (Jamie Kennedy Xperiment, MADtv) -- it's also a chance to come full circle. I story edited a very early version of the pilot script by my friends Marvin Kaye & Chris Sheasgreen, when they were part of the NSI Totally Television program.

And then there's Jenn Engels, who was nominated for a Canadian Screenwriting Award for a season 1 LTK script she wrote.  She's great on story.  And Kim Coghill gamely, patiently keeps the notes and preps for what will be her first professional script...one more new member for the WGC!

What a pleasure it is to be back working on a show that has a set of well-defined characters, and actors who you know can sell the scenes, as well as a tone that goes for both laughs & heart.  It's amazing that Canada's pay channels TMN & Movie Central rescued this worthy show.

As much as I love the room, now there's an outline and a script to write, as well as my own ongoing projects.  Now that I'm in a good, fullsteam workweek groove, I'm loathe to give it up.  And Oh Bloggy, you can so be a distraction.

So I'm stepping out for a bit.  For the next week or so, we're hosting "Hindsight Week" here in Sticksville.  Part of the fun of blogging is that there are no lead times; publishing is instant. What happens when we revisit old posts & opinions with wiser, older eyes & a fuller appreciation of what followed?

Well, guess we'll find out.

Note to commenters: comments will be on the original posts, but since I'm stepping out -- approvals might be slower than normal.  I'll get to them.  Meantime, enjoy the sun, and feel free to use this as an open thread to leave any suggestions for stuff you'd like to talk about or see down the road.

An earlier version of this story contained errors. It has been corrected.

If You're Going To The Movies This Weekend...

MAY I RECOMMEND SPLICE, the nifty horror flick that's currently 72% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes (so you know it's good) featuring the talents of, among others, Canadians Sarah Polley, Director Vincenzo Natali -- and one of the most nattily-dressed screenwriters I know, Doug Taylor.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Hey Canadian Nets, Can We Be Upfront?

I FELT SORRY for Barbara Williams.

I really did.  She had a job to do -- a very specific job, which was to present the new fall offerings from Global Television in a positive way to entice advertisers.  It's a presentation that requires charm & clarity of message.  If you read any account of the U.S. network upfronts, which generally happen in the middle of May, you can see how it's done.  A stage managed parade of "it's never been better."  The brain might know that a year from now, 90% of these new shows you're talking up will be lying dead, broken, ignored, unloved, canceled -- but you will it not to show that.  Instead, you smile.  "Things have never been better."

Oh that was tough the last couple of years, to be sure.  Advertising was down, audiences were still eroding, everyone was abuzz about piracy, the internet, cable cannibalization of network numbers, the scourge of Tivo...not to mention the bankruptcy of GM, the world's largest advertiser, and that unbelievably stupid Leno-at-10pm turd.

But this year? Advertising's up.  They're back. They're looking to spend money.  The data on PVR's isn't so bad.  People still apparently appointment view. There's life in the old network girl yet!

But at Global's presentation of its fall schedule, something was definitely off.

Was it the protestors outside from ACTRA?  A few dozen of them, saying what they say at every one of these things -- "we should tell our own stories," etc.

It can't be them.  Can't be! I mean, ACTRA's been protesting like that for years. They did it in front of the upfront at the Elgin. They've done it ... well, they've done it A LOT.   Eric Peterson, God love him, he always shows up. And sometimes Paul Gross is there.  If you spot Wendy Crewson at one of those things, you get to yell, "bingo!"

Yet, lo and behold, and a wag of the finger to all you Eeyores out there who insist there's no point tryin' anything -- this time, that protest worked...

If the press is anything to go by, I mean.

In article after article after article -- Global's launch message was muddied, shoved aside, and forced to share the spotlight with some very unusual creative-driven questions:  "why does the spending on U.S. programming go up every year?" "Why does your big splashy fall schedule only have one homegrown show on it?" "Why should we be excited by a warmed-over rehash of shows we get on the U.S. networks on our cable dials already?"

When you're talking through the smile of "things are going great," that's just not the message you want to have out there. So what happened?

Well, I submit to you that finally, the Broadcasters brought this on themselves. And Global bore the brunt by going first, and not being ready with an integrated counter message. The combination over the relentlessly partisan rah rah "Save Local TV" campaign, combined with the CRTC hearings and scrutiny over their business models has finally filtered through to the journalist class.

