My New Series

I thought I should tell you all first, since you're my supportive readers. I've just sold my next series. I'm very excited about it as it's a high concept comedy, and I think it's time we did more of those.

Mike Crain, Karatist Preacher goes into Production in early 2007. It's the hilarious, offbeat, and yet socially redemptive tale of a young preacher who roams the country dispensing bible wisdom and kicking ass -- whoremongers, idolators, liars, jezebels, hypocrites, crooked CEO's, dishonest people, and Rush Limbaugh fans, you cannot escape the righteous words, and deadly chop of Mike Crain. Do not even try. You will fail. As Karatist Preachers go, Mike Crain is the man. Fundamentalists -- Mike Crain will go John 3:16 on your ass before you can yell gay marriage amendment. You know why Mike Crain is so formidable? Because Mike Crain follows the Gospel of Matthew. You know, the one about love and stuff. If you're a hater, then Mike Crain has a message for you: "feel my righteous chop, sinner." Mike Crain is a blue state karatist kicking machine. He'll bring a tear to your eye, and his sidekick, Blue, will warm your heart.

As far as I know (and I hope you'll correct me on this if I'm wrong) this is the first television series to ever be optioned off an album cover.

We have a generous, 22 episode commitment from a network I won't name now, because they'll be putting out a press release soon.

Jon Heder has been signed to play Mike Crain. We're all very excited. I'm buying a house off this deal. And best of all, the shit just writes itself.

And then I woke up. And was sad.

Somewhere, in some alternate dimension maybe, Mike Crain: Karatist Preacher is entering its fifth season. And in this alternate dimension, I am very happy with my split-level five bedroom house with a nice view of the lake, 20 minutes from downtown Manhattan, where I live with my loving wife, Rachel McAdams.

The Song About The Song That Once Said Something New

There's something I don't want to write. I'm having trouble getting started. It happens. I can't do the usual, and procrastinate for six hours before writing furiously for three. Which means I can't fall prey to justupdatetheblogitis. I mean, sure, there's a cream for that, but they haven't finished the monkey testing yet.

So in lieu of a well-thought out, argued, or considered posts, here are a bunch of random thoughts:

1. I got passed a tape from VH1 of two episodes of Love Monkey unaired-by-CBS. They were so well-written, the dialogue so fresh, the New York setting so authentic, the music and media cameos so well deployed that it makes my heart sad that no one watched the goddamn show. All of the idiots trolling myspace, feh. I wish genital itching upon you.
   
2. Cows taste good. That's Right. I said it. They are tasty, tasty animals.
3. Last night, a Canadian Television network had their big sales launch -- kind of like the Canadian upfronts. I wasn't invited. I'm betting other people who created shows on the network weren't either. I bet they tried really hard to get one of America's Next Top Models, though. A few years ago, I heard that a different network actually had the stars of one of their long running Canadian shows onstage when they announced that they had just bought an American show with exactly the same concept. That's how the Canadian actor found out. Onstage. This is how the television business works in Canada.
4. If young people are the viewers you want, and young people are the ones most likely to download, and your entire business model is based on buying U.S. shows that are now produced mostly by the production arms of the U.S. Networks, then once the advertising model goes, the U.S. networks will have to make money somewhere else. But if you haven't really ever put a lot into developing your own hit shows, how will you make your money then? Just wondering.
5. I wasn't kidding about the cows. Delicious.
6. Isn't it depressing that Teletoon keeps running the same 13 episodes of Undergrads, produced five years ago, and the ratings stay more or less the same, yet they can't raise the money to make any more?
7. Does anyone under the age of 30 ever read a book anymore?
8. If I had a dream last night about vengeful cows coming after me, and felt better when I woke up only because I realized I live on the ninth floor and they'd never be able to work the elevator buttons, well, does that make me insane? Or just pathetic?
   
9. Hot Pockets.
10. Do you think anyone ever asked M. Night, about The Sixth Sense, "Does Bruce Willis Have To Be Dead?"
    

Dare To Be Bold & Always Sweat the Details

Lovely anecdote from an Anonymous commenter, re: The Matthew Weiner Project for AMC I wrote about below:

I had a master class with Matt Weiner out here in Vancouver, maybe two years ago now. He mentioned this series, how he'd written this pilot on spec and how producers who read it always mentioned that what elevated this above the norm was the details, such as: the subway seats at the time were made of wooden slats -- a nightmare for the modern working girl and her taupe nylons. So women sat on newspapers on the subway. Small detail, well thought out. He used this pilot as his sample material despite years and years on Becker and despite his agent wavering about sending out an unproduced pilot as his sample. He had it sent anyway to a certain HBO series. A wise choice, no? Damn, I wish I could see it!

Me Too, man. Me Too.

Anonymous Commenter, if only I knew your address, I'd send you a complementary Dead Things On Sticks(tm) Dead Thing Stick -- suitable for poking your girlfriend/boyfriend, spearing dead critter flesh, or holding up complicated hairstyles. Accept no substitutes. Demand the Dead Things On Sticks(tm) Dead Thing Stick.

Whereever fine sticks are sold.*

That's the thing about bold ideas mixed with details that are so right: we're used to a paste of sameness today. Kickass creative means breathing the thing out your inner eyelid. It means knowing little things like that and weaving them in while having your characters make the bold, entertaining choices. It means having the faith to send out a script that is not the same old same old. It's knowing the difference between quality and crap. It's about having the courage to go out on the limb, and having the faith not to fear that someone will hack the limb off behind you.

If you can do that, then you're playing in the bigs -- whether you've made the sale or not.


