Year End List: Fuel for Inspiration

2005 was a transitional year for me. I spent a good part of 2004 living in a foreign country and working on a weekly show there. Then, when I returned, I had the singular experience of taking a show that I'd written to New York City.

After those highs, it's probably a good thing that 2005 was a bit quieter. I spent most of the year tending to projects that were in various stages of development. I made new professional acquaintances, transited old working relationships to a different level, pitched (and sold) a few ideas, dipped my ridiculously big toe into animation, story edited projects by several other writers, and started this blog.

But amidst all that in the year, there's fuel. Fuel exists all around us; it's writing that makes you learn and writing that makes you want to write. For me, I recognize and love writing regardless of media -- it inspires me in the same way, it makes me want to work in the same way. So if I'm going to to a year-end list, by its very definition it needs to be cross-disciplinary. So then, in no particular order, here are ten written works that inspired or fueled me this year.

1) Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman
I saw The Pillowman back in May on a trip to New York. Best ninety dollars I've ever spent, and maybe one of only two things on this list that actually vies to be first.

Because The Pillowman isn't just a horror-filled tale well told, it's a play about writing. About the personality of the writer, and how often our obsessive nature can seem crazy; can even cross over into crazy. It's also about the power of writing to reach out and touch others, in the most unlikely and unexpected of ways.

Billy Crudup's writer, Katurian, is pulled into an interrogation room for a series of grisly murders. The setting is a totalitarian state. The Writer is more or less condemned by his macabre works, which seem the result of a mind that could contemplate horrible things, and therefore must be guilty. His interrogators are the quietly menacing Tupolski (Jeff Goldblum) and the more upfront bruiser Ariel (Zelkjko Ivanek.) Through the course of the action, we meet Katurian's slow brother ( a riveting Michael Stuhlbarg,) as well as hear the horrible, blood-soaked tales that form Katurian's storytelling canon. Someone has to pay for the crimes, and though the truth eventually will out, at the core of this play is an astonishing deal and a bloody-minded choice: a choice that every writer would have to make for themselves. I know what choice I'd make. If you're going to be in New York anytime soon, I would heartily recommend this show. John Crowley's direction is some of the most exciting I've seen in the theater in years. I went back to my hotel after seeing this and wrote for five hours without moving from my chair.

2) Until I Find You by John Irving
John Irving's been more or less my favorite writer since I first tore through Garp and Hotel New Hampshire as a teenager. I've liked some of his books more than others. This book had a tough slough in the reviews, at least here in North America. Like many of his recent books, it's partially set in Toronto. Like none of the others I can recall, it's also set within the movie business, and its main character is an actor. Until I Find You is a profoundly sad book, with some disquieting passages that come out of Irving's own experience of being sexualized at a too-early age. But to surrender yourself to an Irving world is to immerse yourself in it completely, so much so that the loss that permeates the book is reflected in you as you lay it down for the last time. I have a bit of a "fiction problem." I get into a book, I'm pretty much going to neglect whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing til I'm finished. I lost a week to this book. (It's over 700 pages.) For a book with an undertone of such sadness, the ending is strangely affirming and uplifting. Thank God. Irving lost me with his last book. I'm back in the fold now. Probably for good.

3)House "Three Stories"

The penultimate episode of House's first season was a real corker. A perfect example of how to pull everything out of character. David Shore deservedly won the Emmy for this, and deservedly so. Stressed from the appearance of his ex-girlfriend Stacy, and forced to lecture to medical students, House weaves a story of three patients who present with a similar symptom. To say more would be to reveal all, but let's just say that this was a rich tapestry that proves that American network TV can assume intelligence on the part of its viewership and not have their asses handed to them. This episode was also the hearty middle-finger to House-haters who said the show only had one storytelling template. A rich signpost to why, and forgive me for this, House has legs.

4) Wedding Crashers and The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Because they were dirty. And funny. And not a sequel. And not based on a videogame. And had jokes high and low, farcical and clever. Because there was a sweetness to Steve Carell that came through amidst all the raunch. Because they cast Amy, the woman that the friend can't get over, as an average-looking South Asian woman. Because Christopher Walken just has to stand there and he's funny. Because Isla Fisher deserves to be known here as more than Ali G's fiancee. Because Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are Hope and Crosby, or at least Frank and Dino. Because Judd Apatow finally, finally, finally gets to have more than the astonished, geeky appreciation of writers everywhere. Ditto Seth Rogan. Because in enumerating all the reasons why this exuberant pair of funny, true, heartfelt comedies were the only times I walked into a movie theatre this summer and wasn't disappointed...(okay, maybe Batman Begins, too,) I got this far into the list without mentioning Rachel McAdams. Damnit. Oh well. There.

5) John Patrick Shanley's Doubt Here's how good a play Doubt is. I saw it at a matinee on the same trip where I saw The Pillowman. When you go to the theater in New York for a matinee, you just have to suck it up and realize that you are going to be absolutely surrounded by old dears. Lots, and lots, and lots of old dears. I think there are more old people in your average theater matinee than there are in all of Southern California. Then again, in SoCal, your old people don't look old, they just look kind of ... stretched. Seriously, it's nice to go to New York and see old people in all their glory rather than the macabre vision of leathery tanned 70 year olds trying to look 50 not realizing that they look more like my wallet than the 18 year old popstars they're trying to emulate. Brrr.


Anyway, when I saw Doubt, the prizes had already started to roll in. Doubt is an old-fashioned, unvarnished, rollicking play kind of play. Very theatrical, simple story, killer performances. I got to see the incomparable Cherry Jones attack her role with gusto and total committment -- even though the old dear one row down from me in the balcony had a hearing aid that kept whistling through the whole show. Loudly. The usher kept whispering to people to turn down their hearing aids, then after a few minutes, she couldn't hear and she turned it up again. This went on for seventy minutes.

