Surf's Up on Falcon Beach

Well, it went to air, & far as I can see, no one got hurt.

Falcon Beach may be unfairly freighted with lotsa baggage, seeing as it's Global's big return to Canadian TV Drama. After watching the premiere last night I was relieved that it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

But is that enough to make it a big, Atlas-like, Canadian-industry-saving hit? Let's go to the tale of the tape:

PROS:

The 90210-factor. I'm thrilled to report that they've learned well the lessons of proto-fantasy teen soap 90210, by casting a lead actress who looks 27, to play 17. (Jennifer Kydd, above.) This is not a bad thing. First, it means the spirit of Dylan McKay rules. Second, she's actually hot, has lovely blonde hair, a bit of edge, and seems like she can act. And the fact that you suspect she's playing way younger than she is in real life raises the possibility that an adult male could watch her on this show and feel less creepy than, say, watching Rachel Bilson on The O.C. I hear from a female friend of mine that the lead guy, whathisname, is equally tasty. Ladies? Gay Male readers? What say you? +10 points

Putting a stake to realistic dialogue. In the last year, I've had scary discussions with development people at both networks and production companies who wanted "teenagers who talk like real teenagers." In a completely unsourced, unscientific poll of my own experience, I would boldly predict that 100% of these people do not have any ongoing contact with actual teenagers. Dawson's Creek worked because the kids talked like 30-year-old academics. Mean Girls, Clueless, and Heathers worked because they didn't try to ape real teen speak, they created plausible dialects of their own. (Dialects which eventually crossed over into real teenspeak.) Falcon Beach is nowhere at that level yet, but the decision to eschew "real teen talk" is a thankful development. +10 points

Promo the sh*t out of everything, and throw in a car while you're at it. A few years ago, CTV pulled out all the stops with billboards, on-air, editorial, and other advertising to introduce its new show The Associates. It worked in the sense that it raised great awareness of the show and gave them a great opening number. It didn't work in the sense that the show didn't deliver, and audiences quickly grew disenchanted and tuned away. Global has run a top-notch awareness campaign for Falcon Beach. They've leveraged it through their various media properties. They've done outdoor, and magazine, and editorial. They even cooked up a product placement-in-show thingie for some new Pontiac vehicle. Whatever works. Canadian series often fail because no one's willing to spend the money to promote them. No one can accuse Global of that. +20 points

CONS:

The Old Grey Mare, She Aint What She Used To Be. Okay. I know that Lake Winnipeg, like a lot of northern lakes, appears to be grey. But this is fantasy. For pity's sake, spend some money on the color correction. Make the thing look blue. I've seen a million Beer commercials shot in Canada, and not once have I seen a grey lake. -5 points.

If You're Gonna Drop the Needle, Drop the Needle. It's great that the Falcon Beach team has learned that if you're doing a series for young people, you better be prepared to clear some music. But they're a long way from perfecting the needle drop. When you watch The O.C. or even a show like Grey's Anatomy, the crisp interplay of image and song carry you away. The music cues pump up your excitement by kicking off with a change in action or locale. They drive the scene as much as they exist as aural wallpaper. In Falcon Beach, it looks like they locked the picture, then cleared the music. Music comes in, fades down under scenes, then back up, then out...but there's no real artistry to how and when. Maybe there needs to be better syncing between post and clearance -- or maybe the editors need to take a chance on certain songs. Worst comes to worst, you recut. There's not a single music cue from Episode 1 that worked in lockstep with the image -- save the wakeboarding sequence, to which the transition was awkward. Also -- and this is a big one -- you're talking to teenagers in 2006. Where the hell's the hip hop? -15 points

Would it Kill You to be Funny? For earnestness, you can't compete with Degrassi. Why even try? A little wit, a little Seth Cohen or even Pacey...well, it would go a long way. If the writers are being reined in, let 'em loose. There wasn't a single memorable line from last night's premiere. Welcome to the O.C., bitch! was a cultural moment because it was outrageously quotable. You gotta go to the wall. (Teenagers may be inarticulate, but I've also seen a lot of them who are pretty funny.) There's a couple of characters who could be breakout wiseasses, if only you wrote'em that way. See also Would It Kill You to Make Someone Slutty? -10 points