*Not a real product. Jackass.

Advertising, the 1960's, and How We Pay For Shows: The Back To The Future Edition

Today we're going to have a linkapalooza a bit. I've got to dash off to a big pitch meeting. Wish a girl luck.

This article about a potential new series for AMC caught my eye. (From the NYTimes)

THE AMC cable television network is considering a series that would explore how Madison Avenue remakes itself to meet the changing needs of clients as consumers and the media undergo transformation.

So the show would be a reality series, right? Not exactly. It is fictional, a drama about the advertising industry circa 1960.

In another example of how the more things change the more they remain the same, if AMC decides to pick up the series, each episode may be sponsored by a single advertiser — just as was done in 1960.

The filming of an hourlong pilot episode of the series, called "Mad Men," has been completed after a month of shooting at locations in Manhattan, as well as the Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens. Soon, the producer, @radical Media, plans to turn over the episode to AMC for a decision.

Now, this is interesting to me because it's a period show set in the 1960's -- something very close to my heart right now. Like all good period shows, there's a reason to set it there: 1960 is where the ad culture starts to change and the media world we live in and take for granted starts to be formed. I've always thought it was a fascinating world -- even thought it might make a good movie...but never considered a TV series. But when you think of what AMC's niche is, it makes sense.

Also -- please note the single sponsor idea. Maybe none of us know how the future of TV is going to unfold. But that doesn't mean people aren't trying. And looking back to the past for the single sponsor is one way to go. Would anyone really care if it was "The Ford Motor Company Presents 24?" As long as it was still free to you, I mean?

The more the creator, Matthew Weiner ( The Sopranos) describes the show, the more I love it:

Advertising was "the sexiest job of the period," Mr. Weiner said during an interview on Stage 9 at Silvercup Studios as a scene from the "Mad Men" pilot was being filmed.

"Some people think money is our national religion," Mr. Weiner said. "I think it's selling, and it's beautiful, and we do it better than anyone."

Mr. Weiner described himself as a big fan of the popular culture of the period, particularly films about what he termed "the war at the office." Among them he listed "The Apartment," "The Best of Everything" and "Patterns."

Rod Serling, who wrote "Patterns," also made ad executives the protagonists in several episodes of his TV series, "The Twilight Zone."

Still, Mr. Weiner said, if "Mad Men" becomes a series, he does not want viewers to wallow in nostalgia.

"We look back on that period now as innocent," Mr. Weiner said, but the early 1960's was a time of great ferment, prefiguring much of what happened to America in subsequent decades.

Bring on the overflowing ashtrays, IBM selectrics, and drinks in The Office, I say. Huzzah!

You're still bumping on the sponsorship thing, aren't you? Worried that your artistic vision as writers will be compromised by having to bow to grubby commercial interests?

Well, for heaven's sake, then...don't read this article.

Canadian show Alert

John Doyle in Today's Globe and Mail drops the unhappy news that he's gone off the TV beat til August. First he'll be covering the World Cup (note to Americans, the World Cup is kind of like the World Series, except it's soccer and the world actually cares,) then he's off on vacation. The nerve.

He leaves with one recommendation: The Jane Show, a new Global sitcom starring Teresa Pavlinek. They showed a pilot for this one last year and it was pretty dire. It's since been retooled, and Doyle says it's good. I'll be watching. I'd link to his article, but it's behind the Globe firewall. And other articles on the show are hard to find. I'd post the time, but that's hard to find too. Check your online listings.

And they ask why Canadians don't watche their own shows. Sigh.

Enjoy The Next NASCAR Event

I'm so screwed.

Seriously. So deeply, deeply screwed for the next couple of days. I'm going to ask y'all to procrastinate for me right now. Seriously, help a brother out.

One of the nice things about being a writer is that you never really have to grow up. You can still quote catchphrases you like over and over for weeks and weeks to your friends til you're sick of them and they are too. It's awesome.

Jim Gaffigan is my hero because he does his own meta commentary in his routines, and it sounds like my id.

Guess what phrase my friends are starting to get sick of?

Oh Jim, when will you come to Canada and make me happy?

The Squid, The Whale, Backstory and Busywork

I watched The Squid and The Whale on the weekend, and quite enjoyed it. The evocation of 1986 was subtle and clever, the performances were all solid, and I was intrigued by how the characters could be sympathetic even when they were saying and doing ugly things that were messing up their kids.

It was also yet another note in what's becoming my standard chorus: why I write TV, not movies.

Though I enjoyed the movie very much, at the end of it, I didn't want to spend any more time with the characters. The story about them was over. They were movie characters, I saw them at an interesting time in their lives (the span of the movie) and once that story came to its resolution, I had no wish to revisit them. What was interesting about them was done, and the parts that were unpleasant, weren't unpleasant in a 'have to see more' kind of way.

This, of course, is the very essence of a movie. It's probably one of the reasons why sequels to good movies (as opposed to Popcorn movies) usually kind of blow.

I admire the craft and the toil of any screenwriter who comes up with a competent, workable, readable screenplay. There's a lot stacked against you -- and I'm not just talking about the lack of respect you get from other stakeholders in the moviemaking process. But I still don't think it holds a candle to conceiving a really great television series.

Because a series is about creating a world from which multiple stories will spring. A well-crafted movie script is building a house. A well-crafted TV series is building a village.

Which is why it sometimes takes a village of writers to truly make it fly -- but that's a point for another time.