To be able to surrender to the powerful heft of Shanley's words and the top-notch cast's performance under those circumstances...well, I'll take that over listening to some kid talk on his cell phone in the middle of the matinee of The Ringer anyday.

6) The West Wing

Because they managed to get their mojo back. And that aint an easy task for a show at the end of its shelf life. Frasier did it too, and just as improbably. This is the reason why, against all odds and evidence to the contrary, I will not yet write off The Simpsons.

7) Stars

"When there's nothing left to burn...you have to set yourself on fire."

This chilling refrain is what opens the latest record by Stars. Technically this maybe shouldn't be part of a 2005 list, since the record came out last year. But I think I can get away with it since Set Yourself on Fire was only released in the United States this year.

My love of Stars is complete and transcendant. They recently did a stand of club shows here in Toronto and I desperately tried to get tickets, and failed spectacularly. Stars is the counterpoint between the male and female voices. It's stories of longing and loss that just seem to drill down into my marrow. None more so than the stately opening track, "Your Ex Lover is Dead."

God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said 'yes I think we've met before'
In that instant it started to pour,
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name...

There's a bloody novel in those words -- which builds in its slow, sleepy way to the devestating coda, "I'm not sorry I met you, I'm not sorry it's over, I'm not sorry that there's nothing to say."

Haunting. And the video inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is here, only deepens the spell. Buy this damn CD right now.

8) The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger

I never like books like this. In the last year, I've really become a little put off by Sci-fi fans. A genre that should be about expanding possibilities, ideas, and using allegory to examine our present is ruled by a fanbase that seems to becoming more close-minded, conservative, and puerile by the day. It's with a bit of trepidation that I notice that shows like the new Battlestar Galactica are embraced more by drama fans, than by Sci-fi fans. That can't be good for the genre, for a whole bunch of reasons. Then comes this lovely little book.

From the back cover: "When Henry meets Clare, he is twenty-eight and she is twenty. He is a hip librarian; she is a beautiful art student. Henry has never met Clare before; Clare has known Henry since she was six..."

How can you not want to read that? This book stayed in my head for weeks.

9) Intelligence by Haddock Entertainment

This is a TV movie that aired on CBC a few weeks ago. It's a backdoor pilot for a new series written by Chris Haddock (DaVinci's Inquest & DaVinci's City Hall)

The picture at left shows stars Klea Scott and an almost unrecognizable Matt Frewer. (Max Headroom) Both are scary good in their roles.

Intelligence is a story set very much in the post 9-11 world. And here's the interesting thing: Unlike Jack Bauer's shenanigans on 24, or even Alias, (where I notice Jack Bristow joined the "torturer's club" a few weeks back...I mean, is the White House now funnelling soft-money to TV producers to make the whole "torture is cool" meme stick?) Intelligence doesn't deal in the world of superheroes, black hats and white hats, or, "if you're not with me, you're with the terrorists." In the Vancouver painted by Haddock, the various police jurisdictions: CSIS (The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service,) The Vancouver Police, the Major Crime Unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and even the US DEA jockey and manuever for the best "human intelligence." Klea Scott's director is hated by her underlings, who seem helpful on the surface, but who quietly try to undermine her at every step. Ian Tracey plays a truly sympathetic gangster named Jimmy Reardon, in a nuanced, studied, and riveting performance. The guy is just one of the best actors Canadian Television has ever seen. The first hour of Intelligence weaves an interesting tapestry where everyone is witholding something, and jockeying for position. Then comes the cracking plot twist: a briefcase containing informant files is stolen in a smash and grab. (An incident based on a real-life theft that happened years ago in Toronto.)

The lengths people will go to get it back, and how this random event affects alliances old and new makes for great, compelling, and adult television. CBC would be absolutely insane not to pick this up as a full series. It has the complexity of The Sopranos, or the best of British crime series. For once, the superlatives and praise ladled out rather sluttily for homegrown product in this country is earned, in spades.

The layered, nuanced, subtle touches that permeate every scene make for an absolutely first rate show. If CBC is going to fix its torturous problem of trying to appeal to audiences, or at least do good work, I have a bold solution: clear the decks. Make Chris Haddock the commissioning editor for two years. Give him room to develop a slate. He probably won't want to do it. Cajole him. This is a guy who knows how to make intelligent, absorbing television that's better than anything else on your slate -- most of which are overcooked, overwrought, shrill, or unabsorbing dramas. You need this guy desperately.

10) The Last Five Minutes of the finale of Six Feet Under.

Because ... I mean ... Jesus, what an ending.


Well, that's it. There are other daily inspirations that I'm thankful for. I've drawn succor and support and insight from the scribosphere this last year. I continue to enjoy the very witty John Doyle, whose TV columns in the Globe & Mail are always a first read of the day...I'm inspired and very pleased by Penguin's new "Pocket Penguin" series of books where you can buy a cheap, slim volume, and dip into J.K. Galbraith's The Economics of Innocent Fraud, Nick Hornby's Otherwise Pandemonium, Roald Dahl's A Taste for the Unexpected, or even Thomas Paine's Common Sense.

There's a lot to look forward to in 2006 -- new episodes of 24, The Sopranos, the new Superman movie, and so much else. Maybe even something by me. We'll see.

I wish you all continued inspiration and fuel for a mighty New Year.

Peace.

DMc

There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays...

...especially when all you want is for it to rub the lotion on its skin.

Last night, someone found my blog.
They were searching on Yahoo for...wait for it...

"dead body parts clip art"

Bouncing Baby Jebus, WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

Hmm. Funny. I Can't Seem to Feel My Left Arm...

From Andrew Nicholls' Valuable Lessons (which I've almost finished. Script's on page 17, thanks for asking.)

The life cycle of a Hollywood comedy writer is: Freelancer, Staffer, Showrunner, Creative Consultant, Animation, Pre-School Animation, Death.

