Your Must Read For The Weekend

IF YOU'RE A TV writer, or an aspiring, that is...

Rogers got through his script pile. And now the Kung Fu Monkey shares his Lessons from the Script Pile.

A Taste:

2.) Definitely want the double-team when submitting. One on-air show/one pilot. On-air to see how you adapt your voice to another show, a pilot to show what sort of tone and structure you dig when cut loose. I personally don't mind reading movies, but when facing a mountain of scripts they are generally wince-inducing. If submitting a movie, make sure it's got a helluva first act. A screamingly funny one-act play isn't bad either, and may even be preferable to the pilot when doing half-hour submissions.

Having now plowed through a ridiculous number of on-air specs, for what it's worth (and this is purely personal) I'd recommend writing a House. It's one of the few one-hours where you can show off your research and plotting skills, AND the characters are both joke-funny and engage the emotional issues presented by the case-of-the-week. Without a Trace is a fine show, for example, and we interviewed a couple writers of WaT specs, but the characters do not lend themselves to banter.

If you've been on staff, that second original work is important. We've been on staff, we know how the rewriting process goes. It's very hard to break out what's yours and what's derived from the mandatory template of the sow and your own particular show-runner's idiosyncracies.

If your on-air spec show has been off the air for two years, time for a new spec.

Go read the whole thing. And pay special attention to the part about the play. Put...that...play...down.

John Adams: Join or Die

WHEN I FIRST moved to Canada as a child, lo, these many years ago, one of the first things I remember is the shock of hating history class.

It was boring.

This came as some kind of shock.

History had been my favourite subject. But, I was used to the U.S. history, all stirring and bloody, full of cowboys and wars and fights and exploration and danger and bad, mad, glorious craziness.

Canadian history, it seemed to my child mind, was all people talking in rooms in hushed tones. And the railroad. And Mounties. Oh sure, there was that cool thing on the Plains of Abraham, but come on, man, both the Generals died. What good is that?

Apparently one day I came home and announced my feelings with disdain: "Real countries don't confederate. They revolt."

I have learned to temper those childlike opinions. Somewhat.

(By the way, there's a new bio of John A. MacDonald out. The first in fifty years. There's a new book on Lincoln out, what, every sixteen minutes?)

Still, there is a certain stir in my heart for that early period of United States history.

A few years ago, when I read JOHN ADAMS, the stirring quickened. Here was a great, neglected guy -- the first first-term President, the first President to be defeated.

The first loser.

Oh yes, we Americans are harsh. John Adams didn't get his way onto any money. He's one of the most important Founding Fathers, but we've kicked him to the curb something fierce.

Here's a guy who wrote the Massachusetts Constitution, which formed the basis of the American document. He argued first, and forcefully, that the break from Britain had to be permanent. He pushed for Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence, and he pushed for Washington to be appointed the head of the Continental Army. He secured the first major loan from the Dutch to get the country on its feet. And it was he who took up what had to be the most awkward position in colonial history: the first Ambassador from the United States of America to the Court of St. James. He was the second President, and the first man to see his son also become President.

Why did Adams get such a raw deal? Some say he was unpleasant. He fought too hard. He was inflexible. He waffled, as President, on the implications of some of the freedoms won in the Revolution.

But he called some things right. He believed that political parties were going to poison the Democratic experiment. And they did.

What Author David McCullogh had going for him was the ability to correct over 200 years of partisan hagiographies of Jefferson, most of which cast Adams in a poor light. (The two friends' bitter falling out and eventual rapprochement is one of the major themes of the miniseries.)

He also had the relationship between John and his wife, Abigail. They had a pretty astonishing relationship, a marriage that was probably a couple of centuries ahead of its time. And it's all documented, because they wrote long, passionate, beautiful and teasing letters to each other. It's probably the most enjoyable history book I ever read. Its Pulitzer Prize was richly deserved.

And now HBO and Tom Hanks have pulled out all the stops in adapting it.

JOHN ADAMS, the miniseries bows the first and second of seven parts Sunday night on HBO in the U.S./Movie Central & TMN in Canada. This is American history even a Canadian could love.

Lavish and confident in scope, the first episode does a wonderful job of both establishing Adams' character, and his deep ambivalence and slow move toward the need for a permanent break. Nothing was sure, and everything was fluid. The stalwart heroes of childish history books are nowhere to be found. George Washington (David Morse) is taciturn, and socially uncomfortable -- as he was in life. A scene with a tar and feathering isn't the "wow gosh" thing from childhood. It's nearly unbearable to watch -- this is torture, pure and simple, and the disgust it prompts in Adams reminds anyone watching that American brutality didn't start with Abu Ghirab.

I've seen the first four parts, and I have to say, like he did on Band of Brothers, Hanks, Director Tom Hooper, and Screenwriter Kirk Ellis have captured everything that was great about the book. It's an amazing feat, since so much of the book leaned on the source material of letters and such. Here, Ellis puts some of those letters in the mouths of Abigail (Laura Linney, luminous) and it works surprisingly well.

The acting, again, is top notch -- Tom Wilkinson is a delight as Horny Old Ben Franklin, and Stephen Dillane is quiet and fierce as Jefferson.

There's a key scene in Episode Four where Adams faces George III in his first meeting as Ambassador. It's as rich and poignant and evocative as you could hope for. Paul Giamatti finds the arrogance and the hurt and the doubt.

They wanted to make a republic of laws, not men. But the men who did it weren't statues and granite. The outcome was never clear, always uncertain.

This is historical drama of the highest order.

In its pains to tamp down the heroic, and focus on the human, it becomes more than a parade of history. It becomes everything a history buff and a drama buff could hope for.

HBO may be stumbling in the series department, but this is a monster show for them. Well worth the price of the subscription.

I'm buying this bastard on DVD for sure.

Now Here's a Guy I Can Get Behind...

FROM SALON.COM:

Yesterday -"Just so we don't have to go through this whole resignation thing again," one ballsy reporter asked, "have you ever patronized a prostitute?" Paterson thought for a minute. "Only the lobbyists," he said.

That's an exchange New York Lt. Gov. David Paterson had with a reporter, according to New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer blog. Paterson will replace outgoing Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Monday.

Q-Cast

THE PODCAST for yesterday's Q is available here. Tara Thorne and I start after the interview with Battlestar Galactica's Grace Park and Katee Sackhoff.

And Then The Cylon Said, "That's Not a Waffle Iron, That's My Husband..."

SO, Q. Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park are actually just as beautiful in person as they are on the show. And without makeup, too. Wow.

Though the earlier DTOS Theory of People On Television still stands...


During the interview, when we get to talking about fan campaigns I refer to a much-forwarded blog post I did on the subject. If you're one of the seven television fans on the internet that hasn't been sent this in regards to Jericho, Supernatural, Intelligence, Friday Night Lights, One Tree Hill, Blood Ties, Moonlight, or a dozen other shows, take a gander here.

Q airs at 2pm and 10p on CBC Radio.

Oh $#@. I'm in Deep, Deep &^#%

WHAT TO SAY about this little story?

LAS VEGAS–A new study by The Nielsen Co. has found that the PG-rated movies with the least profanity made the most money at the U.S. box office.

Sexuality or violence in those films had less to do with success than the language, the Nielsen PreView group said in a study being released Thursday.

"The reality is that profanity, within PG, is the big demarcation between box office winner and box office loser," research and marketing director Dan O'Toole said at ShoWest, a conference where studios unveil upcoming movie lineups.

"Parents are choosing PG films for their kids that have very, very low levels of profanity. We're talking one-third the level of the average PG film," he said.

The research firm cross-referenced box office data on 400 films in wide-release from the fall of 2005 to the fall of 2007 with their ratings for sex, violence and profanity given by Critics Inc.'s Kids-In-Mind.com website.