Well, let's see...by my count that leaves us up by 10 points. Which to me is enough to cover the spread. I think Falcon Beach has got a good chance to make it -- but only if it builds on its natural teen audience. The O.C. isn't a hit because only teens are watching, and neither was 90210. Right now there's not a lot to keep adults coming back for more. It's an eminently fixable position to be in -- and maybe there's a question of how far they can go because the ABC Family association...but the potential for this series is far greater than I would have thought, having read some of the initial scripts a long, long, long time ago. I've got fingers crossed, or some suitable, uh...wakeboarding lingo alternative. Hope it does well for Global.

Four Kings? Yeah...out of TEN.

Well, I'm flummoxed.

For the second time this season, I've read good pre-buzz on a show only to tune in and say, "Quoi?"

NBC's returned-from-the-dead Must See TV didn't exactly blow the doors off last night. The Office was as reliably funny as ever -- even if it did resort to a heart-to-heart moment between Michael Scott and Jim that the original would have never touched. Don't get me wrong, it was still funny, and the idea that Michael's the only guy in Dunder-Mifflin who doesn't know Jim has a thing for Pam is kinda sweet, and very true to his character. In fact, that scene pretty much summarized the basic cultural difference between the British and American iterations of the show. I dare say that for many Brits (and probably more than a few Canadians,) Michael's advice to never give up would seem -- unseemly. Maybe so. But also very American.

My Name is Earl was middling-to-solid -- I can't help but think that they've got to complicate the formula a bit more as they wear on. The twist with Randy was a good one -- and the little asides where Catalina references her dark childhood are getting increasingly twisted -- but I still think it's got a bit of mid-season sputter. Jaime Pressly is pretty gifted as a comedienne, though.

Which brings us to Four Kings. Oy.

You know, a few years ago, I sat in a session with Phil Rosenthal (Everybody Loves Raymond) at the Canadian Film Centre. We got talking about likeajokes, and how they were killing comedy.

Likeajokes are rife in the sitcom today -- it's the main force, in my opinion, that makes the four-camera soundstage sitcom so utterly moribund. We've gotten to the point now where we've all internalized the sitcom rhythm. We know the parry and thrust of the setup-punchline-topper form of sitcom writing, with the three-jokes-a-page and the snarky asides. But somewhere along the line it became okay to ape the form without the content. If you look all over the dial today you'll see shows where the actor goes into a rhythm, and, yep, there's the setup, and boom...there's the punchline. And the canned laughter goes wild!

Only one problem: the "punchline" wasn't funny. In fact, it wasn't even a joke.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the likeajoke.

A likeajoke is like watching an NBA player leave the ground, stretch toward the basket gracefully, place the ball nowhere near the basket, only to hit the ground triumphantly anyway, as we're forced to watch the crowd go wild and the team slaps his back-- for nothing. It's all rhythm, and no emotional payoff. The cathartic effect of laughter? Well, sorry, bub. The machine's cranked up to 11. Either go along with the fakey-fake catharsis, or...um...er...that's it.

Four Kings is chock full of likeajokes. By about four minutes in, I was wondering if I'd ever be able to watch a sitcom with a laugh track again. Time after time, I called out the "punchline" as the setup was being said. It was slow, abysmal, and mawkish. The pot-pill popping old lady was the only petit amusant in the whole show.

I read a lot of first scripts (perils of teaching) and I used to be amazed that people could get the feel of a sitcom without actually delivering any laughs. But now those people, apparently, have actual jobs on actual sitcoms.

Dana Stevens at Slate, who's seen more than last night's episode, seems to feel it gets better. I may give it one more. But to me, this is How I Met Your Mother all over again.

Maybe it is time to put the sitcom out to pasture.

Must see? Or Just Musty?

Well, I guess we'll see tonight.