The delicate balance that one strikes when coming up with an original TV series is a living, organic compromise between the need to make a strong impression, and the need for space. Your character, setting, situation, secondary characters -- all need to be clearly mapped out so that when we meet them, we have an entire sense of who they are -- but at the same time, you have to leave room so that the characters can change and grow, and the situation can be re-invented, and the world you know so well can surprise you.

I'm not talking about a show like LOST here, that's built on mystery and surprise, I'm talking about your solid, kitchen-sink character based dramas.

So -- you can't blow it all in the Pilot, but at the same time, you must always remember the feeling you need to evoke at the end of the pilot: a desire to return. If people don't want to go back and see more from those characters, spend more time in that world, then you've got a situation like my reaction to The Squid and the Whale. You're done. You've written a movie, not a TV show.

In Canada, where there is a lot less opportunity, traditionally you've had a lot of crossover from people who write movies to tv series. To my mind, the fundamental differences between the two mediums, and the writer's inability to grasp this, has hamstrung more than a few series before they ever got going.

And there's another bugaboo that constricts and constrains the development of series television: fear of dynamic uncertainty.

What do I mean by that?

Well, a standard part of the tortured development process in this country (and I'm speaking not just from my own experience here; this is gathered from at least half a dozen writers I know who are currently, or have recently developed shows) is coming up with ever-more-detailed character descriptions and arcs. Sometimes a network will demand page after page of information about a character and where they came from. Early life, family life, romantic trauma in their pasts -- in short, everything that makes them what they are.

It's not hard to understand why. A TV series is a huge risk. It's very expensive. And hard to get going, and at the end of the day, you don't want to face the most terrifying idea of all:

It has to be allowed to develop organically as it goes along.

By asking for page after page of backstory, what the developing partner thinks they're getting is a fully-fleshed out character that will make the series all the more compelling.

But to a writer, a real writer, or a team of writers who are clicking and sparking on the same page, that's going to be, in the end, just a lot of busywork. You have to do it -- after all, you're not paying for the show, are you? But it doesn't really help. And you have to have the freedom to ignore all that backstory if the character takes you in another direction.

There's a problem I call "backstory fatigue." I've seen it quite a bit working on Canadian shows. You're talking about a story point and somebody says something about the character, and you have to shake your head and say, "that's not in the show yet."

One of the problems of writing so much backstory is that you get confused. You lose touch with what's been revealed to the audience and what still sits in that brick of a development document, begging to be woven into the story. Or not, as the case may be.

I'm starting to think that much of the criticism of Canadian stories being "slow to develop" is grounded in the desire to work more of the brick into the storytelling. The reality is that beyond the broad strokes of your character, your audience only needs to know what they need to know as demanded by the story... anything else is just slowing you down.

In The West Wing, for two seasons or so, Bartlet had two daughters, Annie and Zoe. You saw Zoe, and Annie was just talked about. But then they needed a third daughter. And so they invented Ellie. And it worked. You know why? Because they'd been clever enough to never specify that Bartlet had two daughters. (which surely would have happened had they been developing the show with the standard Candian brick of a bible.) They told you only what you, as the audience, needed to know in the drama at the time, which left open the storytelling possibilities until there was a need for a third daughter. Then, rather than have to "work in" that they have three daughters, that reveal of backstory drives a story of its own, in its proper time, that also reveals character.

That is the high wire act that is series television.

In Season One of The Sopranos, you see Tony's sister. In Season Two, Aida Turturro shows up and we meet Janice, the older sister. Ah. Now we have another piece of Tony. In season five, we meet Tony's good friend and cousin Tony B. Wow. We now see another side of Tony.

We didn't need to hear about Tony B. at the beginning-- only when he became relevant. Going back to The X-Files, we had the setup off the top: Mulder was a believer, Scully was a scientific skeptic. Only a couple of seasons into it did you learn that Scully had religious faith -- which Mulder derided. This was not in the show at the beginning. It does not live or exist anywhere in a bible document. It was, instead, a dynamic invention by the writers that served to illuminate the characters down the road -- and do so in a wonderfully evocative, inventive story.

It's hard to have faith. In God, in writing, in proof of concept. But as much as people want to take the uncertainty out of the development process, that can never happen. Successful series run for years, which means that everyone involved with them grows, changes and develops as surely as the characters and world they're inventing. You can't front load the process.

Which doesn't mean anyone's going to stop trying to do exactly that.

Ah well, c'est la guerre.

And On This Memorial Day...

Please note how John Rogers hits it out of the park. A beautiful post that sticks a knife in the heart of the rhetoric.

There is truth in the idea that soldiers are our designated warriors. But the accidental revelation in these attitudes is the bizarre concept that by soldiers choosing a life of taking risks on our behalf, these war supporters are somehow absolved of any responsibility to them other than emotional support and approval. There is the stink of ... the troops as employees. Like, say, gardeners. Not that I would ever make such a crude comparison.

But the fact is that soldiers make this choice in a specific context. They are not just entering a job. They are, to pull up my Catholic high school education, entering into a covenant with us. They take an oath to sacrifice their lives, if need be. That is, in my faith anyway, the holiest thing a person can do. In return, the civilian side of the covenant is a deep responsibility, a responsibility far beyond the emotional support one gives a sports team, or the minimal responsibility one has with employees. Our oath is simple:

We will make sure you have the equipment you need.

We will make sure have a clearly defined mission.

We will make sure that such missions are as well-planned as possible.

We will take care of your families while you are gone.

We will take care of you when you come home.

That's not a lot to do for someone who's out there getting shot at for you

Beautiful. Go read it.