Controlling for marketing and production budgets of films, as well as depictions of violence and sex, movies that scored an average 0.8 on a 10-point profanity scale collected an average of $69 million. Those that averaged 2.8 for profanity averaged $38 million.

All PG movies averaged 2.3 on the profanity scale.

Actually, when you think about it, this really makes perfect sense. There's not a parent I've ever met that hasn't been concerned about their kids' use of profanity. Profanity, especially in writing, is a crutch. For all the many arguments people make about a Deadwood or a gangster movie where the use of profanity adds to the realism, I think 90% percent of the time it's gratuitous.

And I cringe whenever the punchline to a joke is just a big curse-out. Even when I laugh, I think, "man, this is such a #$@ing clam."

Cursing does make you feel better. Some people don't get that. And for whatever reason, cursing is endemic in film and TV. You know who also curses a lot? Dancers. Oh My Stars, they talk the blue streak.

Oh well.

I should also hang my head here a bit and say publicly, in light of this article:

Dad. Hi. Um.... You were right.

Now I hope somebody comes up with a study proving that profanity makes R movies more profitable, or I'm right and truly #@$%ed.

The Jezebel Inside

VINAY MENON got me thinking this morning.

That's not an unusual circumstance, by any means. Menon, who writes on TV for the Toronto Star, usually sports a pleasing populist sensibility in his reviews. He's the kind of reviewer where, often, a pan makes for funnier and better reading than a rave.

This morning he takes on Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls, who's back tomorrow with a new show, The Return of Jezebel James.

Uh, he didn't like it much:

You better alert your agent, manager, publicist and legal team because Fox has clearly hatched a diabolical scheme, one that involves attaching your good name to their very bad show.

Did the scoundrels really think they could get away with this brazen deception? Did they think fans would believe you created a show so stupendously awful it makes Full House seem like Seinfeld?

I don't know who actually wrote this pilot. But the person was surely forced to do so while strapped into a jury-rigged electric chair, one that emitted an excruciating jolt whenever a scene threatened to be funny or logical.

Then there's Parker Posey, or a life form cloned from Parker Posey's DNA. After watching the pilot, I'm convinced this creature was either: a) secretly given amphetamines and forced to do strenuous calisthenics before each scene or, b) blindfolded, spun around a few dozen times and hastily thrown toward her mark so character Sarah Tompkins would always seem looped, out of breath and dizzy.

Though I'm not sure why Posey was advised to whisper occasionally, ambulate exclusively in tiny stutter-steps or deliver her lines as if she doesn't actually comprehend the English language.

Sarah, in her mid-30s, is a children's book editor. She has decided, out of the blue, to have a baby. The hitch: she's infertile.

So Sarah asks younger sister Coco (Ambrose) to be a surrogate because, let's face it, when you make a snap decision about motherhood but are diagnosed with Asherman's syndrome in about 2 1/2 minutes, you might as well rent the uterus of an estranged sibling who is technically homeless, unemployed and recently out of rehab.

Honestly, Amy, between the utter lack of comedic timing and the utter surplus of lame dialogue, even the voices on the laugh track sounded like they were faking it at gunpoint.

I was never a fan of Gilmore Girls, but I understand the passionate devotion of those who were.

I've also, in the last few years, grown amused and heartened by the way that the internet has created a sort-of brand of "writer fandom." This used to be well nigh impossible, because it's so hit and miss to know whether this show or that show was created by who or what. But ah, internet, you vixen like series of tubes, you make all that easy -- just one "Google Alert" and you're off. So you get JMS from B5, and Whedon, and Tim Minnear and Darin Morgan, and Winnie Holzman, and people who keep their eyes on Bryan Fuller, Greg Berlanti and Shawn Ryan, or Jenji Kohan, David Shore, or Shonda Rimes. These days, there are TV writer fans. It's bizarre.

And it's a tough gig to take too, being a writer's fan. it's not like being a fan of an actor. An actor makes a horrific misstep with a role and you blame the directing, or the writing, or you just say they tried something different but failed.

But it's harder to understand how somebody you've been following, somebody whose work you've admired and loved, can create something that sucks so very, very hard. I mean, they created this whole world you loved -- the characters, the dialogue, the whole shebang. How can the next thing they do suck? I mean, it's not like it's any less work to make something that sucks. I guarantee you that Amy Sherman-Palladino (just typing her name is exhausting) worked every bit as hard on Jezebel James as she slaved over Gilmore Girls.

I've been disappointed by authors and by artists, by musicians and movie makers -- people whose brilliance in one project did nothing to protect them from the great suck that followed. Anne Rice gave me vampires and witches and now she's all about the Jesus? Wha? What do you MEAN that group's new CD sucks? They're awesome! I can't believe that the same guys who made The Matrix, made the next two movies. It's almost unfathomable.

Yup. It's hard being a fan of a writer. Maybe almost as hard as it is being a writer. I wonder, though, if you ever get the terrified realization we do, the thing that you just have to push past and forget to keep going:

We have no idea where it comes from. And we know that one day it might go away and not come back.

Pour that over your cereal in the morning, kids!

When we engage in low level neurotic games, or drink, or self-medicate, or do whatever it is to unwind, or snap back, or forget, that's the thing that we're trying to get past. We have no idea where it comes from.

One of the most pathetic things troll-y people do (and these trolls can be people in the industry, or they can be internet commenters, or whoever) is throw early credits at you. It's a particularly clam-y kind of halfass critique, and it goes like this, "Oh yes, I suppose I should listen to the guy who wrote X..."

What writers know is that the guy who wrote X might, right now, even as we speak, be writing the thing that will be a hit and run for nineteen years. Or it might suck. And hey, it got made. There's not a successful writer I know who won't roll the eyes and say, "ooh, don't," when you bring up the sucky early credit. But I guarantee you that there's affection for that thing deep down there. And those credits always come with great stories attached to them. Often, the best stories. You can't choose your break. And you can't judge it down the line...because it's the thing that set you on the path...

And, because, you just don't know.

David Chase toiled for how many years before creating Sopranos? Tom Fontana has had TWO brilliant series, and keeps trying for a third. Larry David managed to slice his pimento of an idea twice and cash in.

And the rest of us pound the keyboard, hoping that we're writing Gilmore Girls and not Jezebel James.

I think that most professions probably have the thing you make peace with. They say that Doctors have to establish a distance, because they kill people. Who knew what demons drove New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, but you do have to wonder at the law and order crusader who lost it all, because he couldn't make peace with his public and private selves, and understand or overcome his desires.

The other night, in the midst of a Florida night, crisp and dark, I stood in the middle of a parking lot at 2:30 in the morning to watch the sky turn from night to day and back to night again. Even from far away, the sight at the horizon of the Space Shuttle Endeavor blasting off is simply a sight that is hard to process. My mother shook her head, the next day, watching the coverage and said, "who would do that?"

"Strap yourself in on top of a huge bomb, you mean?" I said. She nodded.

I shrugged. "I guess maybe they don't think about it."

But now I think that's a load of hooey. I bet they do. I bet they think about it all the time. But the horrible, crazy thing is that if you ask them where that comes from -- the courage to be able to think about it, and understand what it is they're doing, and still to get up there and do it, to strap yourself into that little capsule on top of a bomb...I bet you they don't know.

When I worked at the Canadian Sci-Fi channel, we'd sometimes have a parade of astronauts come through, as they were promoting this project or that one. I met Eugene Cernan, the last man on the moon. I met Buzz Aldrin, Roberta Bondar, Marc Garneau, and a few others. The ones who walked on the moon, especially, were frustrating. Because you'd try to get them to describe the experience, to give thoughtful answers to the big, sweeping, important feel of it all -- and they'd always come up empty.

Buzz Aldrin was the second guy to step on the moon, for Godsake. He was a perfectly nice man, but you think he could string together a sentence about it that had any poetry whatsoever? Nope. Neil Armstrong doesn't give interviews anymore. I wonder if it's because he just has no idea what to say, and he's tired of seeing the look of disappointment on the faces of people when he answers with something that's somehow ... less than what they hoped for.