Of course, in Canada, there's a whole lot of Animation. Tons of it. (And not that much live action.) I've only done a bit, but I'm probably going to wind up doing more in 2006. And a lot of writer friends younger than me are making a go of it in animation.

So what I'm wondering is -- should my next paycheck go straight toward buying the in-home defribulator?

Diversity, Shmeversity

It's pretty much like clockwork. You can always tell how the day's going by the number of blog posts I get up to. I have diligently sat here since 9:01 a.m. struggling to get into this half hour pilot I'm trying to write. Eight hours with breaks and I have about nine or ten of the hardest-fought pages ever. Painful. But I am not moving til 6:30. If my usual holds, I'll get another five pages written between 5:30 and 6:30 pm when I knock off, begging the question, "what the hell is wrong with you?"

Alex over at Complications Ensue made a post about doing a "diversity pass" and got taken out to the woodshed by some of his commenters. You can check out the whole ugly contretemps here.

I have some sympathy for Alex's dilemna. One of my favorite things about Grey's Anatomy is the fact that the Black leads and the Asian leads are people, and not plugged-in for racially tinged stories, except when it confounds your pointy-head PC expectations, like when Sandra Oh's Christina Yang revealed to her beau, Dr. Burke, that she was Jewish. I clapped my hands like a seven-year-old girl trying to keep Tinkerbell from dying. (little Durang reference for you theater-philes out there.) To my recollection, Grey's has yet to do a racially-based story. And Hallelujah for that. Gee, wonder if that has to do with the fact that the creator is a black woman? Maybe if we get some more diversity in the boardrooms of the networks buying these shows, and in the creator and showrunner's offices, and the problem will solve itself.

But I doubt it.

We'll still have to suffer through the Female Black Judge and the Magic Black Person (which, granted, is more prevalent in the Film division, but still...) There's also the One Black Friend of all the White People, and the Single Asian Cheerleader, and the Good Looking Blond Mugger, (which I think someone over on Complications Ensue mentioned.)

For my part, I've struggled mightily in one of my pilots to have a dumb female Asian character (who was Jewish and Texan, to boot) and the network reaction was basically...well...let's be diplomatic and say, "questioning."

The thing is, as retarded as it sounds, (And yes, I said "retarded." I'm reclaiming the word,) there are only so many combinations available to you. I wanted the dumb Asian female character partly to show our hyphenated society, and partly because, damnit, I have met a lot of dumb Asian women in my time. And why not confound expectations?)

I wanted her to have big ol' Texas hair and a southern drawl because, damnit, that would just be funny. And I've met Asian girls with southern accents. And it's dead sexy, hoss.

But at the same time, how do you go to the network with another black criminal? If you have a black character who's dumb, what does that do to your show? What's the reaction going to be? And do you want that reaction to overshadow the material? Maybe people aren't comfortable talking about it, but these things are at issue. To say that they're not is hopelessly naive.

There is a female Canadian journalist who was one of Canada's most respected newswomen. She's interviewed Prime Ministers and Presidents and Nobel Prize winners. She co-anchored the National Newscast on the CBC for a time. She's now the Canadian Consul General in New York. But the thing that I've never been able to forget is how a top Canadian network exec told me that the only thing this woman did in her journalism career that got a consistent, passionate response from viewers was change her hair.

Seriously. Every haircut, hundreds of calls.

Do you think writers go through these hoops because we're the crazy ones? Sometimes. But that doesn't make the issue any less worthy of consideration.

Invent the colorblind, totally racial-consideration free society, and most writers I know will be right there with you. But until then, just because race isn't something that we ever talk about doesn't mean that we don't have to talk about it.

And for the record, my favorite Diversity Pass EVER was a Canadian show made by the same company that does DeGrassi. It aired about ten years ago.

The character was....drumroll, please....

a gay
native
bicycle courier

I think he had a learning disability, too.

Awesome.

Say it with me: FANNY.

I got a funny email from a UK reader not so long ago where he was ragging on the U.S. for changing the name of the show "Spooks" to "MI-5" on these shores.

I think trying to explain these things is usually futile, so I didn't answer him. But I just got a similar email, so this is the best I can do:

The British title, on this side of the pond, connotes a certain pejorative insensitivity that might be more of a problem here than there.

I'm guessing that a gentle romantic American comedy sitcom called "My Sweet Fanny," would probably present an interesting promotional challenge in the UK.

At least, judging from the looks one of my colleagues got in South Africa, when they referred to their little hip-bag by the name we call them here in North America:

the Fannypack.

UPDATE: ok, so I saw that in the original post I mis-hyphenated MI-5 as MI:5. Mea Culpa. Also, I went to a comedy show tonight at the Rivoli where a comic named Mike Wilmott, Canadian who now lives in the UK, did a long bit on the British definition of the word "fanny." Serendipity. It's a bitch.

Doctor Who at the Holidays (or...Hug Me Now, Rick, Hug Me as if it Was the Last Time...)

Well, I was all set and ready to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special last night on CBC, but I forgot. And, uh, I don't really care enough to go do something illegal.

On the bright side, I did get to see a Hockey Game at the Air Canada Centre from swank box seats and it was an awesome game with a fight and everything. (Leafs crush Devils 2-1; Eddie Belfour earns his paycheck; Denis sips Heineken and eats chicken wings.)

Matt Watts has a sort-o-review of Doctor Who on his blog. Apparently David Tennant takes over the role just fine. And that Billie Piper popsy is strangely alluring. Maybe I need to get out more.

Last year, I managed to catch about half the new episodes with Chris Eccleston. I think hiring Russel T. Davies (creator of the original British Queer as Folk) was inspired. The show crackled and walked a fun line of entertainment that could please adults with high camp, and still pull in the kids. Eccleston took a lot of heat when he left the role, despite my strong suspicion that he only ever agreed to take on one season to get the franchise re-started. (A suspicion more or less confirmed when BBC leaked the fact that he was ankling and the actor's camp got all snippy.)