Instead of viewing the economic downturn of 2008 as a cyclical bump in their business, the Canadian nets pounced and called it a "permanent downturn" and used it to hysterically call for all sorts of relief -- Fee For Carriage, and of course, a reduction in CanCon.

But, see, you can't square that with the upfront mentality, especially when all signs point to a resurgence in ad spending.  And there is the inconvenient fact that the U.S. spending still went up when they were crying poor.  With those numbers floating out there, and the whole bad taste from the "Save Local TV" imbroglio still brewing, it was bound to create a climate where people took a harder look at what the business model of Canadian TV really is.

And when you do look at it, it's pretty indefensible. It's lazy. It's parasitic and it trades only on the creativity of another nation.  Even the CRTC knows it -- though they do try to bury their own reports when they come out and say it.

The other piece of blowback could be called, "the Corner Gas/Flashpoint effect."

Now that some of those homegrown shows are starting to get good, it's a natural thing to ask, "well, why aren't there more of them?"  Why DO the Canadian nets insist on doing only the bare minimum that they are dragged kicking and screaming into doing?  From a consumer standpoint, what is the value of having networks that only replicate the U.S. schedules?

When Barbara Williams stood on the stage earlier this week, what she didn't realize is that she was standing on the wrong side of the Tipping Point.  She faced a "friendly audience" at the CRTC when she presented there last year about the network TV problem (so friendly that the CRTC redacted all her testimony, creating the odd spectacle of a commission that's supposed to protect consumer's rights in the broadcast sphere holding secret hearings)  but the combination of bad theatre over the local TV thing, the mounting questions, years of ACTRA protests, the wall-falling nature of things like Hulu, the Net, Torrents and iTunes have all coalesced.   These questions over CanCon, and what are you doing, what are you MAKING for viewers? They are never going away again.  They are a permanent part of the conversation now.

The truth is, Global is making homegrown shows.  More than perhaps they've ever done before.  They have a simulcast coming up with Rookie Blue in a couple of weeks. They have greenlit pilots, and ordered series. But they're so used to not talking about any of that that Barb Williams only got to bring it up in response to questions about the lack of CanCon, and the ACTRA protest -- which immediately made them sound defensive.  Because it WAS DEFENSIVE.

CTV read those tea leaves clearly, and did a serious adjust in time for their upfront presentation yesterday.  Among the self-congratulatory email releases was one frontloading just how much they were doing in terms of CanCon.  And you know what? They deserve the lap.  I, and many others, may have differing things to say about a slate that includes Flashpoint, The Bridge, The Listener, Dan For Mayor, Hiccups, Degrassi and all -- but they all got renewed yesterday.  Some of them are even drawing numbers.  CTV supports them with advertising.  They play some of the same games at the CRTC, to be sure, and they're certainly not busting down the doors to bring you CanCon this fall -- but the truth is, they deserve their victory lap. They've done the work. And they were ready with the release to shine a light on what they have.  I'm sure the fact that it also allowed them to tweak their rival Global played a part in it, but you know, whatever.

Meanwhile, there are the others.  You know a few years ago when I had a show on Citytv -- I wasn't even invited to the upfronts.   Don't boohoo for me, Argentina -- I'm not so special...nobody with a Canadian show was.  And in the Rogers-era, so far there's no evidence that that's changed.

Last night, you could read tweets from the CTV party by the co-creator of Flashpoint.

That's the new world, kids.  The conversation is different now.

So congrats to ACTRA for keeping the heat on, and WGC for doggedly getting those U.S. spend numbers out there, over and over -- and anyone who raised a finger to raise the alarm. The message has finally trickled down.  What happens next?

Well, that's up to them.  I dream of the day when these guys realize -- as CTV has started to -- that maybe pushing your CanCon just a little is good business, too.   That celebrating Canadian talent only after you've forced them to move to the USA is a bit perverse.  That if you're the CBC, you can fade a lot of built-in goodwill by floating a fall schedule with nothing new.  That burying stuff on the specialties & Fridays & Saturdays in the winter in favor of shows -- 90% of which won't live the season -- isn't the best foot to put forward.  That if you're the Movie Channels -- Astral & Corus-owned, and you push your CanCon like you push stuff from HBO and Showtime -- that you gain respect.

Most of all, I dream of the day when the Canadian nets -- all of them -- realize that the shows they make themselves are part of the story they have to tell at the upfronts...not merely the tax on their business they have to endure.

You want a party free of protestors, and headlines that are on message? That's what it's going to take.