"Leave me alone. I'm a pilot, for god's sake. Yes, I know it was profound. Or important. But you think I spent any time up there worrying abou that? I had a million things to do. I just had to keep going. I have no idea where it comes from."

I'm not really comparing myself to Neil Armstrong. Or Buzz, or a surgeon that saves lives and occasionally ends them. Or even to Amy Sherman-Palladino. No sir. All I'm saying is that there's an essential mystery to the things we do, and the great human defence mechanism against that uncertainty is to push past it, and try not to think about it too hard.

I have no idea where it comes from.

And the flipside of that? I have no idea where it's going.

I guess, in the end, that's not the worst way to live your life.

I just hope there's more Girls out there than Jezebels, is all.

Them Cylons Sure Is Purdy

WELL, LOOKS LIKE I'll be on CBC Radio's "Q" today talking about the CBC Cancellations and Fan Campaigns, as part of the Tube Team. That's around 2:30 p.m.

But before me will be Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park from Battlestar Galactica.

Beat.

Beat.


Oh yeah. I'm going early.

I Am Not A Hothouse Flower.

REALLY I'M NOT. But somehow, Uncle Jim Henshaw just has a way of prying the boards out from covering up the whole kissin-yer-cousin, doing nasty shit in the pews and sneakin smokes in the parlor nature of the Canadian broadcasting racket.

Even the stuff I knew already seems...shocking.

Remember that great moment in Lawrence of Arabia when O'Toole shouts "NOOOOO PRISSONERRRS!"

Well, how about Henshaw standing there, staring down the parliament block or the CRTC in Gatineau screaming, "NOOOO ACCCOUNTABILITYYYY!"

So, let's start with tax credits...

Allow Jim Russell, a partner at Heenan Blaikie LLP and expert at entertainment law explain them as he did in last Saturday's National Post...

"When the tax credits were first brought in, in 1995, the rationale was that they wouldn't be included in the financing plan for a show. They were designed to allow producers to build up their equity in their company between projects. And it took all of about two seconds for broadcasters, distributors and other stakeholders to say 'No, producer, that's your skin in the game'."

You can read the full article by Joseph Brean and its well-written primer on Canadian film financing here.

Prior to 1995, Canadian networks paid license fees on a par with the rest of the world, that being 60% of the total cost of a program. This meant for an average $1 million dollar hour of drama, the broadcaster would ante $600,000; receiving in return the right to all domestic broadcast revenue and usually a percentage of equity in foreign sales or future earnings.

With the advent of tax credits, the Broadcaster contribution dropped to around 20%, or $200,000 for that same hour with the same benefits in return. In other words, $400,000 in taxpayer and cable mogul money replaced their own investment without impacting their earnings.

Now this was specifically forbidden when the tax credit system came into effect. Yet it goes on every day and the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association (CFTPA) and others reminded the CRTC of that fact during last month's CTF Hearings. But it didn't change anything.

So your tax dollars and cable fees continue to be used to reduce the costs of Canadian Broadcasters in order to increase their profits.

And, in case you haven't noticed -- there never seem to be any profits to be shared with either the people who made the show or you guys who paid for it.

Apres lui, le deluge...?

I'm Guessing That Explains the Harlem Globetrotters Showing Up

I'M SORRY. THIS IS JUST AWESOME.

A surprise birthday party for Dawn Wells, the actress who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," ended with a nearly three-hour tour of the Teton County sheriff's office and jail when the 69-year-old was caught with marijuana in her vehicle while driving home.

ACTRA Got It Wrong

THERE ARE CERTAIN inevitabilities to the problem of Canadian TV. But none are more reliable than the duelling press releases of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and ACTRA, the national performers' union. It's gotten to the point where you don't even have to read them, because when any news event happens you pretty much know what they're going to say.

Here's the latest, on the subject of CBC cancelling MVP (whose name they get wrong), JPOD and Intelligence:

CBC'S CANCELLATION OF INTELLIGENCE, HOCKEY WIVES, jPOD
ANOTHER DEVASTATING BLOW TO CANADIAN DRAMA

March 10, 2008 - Toronto - The CBC's decision to cancel three shows for the fall season - Intelligence, The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives, and jPOD, is a clear example of inexperienced CBC executives who don't understand their mandate to support Canadian programming, especially drama.

"CBC is a public broadcaster, and they have a responsibility to actively support and promote Canadian critically acclaimed series like Intelligence, and work to build a bigger market share for new, distinctive and creatively exciting programming like MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives and jPOD, " said Richard Hardacre, ACTRA National President.

The CBC has an unfortunate history of cancelling quality Canadian productions before they have had a chance to build audience share - and without announcing replacements thereby abandoning their audience. Past cancellations include Da Vinci's City Hall, This is Wonderland and The Tournament.

"It appears that CBC executives don't even understand the basics of marketing and how to support distinctive Canadian programming. CBC's mandate is different from that of private broadcasters, that inundate us with U.S. production, yet the CBC's idea of supporting Canadian production is to kill it before it's given a chance to grow, "said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA National Executive Director.

"Canadian TV screens are swamped with U.S. programming that private broadcasters are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on to buy and market in Canada. We need our public broadcaster to show more commitment to supporting Canadian production, which is critically acclaimed around the world," added Waddell.

ACTRA has been sounding the alarm about the crisis in Canadian television drama for years, and demands that the CRTC fix its disastrous 1999 Television Policy. ACTRA is calling on the CRTC to set a regulatory minimum expenditure of 7% of broadcaster ad revenues on English-language drama.

You have to hand it to journalists, though. Sometimes when you have only the predictable way to respond, you gotta work hard to find your fresh angle. And -- heh heh -- Rob Salem in the Toronto Star today did a bang-up job doing just that.

Leafs blamed for CBC cancellations

It has not been a good season for hometown hockey wives – real or imagined.

Along with the hopes and dreams of long-suffering local fans, the Maple Leafs' characteristic end-of-season fizzle has allegedly had a devastating impact on the CBC prime-time lineup. Including, oh-so-ironically, the sexy, soapy MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives, whose final episode airs tonight at 9.

A CBC news release issued Friday trumpeted the new and returning series that were being picked up for next year, with the critically acclaimed Intelligence and the freshman efforts jPod and MVP noticeably absent from the list.

Unofficially, the inevitability of another Leaf-less playoffs, expected to cost the national broadcaster some $10 million in potential ad revenues, is being blamed.

Later in the article, Salem does quote the ACTRA position. So what's wrong with it? How did ACTRA get it wrong?

Well, first of all, they're wrong on the facts. Take this paragraph:

The CBC has an unfortunate history of cancelling quality Canadian productions before they have had a chance to build audience share - and without announcing replacements thereby abandoning their audience. Past cancellations include Da Vinci's City Hall, This is Wonderland and The Tournament.

Yes. DaVinci's City Hall was a one-season spinoff/retool of the once-mighty DaVinci's Inquest. The problem is that the show did not invigorate the ratings for DaVinci, which had been on a steady slide for years. Taken together, the two incarnations of DaVinci ran for something like eight seasons and 104 episodes. It went from being a hit of around a million plus viewers an episode to nearly a third that. How is that not giving the show a chance to build audience share?

This is Wonderland was canceled after its third season, with 39 episodes in the can. It was drawing around 300 000 viewers max. How is three years not giving the show a chance?

Intelligence. Now, at the risk of angering the passionate fan base of this show, of which I count myself a member -- there were two 13 episode seasons and one pilot movie. They never did better than slightly over 400 000 viewers, and in the end, the show on the main CBC network was being regularly beaten (as in EVERY episode was being beaten) by the ninth and tenth reruns of Blue Murder on Showcase -- a cable channel in less than half the homes reached by CBC.