Higgeldy-Pig-Ugly

Well, whilst you Yanquis revel in your Memorial Day, lining up to see X3 (it's Ratner, people! Ratner! If you reward hackery, hackery will be all you ever get!) Here in Dead Things City everyone woke up to an illegal transit strike. Eight hundred maintenance workers brought the whole system to its knees with no warning, and despite the fact that they signed and ratified a contract last year.

The weather forecast for Toronto today is going to be very Hot and Humid, with the air quality expected to be poor, due to smog.

In Detroit there would be gunshots.

In Toronto, I want you to imagine lots and lots of passive aggressive people spitting out "Sorrrrry!" as they bodycheck each other to get into cabs. Seriously. You haven't lived until you've experienced how a "Sorrrry" can actually mean, "Fuck. You. To. Death."

That's apropos of nothing except this:

A few people (or it may be the same hectoring blogofan, I can't be bothered to check) have asked about the promised but ne'er delivered fourth installment of the Spec Scripts Series -- on what to do after you do your spec script -- and submitting in Canada.

What I want to say is -- you guessed it -- "Sorrrry!"

Nah. The truth is that I was all set to write that, but somewhere in between the thinking and the typing, I actually changed my mind about a lot of what I was going to say in the post. There's a shifting playing field right now in Canadian television, and the honest thing is that a lot of the advice I was going to bust out might not be relevant anymore. So rather than teach you the wonders of shooting on 3/4 inch and 2 inch videotape (Thank you, University. Seriously, that's what we shot on. The same kids today have a full HD studio) I have let it go. If I can figure what to say on the subject, I will.

In the meantime, if you're a spec writer, I firmly believe that the one blog you should be reading right now is Jane Espenson. Every day, a firm, practical, juicy, crafty nugget of specwriter's gold. Serious. Go. Go now.

Guest Blog Your Way to Banff

Hey there. Are you going to the Banff TV Festival?

I'm not. Not this year. Too much doing, and I left it too late and it just seemed too expensive, and a little irresponsible when I already (ulp) have six TV scripts to shepherd this summer.

But I'm looking for guest bloggers. Anyone who attends a particularly great Master Class, or chews on some great gossip on the deck at the Banff Springs, or dishes dirt at that Irish Pub at 2 am -- I'd love to know. I'll give you full credit if you want it, and none if you don't. I'm not looking for the stuff that will get reported in the papers -- I'm looking for the inside skinny.

heywriterboy@hotmail.com will place your missives into the messy beating heart of Dead Things Labs. (TM)

(For those who don't know, The Banff TV festival happens every year, in a ridiculously beautiful setting in Alberta a bunch of people get together and chatter about TV. Not a lot of writers, but lots of program execs and bottom fee...no no no....we're all on the same team...)

Last time I went, in 2001, it was on a Fellowship, so I had nothing at risk and got to see the fun as I threw my voice on the Patio and said, "convergence" and "synergy" and watched everyone scatter and clamor.

Free tip #1: if you're in a Master Class, come up with a great question before you go in. Seriously. I sat through some seriously lame questions.

Are You (Lost) Experienced? Or Just Lost?

When ALIAS went on the air, they experimented with fake websites devoted to SD-6, and Rambaldi. There were various different things and a suggestion that there was some game to be had. I never really paid that much attention to it.

What a difference a few years makes.

I find myself flabbergasted by the amount of work and precision that's gone into the alternate reality game for LOST, LOST EXPERIENCE. Fake Hanso Foundation commercials, fake phone numbers with secret messages, a book published with "interview" clues dropped on websites like Amazon and Powell's...it seems to me like finally someone came up with something to do with corporate media synergy.

Having come off a show (Charlie Jade) that could really have used some of these kinds of tricks to help with a mythology and worldview that was dense and vast, but that had nowhere near the budget to achieve anything even in the same universe as what the makers of LOST are attempting -- well, it fills me with a sense of wonder and a little trepidation about the future.

Wonder because it does do something interesting in being able to stoke the fires of interest even through the fallow period of a summer off. Everyone noticed how much LOST was hurt this season by the repeats. ABC has adjusted so that won't be a problem next season -- the show's going to run uninterrupted, for the most parts. But that still leaves the summer. So now there's this game, ready to step up and fill the gap. Nifty.

On the other hand, there's trepidation, because now that the bar has been raised like that, the burden of creating and maintaining a TV show mythology is only the tip of the iceberg. I feel like there's no going back from The Lost Experience. This isn't Barney's Blog -- this is a full on throwdown to those of us who create content and who try to get TV shows going.

It occurs to me that this could wind up being a cool new way to get junior writers involved. This could be part and parcel of the right of passage -- and open even more opportunties for young writers who think differently.

But.

There's always a but.

Here in Canada, of course, we have writing rooms with three writers doing the work that would be done with eight or ten writers. There's no accounting for that in the production process. But I'll bet you twenty dollars sometime in the next six months I sit in a room and someone asks me how this concept could spin out something like the LOST Experience. And the answer, "a few more million dollars and about fifteen more people," isn't going to cut it.

No, all around my city now (well, not now, it's Sunday, but go with me here) there are discussions about alternate content and what about cellphone content? and how can we do value added stuff?-- and the LOST game is going to be the new benchmark.

And we can't even afford to sit on the bench.

I've seen this before. Post-SURVIVOR, I wrote on a bunch of reality/documentary shows being done by Canadian channels. And the notes were always the same: They wanted Survivor- style reveals and twists, and no matter how my editor friends or I tried to explain it, no one seemed to get that you can't replicate SURVIVOR's 24/7 four dedicated crews and hundreds of hours of wall to wall tape with one camera shooting a subject over five days, for a few hours here and there.