I have fond memories of Must See TV. Once upon a time, those dark, long-ago days of 1995, it was still cooking for me. E.R. capped the night in its first breathtaking season, and started my TV taste-waning from the Half Hour comedies of my youth to the Hour Dramas I mostly watch today.

Before 1995, Must See was all about the Half Hours. Cheers and Frasier (when it started.) Even back to Family Ties. I can't remember why I liked Family Ties now. God, I hope it wasn't for Skippy.

The late 90's strain of Must See already had cracks in it -- Sure, there was Friends and Seinfeld, but there was also that steady stream of horrible pretenders sandwiched at 8:30 and 9:30 ET -- I mean, did anyone ever watch more than one episode of The Single Guy? I didn't. And I was a) a single guy and b) kind of hot for Ming Na. No sale. Don't even get me started on Veronica's Closet or Suddenly Susan or...gee.....um...I'm starting to black out now.

I wonder in this day and age, now that pandora's box has been opened and downloading shows is becoming Itunes-ized, if that whole idea of 'appointment viewing' and 'must see' is going to go away -- replaced by the 'must see when I want.'

I think that serial dramas like LOST or 24 are the only ones with that "must see" cachet, today. If there are water cooler shows (or indeed, water coolers) in offices now, I'm not sure that Will & Grace or even My Name is Earl are the shows they're likely to be talking about.

I'm old enough to remember when "keeping your audience for the night" was an organic thing...made easier by the fact that if you wanted to change channels, someone (usually me, or one of my sisters) would have to go up and physically change the channel on the (black & white: yeah, I know. Shutup) TV.

But in the end, I wish NBC well -- more for nostalgia's sake than for the merits of the shows. I've always appreciated Will & Grace more than I really loved it. I'm a fan of Earl and especially The Office -- but I certainly won't be letting Must See-giddiness carry me into the moribund E.R. Even Linda Cardellini couldn't get me to do that.



Allesandra Stanley in the New York Times today has a cautious review of new show Four Kings, (pictured above) that makes it sound likable enough. (Although I'm still gun shy, considering the free ride that How I Met Your Mother seems to be getting.)

Then again, as my friend Rob says, there are people out there taping According to Jim.

Anyway, I'll be watching. Will you? If you do, let me know what you think: must see? Or just musty?

I hear Rob Corddry's wearing Chanel

Well. This is interesting.

I liked Chris Rock. But I think about 100 million Americans who haven't heard of The Daily Show yet (Too Much Fox News) are going to see something really interesting. I might even watch this one live, not with one hand on the Fast Forward button on my PVR.

And the unexpected new Daily Show last night was like a warm bath. Sometimes I think I am a sad, sad man.

The Diversity Clusterf**k

Hoo boy.

Alex started it. I took a kick at the can. The Artful Writer chimed in, but in the end, John August came up with the best reason to do a diversity pass: It makes your script more readable, and therefore, better. (Whether you do it as you're writing or after, I don't think it matters...though I'm sure there's a contingent who would say it does.)

For the record, I think what John August articulates is probably another way of saying what Alex was talking about in the first place.

Anyway, sayeth Mr. August:

Screenplays are read quickly. Unlike a novel, you don’t linger for a few paragraphs getting to know minor characters, setting up their memorable quirks. Rather, you meet them on page 20, then see them again on page 64. As a screenwriter, you want the reader to instantly recall that they’ve encountered a certain character before.

A reader is much more likely to remember an international banker named Abebayehu Tegene than Abe Thompson.

You can debate why this is. Maybe it’s just that the name is more interesting. But in most cases, I think it’s because we’re hard-wired to match race to surnames. We see Abebayehu Tegene and we think, “This character is black. Not only that, he’s probably African.” We form a mental picture of “African banker,” then move on.

With Abe Thompson, the reader has nothing to latch onto. Abe Thompson is just a name.

John goes on to make the point that coming up with a cool ethnic name does not abrogate your responsibility to make the character interesting.