If you make a deal with an actor, you have to honor it. Just because they're insane doesn't mean they don't have rights -- or feelings. Oh, they have feelings. Feelings for days.

More than his review of Who, though (say that aloud three times fast) what interested me most about Matt's review was how the show made him feel:

At times like this, when I’m sitting alone, trying to figure out where to go with my life, I realize that all I really want to do, is to write on a show that is fun. I want to work on a show where people save the world and hug.

Canada needs shows like that, don’t you think? I’m sick of all the depressing angsty bleak shit. Give me people saving the world and hugging.

Amen, brother. I've got a few save and huggers up my sleeve. I wonder if 2006 will bring any of 'em to Canadian airwaves?

Fresh Coat o' Paint

Take a look around, kick the tires, shoot the virtual tv set, Elvis-style and let me know what y'all think.

That's right. I said y'all.

Cause I lived in the South. Now I'm going to the Leafs game.

Embrasser les differences grandes.

Score!

Now this is what I call a Christmas Gift.

Beautiful color reproduction. Crisp printing.

And it weighs roughly the same as a very heavy bag of golf clubs.

Now if I could just find the time to read it. After all, as Calvin teaches us: "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want."


Thanks, Trish.

Lights, please?

It's not such a bad little tree.
All it needed was a little love.

In 1993, I was still a TV producer, and I got a good TV-producer like break. A gallery in Yorkville was selling cels from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and they were bringing in one of the creators of that landmark 1965 special to do some interviews. I pitched the story. My producer wasn't sure. I re-pitched the story. We wanted a way to do a fun Christmas-like story, but since our show was about media, it was kind of hard to come up with an angle that wasn't the usual, "Oh, has the selling of Christmas gone too far?" I made every argument I could think to make, but the Producer still wasn't budging. I tried to tell him that baby-boomers might not understand the significance of a Charlie Brown Christmas, but to people just a bit younger, it was everything. No dice. Finally, I got him on the content: that hoary old "has the selling of Christmas gone too far?" I said, "How can you not want to do a story on this special? They basically anticipated that whole question by about 20 years." When I pointed out the similarities between the philosophy underpinning our show, and A Charlie Brown Christmas, I got a bit of traction. So I dug in. I was doing the story.

Jose Cuauhtemoc Melendez was born in Mexico in 1916, which would make him 89 years old now. To the world, he was known as Bill Melendez, and besides working on Fantasia, Bambi, and Dumbo, he was there during the birth of all those classic Warner Brothers Cartoons. The man worked with Bob Clampett.

When it came time to animate Charles Schulz's Peanuts world, it was Bill Melendez who did a lot of the heavy lifting. He and his team came up with all the groundbreaking stuff we don't even think about anymore: they resisted the impulse to have Snoopy talk (Snoopy's unique vocalisations would eventually be performed by Melendez himself,) they decided to use real kids for the voices, and brass bleats for the voices of all the adults. They hired Vince Guaraldi.
Most of all, they resisted any attempts to cute-up or pull punches with the rather melancholy, serious subtext that beats at the heart of that special.

It's an amazing feat, now, looking back at this thirty-year-old special, and soberly realizing that practically none of those decisions would likely have stood today, in our market-researched and thoroughly-picked-over network culture. I mean -- a jazz soundtrack?

But Melendez and his team stuck to their guns. Sparky Schulz trusted them, and the result is, at least to my eyes, a special that is enduring because it manages to be both simple and profound all at once.

I loved Charlie Brown when I was a child. I went through a cartooning phase when I was in Florida -- obsessed with the Disney types, wondering at why Mickey went from his stylized and interesting 40's guise to the bland, more-childlike visage of the 1970's. I loved Bugs, and Daffy, but most of all, above all -- I loved Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Linus. Especially Linus.

I guess even then I was destined to drift into writing.

In my drawing phase, I would work tracing, trying, erasing, trying to reproduce the comics that I saw over and over again. There were two things I could never get. Linus' head gave me trouble long after I perfected the Charlie Brown circle. The blanket never seemed right. And though I could do a passable Snoopy on his doghouse, I never could assay what for me was the vision of Snoopy at his most sublime: the dog dancing.

Flash ahead to 1993, and on a cold December day, I'm with my cameraman in this tiny, tony Yorkville gallery. And in walks Bill Melendez. He was a sprightly 77-year-old then, with a thick head of hair and his signature mustache trimmed and crisp, turning up at the sides with a Salvidor Dali-like puckishness. He shook my hand firmly -- so firmly that I mimed the old "ow, that handshake is too much" schtick. And that's when I got to hear the laugh.

You can tell a lot about a man about the way he laughs. Melendez's laugh was long and uninhibited, the laugh of a man who does what he wants, and knows that what he does has an impact. It was the laugh of a man for whom joy was a daily visitor; who savored the good in life. In short, it was the laugh of a guy who'd come up with something iconic like A Charlie Brown Christmas, that speaks through being, not preaching.

I don't remember too much about the interview anymore. He knew I was about the age -- the age of his first audience, the same age as the first of the Sesame Street kids. He talked about the creation of that early special, and his characters, and what you got from working with children over adult voice actors. He spoke warmly and admiringly of Sparky Schulz, and gave a few tips and tricks and well-worn stories from the creation of Charlie Brown and his friends over the years.

All too soon it was over. I had a big old smile on my face and so did he. He'd been drawing for part of the interview (gotta get those cutaways,) just doodles, really. But once we were done and the cameraman started breaking down the equipment, I said to him, "you know, this interview really meant a lot to me." I explained the history, being a kid in Florida, the obsession with drawing, and then I did something that I couldn't believe. I said, "You guys actually made me want to do this." And I pulled out a pad and within thirty seconds, I'd drawn my best Snoopy-on-a-doghouse. And I gave it to him, and he smiled. What the hell was I doing? This is why I'm not a journalist. So there I am beating myself up and he just smiles at me and says, "you have to sign it. And date it." And I did, and he took it, and gingerly put it inside his portfolio. And I said, "I feel a little dumb right now. You just need to know that the work you did, And Charles Schulz... it's just meant more to me than I can say."