So I sit here, open mouthed, marvelling at things like this weird stunt on Jimmy Kimmel Live:



And I know that's the new bar. I sense it. And I don't see how we'll ever be able to effectively compete with it. Is the only way to do a mystery series now to have a CSI, Bruckheimer-sized budget? I don't know.

I should say that there's no way you're going to find me going around taking part in this LOST game -- I barely have enough time for work and keeping up with TV. But I'll be checking out that clue page now and again-- dipping in as other people play the game, to see what they've found out.

I just wonder, in the end, what it all means.

Lost and Gone Forever?

So -- Best Finale Ever?

Not so much?

Did they reveal enough? Too little? Too much?

Are they making everything up as they go along?

Interested to hear other opinions.

If You Want, We'll Gladly Take Back Neil Young...

The Mad Pulp Bastard passes on some notes on Canadian shows in the US of Eh.

The syndicated crime drama Da Vinci's Inquest, distributed in the U.S. by Program Partners, will be around for year two with clearances in 98% of the country and more than 200 station affiliates. Here in its freshman season in the US, the show delivered a season-to-date 2.1AA/2.2 GAA and a season average of 1.8 AA/2.0 GAA in year one.


Canada's #1 comedy series Corner Gas will be coming to American TV. CTV has signed an agreement with Arthur Hasson's Multi-Platform Distribution Company to market the show to U.S. networks right away.


Sadly, still no Charlie Jade. Guess that sympathetic terrorist wasn't the best idear. Cowards!

Embrace The Fun

My agent sent me to a hello-how-are-you-who-are-you-here's-who-we-are meeting the other day at a Toronto production company. I met with two women there, one in development and the other one of the show producers. It was the end of the day after a long weekend, and the office was very buzzy.

Both of these fine women were very charming, very amped up. They laughed easily, and described the projects they had in the pipe with enthusiasm and vigor -- and a lot of laughter. They both seemed like they really loved the company and really loved their jobs. They apologized for having to jump in and out of the meeting, or run off to another meeting.

I was only there for about an hour, but I got a great sense of the company, and an even better sense of these people. And they seemed fun.

You don't get that meeting very often. When you do get it -- make sure you capitalize on it. The Crazy Vibe is far more common in this business. I can only think of a couple of times when I've gotten The Crazy Vibe when it turned out to be a false positive.

But never The Fun Vibe. The Fun Vibe will never let you down. Unless they're religious cultists. In which case either the robes, the sneakers, or the lingo should give it away.

"Am I clear? Um...you mean like....Sprite?"

A Reader Writes:

When I think of my future career in writing...it's strange...I see no prospect of writing for canadian programming- movies or television.

I love my county. I love my hockey. I tell anyone I'm Canadian- with pride. (Hell, I'm actually an eskimo- no kidding)...but I don't see a light here in this tunnel of Canadian market. I have to look South for any interest at all...

Telefilm- is one big reason for this. When I go in with a producer (of 25 plus year of US tv under his belt) and we're told that we don't have the 'right' track record with them...well...add it up. Where are we going to go?

I know it can be frustrating. And the reality of the situation is this: if you're good, I mean, really, really good. Not I won a short story contest good. But if you have chops, and you're young -- say under 25. And you don't have a relationship or kids or anything really tethering you here...my advice would be go. If you're going to be unknown and struggling, you may as well be unknown and struggling where the jobs are. But you better be serious about working, and not just replicating that "what the hell am I doing drinking in L.A. at 26" song. What happened to those guys? I loved that song. Life won't be easy. You're going to need to find a car. You're not going to have health insurance, so you better not get sick. And if you're there illegally, you're going to have to get some sketchy jobs. But you'll be there. And maybe, just maybe -- you'll get a shot.

But arguing for the loyal opposition who stays...why not try to get yourself established here not with your own stuff, but write for hire? There is plenty of writing going on in Toronto this summer. Especially if you don't look down your nose on writing kids animation. (And if you do, shame on you.)

Complaining about Telefilm is all well and good, and yeah, the bureaucrazy of it can frost my cornflakes too. But what about good old fashioned ingenuity? What about doing something like FUBAR? What about picking up those Robert Rodriguez books and doing a credit card opus to get your first film done? Why do we never hear any of these stories from young Canadians willing to take a risk and their indie spirit forward? I mean, when you're young there's nothing to lose. So if you do a bad digital short, okay, who cares. But what if that bad digital short cracks YouTube and you wind up the next Andy Samberg? How do you think these things happen?

Canadians automatically look for handouts and I think that saps the will of anybody. Give a guy a grant and he'll write paper for a month. But let him go dive through dumpsters with a HD palmcorder and ...well, he'll get stinky. But in this failed metaphor, stinky is good.

I think-
1) telefilm needs to be severly beaten down and shaken-
2) that the only way canadian companies will compete and sustain is by finding product that won't only sell in Canada...but everywhere. US. Europe...everywhere...and if that means hiring US actors...then so be it.

Until they take risks, outside their defined box...it won't happen. They won't succeed. And companies like AA will continue to take the gimmes and let loose.

Sad...i wish the place I have so much pride in, could be the place to foster my hope for a career...

It doesn't. Suck it up. It's got to come from you. Don't worry about what AA is doing. Or Telefilm. What are YOU doing? As for the whole "finding product that won't only sell in Canada, but everywhere..." thing, well, that's a little naive...since that's what producers have been trying to do for about 20 years here.