I hope Barbara Williams gets lots of good headlines when Rookie Blue premieres. After the rough ride she had this week, she deserves them.

The New Copyright Bill in 50 Words or Less

THERE'LL BE MORE later, including the WGC's reaction to the bill, but basically, to parse the new copyright bill:

If you're a consumer:  you get some concessions for fair dealing, timeshifting, format shifting, parody, satire & YouTube -- unless there's a digital lock on the content, in which case you're fucked.

If you're a content creator:  you're just fucked.

If you're a huge multinational company in the bricks & mortar business:  you get a "get out of freedom free" card -- no restrictions on placing digital locks on anything.  So basically, you get a license to fuck.

So, same old story.

POVTV

SERIOCITY'S Kay Reindl has some crunchy crafty goodness with a big bright post about POV -- and especially how POV relates to LOST.  There is a definite chill every writer feels when it comes to storytelling POV... you have tremendous pressure to make the character's choices understandable at every single juncture.

And yet from The Sopranos, to Six Feet Under, to LOST, to The Shield -- many of the most compelling shows with the greatest characters don't bother with that fooferaw.

Both Lost and Twin Peaks had ensembles that were heavily into their own points-of-view. I think the shows that try to ape this success, like FlashForward, do so with the typical omniscient TeeVee point-of-view. And just before some of you wiseacres think I'm saying that ensemble shows are character-driven while single-lead shows aren't, that ain't the case. THINK ABOUT THIS. In most TeeVee shows, you're watching a chosen point-of-view. It's safe; there may be character or plot surprises, but you know that what you're seeing is what's happened. Stuff may get held back, but you watch because you know that the omniscient friend with which you've made a pact will faithfully reveal the truth to you at some pre-designated point in the future (end of episode, two-parter, episode arc, season).

Lost didn't make that pact with people. Now, if you went into the show expecting the answers that you get from other shows, then yeah. You'll be disappointed. And maybe that kind of storytelling just isn't your cup of tea. Doesn't mean it's wrong.

You know what other show does this? Damages. And I dig that show. Except for season two. But one and three? Fantastic.

In the great unfortunate battle between creators & that one vocal nitpick section of the audience, more ammo.  Go read Kay.

No News is Just No News

WE LIVE IN a bit of a fraught media moment.   There are new rules on copyright coming -- rules that might unnecessarily shackle consumers and content creators at the behest of large corporate conglomerates.  After crying poor because of the recession & stating that there wouldn't be a huge spending spree for U.S. shows this year, it looks like the Canadian nets went down and did exactly that.  Meanwhile, the pushoff of license renewals means that Canadian creatives won't have any sense of what we're making for about another year, as lawyers everywhere tread water and try to find loopholes in the new Canadian television policy.

In the meantime, homegrown gossip mavens send out breathless press releases about dubious scoops.  The number two private network in the country has just been taken over by a large cabler. The same large cabler has successfully reconfigured the CMF so that the board members are all cable cronies.  Creatives need not worry, they say, you will be heard -- in the same fabulous, paternalistic way as always, I suppose.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are on the warpath about...everything, really, but let's just call it the CBC for now.

There are questions, and lots of them, about media concentration, the future of homegrown broadcasting, how consumer choice should shape the industry going forward ...

... not to mention things like, well, the fact that they're talking about a National Digital Strategy five years too late; the people who seem to have the ear on the government on that file are the same snake oil salesmen I've been hearing bleat since my days pre-dot.com crash covering the street for Media Television... oh, and nobody but my friend Howard Bernstein seems to be able to lay out a cogent explanation of the ongoing troubles with Canadian Local TV.

And nobody knows who, or how, Canadian networks are going to make the transition to full digital broadcasting.  (The U.S. stations by the way, are mostly done.)

Canada is the second largest country in the world by land mass, yet it's small in population. Spread out. We are wracked by regionalism, resentments rooted in geography that go back to our founding as a nation.  Not fighting at your birth means, maybe, that you push the big fights further down the road. But at a time when we need local voices & local coverage, we have less than ever. We have some of the most concentrated media in the world.

One story can show you what happens when you have a concentrated media and no valve.  Jim Henshaw wrote about this the other day, but if you'll indulge me a moment, I will recap it in short for those who may not be from my corner of the country.  The Province of Ontario's Attorney General was involved in a vehicular accident a year ago in which a bicycle courier was killed. There is surveillance footage showing the car speeding away.  There were also unsavory details that came out about the courier -- his alcohol level, previous altercations with motorists, etc.  Point is, the courier's dead. And now, because an outside prosecutor brought in to hear the case decided there was not enough evidence, there will be no trial for Michael Bryant.