We can quibble about ads and advertising support. And believe me, we have. But if you want to try to convince me that ads in every break would have pushed that 250 000 number back up to 700 000, I'm sorry, I don't buy it.

In the case of Intelligence, in fact, I'm afraid we have the most painful situation in the world. A really, really, really good show that the public, for whatever reason, simply did not buy into. That's life. It did get 26 episodes and a movie. And yes, I fully expect we will be talking about it in five years. But you have to ask yourself if ACTRA's position here is fair. DOES the CBC have a responsibility to keep on shows nobody's watching? Well? Um...Why again?

Because people are always gunning for the CBC. "Look no one is watching these expensive dramas," can become, "why are they making expensive dramas no one watches' in a heartbeat.

How can you save Intelligence if you canceled This is Wonderland, which was getting more viewers? What's the rationale there? Everyone's quoting Sophie's last number because it was a huge dip, but that's pretty unfair, since up to then the show has pretty much hit a rock-solid target and stayed remarkably consistent week to week. (And drew about 3 times the audience of Intelligence, by the way.)

There's a problem with campaigns to save our show in Canada, and it's this: they generally don't come from fans. They come from producers and interested parties, like ACTRA. And the act of condemning the CBC for trying to build on successes and cut losses is tremendously alienating to the one constituency that should really matter: The audience.

What does this attitude lead to? Something vaguely like what Jaime Weinman wrote here, (complete with an excellent clip from the Kids in the Hall):

This is dangerously close to advocating that the CBC should be airing series even though nobody watches them, which verges on unintentional parody of the traditional Canadian TV mentality (the mentality that it's not important to have good or popular shows as long as they're Canadian). MVP was a bad series that deserved to be cancelled; jPOD had some potential but not enough to make people like it. Intelligence is a sadder case because it was a terrific show, but its lack of popularity wasn't some kind of myth invented by the evil CBC for the purpose of destroying Canadian content; it really wasn't popular and shows that aren't popular tend to get canceled. If we want a stronger Canadian TV industry we have to accept one of the things that go with such an industry: the fact that shows can't just hang on indefinitely without being successful.

What else did ACTRA get wrong? Well there's this quote, for one:

"It appears that CBC executives don't even understand the basics of marketing and how to support distinctive Canadian programming."

This just takes whatever credibility ACTRA has managed to build up and shoots it straight out the Air Farce's chicken cannon.

Because anybody who actually watches CBC, or takes public transit in the three cities that were heavily targeted with outdoor for the current season can tell you that this winter, CBC's launch efforts were exemplary. Studies showed that people were more aware of their efforts. If they hadn't yet bought in ... they at least had been made aware.

The basics of marketing, at least where marketing of TV and films are done well, proves that you do what you can to support something, but you cut your losses if it doesn't work.

Question: when was the last time you saw saturation ad coverage in the second week of a release for a film that opened at number 14?

Answer: Try never. They pull the money. They cut their losses. That IS marketing.

Because in Canadian TV we're never going to have the money to pay for programs and not run them at all, like they regularly do down south, the closest we can get to cutting our losses is not spending two or three seasons on something the people do not watch. And CBC, finally, has done that. They've made hard choices. ACTRA can say that they were "abandoning their audience" (who weren't watching) by not announcing replacements -- but in the very press release they were responding to, CBC announced that they were going to announce their new shows in a few weeks.

Note to ACTRA: When ABC or NBC cancel a show, they don't immediately announce a new show. It's not a quid pro quo. That's NOT how marketing works.

So long as we keep mixing these things together -- bad calls like, "You should keep these shows that no one watches indefinitely" with "Broadcasters should spend 7 percent of their revenues on production," you're going to hurt the cause of creatives. Because there are a whole bunch of structural reasons why the latter is probably a good move. But if I'm a viewer, and I hear the former coming from ACTRA -- it sounds like Crazy Talk. So I'm going to think that everything that comes from ACTRA is crazy talk.

Because that's human nature, dood.

Alex Strachan's got a much better analysis of the CBC moves here. As does Brioux, here. And then there's Bill Harris in the Sun, here. Do I agree with everything they have to say? Hell no. But at least they seem to understand the medium they're commenting about.

ACTRA, on the other hand...

The Solution In Search of a Problem

OKAY, SO NOW it's on the record:

Bill C-10 fixes non-existent problem

No film with 'criminal content' has ever sought federal tax credit

Mar 10, 2008 04:30 AM

Peter Howell
Movie Critic

The federal tax credit change that sparked a film censorship uproar is designed to fix a problem that has never presented itself, a government spokesperson has confirmed.

Bill C-10, currently seeking Senate approval, contains an amendment that would allow bureaucrats to withdraw tax credits for Canadian films and TV shows deemed in violation of the Criminal Code.

Yet the problem is a hypothetical one, because no such film has ever been presented for tax credit consideration, said Andrew House, a spokesperson for Heritage Minister Josée Verner.

"Canadian Heritage has not received an application for a production containing criminal content," House said via email.

He was responding to questions from the Star regarding Verner's statement last week that Bill C-10, which the House of Commons approved last fall, will solve the "legal absurdity" of films facing Criminal Code prosecution seeking federal tax breaks.

The government's desire to fix a theoretical "absurdity" has prompted strenuous debate over the use of tax laws to censor films, a move critics say would put at risk a national film and TV production industry worth $5 billion annually.

"Mr. Harper's government is clearly responding to a problem which does not exist," NDP leader Jack Layton told the Star. "The Criminal Code is there to deal with any issues that might arise, and none seem to have."

So all this now boils down to the simplest of questions, which hopefully someone at the Senate Banking committee will ask the government this week:

If the problem you say the change in the law is supposed to fix has never once existed, then why is the change necessary? And how can the public be assured that the new, untested powers -- which are apparently completely unnecessary -- won't be used to impose politics on an area of tax law where it has no business being applied?

Or the short version...if there's no fire, then why are you REALLY pulling out the big fucking hose?

When Networks Don't Know What They Want.

JOHN DOYLE in the Globe uses the axing of Intelligence (moment of silence...........there) to posit that "CBC doesn't know what it wants to be."

So, in getting rid of Intelligence, CBC TV has left itself open to the rage of its fiercely loyal viewers. Over the weekend, numerous readers wrote to me, all latching on to the same theme: "Cancelling Intelligence pretty well sums up CBC's decision to scrap this brilliant program." As many of those loyal CBC viewers see it, CBC has simply swapped intelligence for stupidity.

CBC itself was obtuse about the cancellations. "We certainly recognize they were frankly terrific shows and in many cases they attracted quite a degree of critical acclaim, but unfortunately they were unable to attract an audience. Audience is not our only consideration, but it is an important one," the CBC's spokesman told Canadian Press on Friday, speaking about the cancelled shows.

There's the rub - CBC TV really wants to be a big shot broadcaster, just like the commercial channels, and boast about audience success. And there's the problem - CBC doesn't know what it wants to be. A shrink would ask, 'Do you want to be popular or do you want to be smart?' CBC would probably answer, 'Well, popular is not the only consideration but it's an important one.' Then the shrink would tell CBC to make a decision, grow up and quit alienating those who love and cherish it.

It's a good column, but I'd say he doesn't go wide enough. In fact, as I wrote the other day, this isn't just a CBC problem. All the Canadian networks are like this. In CBC's case it's because they're bureaucratic and swing based on politics and management whims (even if I think the current strategy to try and woo under 50 year olds back to the broadcaster is ultimately the right call. If you want a future in broadcasting, I mean.)

CTV and Global, on the other hand, don't really develop enough of their own shows to even HAVE an identity beyond, "what did we buy this fall?" I think that's why they send out so many duelling press releases. They're desperate to prove that the audience prefers them, when really, I think the audience couldn't care less. They've made sure of that by simply being clearing houses for someone else's creativity.