I have a slightly different take. I think we're poisoned by the noise of the US and trying to make US like product here. I think we should just make some stuff sometimes that is very Canadian. And don't explain it. And try to sell it in a foreign film way. Maybe it won't sell in the USA, but I'm reasonably sure that other territories that just appreciate good storytelling would like a well crafted story that's unique and daring -- even if it's also...gasp...really Canadian.

Stop being the photocopy; start painting something new. That's the thing that will sell. It's a big world.

Thanks for writing.

Desperate Canadian Networks and the "permanent downturn"

UPDATED: 4:00 p.m. Clarified some language and fixed some typos.

Last Thursday, CBC had its mea culpa invitation to producers event in Studio 41 of the Downtown Broadcast Centre (the building John Doyle so lovingly calls, "Fort Dork.")

Now, aside from the irony that the "please help us" meeting was being had in a studio that they soon won't be able to do anything in (cause they're laying off the crews and support staff that work there) the crowd was a grumbly bunch of Independent Producers there to be skeptical.

I happened to be carrying the copy of Desperate Networks I'd just purchased. Which optically probably didn't look too good, but what are you going to do?

I felt a little sorry for the team of CBC programmers as they stood up and gave their speeches about how CBC was now "open for business" (one wag in the crowd said the whole thing should have been called, "help us not suck.") but to my ears it did seem an earnest and heartfelt attempt to clear the decks and try to chart a new relationship. Everyone on the stage was in a new job. They promised things like "we'll get back to you quickly from now on." And "we'll have contracts to you in two weeks..." (a promise that even the woman who'll be in charge of administering it seemed to be nervous about.)

Then, before they opened the bar and brought out the dead things on sticks, (peanut beef..mmm.) they went to questions from the audience.

And that's where I started to tune out. Because the questions were largely disappointing. They were CBC insider questions about CBC insider topics. The first one was about the CBC "dumbing down" -- a stupid spin that VP Stursberg probably made worse with comments he made a few weeks ago. The room was heavily stacked with documentarians, surprising, I thought, considering that most of the production companies were in Toronto. Or at least I thought they were. There was a lot of defending-my-turf stuff...a bit about diversity this or that, some whingeing about the Documentary channel takeover (seriously, doc people, are you always this whingey?) and then... ummmm... that was it.

Anyway, it was only later, having read Desperate Networks, that I realized just how much is stacked against the programmers not just at CBC, but anywhere in Canada.

Because in the US, everybody knows they need the next hit, and everyone's afraid to take a risk. But that's in a country that celebrates, venerates, and promotes great risk takers who succeed.

Canada is not that country. Canada is one of the most risk averse nations on the planet. Canadians like to debate, and debate, and be cautious, and even more cautious...it's part of the natural national character, partly due to 150 years of watching the lunatics to the south go off half cocked every few years into some Civil War or brouhaha or what have you.

The lesson of Carter's book is that the middle executive who speaks up for a project, and really pushes it, believes in it, tends to ride their way to the top. Is there anyone at CBC or CTV or Global or other Canadian networks willing to be that person? Or is that even relevant here? I mean, before the current shakeup, the people making the calls about what went on the schedule at CBC had been in their jobs for twenty years. People can fail here, and not get fired. People who'd be tossed out on their asses in the US at the slightest complication Jeff Zucker their way through for years.

So I'm not sure that middle exec here can stick their neck out, because I'm not sure there's anywhere to go. Or that it will even be read as a positive thing. (Remember: risk averse.) The problem is, I don't see any better alternative. So the question remains: Is anyone going to stop being quite so Canadian for a second and do what needs to be done to generate a creative hit and make some money?

Anyone?

Bueller?

The Canadian story is actually far more commonly this -- the passage in the book that will doubtless be of most interest to Canadians, who've been hearing a bunch of vague stories for years.

Ladies and gentlemen, how Alliance Atlantis scored CSI:

Everyone involved with CSI had reason to be elated, but the tale took a new twist only two months later. CBS got word that its 50/50 business partner on CSI wanted to pull its investment out of the show. The partner was the Touchstone studio, owned by the Walt Disney Company, which also owned ABC. Moonves immediately smelled a rat....Moonves wasted no time driving home the point, telling the Wall Street Journal, "Any network that expects to get a show from that company is out of their minds."...Disney pulled its money out of the series....That left CBS Productions holding the bag for all the show's cost...Moonves realized he had to look beyond Hollywood -- way beyond, as it happened. He decided to call Peter Sussman, the chief executive at a Canadian production company called Alliance Atlantis. The company had coproduced a sucessful miniseries version of Joan of Arc with CBS the previous year. Moonves pitched Sussman on the value of becoming a partner in a weekly series. His timing, as it often was, was perfect. Sussman had been pondering how to get his company into the series business....Moonves's call offering a half stake in CSI turned out to be the most financially significant conversation Peter Sussman would ever have in his life.

I'll say.

If you have any knowledge of the Canadian TV industry, the above passage is just going to set you howling. Howling because, of course, Alliance Atlantis was very much, very famously IN the series business. Between the merged company and the two separate corporate entities they were before merging (Alliance and Atlantis) these two companies were the biggest producers of series TV in Canada, with credits for all networks, and shows including Cold Squad, Traders, The Associates, Due South, Tekwar, Earth: Final Conflict, The Outer Limits, The Eleventh Hour, Degrassi: The Next Generation and on and on and on.

(I don't know whether to fault Carter for his research here or not. The problem, of course, is when you talk to people at the CEO and Exec level -- you get the CEO or Exec spin. There were huge, huge structural problems in the way Canadian series were financed in the 1990's, and rather than working to fix them, well....keep reading.)