And he nodded, and he said, "can you do anything else from Peanuts?" And I smiled and clocked through my specialties. And I confessed that no matter how, or when, I could never master Snoopy Dancing, or Linus.

And so he sat down and drew me two drawings. They hang framed in my apartment, now. One is a glorious Snoopy in mid canter, and it's signed, "A Dance for Denis." The other is a simple 12 x 17 of Linus with Woodstock, and it says, "To Denis, Who Draws."

I look at these every day. Amidst the writer's block and the life problems, the rough patches and the joyful noises, the crunchy and the smooth, they never, ever fail to make me smile, or remind me of the generous spirit who produced them.

I don't have the Christmas spirit this year. It's just been lacking all round. Too much bustle, too many parties, too much smug preening over stupid things-- like the "War on Christmas."

But this morning among my Bah, Humbug I looked up at those drawings that I know so well, and I caught something new in Snoopy's eye and it just made me laugh. And suddenly, I want to throw on that Vince Guaraldi. There's the spirit. What took you so long?

I guess that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

The Guys Get Shirts

It's quiet.

Too quiet.

I keep trying to get up the gumption (which is hard, since I had a gumptionectomy in 2000 -- it was benign, thanks for asking) to do a couple of post ideas. But the truth is that I'm burned out from working a few projects the last little while.

I also have to crash out a pilot for a last-minute hush hush project for next week. That should make Christmas Dinner fun.

A couple days back I had a phone-driven pity fest over "Notes" with a fellow writer friend that left us both collapsed in laughter. Somehow it devolved into what kind of notes they would have given the Marx Brothers... my favorite was, "Hey, we haven't heard from Harpo for a while. Can he say something so we know he's present in the scene?" Reminds me of the best line that Gilbert Gottfried got off about Jean Doumanian, SNL's notorious "worst producer everrr..." She's the kind of woman who would look at the Marx Brothers movie and talk about how great Margaret Dumont was.

Now if you really, truly want to intellectualize the notes process, and take some of the "why are writers the only ones who need to go through this" sting away, you could go this great post at the Artful Writer.

But if you need something more...visceral...to convince you that maybe you don't have it so bad...visualize being in Paul Anka's band.

I slice like a %#$#@ing hammer, man. But that's just the kind of integrity kick that I'm on.

Yeah, well. That's the best I can manage for now. I'm gonna have a wee whiskey and enjoy a bit 'o Alan Partridge before the sweet release of sleep.

Enjoy the puttin up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace.

Taking the Left Turn: Radio & Stage

The image of a million writers pounding out their spec screenplays and sending 'em off to a reader somewhere who'll rip 'em apart -- it's always hit me as a little depressing.

Don't get me wrong. It does require toughness. Any time any writer finishes a new script, an angel gets a small little airplane- sized bottle of Vodka. (I'm talking about the drunken, ranting angels, who are really the only ones you want to spend any time with.)

But if the point of writing is to be read, or enjoyed, then having your script's audience be a successive series of assistants and readers really does just seem...oogie.

There's also the simple truth that though you learn a little more with every script you write, you learn way more by seeing something go through production, where you have to deal with Producers and Directors and Execs (Oh My.) Even working with a producer on the script is going to make you a better, tighter, more focused and marketable writer.

But what if you can't do that? What if nothing's hit yet?

Well, then you need to do something, son. You've got to see your words up and running in some way. You've got to figure out a way to get some chops.

Now if you're in L.A., I'm sure there's a million out-of-work waiters that will love to help you organize a reading. But even there, you're still only getting feedback from Actors and Insiders.

If you're in N.Y. then I'm sure your cat can throw up on a sidewalk somewhere and it will, by coincidence, be just outside a lovely little black box theatre space where you can put on a dandy show and invite your friends, and hear real people react in real time to your words.

This is such a key transition I can't possibly overstate it. In long-ago baby days, when I first got out of University, I used to perform sketch comedy in clubs around Toronto. It was a good time for sketch -- the comedy boom was still booming, the Kids in The Hall tv show gave the scene a little cachet...but after a while, though my group got consistently good notices for our writing and our material, life intervened. A couple of people broke off and formed their own group. One of our members went off to become a rock star. (No, I'm not actually kidding.)

But by then I'd learned what I needed to from the experience: I'd heard where the laughs were. I'd also completed the transformation that I'd always been destined to make. Y'see, I started out writing material so that I could have something to perform. Then somewhere along the line, I realized that I actually found the performing nervewracking and not as enjoyable as the conception. I wanted to hear the laughter, I just didn't enjoy sweating the performing of it.

I had come out as a writer.

Well this is a bit more of a Memory Lane trip than I'd wanted it to be, but I have been elliptically coming to my point, which is this: if the end you seek is money, you are doing this all wrong. The end you must seek is getting your stuff in front of an audience. That's how you learn, and that's what will keep you going through the crappy day jobs. The money will either come (if you're lucky and good) or it won't (if you're neither, or even just one. Seriously, the universe sucks.)

From those comedy days, one of the people I performed with is a very successful Actor & writer, one is a writer for two of Canada's most successful comedy shows, and the Rock Star is a Goddamn Rock Star. I went on to write plays and continue the transition from timid TV producer type to "nope, I'm a writer full time now" type.

And that brings me to the first thing you can look for: Fringe Festivals. They're all over. If you're a writer, and there's one in your area, find out the application deadlines, and enter. Fringe Festivals are a great way to get something on the stage because usually your entry fee, whatever it is, covers the rental and the tech. You're part of a like-minded community, and when all's said and done, you can get that work in front of an audience for under a grand -- maybe a little more if you do fancy posters. In Canada, the big Fringe festivals are in Edmonton, Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. There are also fests in Ottawa and Winnipeg, and probably a few I'm forgetting.