This may have been the right call, for all I know.  I know that the details about the courier gave me pause. I've ridden a bike downtown, and been scared by crazy drivers -- but I've also been a driver desperately looking for bicycles and incensed when a rider flouted the rules of the road; riding unsafely, running lights, going the wrong way up a one way street and a hundred other moves.

But what's happened now is that there is no satisfaction on either side. Evidence will never be heard. We will never settle this as a society. It will always remain there, hanging, the two factions convinced they're right, a vague queasy sense of a backroom deal, and many people feeling like that deal robbed us of a public airing; of justice.

There's a lot of that in Canadian society.  I remember learning about the Family Compact in my Canadian History.  Like Tammany Hall in NYC, the Family Compact was the group of families who ran everything for their own benefit here in the early days of Upper Canada.

It was a set of controls made all the easier by the docile nature of the Canadian.  Slow to provoke, slow to object -- given to grumbling mightily but never organizing or really doing much of anything.  (Save the occasional rebellion or General Strike, I mean.)

Well, here we sit now in an age of communications uncertainty. Foreign ownership, editorial independence, Canadian voices -- all of this is up for grabs right now.  And it's not really being written about.

A strong rumor from many sources indicated that in the runup to the "Save Local TV" "TV Tax" last time,  a certain Canadian paper with broadcast interests had a standing policy that the discussion of the issues of Fee For Carriage be restricted to the Business Pages.  The Arts pages were not to be used to discuss the issues arising from the debate -- lest they rile up those excitable creatives & people who care about culture.  And lo, they were not used for that purpose. And that part of the debate was never joined.  It stayed a nice, hermetically sealed business story.

Even papers like The Toronto Star, with no major broadcast interests, gave the issue short shrift. Who is reporting on media issues, whether from a creative industry or consumer side?  A few blogs. A few paid industry newsletters that never trickle down to the public. Nobody else.

Then, last week, a wonderful piece of doublespeak flew into people's inboxes.  It seems in order to serve us better, Playback, the publication that served as the putative "industry paper," for the Canadian TV industry, had folded its print version, and would henceforth publish only electronically.  This would allow for more immediacy, or something.

Playback has gone through a rocky road through the years, from being a rag that published stuff you mostly already knew to having occasional flashes of insight or good writing & reportage.  Mostly, though, it's always been a reliable repository for the fawning "tribute to" this or that issue -- somebody in the club who's retiring, meeting a career milestone, grabbing a gold watch or something.  It's not rare to see a single-sourced story in Playback -- nor is it particularly odd to see a rewritten press release served up as news.

What was interesting in the runup to their announcement, though, was Playback didn't cover what I would say was the real story: the fact that when they folded the paper, they laid off a significant portion of their staff.  About 20 people, including the editor.

Now you can play any game you want talking about how they're going to do more with less -- but we both know that's not how it works.

And though I looked, I didn't really see any coverage of Playback laying off their staff in any of the nation's newspapers.

So there are all these questions, all these issues going forward in Canadian broadcasting.  It's a strange time.

And I guess you better hope that all us free bloggers keep writing about them, because aside from some expensive subscription-only newsletters with narrower focuses, you're not going to read any day to day journalism covering the beat.

Don't you feel well served?

Don't...

YOU $@%^#* LOOK AT ME.

It's always sad when a Dennis goes out. I would now like to direct you to Jim at The Legion for one of my favorite Dennis Hopper stories.

"Mommy!"

Not So Glee-ful Anymore

AWASH IN SERIES finale nostalgia, what I think of as the most dramatic story of the 2009-2010 U.S. Television season has gotten a little lost: and that is the bizarre flameout of GLEE as an original, creative force.

I'm certainly not the first to lament about the decline of Glee since it returned for the second half of its first season. Not since first-season O.C. has a guilty pleasure series flamed out so fast. One of the best critiques I've seen (and I can't remember where I saw it now; if you know, please let me know the link in comments) is about the "two Glees." One is the show that's smart, with heart & surprising & interesting characters & situations and the other is the post-Success, Madonna-themed, shoehorn in as many numbers as possible Glee.

(EDIT: an enterprising reader emailed me the link. Of course the two Glees came from the excellent Maureen Ryan at the Chicago Tribune.)