Most of the time, when I'm reading scripts from new writers trying to figure out if they have any talent, the thing that convinces me is how well drawn the three-and-four line parts are. You get sensitive to that in Canada, especially if you have a lot of actor friends, because when American movies come to shoot here, those parts are the ones they give to all the Canadians. I've helped a lot of friends run lines in my time, which means more often than not going over a lot of sides with cliched, dull, four-line parts. You learn a lot about a writer when he or she can communicate a full and rich life for a character we only see once for a moment.

(All this assumes, of course, that you already have compelling leads, and a story that isn't too FUBAR.)

None of this deals with the problems of race in America (or Canada) but then again, we're screenwriters. Not like we're going to fix that one anyway.

(And if we did, a director or actor would probably take the credit.)

Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.

I just finished watching Monday's Arrested Development. My God, this show just gives no quarter whatsoever. The whole thing was one angry, keening, preening, hilarious and laugh-out-loud in joke. From jokes about making the family more "relatable..." the "live" stunt, the "someone will die before this episode is over" stunt, the parade of celebrity cameos just dashed off with no fanfare whatsoever... It was a howl and a high point from a series that now seems to know that it's probably time to go: but not before it makes the point that the great sea of viewers, alas, really are that stupid.

It's such small comfort to know that people will be discovering this show for years on DVD, going, "why didn't it catch on? why didn't it catch on?" You hear that a lot from overreaching writers and producers where the answer is simply, "It wasn't that good." It used to be that I thought I could never get romantic with a woman who didn't find The Simpsons funny. Well, the torch has been passed. Arrested Development is exactly as funny as the critics say. It's going to be sorely missed.

UPDATE: CNN ran this AP story today about the show and its chances. They quote some of the big in-jokes from Monday's episode. If no one picks it up, that means...sniff....that only four new episodes of Arrested Development are left.

'Twas beauty, indeed.

Yes, okay. Three hours and seven minutes. But I can just about picture that conversation...

"You cut it."
"No...you."
No...you."

I want to spend my next vacation in Peter Jackson's 1933 New York. But only if I can be rich.

And who says we haven't progressed? It's great that someone with a schnoz the size of Adrien Brody's can be a romantic lead.

The action hero as writer. Swoon.

Dying is Easy (Part Deux)

"Canadians love to make fun of Americans – it’s the unofficial theme of Canadian TV comedy – but turning that spite back onto them is like standing up at a political rally and yelling, “Hey, our side does some dumb things too!” They don’t want to hear it. So whose side you on anyway? You wanna be a ‘merican, go the heck down there. So while you have (some) genuine political television self-satire in the U.S., you really have none in Canada. They’ve got This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Made In Canada and Red Green, but it’s all about as pointed as a high school end-of-the-year stage show that dares to declare the math teacher is a tough marker and the cafeteria food isn’t very good. The biggest laughs will always come from insulting the other school’s basketball team."

-Andrew Nicholls, Valuable Lessons

First...um...ouch.

I remember a few years back I was working with a mentor of mine on a TV project. This guy is funny, opinionated...Jesuit educated (so you know you gotta stay on your toes...) He was the one who first took the bloom off This Hour Has 22 Minutes for me. He pointed out exactly what Nicholls says above: that it's not satire if no one gets hurt. If you get "outraged" about things that nobody could really reasonably disagree with, like, say, "racism is bad" or "intolerance is bad," then you're not really doing barbed comedy.

22 is a Canadian-topical comedy program that's run on CBC for the last decade or so. It comes out of Halifax, and is supposed to be a Daily Show-like wrapup of the week's events. A few years back, the most popular comedian on the program, Rick Mercer, bolted and now has his own show. Oh, and then there's another topical comedy show called Royal Canadian Air Farce, which has been on the air here since roughly the Mesozoic era. Yeah, there's problem number one: CBC has three flavors of exactly the same show.

Yet if I had to quantify that flavor, I'd have to admit that it was... very mild salsa. It's not that there aren't laughs to be had on each of these shows -- it's that the laughs are gentle, not barbed. Even when they're barbed, no one bleeds. There's a comedy show on one of the cable outlets here that's supposed to be a show making fun of pop culture -- and the brief is, swear to God, "make fun of them, but be nice about it."