Then, sometime after CSI took off, came this:

What happened, basically, is that Alliance Atlantis took the gift horse they'd been given, the winfall they had not worked for at all, and used it to gut the Canadian industry which had built them up. Yes, it's a business. It's a business that took years and years of Canadian Tax breaks and incentives to produce, build up their company, merge and grow -- and then when they got the easy score, they didn't reinvest. They cashed out.

Worse, they actually salted the earth behind them. In getting out of the series production business, Alliance said that Canadian TV series had entered a "Permanent downturn."

Read that again. Permanent. Downturn. No ideas how to fix it. No desire to try. Risk averse, meet defeatism. But boy, those three CSI shows sure do help the bottom line...

See, the problem here is not that the networks -- and the prodcos -- are Desperate. It's that they're not Desperate enough. Grown fat on subsidy and retransmission of American hits, they do little or nothing to engender the creativity or business that has risk, yes, but could pay off down the road -- if only you find the right formula, the right product, the right show.

Ironically, Alliance Atlantis now makes most of their money by distributing Miramax and New Line stuff here in Canada, and on their stable of specialty channels, for which they receive a steady revenue stream from cable subscriptions, and the benefits of CRTC oversight.

If they ever let in more U.S. channels, or if the flow of subscription fees is threatened by, say, letting consumers choose which channels they want and which they don't want, well, I expect we'll hear from AA about the "permanent downturn in the cable specialty channel business."

The American Network Programmers, for all their skittishness, shortsightedness, and uncertainty, know what business they're in.

And in Canada, they're waiting for the next call from sugar daddy Les.

"No one dies on my watch." Bill Carter's Desperate Networks

Desperate Networks is a gripping inside look at how the other half frets.

Good lead, huh?

Now, a review of any "inside baseball" book like this has to come with several caveats. First of all, a lot of the (middling) reviews I've read seem to be disappointed that there aren't any juicy revelations on the level of Jay Leno hiding to overhear a conference call (a la Bill Carter's earlier, admittedly superior The Late Shift.)

So no, there's no smoking gun. And the speed at which television changes means that even though the book references events that happened in January 2006, it's already a little out of date.

But as we do here in the R&D department at Sticks Labs, we review these things not as a consumer or a general interest reader, but as a writer toiling in the TV trenches. And as a way to know thy ene--uh--collaborator...it's a very valuable book.

The centrepieces of the book are the outsized portraits of characters like NBC's Jeff Zucker, ABC's Steve McPherson, and the deposed Lloyd Braun, CBS's Les "Hot Wife" Moonves, Mike Darnell, whose FOX reality ideas so freaked out then-prez Gail Berman, she had to make clear, "no one dies on my watch, let me be really clear about that, Mike."

You see how the personal quirks and obessions of these powerful men (and the somewhat less powerful women who usually fill the executive rank just below) shape what we watch and what we, as writers, sell.

If you're a genuine white-wine swilling Hollywood Insider, maybe none of these stories will be news to you. But if you swim on the periphery, like, say, Marc Cherry pre-Desperate Housewives, this is the kind of book that will make you feel better and worse. (More on Cherry later.)

Among the insights, you hear a lot about the legendary micromanaging tendencies of Disney, Zucker's distaste and bias against half-hour filmed comedies, and why and how Fox always seems to go back to the reality well.

But more than this, you see an absolutely crystal-clear illustration of the vintage dictum that William Goldman uncorked for all of us:

Nobody knows Anything.

In fact, in television terms, it's worse. Not only does nobody know anything, but they do everything they can not to express their opinions, unless they're at the tippy-tippy-top.

And that's death. Because the other thing that emerges as you read this book is that it's never the guy at the top who has the big idea. It's usually some middle-executive, forced to stick their neck out and offer their opinion. That's how revolutionary, or quality shows get on the air.

(The only counter to this offered is LOST, which Lloyd Braun generated, supported, and boosted literally at the cost of his job.)

In the clearest example, A passel of female ABC executives lament that since Sex & The City and Ally McBeal went off the air, there's "no show for women to watch and talk about later." Eventually, that complaint reverberates around enough brains that it spawns Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.

Ghen Maynard, the low level (at the time) CBS executive who fought and fought for Survivor, has what is maybe the best insight into network decisionmaking in the book:

Adapting his social psychology training, Maynard had been observing the mechanics of decision making in television, where eight or ten executives would often gather in a room with no one willing to step up and take a risk. He associated the process with something he had studied called the "unresponsive bystanders theory," which posits that if you're lying in the street half dead, you're more likely to be helped if just a few people are in the vicinity than if you are surrounded by a crowd.

Which, by the way, is how we writers up dead and bleeding on the ground. Metaphorically, of course.

That leads us to the other big piece of news in the book: (well, news-ish...) the confirmation of what everyone's always suspected: every show that you know of as a hit was turned down. A lot. And the whys and hows of how these things get turned down is a catalogue of capricious decisionmaking and short sightedness.

• Friends would have been a FOX show, except for a sticking point of $150 000.
• ABC had CSI locked up, and lost it because of a laughably small amount of money.
  
• Every U.S. network turned down American Idol -- and the show only made it onto FOX because Rupert Murdoch's daughter leaned on Dad.
• Desperate Housewives could have been on the year two years earlier.
• Survivor was turned down by everybody -- including CBS. It took extraordinary lengths to push Moonves into supporting it.

Moonves definitely emerges as the book's star -- but with a puzzling myopia at the centre. This is a guy who, while at Warner Brothers, shepherded Friends and E.R. But once at CBS, it seems like anything really different -- he has to be really sold on. It's like the position of power dulls the desire to take the bold creative risks that actually pay off.