For you Americans, you should know that Urinetown came out of the New York Fringe Festival.

All these festivals happen during the summer, and for most of them the application deadlines will be coming up in January and Februray. If you have a story and you're not married to it being a screenplay, why not try it out? Get your stuff seen. My Fringe experiences brought me some new friends, it resulted in amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Heck, I even got to write a musical. Twice.

Time was that I'd use the slack writing months between January and April to come up with a new theatre piece. I don't know if I'm going to be slack enough this year to do it. Probably not. But come this summer, I'll know that I'll miss not having something on stage. It's you, your words, actors, a director and an audience. Pure. How can you not learn from that?

A second route is maybe a little more quixotic, but that's just what makes me love it more. My friend Gregg Taylor is an old-time radio fanatic with his own site, Decoder Ring Theatre. It pains me to think that among you young'uns, you may never have spent part of your childhood as I did, under the covers, listening to rebroadcasts of Orson Welles as The Shadow, late at night on a Sunday, when I was supposed to be asleep, listening to "Theatre of the Mind" (which followed "Dr. Demento.") The fact that, as a culture, we more or less jettisoned the radio drama form always struck me as short-sighted and unfortunate. But with the popularity of Audiobooks and Podcasts, the whole form just might be ready for a revival. Read Gregg's how-to guide of making your own Radio Drama here. And check out his shows here.

And remember the point is to get your words in front of an audience, so you can grow as a writer.

How you gonna do it?

Christmastime For The Jews!

If you happened to catch SNL this past weekend, (I didn't,) you got to see another truly great Robert Smigel cartoon: "Christmastime For The Jews."

They got Darlene Love to do a song firmly in the Spector tradition. It was a funny and wise Claymation bit celebrating what happens when we goyim cede the town for one night to our Jewish brothers and sisters.

But what's really funny is what happened behind-the-scenes... If you check out this blog, you'll see the framegrab I've got posted here that appeared in the closed captioning. (credit to the Comedian blogger for the framegrab.) It would seem to indicate that there was a last-minute change in the script to make something ... um... a little less offensive.

Now, if you know anything about closed captioning, you'll know that there are always some serious mistakes. Also, a show like SNL being, um, live..is captioned live, too...which is why the captioning always lags behind.

If you've ever tried to transcribe a tape with someone talking (which is what a lot of us TV types do to make some dosh in the beginning of our careers) you'll know how hard it is to keep up, and how easy it is to make mistakes. Hopefully the imbroglio won't overshadow the sublime humor of the cartoon itself (Although dedicated conspirians should ask themselves this: why does the picture sequence match the real lyrics (about beating up Quakers and playing for the Lakers) if the line was "dropped at the last minute?")

And why isn't the line about "beating up Quakers" offensive?

Wait, I can answer that one: because it's funny. (Cause they're not into violence, get it? So it's somebody a Jew could beat u....you know what? I'm Catholic. I'm just gonna shutup.)

What's funnier, of course, is that that line is what the captioner thought they heard. Ooh, Nelly. Who knew that a simple live-captioning job could be so character revealing?

Or, you know, it could just be a mistake.

My fave captioning mistake was when one time, I had to call the station I was working at and gently suggest that the Shania Twain special they had just finished might need to be re-captioned. I'd been watching it in a bar whilst enjoying a pint and was surprised to read how Shania had always appreciated growing up "a Jew boy." She said it four or five times.

Say it with me kids:

O-jib-way.

Last time I checked, the "Christmastime For The Jews" video was still up at this site.

(UPDATE: that link above went down... I think it's still possible to find the video if you search for it at youtube.com.)

One More From the Hustings...

I promise, we'll get back to screenwriting soon. But because so many of you screenwriters are U.S. based, and so many of my hits come from the States, I just want to touch this whole "secretly wiretapping Americans" thing once more.

I've told you my perspective as an Expat living abroad. A couple of comments below made me realize that maybe I'd buried the lead. Here's why I'm doing this, and why this is of such concern to me: I can't write my congressperson. I don't have one.

U.S. Electoral Law allows you to vote as a citizen from anywhere in the world. But if you don't reside in the district, you are only allowed to vote for President, not for any of the other offices. (I know that the laws vary from state to state, but the spirit of this is mostly true in other states.) In other words, when it comes to alerting (or shaming) your legislators into exercising their Constitutional authority against a President overstepping the bounds of his power, I have no voice.

The way the law works is that you vote from the last place you resided in the USA. For me, that's Florida. I know. I'm a Florida voter. I've voted absentee in every election since 1988, the first one I was eligible to vote in. I don't know if my vote was counted in 2000. I have doubts that it was counted in 2004. My parents, who have moved back, did vote and said that they had to wait in line for an hour -- but heard that in "other" [read: black] precincts, the wait was much, much longer.

So though this is very important to me, there's no one I can write to it about. And every American living abroad is in exactly the same position.

One of the traumatic things that's happened since 9/11 is Americans have become aware of just how much the world doesn't like them. But that's not the whole story. Everywhere you go there are people like my friend AfricanDen, who I met while I was in South Africa last year. Now here's another perspective, from someone else who once believed in the "City on the Hill."

Here's what he writes:

"I despair, mainly, because while presidents come and go, the people of America have in the past always been steadfast and honest and reasonable… but now, now they’ve lost the plot so badly, it’s like America’s jumped the shark. The rabid conservatism and apologistic neo-fascism that’s chewing up the US constitution terrifies me and I wonder if the greatest country will ever again truly be the land of the free and brave."

While I was in South Africa, they celebrated their tenth anniversary of independence. To anyone who grew up in North America, it was a profound eye-opener to be there. Here's a place who rightly scratched their heads at the hagiography of Reagan when he died (he did, after all, support apartheid.) It's a nation with huge challenges and problems, and also a huge amount of hope -- because they know how close they came to the brink.