Though the latter version is still capable of moments of beauty & pathos -- like the great sequence where Artie imagines rising from his chair to do "The Safety Dance" (like all things Gleek, it sounds ridiculous when you type it out loud) it seems like increasingly, the only thing keeping me watching is this:



And Brittany bon mots, as unexpected & wonderful & lovely as they are, aren't enough to keep me in the Glee camp.  Not by themselves.

Add to that this speech. I can't figure out if it's sublime, or just overwritten. I'm a little thrilled to see this on network TV, but at the same time, it feels a bit ABC Afterschool special. But man, does Mike O'Malley  sell it. Two snaps up for the Emmy bait.


Glee? Yay or Nay? Have at it below in the comments.

Zip.

EVERYTHING is satisfactual.

The Bridge finally goes Stateside

JULY 10 on CBS. Flashpoint returns to CBS June 4. And Rookie Blue goes to ABC June 24. So we'll finally have three Canadian produced series on U.S. Nets at the same time.

Depending on the reception, this might cement the whole "Canadians fill the summer strategy." Or maybe it'll start the backlash. Considering the kinda cavalier way FP was treated, there's so much more potential down than up that all the hoopla over this model two years ago seems kind of silly now.

Then again, anybody still remember crime time after primetime on CBS?

- sent from iPad, nerds.

Events Occur in Real Time? Not Any Real Time I Recognize.

NOT MUCH TO say about the 24 finale, save for the fact that I really was rooting for Jack to die. The tribute to Chloe was nice; it was great to see President Logan eat a bullet, finally.  (And whack a guy.  Seriously. WTF?)  And it was fun seeing Nazneen Contractor in there, too.

I smell spinoff! "Totally Chloe!" Wacky office comedy with Guns!

But you know how in horror movies & suspense movies now they have to do that thing to get rid of the cellphone?

I'm glad they saved that whole "Rewind the tape on the Predator, and then dispatch it immediately, and then have it make a direct microwave call" thing til the series finale, cause -- Dude! -- that is some SERIOUS FUCKING DEUS EX MACHINA.

Seriously? Is this the same CTU that had a mole every season and never once successfully set up a perimeter in EIGHT YEARS?

I'd like to see the writing room come up with Day 9 after you've pulled THAT Shit.

Anyway, Dink, Dink, Dink, Dink we hardly knew you.  There was lots of quiet/loud Jack Bauer yelling, which is always good times.

But beyond that? Ehhhh.

Maybe it's best to just go back to sunnier, more innocent times, and remember and ruminate one more time on How 24 Changed Everything for writers.

Was Blind, But Now I See.

THE SHORT VERSION?  I liked it. A lot.

In retrospect, maybe this promo shot shoulda been a clue.

I liked it because the final LOST gave me the moments I'd always loved about the show: memorable, emotional, wrenching scenes between characters I cared about.  And because those characters, to a one, demonstrated in the final episode how they changed completely in their time on the island: Jack found humility and completed his transformation to man of faith -- after being unlikable for a while, and mired in self-pity, he became worthy of the mantle of the hero. (And his eulogy/upbraiding of his enemy for disrespecting John Locke was incredibly moving.) Hurley found a strength to lead. Ben found validation & forgiveness. Kate proved herself as the person you wanted most in the clutch. Sawyer's strength & decency (tipped this whole season, imperilled by the flirtation with Locke) was confirmed.  Claire got her second chance. 

In the end, I liked that there were no do-overs, and that what happened, happened.  The 'sideways' world wasn't a cosmic do-over.  The bomb didn't split the universe. Actions had consequences.  LOST flirted with that trope for a very long time, and I'm glad in the end they came down firmly on the side of the immutable.  See, because it's the very idea that there's only once choice that makes faith so important. Anyway... that's what I believe.

I think that has a lot to do with how one reads the final LOST.

If you forgive me for a moment, I'm going to veer off for a second in my post about a show that millions of people watched religiously (and a show where millions more lost their religion for the thing along the way) to talk a bit about a show that I worked on that almost nobody saw.

In 2004, I went to South Africa to work on a show called Charlie Jade. The show was this crazy Canada-South Africa co-production that had a famously troubled run.  (It was contracted for 22 episodes, delivered 20. 'Nuff said.)