And Moonves is the guy who did good.

If you're a writer looking for solace, a break from writing that pilot or spec script, or banging your head against your script development deal, inspiration comes in the form of Marc Cherry. Here's a guy who was washed up. A has-been. Marc Cherry is so broke before Housewives that he's living with his mother. Wait. It gets worse. His agent embezzles almost $80 000 from him. He writes this script -- everybody who reads it, loves it, and it doesn't go anywhere. Not for a long time...

Finally, it sells. And a Director is assigned to the pilot, Australian Director P.J. Hogan, best known for My Best Friend's Wedding -- coming straight off the flop of the live action Peter Pan. And what happens next nearly derails Cherry's comeback before it gets started:

They ended up at Hogan's house, to go over his analysis. Hogan began giving notes to Cherry: what image he wanted to open with, what sort of interiors he expected.

Cherry, thinking this was the typical television collaboration, responded with some suggestions of his own. Hogan reacted cooly every time Cherry spoke up. Cherry began to suspect that Hogan expected the kind of writer-director relationship he had experienced in features, which often amounted to lackey and master....Cherry did not challenge Hogan and agreed with many of his notes. Two he did think were "so fucking stupid they would make my head explode." But he did not voice his objections to Hogan yet.

The next day, Cherry learned that Hogan had up and quit, declaring that Marc Cherry was impossible to work with. One of the Touchstone people confronted Cherry...even his own agents asked him how he had managed to offend this guy so thoroughly in one day...

The episode totally pissed Cherry off. He was just getting his career back on track, and this conflict, which he felt he had no way instigated, had make him look like an asshole in the eyes of his studio and his network -- and apparently even his agents.

Then there's Mr. Evil, Simon Cowell. I remember a conversation I had with someone about Idol not so long ago where they couldn't seem to understand why no one had believed in it before it came over. "I mean," they said, "it was a HUGE hit in England. Huge. All they had to do was watch the show!"

I never questioned the Pop Idol/American Idol translation problem, because I'd seen it up close. I'd done a story ten years before on Endemol, the huge Euro gameshow reality producer, and in the process of putting together the story, I'd talked to several U.S. TV types at a convention in Las Vegas. To a one, they all agreed, it would never work here. The reason? Well, there were lots of reasons spoken, but they all boiled down to one, best expressed by a frustrated middle exec from NBC I spoke to, who, frustrated at my question, blurted, "Look. Europeans are just weird."

Ah, America.

I would hate to think that writers would read this book and use it to self-justify their failure with poorly executed or conceived ideas. But reading it, you do think that you've got to take a more zen approach to whether you succeed or not. You have to be zen about the failure, but at the same time, you have also got to amp up your sales and your pitch. Your show is never going to go anywhere unless you break through the bystander syndrome, and get someone, anyone at your network or prodco to stand up and say, "this one. this one, I believe in."

If you think you're going to get to where you need to be without doing that, you're just kidding yourself.




Next time: Desperate Networks and the Canadian TV industry.

Oh Baby, Don't Be That Way, You Know I Still Love You...

Hey ho. Well. I'm a writer who's just spent the bulk of the last couple days not writing, which always makes me cranky. But you know, good stuff can come out of meetings, too. Great stuff. But I'm chomping to get back to the MOUNTAIN of writing and rewriting that I have to do.

Plus, up here North of the 49th Parallel, the weekend coming up is a long weekend. Victoria Day, actually. The Birthday Celebration of that dowager princess Queen Vic. Of Queen Vic and Prince Albert fame. There. You're thinking about a pierced penis right now, aren't you? Don't even try to deny it. There's a good friend of mine who thinks it's funny that if you write my name real fast it looks like penis. Twenty years and she hasn't tired of that joke. And she's a mother.

Anyway, there's plenty of stuff for everyone to chew over with the upfronts and the fallout from the upfronts and the meetings that CBC is doing to explain their new strateregy here in Canada. And then there's that long weekend, which we here call the May 2-4 even though this year it's nowhere near May 24. (2-4 is also Canadian slang for a case of la biere. I know. More than you needed to know.)

All that's a long way of saying that blogging will be light til next week here. I've got limited procrastination time, don'tcha know, and I'm probably going to be cheating on you blog readers with a book in my off seconds.

I've just gotten ahold of the latest from one of my favorite TV writers, Bill Carter (The Late Shift.) If I'm not writing like I should be, or daydreaming like I sometimes do, or wiggling my toes in the grass like I should do more often on a long weekend, chances are I'll be reading this book. I'll let you know what I thought next week.

In the meantime, please, don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Is it just me, or...

Was Grey's Anatomy a bit of a hammock last night?

Great beginning. Great ending. Sagged in the middle. The interview the interns bit was flaccid, and the prom-planning stuff was just...dumb. Bailey's sass about the silver and white was the only inspired portion of that plot.

I know every woman in America is hungup on the Mer/Der thing, but for me the only real relationship convo--again-- was the one with Sara Ramirez and T.R. Knight. George and Cristina remain the main reason to watch this show.

I'm glad for its massive success, but I'm not sure I'll follow it next year. Especially if its moved to another night.

Hey, You Writer Action BBS types...

I see you surfin in on my sitemeter.

I hope whatever article you're linkin to is givin you a chuckle or something. See I can't tell, because I'm not WGA. I'm WGC. So I can't join your little BBS club.

Second class citizen and all.

Have fun pokin around. Solidarity forever.

Or as my English friend Mike would say:

"Oi, Wanker. Shove off right?"