I suggest to you that any comic treatment of popular culture that's any less barbed than, say, Defamer, is not something that's needed, anywhere.

Now, compare the Canadian flavor of comedy to the vicious and delicious tang of Brit satire, or even the howl of outrage that is the Daily Show, and the gulf seems even wider. The Canadian editions mostly go after things that everyone can agree with. And, yup, in a lot of cases, that involves trashing Americans.

It's not like that's a new thing in Canada. The main issue in our current election right now, besides wearying scandals that no one really seems surprised or put out by, is "is the Prime Minister damaging our relationship with the U.S. by criticizing them too much?"

It's an easy score right now, critiquing the other school's football team.

Here's the problem: "Canadians are funny" is one of this country's cherished myths. Seriously. Like "we field the best hockey players in the world," "we're a nation of peackeepers," and "People everywhere think Canada is pretty great!" the Canadians-as-funny meme is nearly as ubiquitous as "We're number one" or "We're spreading democracy" is in the USA.

It's enough of a myth that CBC feels that it can build a whole week around how funny Canadians are. And yeah, they'll trot out the same names. Jim Carrey. Mike Myers. SCTV. (For the most part, all of these people are now based in Los Angeles, which is kind of what that bastard Tucker Carlson was saying, but still...)

So here we go into CBC's Comedy Week. Besides the three-shows-that-are-really-one-show sketch component they have, the CBC has done one truly groundbreaking, funny comedy in the last decade or so -- The Newsroom. The Newsroom came on the heels of Larry Sanders, and did manage to satirize the news business with gusto. But -- here's the catch. The first episodes of The Newsroom appeared ten years ago. And the creator, Ken Finkleman, has followed his muse into more and more esoteric projects.

I remember when The Newsroom came out, having discussions with CBC publicists who were...mystified! They couldn't understand why this show was good -- why it was drawing such positive audience response. They were a little giddy, and a little sad. They had a critical (and at least for that first season) an audience hit -- and they didn't know what to do.

Which neatly describes the recent history of comedy on CBC. Fifteen years ago they had a whole Sitcom department. They tried three series. They tanked. The department folded.

Flash ahead to now, and there's a big problem at the CBC. There's a comedy that's wildly popular on Canadian TV. (Corner Gas) They don't have it. There's an edgy cable show with a cult following (Trailer Park Boys). They don't have it. There's this myth that we're good at comedy, but the national broadcaster can't seem to hit with a comedy show that isn't toothless topical sketches that skewer Americans. What. To. Do?

Well...they actually took a positive step forward. Yay, CBC! The problem, of course, is that it comes complete with the requisite two steps back.

A couple of years ago, CBC started doing "comedy pilots" for their new shows, instead of throwing them on the air. The process by which they get to air, and stay there, is somewhat byzantine, as befits the ever-dysfunctional public broadcaster. A few years ago there was a show called An American In Canada, about an American weatherman who found himself transferred to Calgary. They did, I believe, two half-hearted seasons. By the time CBC yanked the show off the air, they had some great scripts and were genuinely funny. (Although, yup, the laughs to be had were mostly at the expense of Americans. But at least Canadians took some hits too.) Anyway, CBC canceled it. CBC could have its own Corner Gas, but no. Anyway.

On Friday, two of the pilots from last year start full series runs. One, Getting Along Famously, stars thespian married couple Debra McGrath (no relation) and Colin Mochrie (Whose Line is it Anyway?) as a married couple doing a variety show in the 1960's. I remember watching this show last year and just scratching my head because the number one question that popped into my pea-sized noggin was, "who the heck is this show for?" I still don't know. (Friday, 9:30 pm)

The second, Hatching, Matching & Dispatching, is Mary Walsh's show set in a Newfoundland outport where one family, the Fureys, runs the local ambulance, wedding, and funeral service. Sounds promising and funny. What I saw last year didn't deliver many laughs. I hope it gets better. (Friday, 9:00 pm)

Which brings us to this year's pilots. This year, they're one for three -- but again, that's no guarantee that the one that works will get picked up, or that the ones that don't, won't. I wrote about this a bit a month or so ago.