In fact, you could make a strong argument that the only channel with a strong brand identity that knew what it was over the last five years was Showcase. And in the takeover of Alliance Atlantis last year by Canwest Global, they promptly sacked most of their development department. So let's see how they go from here. Fingers crossed.

These disconnects between networks and their core audiences, or even their own development people, aren't even strictly a Canadian thing, though it's probably more acute here because of the lack of development of original shows.

You could argue that the Frankenstein-like creation of the CW from the dessicated corpses of UPN and the WB was disastrous because it took one channel that knew what it was (the WB) and grafted it together with another that was far murkier (UPN.)

One of my favorite shows of the last few years, Love Monkey, was dead out of the gate -- even though the very few reruns have become a big hit in reruns on VH1. Why? It had the bad fortune to be on CBS, a network where it just did not fit.

Plus, ask any genre fan and they'll tell you that the development department at FOX has, for years, been way more ambitious and original than their current department. Fox is famous for developing these really interesting, original shows and then throwing them on the air and abandoning them. (New Amsterdam looks like the latest casualty in this regard.)

In a time when exactly zero eyeballs are guaranteed, maybe a loss leader like Intelligence is appropriate for a public broadcaster.

Then again, between DaVinci and Intelligence, Haddock did have something like nine or ten seasons of shows on the air with the CBC. CBC stuck with Ken Finkleman through series that drew increasingly smaller returns. At what point do you shake it up and try something else?

Intelligence is gone, and that's sad. But we won't know the second verse of this tune for a few more weeks.

In the meantime, I wonder if Showcase has some money to burn? Some of us still really want to find out what happened to Jimmy Reardon.

On Classy Cancellations and Can-Creative Wonkery

IN THE GLOBE today, Mary Leckie's quoted about the demise of CBC's hockey-themed MVP:

"Seventy per cent of the audience was in the 25-54 age group," she said. "I think we created a fabulous brand with MVP. It looks like a world-class show and has been sold to several countries already. I think CBC did its best with the show, but I did think they'd stick with us a little longer. This is a tough business and I can't slam anyone. We move on. "

That, ladies and germs, is how you do that. Note perfect quote. Graceful and upbeat.

It's funny, because the chatter has already started about how this is an unusually decisive move for CBC. Everyone always talks about how series in Canada get two seasons whether they deserve it or not. That's not been my experience, but it says something about CBC -- something good, I think, that they're willing to cut losses and move on with something else. Maybe it means they feel they've got something else in development that might connect more. I don't know. We'll find out in a few weeks, I guess.

The thing about Leckie's gracious quote is that it's sadly, not usually the norm. Engage a Canadian TV reviewer from one of the newspapers off the record, and they'll tell you of the usual response to a bad review -- a storm of drive-by-carping by peeved Producers, whiny writers, and raging relatives of the show creators. I've heard directly from ink-stained wretches who exited the racket because they just couldn't take it anymore.

And yet, without a more honest dialogue about quality, and what it means, how can any of us expect to start forging the only conversation that really matters -- the one with our audience?

I've recently had a drive-by carping over something I wrote about a show. That kind of thing always fills me with despair. We need more people willing to give a quote like Leckie, then shutup, and go back to the tickle trunk and come up with the next thing. That's the thing about ideas, theyr'e supposed to be endlessly renewable, right?

The other chatter that's starting to surface, is the predictable carp of regionalism. Both J-Pod and Intelligence were west-coast based series. I've read at least one analysis already that's trying to fan the flames of "centre of the universe" Toronto vs. "the Left Coast."

Poppycock. Don't buy it. Dollars to doughnuts, expect at least one of CBC's new series, when they're finally announced, to be a west-coaster. I think that's probably a given.

Meantime, this entry sparked a thoughtful reply from nouveau blogger and Canadian Director Ken Girotti (Mayerthorpe, Rescue Me, The Border, Law & Order:SVU)

You bring an interesting point on the "taste" front, Denis. Here in Canada we have been moving toward, what...more "market friendly" film and TV? Well I think that can be read (and certainly is by many) to mean "American style." I just took a look at the pilot for "Sniper" and it's terrific. Hugh Dillon is wonderful to watch. And there's definitely a Canadian sensibility in the theme of (spoiler coming) a sniper making the kill that rocks his confidence and, I'm assuming, will rock his world as the series progresses. But it definitely has a bit of an American sensibility. Lots of gun-porn. Pretty people. And the principal cast was almost entirely white guys. This in a show that's supposedly set in the world's most multicultural city. Perhaps they were making a statement against tokenism...I don't know. But there sure were a lot of white people on the screen.

But I digress. For the American viewer much of what's on offer year after year on the main nets lines up behind itself -I mean it starts to all look the same. One hit gets all the other networks rushing to jump on the thematic, stylistic or conceptual bandwagon. Perhaps that makes the more savvy (or bored) viewer go in search of something different. HBO, FX Networks etc, provide the antidote to that sameness. I guess I worry a bit that the "market friendly" direction we're taking in Canada could become a blessing and a curse. It gets us market share, but at what cost?

I'm an entertain 'em first, deliver the message later guy for sure, and I've spent quite a bit of time south of the border shooting all that filler between commercials. But even down there is a hunger to set things apart. There's less and less an appetite to ape the success stories and a real drive to cut a new path...and this is the vibe I get in the meeting rooms of the network shows I've shot!

If, as you suggest, there's great danger in a supposed difference of taste between here and the country we love and hate to our south, I'd like to suggest that perhaps it's the American viewer whose sophistication may be more highly evolved. If the only shows (I'm being provocative here) we can sell down there, and more importantly, sell to the Canadian viewing public are the ones fit that "line up behind the winner" mold, how can we continue to distinguish ourselves in that 1000 channel universe? Do we need to? Should everything look the same?

And as I suggest, perhaps even more frightening is the notion that the only Canadian shows with a snowball's hope in hell of being successful in their own country are the shows that look and feel (wish I knew how to italicize) American.

I'm just spit-balling here. I guess I'd like is to cling as closely as we can to what makes us different and Terminal City was a show that was just different. It's a grey area, it's completely subjective, but at the end of the day I think the trade off bears examining. Yeah, we want bums in the seats but there's more to making that happen than just putting something up on the screen.

I ranted here before about how little promotion my movie "Mayerthorpe" got. It scored very respectably in spite of that. Watching the Oscars and seeing promos for eps of Housewives and ER which weren't slated to air for SEVEN weeks pissed me off. My movie got a week of promotional attention. One week.

It's a bad hypothetical example because it was on TMN (and you hated it), but here goes anyway: what would Terminal City have done with enough publicity and exhibition on one of Canada's main webs? Hmmmm?

Few housekeeping points above: the "Sniper" pilot that Ken refers to was the original pilot for the CTV show now known as "Flashpoint." I agree that it's pretty great. It shows the aftermath of a shooting and its effect on Dillon's character in a way that I don't think I've ever seen in a U.S. show.

I try to test things on various people to see sometimes if my taste isn't leading me astray. I showed that pilot to a friend who, though they are in the business, doesn't work on hour dramas, and in fact, doesn't watch too many of them - and he agreed it was pretty compelling.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I should also say that the writers of that pilot are two dear friends of mine, and I did a bit of consulting on the show prior to it getting picked up for series by CTV.)

Ken raises, I think, a whole raft of really great questions. They're the kind of questions we all could really tuck into, I think, if we Canadian creatives didn't have to spend all our time responding to crap like this and this. I don't necessarily have a lot of answers to the questions Ken raises. But I know it's a conversation worth having.

Anyway, let's see. I think one of the problems is a lack of precision in what we're really aiming for. Ken asks, "what would Terminal City have done with enough publicity and exhibition on one of Canada's main webs?"