Being there made me think a lot more about the roots of my own country. Mainly because, you know, it was so weird to see stories in the paper about one of the founding fathers of their country still walking about, alive. They don't call Mandela Mandela there -- it's Madiba.

I think every American needs to see the world. And maybe realize that however polarized things are right now, however hopeless or dangerous things seem, it's nothing compared to what other nations face. (And I include Iraq in that equation. No one roots for a free and independent Iraq more than I do.)

But the whole exercise becomes irrelevant if you don't hold fast to the principles. A time of war is no time to jettison them. I don't buy that argument for a second. As a man on BBC World said yesterday, "When the 1978 law was enacted, the threat was the Soviet Union and the Cold War going hot. And that was a real threat. Bush needs to make the case of how things are so much more dangerous now than when we faced nuclear annihilation."

Bush can't make that case, because there is simply no case to be made. Same as the case for torture. It doesn't float on the law, it doesn't float on the facts, and it sure don't float on the ideals on which the Republic was founded.

So please write and call your Representative for those of us who can't. I mean it -- you Republicans too - in this case, it's not a partisan issue. If the President of your stripe has absolute power now, then eventually one of ours will too. Think on that a bit.

You need an out. Take it. Write.

S.O.S.

To My Fellow Americans:

Hey there. Hi. I'm one of those guys who takes a lot of crap for you out there in the world: an American who lives somewhere else. Maybe that doesn't mean diddly to you if you've never left Montana or Idaho, but there are several million of us out here. It's been a little tough on us for the last few years. See, we kind of ping pong back and forth between having to hear a lot of hateful stuff - some of it understandable, some of it not. And we're asked to defend, in many cases, policies we don't particularly agree with.

Many of us felt as raw as you after 9/11. I know that the hours I spent wondering if my relatives working in the Twin Towers got out were not among my fave days ever. (They did, Thank God.)

I remember greeting the "you know America kind of deserved this" comments with both contempt and derision. I didn't back down. I defended my country with passion and intellect.

And one of the things I kept coming back to was the elegance of the Founding Fathers' great experiment: how well thought out it was, how elegant, how very, very revolutionary.

I read the Constitution of the United States of America for the first time when I was about fourteen. The whole thing. It's amazing how many of us haven't -- like Catholics who've never read the Bible.

Though there are some things in the document that aren't particularly elegant -- I'm thinking the part about 3/5ths of persons -- and I'm also pretty sure that the Framers wouldn't want us to forget the part of the 2nd Amendment where they say, "a well organized militia" -- but I thought then, and still do now, that it was pretty great that a document that's over 200 years old could have been as forward-thinking as it was.

Now I know there are battles. And I know there's partisanship. And I know that the divisions in our nation run deeply. But read that wonderful document for yourselves. And imagine you're there, with those men two hundred years ago trying to design a system of government that resists the pull of demagogues. Imagine the brilliance of coming up with a system where three branches of government function as checks on each other -- keeping an eye on each other so that the public interest is served. Imagine that you've chafed under a system where a King wields absolute authority and cannot be questioned, and you've come up with a better way.

Now. Close that magnificent document, and look me in the eye, and tell me that the people who came up with that document would think it's okay that the President set aside the highest law of the land and authorized spying on fellow citizens. He didn't have to do it: the existing law allowed him a way to do it, but the law, he decided, was inconvenient. And so, with the stroke of a pen, he chose to ignore it.

The American President does not have the power to do that.

The American President didn't just ignore an inconvenient 1978 law. He subverted the Constitution of the United States.

American Democracy is an ongoing experiment. It's never perfect. And sometimes it works better than others.

But there are millions of us out here, in other countries, who have to defend those principles against people who think they're bunk, and that no one believes in them, really.

Well, I do.

Do you?

If so, please, please, please -- Say Something. Call and Write your Congressman, your Senator -- and tell them this is not OK.

I don't care if you hate George W. Bush. I don't care if you think he's a Godly man. I want you to read that document and say, "that's not the way the country's supposed to work. And that's not the way the Presidency's supposed to work."

Please tell him "no." So I, and the millions of us out here in the world trying to keep that American experiment alive in our hearts, know what to say when people ask.

Because if you don't say anything, then I'm afraid I got nothing.

Tunage from the Sky

By the bye -- after finally getting some cheques for work long done, and performing the annual rite of mammon-workship known as "Holiday Shopping" (That's right, evildoers: Holiday Shopping-- bwaaaahahhaha hahahaha) I treated myself by buying and signing up for XMRadio (which just made its debut here in Canada.)

It's brilliant.

But the Canadian website is terrible. You want any info, you have to go to the U.S. site.

It's kind of like listening to the Ipod of someone who's musical taste is just like yours -- but they know lots of different bands.

For those of us exiled to work from home, alone -- Satellite Radio is the shiznit.

The Book of Daniel

Interesting article in yesterday's NYTimes about the upcoming Aidan Quinn series, "The Book of Daniel."

This is a show that I've been looking forward to. Quinn has always struck me as a pretty affable actor and I think a show about a flawed minister trying to balance faith and disappointment and tragedy in life could be an interesting zeitgeist show right now.

What remains to be seen, of course, is if viewers will embrace it, and also if the crazy "War On Christmas" types will take it as one more example of the raging apostasy that is trying to...um... I don't know, take away their rights or their babies or something...(honestly, I've stopped paying attention.)

Is American Network TV ready for a minister with a Vicodin habit? Let's see. I just don't know how to handicap this one. After all, though I loved House from the moment it premiered, I was pretty convinced it would be gone in six episodes because of the whole "Americans don't like unlikable lead characters" thing. The nice thing about the show is that NBC is so far down in the dumps right now that maybe they'll continue to be risk takers.