The first one up is called Cheap Draft, Bad Language, Fast Cars, Women, and a Video Camera. (Tues Jan 3, 9pm, CBC)

That's right. That's the title. Can you fricking believe it?

You know, there's a lot that's mysterious and unknown about the human brain. And there's a lot that simply you learn through trial and error. Take phone numbers. Seven number phone numbers work, because seven is about the limit of digits that most people can memorize easily. You know what else people can remember? Short titles. You know what they can't remember? Shopping lists. That's why most people write them down. You know what really doesn't work? Making your show title a shopping list. The fact that the CBC let this title go through is just...beyond.

Aside from the bitter truth that if you read that title, you can't help but think, "wow, they're really trying too hard..." and leaving aside the fact that maybe, just maybe, they hadn't heard of the similarly titled (and targeted) British series "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" ...and...damnit...sorry, I have to go off on a rant here.

You know what's one skill that no writer ignores? How stuff sounds. You read your work out loud. Because you need to hear how it trips off the tongue. "Funny on the page" does you no good in this business, because scripts are meant to be shot. Similarly, say the title "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" and you can feel it slide off the tongue. It's got a nice aural shape to it. Now--say to yourself, out loud, the following: "Cheap Draft, Bad Language, Fast Cars, Women, and a Video Camera."

Unbelievable.

Anyway, once you dip inside the show itself, it doesn't get much better. The acting is terrible. All mugging, all the time. There's a long segment that limns an "extreme" reality-game show that could have been funny, had they played it straight. But nope, the Canadian disease rears its ugly head again...they have to put it across in a smug, over-the-top fashion, just so you absolutely, positively get the idea that they're judging this kind of television. (This, to me, is the same thing that keeps The Tournament from being actually funny. Great. Either we smugly judge and go too far -- or we put up too-gentle wiff-balls. Are we having fun yet?)

Cheap Draft has a serious case of the try-too-hards. There's a few amusing bits. There's a sketch about "Extreme Sports for Kids" that's at least as funny as what you see on SNL. But that's another part of the problem. The whole show has a sketch-y kind of feel. I have no idea what would happen every week on this show -- and what's more, I don't really care.

Comedy's all about tone, and likability. The characters in this show are not likable, and the more they try to push and stretch their farcical bonafides, the flatter it falls. Take away the video camera. This Cheap Draft is just a bunch of warm beer.

Rabbittown, (Tuesday Jan 3, 9:30, CBC) on the other hand, is a bit of a treat. Not only are the characters strangely likable (in a junior Patsy & Edina kind of way,) you can definitely see what would happen from week to week. The template is simple: two girls, best friends, who probably shouldn't be friends, because they're destined to bring the worst out in each other. Their competitiveness means poison for the relationship. And hijinks. Oh yes. Hijinks.

I've seen articles written about toxic female friendships. I've seen them in action among some female friends. But I've never seen a TV show about it, with the exception of AbFab. It's a rich, comic area.

When we meet Odelette, she's just returning to St. John's after being dumped by her husband. Her mom owns the local hair salon, and she's determined not to go back there. She instead tries to become an "Exotic Newfoundland Dancer" at a local bar. This leads to a hilarious scene of the hapless Odelette trying to stepdance in a sexy way. It's a loony idea.

The relationship between the two woman, Louanne and Odelette, is priceless. Simultaneously warm, and toxic. Louanne gives her friend a haircut that makes her friend look like a fifties housewife. Odelette leads Louanne back toward drink. "I haven't drank since the last time you came back," she protests.

"Where we wound up in jail."
"I made out with that hooker."
"She was gross"
"I had to pay her."
"Come on, just one"
"One"
"Two"
"Two"
"Three. Doubles."
"Damnit."