I think it probably would have bombed hard. But that's not the point. Because whether you liked Terminal City or not, to me it just doesn't feel like a big network show. Sundance in the USA is a tiny cable channel, so something like Terminal City or Slings & Arrows can score without drawing big numbers.

To me, part of that branding strategy is: are we, like Ken suggests, trying to create big, American style, broad based network-y hit shows? Then those shows should be marketed and judged like those shows. That was certainly the case with The Border, and MVP.

Or, taking a page from when those dispassionate American critics judge Canadian shows and praise their "different'ness" -- is it okay for CBC or CTV or Global to have a show that's more like a cable show -- character driven, a bit edgier or more challenging? For CBC it's a mandate issue, and for CTV and Global, face it, it's going to always be a, "make the best of something you have to do" issue. There's something to be said if a show attracts interest from a cable channel in the USA. In the USA, cable shows have lower audience number expectations, which are made up for by lower budgets, and hopefully, a metric of success that involves things like a good demographic. No one would claim that AMC scored a ratings Bonanza with Mad Men, but it's back because, though the audience was small (1 million an ep - a very Canadian number) a whole shitload of that one million was people making over 100K a year who like to buy Lexuses and "Talk to Chuck."

There is a certain logic toward aiming for these kinds of cable successes here, even on our over-the-air nets -- because the reality is that that's the budget level we have to play with. Those broad American style hits DO rely on gun porn, and big action set pieces -- four of them an episode, and lots of locations and lots of fast moving hoo-hah. And when we take the field with a "big budget" Canadian show that is less than half the budget of a U.S. show, who are we kidding that we can compete with that? British shows don't. Even a "high budget" British program like Spooks (MI:5) or Life on Mars, has a budget (and an action level) closer to Canadian shows than American shows. And -- here's the thing -- they don't play on U.S. networks either.

But that would require finetuning how we see things and how we market the shows. It would mean not muddling up how we frame things. Global ran The Best Years at 10pm. It wasn't a 10pm show. I read reviews of the show that took it on like it was NYPD Blue. It wasn't. It was a show that ran on ABC Family in the USA. And apparently, that audience responded well to it. But here it wasn't marketed that way. The whole expectations of the show were hopelessly confused. No wonder the audience didn't find it.

I'm not sure that Jpod, even if it was a half hour like it should have been, EVER would have drawn a "Canadian network" big number. It was specialized and weird. But don't you think it's significant that it started to do better when it was moved to a fringe-ier timeslot on a Friday night?

I've been in tons of meetings where the network person references "Six Feet Under," or "Deadwood," or any one of another number of cool, interesting, niche-y shows -- and then in the next breath talks about how the slot they're thinking about is 8pm on a Wednesday and, oh, by the way, it has to draw 800 000 viewers in Canada. Well, there's a profound disconnect there. It's just not got anything to do with the realities of the TV business.

I think what's needed is a consistent project-by-project set of rules and expectations that everybody gets. I think that CTV or Global should be able to say, "we love this project, but this is kind of going to be like our in-house cable show." And then do that show, and when it gets 300 000 viewers, say, whatever, that's fine -- look at the demos... Market the damn thing like, "if you lived in the USA, you'd have to subscribe to HBO to see something like this. But we're the channel that brought you The Sopranos for free, damnit."

I think the CBC should be able to say, "Hey, we love Intelligence, and it only gets 250 000 viewers. And that's fine. Because look at who those viewers are."

Unless, you know, they're not that desirable demo. Then, you know...(slashing motion across throat.)

Right now, nobody has a clear idea of the types of shows they want or how to deliver the shows they ask for.

• Networks have to stop asking for a 4 million dollar per episode show on a 1 million dollar budget, for which they're only kicking in 300K.

• People have to stop promising CSI numbers for a show whose whole DNA is a niche cable show.

• Stars and Producers have to know what to say, and how to say it, so that their show is well-branded. We have to be message-focused, and not see things in print that creates audience confusion about the brand.

Now that the internet means that the numbers for this or that show leak every week, it's just added chum (as opposed to CHUM) to the waters.

We need to line up the material, with the expectations for the material, and carry that through to the marketing of the material, the promotion of the material, and the foreign sales positioning of the material.

In other words, it's time to get into the television business. For real. That's what I think, anyway. What do y'all think of Ken's questions? Rumble in below.

CBC Renewals and Cancellations

FURTHER TO THE JPOD article posted earlier today, comes this CBC press release:

CBC Television announces returning shows for 2008/2009; network achieves record success this season

    TORONTO, March 7 /CNW/ - CBC Television broke viewership records with its
2007-2008 programming lineup. Our season-to-date prime-time share is 7.9, the
highest in six years. In addition, Canadian content on the network has
increased significantly over the last two years, with drama series increasing
68 per cent and comedy series up 41 per cent. This incredible success heralds
the return of several new hit shows from this past season and returning
favourites.
   "This has been an outstanding year for CBC Television," said Kirstine
Layfield, CBC-TV's executive director of network programming. "These returning
shows will be the cornerstone for next season. We'll be announcing our new
shows in the coming weeks."
   Canada's favourite homegrown drama, The BORDER will be back with James
McGowan reprising his role as Major Mike Kessler. HEARTLAND, a heart-warming
family drama based on the international best-selling novels of the same name
is also back after winning the hearts of Canadians. Debuting on CBC to nearly
one million viewers, CBC's hot and steamy co-production THE TUDORS returns for
a second season and the drama continues with the marriage of Anne Boleyn and
King Henry VIII, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The charming comedy series
SOPHIE, picked up by ABC Family, is also back with star-on-the-rise Natalie
Brown returning as the hot-tempered, but loving single mom out to re-balance
her life and priorities.
   Returning comedy favourites include; RICK MERCER REPORT coming off its
best year ever averaging 1 million viewers weekly, LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE
PRAIRIE, THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES, AIR FARCE LIVE, JUST FOR LAUGHS, HALIFAX
COMEDY FESTIVAL and WINNIPEG COMEDY FESTIVAL.
   CBC also continues its legacy of award-winning journalism and
documentaries with the fifth estate, MARKETPLACE, DOC ZONE and THE NATURE OF
THINGS
   Reality fans will see the return of the hit series DRAGONS' DEN, TRIPLE
SENSATION, TEST THE NATION and CANADA'S NEXT GREAT PRIME MINISTER.
   THE HOUR with George Stroumboulopoulos is back with A-list interviews and
his take on world events. And STEVEN AND CHRIS will continue to add a little
bit of fabulous to daytime programming.

So there it is. Not on the list, obviously: JPod, MVP, and Intelligence.

MVP's ratings can't make that much of surprise. And unfortunately, the same's true of Intelligence. Nevertheless, the latter's a show I'll mourn -- a lot. And I'm pretty sure that people will still be talking about that show, and how great it was, a few years on.

And I'm also guessing that like some other Canadian shows of recent vintage, once it starts stripping a lot on Showcase or somewhere, a whole new audience is going to discover it. What a shame.

But, if nothing else, you gotta think that Haddock will be back on Canadian TV screens soon. Can't wait for that.

Congrats to the shows renewed, and to the shows not coming back: hope everyone gigs up soon.

JPOD Canceled

THE VANCOUVER SUN got the scoop, so far as I can see:

It's a shame that the show never really found its feet, though numbers have actually trended up a bit since moving to Fridays. (MVP, which switched timeslots with the show, continues to struggle on Tuesdays.)

JPOD finished the season with a very small story department, and I think half of them are already working on other shows. So producers, hop to it...get a-hiring. And maybe they'll even tell you all the dirt.

Though probably they won't, because Canadian TV writers are all fine, circumspect, God-fearing, peaceloving upright citizens.

From the SUN:

About 150 jPod cast and crew members are out of a job.

Larry Sugar, executive producer of jPod, was shaken by the cancellation. Sugar says the network did not adequately promote the show.