The show was an overstuffed burrito of narrative hoo-ha.  Sci-fi magicks embracing parallel universes, environmentalism and a whole bunch of other isms, hero & villain tropes, tattoos, dystopian futurism, corporate responsibility, flashforwards, backs, dream sequences, X-Files style paranoia, film noir...I'm surprised there wasn't a unicorn in there.  I was part of a complete reboot of the writing staff, about halfway through the run of the show.  (This is where I met my good friend Alex Epstein.)

Of the many flaws of Charlie Jade, (and they were legion) one of the biggest challenges we faced was a whole bag of mythological ideas that had been thrown at the wall in a slightly ADHD way, and didn't really add up.  There was no plan. (Well, that's not true, there had been a plan in the deep longago, including a series bible conceived by the Executive Producer with some help from Sci Fi writer Robert J. Sawyer... but that had effectively slipped between the couch cushions.)  By the time we hit the ground  they were halfway through shooting, and the new writing staff had to figure out a way to try to tie the disparate threads of story continuity & myth together, and work toward a new end point.

At the same time, there were some truly perplexing characters who didn't act in ways that made sense, and we had to try to iron out a character arc, too.

(This kind of chaos still happens far too often on Canadian TV series. It's happening on a couple of shows right now.  It's not just a Canadian disease, but it is endemic of a system of TV production where you don't have writers riding point on story -- but that's a story for another time. Or, um, five years worth of blog.)

What put me in mind of Charlie Jade watching the LOST finale was the particulars of the big island solve.

The following is sort of a spoiler alert, but, uh, not really. And if you didn't watch LOST, it can probably be more accurately described as a "glad I didn't waste six seasons on this" alert:

So there's a giant butt plug in the island's heinie.  Desmond takes out the butt plug, and instead of cool flowing water, and golden light....there's nasty fire & rocks start falling all over the place, and steam shoots out and things get very very dire.  What can I say? The Island likes its butt plug.  Jack puts the butt plug back in though, and the island calms down.  But Jack is kind of covered in golden light water & nasty steam & island spit up & other...juices...and, uh, he's got a stab wound so he's all septic & stuff and he wanders off into the jungle and dies of a staph infection.

In retrospect, maybe going for a pacifier metaphor might have been better.  Oh well. Moving on.

Now for people wanting answers about Jacob & the Man In Black and the Smoke & what kind of energy and just what the $#@ is the island, anyway? I imagine this is just going to be a TOTALLY...ENRAGING... DEVELOPMENT!!!!

And yet, watching it all unfold, I couldn't care less.

Back in 2004, on Charlie Jade, we'd promised some sort of resolution that involved parallel universes. They had spent a jillion dollars on the first three episodes.  Now it was the end of the series, and instead of spectacular, spectacular, we had about three carrots, a Springbok & a package of biltong to throw at the screen.

So what the story department came up with was an impressionistic ending that pitted the two main characters against each other in a battle of wills, in a dreamscape that was a place between three parallel universes.

After bible fulls of plane theory and advanced scientific quantum explanations of how one universe would collapse upon another and all matter of hoofera, the final test of the two main characters came down to trying one another for their actions and intentions -- and the objective correlative of the struggle became three melting blocks of ice.  The two characters -- evil but complicated & good but complicated, finally worked together to unite the universes in a stable way that removed the threat of annihilation.

You know how they did it?

The ice from the symbolic blocks dripped into a glass. And they both drank from it.  And lo, they redeemed the universes.

Did I mention I'm Catholic?

Here's a clip from the finale. I'm telling you right now -- if you haven't seen the show (which includes the vast, vast majority of you -- you're gonna find it incomprehensible.) The drinking comes about 3/4 of the way through.



Charlie Jade was a rough ride, but I think we got out with an emotionally satisfying finale.  We scrambled toward that together -- the writers, the Creator/Executive Producer, the crew, the actors...But the only way we could do that was by letting go of the nitpicks and the how-this's and delivering emotionally resonant satisfying conclusions.  Which always come down to sacrifice.

But come on. They drank the kool aid? That's the big problem solve? Are you freaking kidding me?

Uh, no.  I wish we'd thought of the big old butt plug. But that's why the LOST guys are geniuses. Heh.

I firmly believe that they delivered a great finale because they focused on the right things.  We had to scramble to do that on our show.  They got to work toward it. And the resonance was much the greater for it.

TV Finales on Q

THE PODCAST for my appearance on Q last week is now up.  Check out me and author Nikki Stafford at about thirty-eight minutes in.