Rabbittown also, Jebus be praised, does go for the jugular now and then - in that peculiarly Newfoundland way... Andy Jones, playing the proprietor of the local bar, is enquiring after Odelette's mother. Odelette mentions that she's only half-Newfoundlander, because her mother's from Montreal. Jones' looks wistfully away and observed, "I knew she seemed better than the rest of us."

Now that's a line that got me to laugh out loud. If you don't get it, it would sail by. But the great thing about Newfoundlanders is that they actually do have a tradition of laughing at themselves. Would that the rest of Canada returned the favour.

Rabbittown weaves through logical, rich, consistent character development. The low- key crush Jones' character has on the mother; the mother's exasperation over the relationship between her employee and her daughter...every scene in the half hour promises more.

And it's got a killer opening scene that manages to draw you in while ladling exposition so slightly it should get a laying the pipe award.

Rabbittown was written and conceived of by its two stars, Adriana Maggs and Sherry White. James Genn directs. It's Produced by Jennice Ripley. If this sucker doesn't get at least six episodes, then there's no hope.

I wanted to like the third show, This Space for Rent. (Wed, Jan 4, 9pm) A comedy based in Vancouver could work. There's one great scene with actor Jason Bryden, where he haggles with a Chinese street vendor in perfect Cantonese over the price of fish. At least I think it was Cantonese. Might have been Mandarin. Anyway, that was a funny scene. It's an incidental scene going on while two of the female characters lay pipe for the main plot. As he drives away on his Vespa, Bryden says, "Your life makes me sad." Funny line. Good scene. Is he the main character? Er...no.

There's also some good business with actress Emily Hampshire, playing a junior lawyer forced to be one of the boys in her new firm. There's some funny slapstick to be had there as she struggles to "act like she's got a pair." Is she the main character? Er...no again.

Ulitmately, This Space For Rent is pretty impossible to love. First of all, it's an hour long. And you feel every second of that hour. Jerry Seinfeld once opined "I'm not sure comedy wants to be a movie." Well, the one thing I'm sure of is that unless you're prepared to go the comedy-drama route, comedy doesn't really want to be an hour. The hour long epsiodes of Frasier, Seinfeld, Cheers, and Friends were always deadly.

The second problem is the main character, Lucky. (Dov Tiefenbach) Tiefenbach's got a comedy face, that's for sure. He took a very small role in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and made it memorable. But, alas, his character here is a twentysomething writer trying to find himself. He gets depressed, whines, stays in his apartment for thirty days, gets static from his impossibly understanding doctor girlfriend, then writes a letter to the editor and gets a monthly column to bitch in Vancouver magazine. Yay, Lucky. Good for you! Now where's my glock? BLAM! I'm dead. Sorry, Lucky.

Twentysomething angst is something everyone goes through. It is not inherently interesting. When will writers and commissioning editors learn this? This can be your character's viewpoint, but it is not funny in and of itself. You need funny things to happen.

The kind of journey Lucky goes through in this pilot, might have been the plot of a middling Canadian film. But it does nothing to set up the central conflict or template for an ongoing series. And with an hour to establish character and tone (which is also all over the place -- from trendy film-effected montage and manipulation shots to slapstick to loopy drug humor; it's all in the pot: "let's cook it and see if anything sticks once we heat it and it explodes onto the wall,") the closest I can come to an idea of template is that from week to week we'd get to see Lucky write his column, Hate Male, (yup, I know) while his friends all try to find themselves.

Which is pretty much a one-minute pitch. I would think that after 48 minutes of TV, I'd know more. I don't. If you can't make me fall in love with your characters and your world in 48 minutes, I don't think you should get to make a series.

I think there's a persistent problem in Canadian TV -- and especially comedy -- and it's this: they keep giving TV series to people who really want to make Canadian films.

Not films.

Canadian films.

Yes, there's a difference. But that really is a different post.

As always, your mileage may vary. But the reality is that CBC needs some popular comedy hits to reverse its increasing audience irrelevance. Rabbittown is the only one of these three pilots with the potential to reverse that slide -- at least critically. I hope CBC looks at that pilot hard and tries to figure out what went right. Is it significant that it's the only one where the actors are also the writers? Maybe. Does that mean you've got a problem in your script development, or your casting, or both? I don't know. Is the Rabbittown duo really that talented, or does the fact that they wear dual hats leave them open to less meddling from the network? Again, I don't know.