I'll be watching this one, and not just to see the return of Ellen Burstyn...

Read the article here.

When Stupid Isn't.

A reader, down there in the comments section of my post on stupid books, isn't buying the subversive nature of "Fuck This Book" (By the way, if you want to check out the website, it's here.)

He writes:

Alright...imagine this press release next year:

"From the tradition that brought you last year's smash gift "Fuck This Book" HarperCollins Canada proudly announces this year's must-give book "The Tao of Poo." Conceived by Dr. Hans Unger of the Ontario College of Art (author of "Caca-caphony" and "Look What Fell Out Of My Bum"), "The Tao of Poo" takes a light-hearted yet revealing look at our Western obsession with material wealth through a striking series of photographic images of everyday objects subverted with the word "Poo," written in crayon. (Images show street sign with "No Parking 9am-6pm IN POO", can of soup with label "Campbelll's Chicken Noodle POO", book with title "Fuck this POO".) A perfect gift for those who remain children at heart, "The Tao of Poo" will be also available in a special edition with a brown "Tao of Poo" crayon . $24.99 (regular)/$49.99 (special edition) Coming October 2006 (HarperCollins Canada)."

Now my immediate reaction was: the two things are different. But why? Why is the above (while lovingly rendered) not on the same level as the admittedly equally stupid "Fuck This Book?"

I think it has to do with being tuned into exactly what is transgressive, and why.

I'm hardly the first person to opine about the sheer, unbridled brilliance of the word "Fuck." It's a noun, it's a verb, it's a command, it's an expression of displeasure and pleasure both. In many ways, its versatility is unassailable. What other word in English has so many fine and flexible uses?

Moreover, though the laughter one has flipping through "Fuck this Book" is anything but sophisticated, you can occasionally be caught up short by some of the captions. My favorite, by far, is the one of the video drop box changed to read, "FUCK your convenience, please use the drop box located to the right." Now, that's funny, but in one little culture jamming moment, it also says something about faux politesse and the death of customer service. By placing a bumper sticker that says, "Fuck" over the word, "For."

That's cool.

I put it in the same category as trying to understand why I find Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on Conan funny. It's the same joke, innit? Over and over and over. Yet for whatever reason, "for me to poop on" added on the end of the statement is funny. And it does have power -- otherwise, why would a guy with a dog puppet on his hand be able, for instance, to cause Eminem to totally lose his cool at an awards show? It's a puppet! It's a puppet doing the same joke over and over!

For a while there, I really thought my love for Triumph hearkened back to half-remembered but totally drilled-in Sundays spent at mass as a kid. Maybe it tripped some secret Catholic switch -- the call-and-response nature of waiting for that "for me to poop on" being a slightly transgressive version of the call-and-response built into the Catholic liturgy.

Or maybe "for me to poop on" is just funny. Who knows?

But it's still not as funny as "Fuck this Book."

Heather Havrilesky cracks The O.C.

Salon's TV critic has cracked the Davinci Code of The O.C. and good on her for doing it.

Watching "The O.C." is sort of like listening to a pop song or reading Jane Austen: You know what's coming next, and that's what makes it so relaxing. Will Jeri Ryan, the woman trying to mess with Kirsten, succeed in toppling her world, or at least ripping off a big chunk of her cash? Will Ryan sail away on a fishing boat? Will Seth and Summer end up 3,000 miles apart in college next year? Will Marissa skip college to hang out with the dull surfer boys she met at public school?

The answers are no, no, no and no. Because if anything really big and ugly happened, then we couldn't begin the episode with Sandy, Kirsten, Seth and Ryan engaging in witty banter in the kitchen as they eat cereal and bagels and prepare for the day. If bad things really stuck, then Seth and Summer couldn't sip coffee in the high school cafe, and Marissa, Ryan, Summer and Seth couldn't sum everything up, Scooby-style, at the local diner. No, everything will work out just fine, and Death Cab for Cutie will be playing when it does.

Read the whole article here. (Her build your own O.C. episode is really funny.)

Give up on the Screenwriting

One of my resolutions for 2006 is going to be to not try so much with the typing of words in dialogue and action descriptions.

Nope. If you really want cultural impact, you gotta come up with a really stupid book idea.

From today's Globe & Mail:

So it is that, at their recent sales conference, many Raincoast sales representatives reported that the surprise hit of the season so far has been the Chronicle Books title Fuck This Book. Here is this season's poster boy for the stupid book. Author Bodhi Oser's scheme is simple: Wander around with bumper-stickers that say Fuck and a camera. Place bumper sticker over sign to create hilarious incongruities like "Fuckle Up and Drive Safely" and "Please Do Not Fuck the Pigeons." Snap photo.

Fuck This Book captures many of the key ingredients of the genre. It feels vaguely subversive, it's brightly rendered, and you can spend two minutes or two hours thumbing through it. It takes a single silly idea and goes with it. And goes with it. And goes with it. Finally, Fuck This Book is populist-inspired in that arm's-length Internet way. You can visit the website and order your own bumper stickers and submit/peruse more hilarious pics.

For the record, if anyone cares, I'd really like to own a copy of Me Write Book. Bigfoot was my first non-sexual crush.

He Let Bartlet Be Bartlet

John Spencer, 1946 - 2005

He was a character actor's character actor. More than Sheen's showy Josiah Bartlet (who only entered in the last scene in any case) it was Spencer's Leo McGarry who set the tone in that West Wing pilot, and who told you, unequivocably, that this show would have a soul -- that it wasn't just a stunt.

His performance of the role was never showy. Yet when West Wing was good -- as it so often was in those early, Sorkin-driven seasons -- it was Spencer's Leo, along with Richard Schiff's Toby who embodied the heart and the soul of deceny and belief that made millions want to believe that our government servants could really be that dedicated. He was also my favorite kind of actor: he relished what he'd achieved, and felt lucky to be there.