"No other show was intended to meet the mandate of Canadian broadcasters than a show that was written by one of the great Canadian writers," said Sugar. "To not fully support it is beyond me.

"I really love the show, and I think it's as good as anything I have done."

The CBC mounted an online promotion when jPod was launched, including a website that contained blogs of the show's characters and jPod video games.

All due respect to Larry Sugar, but the promotion wasn't the problem here.

Good "Dead Things" wishes to the cast and crew -- hope you all land on your feet soon. Thank heavens at least Vancouver's ramping back up again, post strike...

What Are They Saying in Abbotsford?

WHEN I WAS out West, I learned a very interesting shorthand that I'd never heard before. People started talking about how something would play in Abbotsford.

That kind of stuck with me, and when I got back to Toronto, I looked into it a bit further. What I learned was that Abbotsford, B.C., is a place in Canada where you find quite a few religious conservatives. Not only are they there, but they are, in that very American-kind of way, very active in exercising their displeasure when they see something they don't like.

I talked to people who worked in Audience relations -- at CBC, at CTV and someone who'd worked at Global too. I also polled some of my contacts from the former CHUM, and found out that, if something appears on TV that could in any stretch of the imagination be viewed as too racy or offensive to a socially conservative, (usually) religious sensibility, you're gonna get a bunch o'letters from Abbotsford.

I guess I'd always known that Canada had its own, smaller Bible belt. But you get out of B.C. and we Central Ontarians (as well as people from Quebec and Down East and Saskatchewan I've talked about this with) tend to associate B.C. with permissive and lefty Vancouver. Abbotsford isn't that far from Vancouver, really. But it's a world away.

So to my mind, "What are they saying in Abbotsford?" kind of became like a subjective Canadian version of "How Will It Play in Peoria?"

Believe it or not, most TV writers in my ken are not people who go around thinking, "How can we serve the cause of child exploiting, head chopping, meth smoking gay abortionists this week?"

I mean, most of us really are out to try to craft popular entertainment that will appeal to the widest popular audience. Now, there are always going to be social differences, as well as generational ones. I guarantee you that my boundaries for humor and social acceptability are wider than my parents' generation. That's always the way, right? 1.5 and 2nd generation children of immigrants constantly find themselves striking up against their parents "old country" ways. It's in such a collision of ideas and social mores that change emerges, and societies evolve. "Not for the better!" the old people say. "Shhh, Grandma, I'm watching American Gladiators, ISM'ing my BFF, and downloading the new Tupac!" we answer.

What distorts, often, is that older people have more time on their hands. Usually. They vote more. They follow local politics more. And they write letters. Fundamentalist conservatives, too, are very comfortable being preached to from the pulpit. One of the reasons why religious boycotts are so often effective is because they really can mobilize a lot of people to do something. And traditionally, they're untroubled by the constant self-questioning and splintering that usually comes from any issue from the left. Discipline and an accustomed familiarity with proscribed and absolute rules mean that when those letters come sailing out of Abbotsford, they come in droves. Does this mean that that's representative of a huge groundswell of opinion?

No. Not really. It means that those who are motivated to react, are highly motivated to react.

I'm a guy who, in my every day career really does try not to needlessly antagonize. I like my humor and my material edgy, but I have great sympathy for someone from a more conservative background who wants to have something they can watch and enjoy with their family and not feel uncomfortable by being exposed to stuff they don't want to see.

So I'm not a big fan of shows that really are aimed at a family audience that have jokes that "push the envelope." I don't think that envelope needs to be pushed. In a similar vein, I've argued in a couple story rooms against the use of epithets like "Goddamn" -- not because it's something that shouldn't be said every once in a while...but because, why needlessy antagonize those nice folks in Abbotsford when you don't need to? You can use another word, just as easily. I see this as very different from self-censorship, because I don't really see anything being lost.

Now, there's lots that the Abbotsford crowd would probably hate that I won't compromise on. Like a majority of Canadians, I see absolutely nothing wrong with Same-sex relationships. So even though I know that it's gonna drive those Abbotsford people crazy, I'm not going to restrict myself from portraying gay people as just normal, everyday folk. Sorry guys, that's where your social agenda and mine don't mesh. I fully expect, in those cases, that you'll probably not opt to watch my show. And that's your right.

See, being respectful of someone else's sensibilities doesn't mean capitulation. And the problem with the culture wars as they're currently constituted is that the Abbotsfordians kind of want to be able to dictate what the rest of us can and can't watch.

To reduce it to a T-shirt slogan, there's an actual satirical T-shirt that I quite like, which basically just says, "How Dare I Wear This Shirt In Front of Your Goddamn Kids." At a certain point, you draw a line. And yup, if you say, "I don't want my tax dollars going to support smut. You shouldn't get tax breaks." then my answer's going to be, "I don't want my tax dollars going to support people who preach hate against some of my friends. Your church shouldn't get tax breaks."

Don't you think that maybe the best thing here would be, um, to kinda call it a draw?

Anyhow, I bring up Abbotsford as a way to get around to Ed Fast. Ed Fast is a Conservative member of Parliament for, you guessed it, Abbotsford. A couple of days ago, when C-10 came up in Question period, Fast rose up and said that he didn't think it was a big deal, and in fact, he'd only received one email speaking out against the provisions of the bill having to do with Film and Television.

This sparked, in the 28 000 member Facebook group opposing C-10, a suggestion to write and email Fast about why people oppose C-10. Lots of people took up the cause.

And here's where I have to admire Ed Fast a little bit. He wrote back.

Personally. To every one of the people that wrote in. Now, he said the things that the Conservatives have been saying all along, which I find to be a little disingenuous. He is a politician, after all. But still, that kind of engagement is personally interesting to me.

But even with all that, I probably wouldn't have blogged any of this, except for the fact that today, one of the people who joined in the dialogue in the Facebook group was the eminently good-humored, hard working and logical Maureen Parker, Executive Director of the Writers Guild of Canada. I'm gonna reproduce her whole letter here. She says a lot of the things I've said before, but she says them in that no-nonsense, I've been talking to these guys for a thousand Sundays kind of Maureen Parker way. So, here you go:

Hi Anti C10 Group -

I feel I should get on record just to keep Ed Fast on his toes. Hi Ed! I've spoken with Ed many times and I can say that without a doubt he is my favourite conservative.

Ed makes the point several times that this was initially Liberal legislation and that it is true. In fact, the current Bill contains two provisions that the WGC worked very hard to get - one provision allows development costs for a two year period to form part of the Canadian tax credit and another finally allows all Canadians to see what films and TV shows they have invested in. (Previously we were not able to get confirmation from CAVCO on what productions had received the tax credit.) But we were never consulted or told about new guidelines which would determine which productions are contrary to public public policy. It makes no difference to us as to whether this was Liberal or Conservative legislation - we would have objected to this regardless. The "guideline requirement" was buried in an omnibus bill and it was never brought to our attention nor were we given an opportunity to respond to it. So now we have to ask the Senate to address this.

Now about the public money argument. I am a tax payer and I pay for plenty of things I don't use because I believe in a Canada we everyone contributes to sustain Canadian values - like universal health care, public education, and proper infrastructure and yes, even culture. Sorry, I don't believe in a Canada where individuals can pick and choose where their taxes go. That's why we have a federal government which hopefully supports cultural funding amongst many other priorities.

It is disingenuous to say that the film and TV community can simply go out and use private funding to make their offensive films. In fact it makes me laugh. I started working in this industry during the tax shelter days when dentists invested in film and TV productions in exchange for huge tax write-offs. I have plenty of great stories about those days but just like my youth they are never coming back. The government changed the tax rules and rightly (in my mind).