What I do know is this: CBC needs to start doing better. Rabbittown's a start. But there's still too much decisionmaking by committee (which really doesn't serve comedy too well.) They take too long to develop things. (If Rabbittown gets picked up it likely won't return til 2007.) And most of all: it would have been much nicer if they could have gone two for three during Comedy Week.

ADDENDUM: Jan 3: Reading John Doyle's column in the Globe & Mail today, he pretty much agrees with my contentions on these three shows, but raises an interesting further point, which I didn't realize: Both Maggs and White are part of the creative team -- and may even be on air in Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, the Mary Walsh show. Does having two such similar styles of humor with creative crossover hurt the chances for a Rabbittown pickup? Who knows? It does make you despise lazy casting in this country, though. Similar to the situation last summer where CTV's Robson Arms premiered, and over its run, practically every cast member of Corner Gas, CTV's other show, showed up in different roles. This doubling up makes for a couple of problems: a) It makes it seem like we don't have too many talented actors (untrue) and b) it's impossible to establish a unique identity if your actors pop up on every damn show and all the commercials on the air too. I don't blame the actors here...people have got to eat. But it's yet another consequence of doing too few episodes. Typecasting? Forget about it. You're in trouble when your number one comedy features that guy from the Listerine ad.

Gentlemen, Start Your Cathode Ray Tubes...

Yes, there's much rubbing of eyes and bleariness still. (Though not for me, I woke up New Year's Day feeling sound as a pound, I'll have you know.) But this week is serious business indeed for Television in "America's retarded cousin." (Thanks for that one, Tucker.)

This week & next marks the "mid-season" launches of replacement shows on U.S. nets. I'll be checking out Emily's Reasons Why Not, Four Kings, Love Monkey, In Justice, and The Book of Daniel, to be sure.

But in Canada, January and February aren't really the mid-season, they're the start of the new season. Most Canadian shows run only 13 weeks (at most.) January and February are high TV viewing months in Canada, for obvious reasons. Though there's much to shake your head askance at in the decisionmaking process of Canadian Television, the idea that maybe we should get out of the way of the promotional juggernaut of the U.S. fall TV launch -- not a bad idea, rilly.

Not all the parties are taking part in the hootenanny, of course. CBC is going to roll out a number of new comedies, and comedy pilots, this week. Global has the launch of a Very Important Series, but CTV, who is the 900 pound gorilla of Canadian TV right now, doesn't have airdates for most of its homegrown stuff yet. (No wonder. They're making money hand over fist on their U.S. imports right now. CTV had the best shoppers this year. Good for them!)

Global's Falcon Beach, (see hotties at left,) a teen soap that premieres Thursday (and which will air later this year on ABC Family down in the USA) has been promo'd extensively on the network. It's supposed to be a Canadian O.C. I have mixed feelings about this one. Global has not done a lot of homegrown stuff in the last few years. Now there's a new team in place who are really trying to make a new identity for the channel, and that means developing signature shows. And that's the problem. Poor little Falcon Beach should just be able to try to be a diverting, soapy, trifling little show with a bit of wicked fun. But it's not. It's the bellweather of a whole network's emerging strategy. That's a lot of freight to pack into a tiny bikini. I remember hearing some strange things wafting through media circles about this show last summer when it was being shot, but hopefully they'll be able to pull it off. I'm rooting for Global on this one. Welcome to the 'Peg, beeyatch.

(God I hope it has a more clever line than that. Or some kind of catch phrase. And that they do manage to capture some good adult storylines, so that it can draw on something other than the fickle teen audience. See? It's just not healthy to have so much riding on a show. Unless you actually worked on it.)

CBC is going to be throwing a whole bunch of new comedy shows and comedy pilots at the wall this week to see if anything sticks. That deserves its own post. Later.

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.