It costs alot to make a film or TV production - an average one hour drama episode comes in at $1.3m So a tax credit on a 13 episode drama comes to $1.69 million (roughly) - this is not chump change. And this is quite different from the magazine and book industry. In our industry when a producer puts together her financing together she borrows against this amount of $1.69m in order to make the production. Without this interim financing from a bank this show wouldn't be made. So when you introduce subjective guidelines into the equation you put the financing for the whole production in risk. Banks don't want to invest unless they know they are getting their money back.

We are being asked to trust the government and the Department of Heritage to draft guidelines that won't create instablity in our industry. And sorry but we can't do that. We've been told that films like Eastern Promises and Juno are perfectly fine. But that's today and according to Ed.

The Canadian tax credit for film and TV productions is an industrial tax credit. It is based on Canadian labour expenditures and no way is it subjective. Our government designed this years ago to pump money into the Canadian film and TV industry and develop a skilled labour force. And it works. But it won't work if this government introduces inappropriate measures into the tax credit system where they do not belong.

So this is not alot of ado about nothing. Our industry has been hit with one regulatory change after another and uncertain public funding from every quarter. Enough already go after the oil and gas industry!!!

Maureen

Maureen Parker
Executive Director of
the WGC

See? You don't have to talk Nazi or Beijing-style gulag censorship. You don't have to demonize your opponents. All the heat in the world hasn't led the United States any closer to coming up with real solutions in the last eight years. On a subject like this, where the facts, the economic arguments, the law and Canadian values are on our side, sometimes you just have to make the case patiently, and hope for the best. That doesn't mean you can't be passionate. It just means, you know, no Nazi talk, k?

One more thing:

The other thing that happens in situations like this is that a whole bunch of other stuff gets lumped together and folded into the same cause. There's nothing both the right and the left like more than being able to label each other as knee-jerk reactionaries who just follow a script and don't think through anything.

Here's a perfect example of something that some people are trying to roll into C-10 that I don't think needs to be there.

The short version is that Adbusters is an anti-consumerist magazine and organization that has been fighting a lawsuit to try and force broadcast outlets to let them buy time for their anti-commercials, which preach against things like McDonalds and consumerism.

A couple of weeks ago they lost their case. Which I think is perfectly a-okay.

There is a big difference between getting to go on The Daily Show or The Current and air your view about Media Literacy and Buy Nothing Day, and forcing channels that depend on Advertising to also accept your ads that basically argue against the entire capitalist system.

Sorry doods. That's too out there for me.

I've always been of a couple of minds about Kalle Lasn and Adbusters. On the one hand, I think what they do is incredibly necessary. On the other hand, I've always thought they embody a bit of the worst kind of thinking that fuels some on the left: an irretrievably and unforgivably smug attitude that hectors rather than persuades.

The reason why advertising works is because it demonstrates an uncanny ability to tap into people's desires. It seduces.

Adbusters tries to preach to convince you of the other side. But that's never going to work. If you want to get that message across, you have to be at least as seductive and as clever as the industry you're going up against. And I think Adbusters rarely meets that burden.

Authors like Naomi Klein and a hundred YouTube stars make a lot of the same points. But they're packaged in a such a way that the message is compelling and appealing...

...just like the message they're fighting against.

So, to sum up: Ed, good on you for answering your mail. Maureen, keep fighting the good fight, Bill C10 opponents, careful with the rhetoric, and guys, don't try too hard to ride the coattails of this one.

Oh, and read your Naomi Klein. She's the business.

Catching Up on The Why I Got Into This In The First Place

FIRST OF ALL, I don't want to talk about THE WIRE. Shhhh. I have my PVR filling up at home, and I'll just have to wait to hear what happens to McNulty and Bunk and Bubbles et al.

But in this little window between the resumption of the strike-shortened U.S. TV season, there's a moment for reflection and sampling and such. And there's something about a staid, low-key, not-doin-much vacance that puts your sampling gear into high alert. It makes you more open to try stuff. As I work up a few pitches for original material, and research other stuff for an upcoming paid gig, here's what I'm seeing, and liking:

NEW AMSTERDAM

I was surprised by how much I actually dug this. Being able to say, "Hey, that's Proposition Joe from The Wire!" was cool. And you have to love that episode-ending money shot montage of Times Square from the 17th century til now.

Actually, there's a little bit of craft goodness in there, too -- remember that any original series should have the thing in there that only that series can do. No sense demo'ing a pilot that feels like every other cop show you've seen; or every other medical show in the live-long world.

So that reveal for New Amsterdam -- the way Amsterdam has patiently taken a shot of Times Square every year of his existence, is not only a unique thing about the series, it also serves as a great kind of objective correlative of the thing that makes him different: his immortality.

Immortality in characters is something that every writer struggles with. Joss Whedon got lucky in the fact that David Boreanaz's Angel character was such a strong character in early Buffy -- it really sold that part of it. For as much as the adaptation of Interview With the Vampire was pretty good, they had trouble translating that part of Anne Rice's book. Immortality is a very difficult thing to get us all to identify with, I mean, really identify with. We're all terrified and protective of our threescore and ten or twenty or thirty. From Blood Ties to Moonlight to New Amsterdam, selling immortality is a huge challenge. And damn if the latter show didn't find a new and fresh way to sell it that was simultaneously lovely, and a little sad, too.

Oh, and the lead in this show -- I don't know his name, and I'm on vacation so I'm not looking it up, screw it...you do it -- is gold. Immensely likable to men. I'm guessing he's fairly easy on the eyes for the ladies too. I'll be following this show for a few weeks.

ELI STONE

is turning out to be not the show I thought it was going to be. I've dipped in and out of this show since it premiered, and I watched it again last night. Again, the show is largely on the back of Jonny Lee Miller and Victor Garber, who are just money-in-the-bank actors. Seeing Garber in a Hair-inspired musical number brought a huge smile to my face.

The other thing that's great about this show is that it's the best kind of high concept -- easily explainable. If I can relate what this show is about to my sixtysomething parents and have them go, "oh it's kind of like Picket Fences," then that's an interesting step. Not only does the concept seem instantly understandable. (You know why all this is happening, it's not all arcane and mysterious like on Journeyman or Lost) but having that easy and upfront allows you to take the more outlandish fantasy elements and relate them to something more familiar. Oh, and how incredible is Loretta Devine? Man, I must be relaxed and on vacation if I'm giving actors this much credit. Damn, though. Damn. They really do make the show warm, don't they? Writers can't warm up material. Juno without Ellen Page is just a smarmy smart aleck wordfest, honest to Blog, Diablo.

I will never admit this again. Actors. You...um...you're still vain. And uh...you...uh...talk about your thighs too much. There! ha Hah!

(Secretly I'm crying inside.)

Anyway, back to off the top. I've dipped in and out of Eli Stone, so I'm surprised to see that by the end of last night's ep, most of the tropes that they'd set up since the pilot are gone. He's no longer engaged. The news of his aneurism is out. He's seemingly out of the office. I would be fascinated to know how much of this is a retool from the writers' room and how much was planned all along. It seems like they're chipping away at the setting, but I'm not sure what they're reaching for. Guess that means I better keep tuning in.

STATE OF PLAY

is FINALLY, FINALLY out on DVD in North America. If you haven't seen this superb British mini, with Kelly MacDonald (No Country for Old Men,) John Simm (Life On Mars,) James McAvoy (Atonement, Shameless) and the incredible Bill Nighy, get thee to the video store, now. Journalism, Politics, and intrigue in a British stew by the incredible Paul Abbot. Rent it. Do it now. It's even great the second time through.

JOHN ADAMS

is HBO's adaptation of the David McCullogh best selling memoir of the life and times of the second President of the United States. Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, David Morse, Sarah Polley, Tom Wilkinson -- I was lucky enough to get preview discs sent to me of the first four eps, and it's a breathtakingly good miniseries. Smart, incredibly well made. A total winner. I'll have a fuller review closer to its premiere date, March 16th.

All this, and maybe a third season for Friday Night Lights? It's great that the TV news isn't all bad.