Reality Used To Be A Friend of Mine

HERE IS ME and Kate Taylor on Q, about halfway through --after the Jonas Brothers piece.

Ch ch ch ch changes

www.strike.tv Teaser from StrikeTV on Vimeo.

Logrolling for the Weekend

WELL I FORGOT. Apparently I was on Q again today with Globe & Mail entertainment writer Kate Taylor, talking "reality teevee that makes you feel dirty."

Repeats tonight at 10 on CBC Radio.

And there was this nice mention of a show I wrote in NOW Magazine's roundup of 20 years of Toronto Fringe Moments.

16. TOP GUN! THE MUSICAL (2002)
Writer Denis McGrath and composer Scott White cruised into a hit with this laugh-out-loud musical send-up of the hit film, with the gay subtext writ large and the battle between actors’ egos as gigantic as the planes the performers were supposed to pilot. The show later flew south of the border to play at the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

Have a good weekend -- oh, and keep voting on our new CanTV terms - and feel free to submit your own in the comments below.

Can't Stop The Trouble: Gassin' Up For the Weekend

TO THIS DAY, this is the only column I've ever published for which I received an actual, serious threat.

It was pretty creepy. Someone went to the trouble to register a brand new Hotmail account, or to spoof one or whatever, and they wrote to tell me that I should keep my mouth shut or -- and I'm not kidding here -- I would "never work in this town again."

Which is weird, because I got the email on my cell phone when I was in Brampton, and I was like, "Pshaw, whateva, whateva!"

Seriously, though. A threat. Weird.

The narrative used to be easy. It went like this:

"Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows."

That statement was a powerful defence. It's the reason why, in 1999, the broadcasters successfully got the CRTC to relax Canadian Content regulations on homegrown comedy and drama.

Actually, what they did was allow networks to count things like lifestyle shows and light entertainment and reality toward their CanCon quotas. The result, by now, is well known. There were eleven drama series on the air in 1999 on the various Canadian networks. Those numbers dropped by half within a year or so. These days, you'd be hard pressed to find more than one drama or comedy show on any of the Canadian networks at one time or another. The private networks continue to make their money by buying U.S. shows at the L.A. screenings, programming them at the same time as the U.S. networks, to take advantage of their promotional spending and then, as a final gift, the CRTC allows them to substitute their signal over the American networks, so that even if you watch the NBC show on NBC, you're actually watching CTV or Global, and their commercials. Then, they fill out their schedule and CanCon with cheap shows like ET Canada or E Talk Daily -- which they sell as -- and here's the final insult -- a way to promote Canadian stars!

At the time, Canadian creatives tried to make the case that maybe the reason people weren't watching had something to do with a lack of promotion, bouncing the few series they did do around the schedule to accomodate money-making U.S. simulcasts, dumping homegrown series in unflattering slots where they were designed to fail (like scheduling TRADERS for years against E.R. which was then Canada's Number 1 show.)

But the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (the broadcaster lobby group) had a powerful, though passive ally: viewers themselves.

Because they could also point to viewers and hear things like, "Canadian shows look cheap." "They're not good." "There's no one in them that I know."

That's a hard thing to hear -- and unfortunately, it's often true. I'll return to that later.

So how did Corner Gas ruin everything?

By exposing the fracture and fiction points that underpin the laughable toy that is the domestic Canadian broadcast industry.

Read the rest of...

How Corner Gas Ruined Everything

Tour of Trouble Friday Extra: Denis Gets Twitchy

I WROTE A short rumination on the review in the NY Times on the release of the DVD of Twitch City, a show that I didn't enjoy as much as I really, really wanted to.

Don McKellar weighed in, and in the end I think in the end we came to somewhere sweet and accomodating. Seriously. Read it and tell me you don't get the goosebumps.

I'm not gonna excerpt this one, because my thoughts weren't really anything special. The gelt comes in the comments.

Interesting coda, too. One night recently, I'm at the Paddock, as is my wont. I'm talking to John Doyle, who frequents the place too, and McKellar comes over. I congratulate him on Blindness getting into Cannes (it had just been announced that day,) and he basically just blinks, and turns away and has a conversation with Doyle for five minutes while I sit there like Mr. Bump on a log. Seriously, folks, it's glamorous being a writer.

Okay, okay, before I cause more trouble, I know, I know, it wasn't about me. I mean, I hear he's like that. He probably didn't know who the hell I was. I mean, I just got back from the airport right now, and weird thing, true story, I ran into one of my sister's best friends and I KNOW her and I didn't recognize her, so, you know...Whatever.

But you don't know how Daddy cries.

McGrath vs. McKellar: and the winner, my friend, is JESUS:

Twitch City in The Times.

Tour of Trouble Three: On Fanfic (Shudder)

WHY O WHY do I pick on the fanfic people? Clearly a deep flaw in character. I STILL get hate mail about this one.

But to me, the thing about fanfic is ... it's bad. All of it. So close to all of it that, yeah, you might as well say all of it. It's like When Leonard Nimoy recorded albums. I'm sure somebody could make the argument that, hey, you know his cover of...X...actually wasn't too bad. But it doesn't matter. Ed Wood might have very well, in one of his movies, wrung a real human emotion out of somebody and done a great scene. But it doesn't matter.

What matters is the overall impression. And the overall impression of fanfic -- all the fanfic I've ever read -- is that it's puerile, overwrought, florid, hamfisted, tin-eared, illiterate, badly spelled, laughably punctuated, intellectually bankrupt pig vomit.

I'm not sure I've made myself clear enough.

Fanfic makes the Baby Jesus cry. It's snuffed it. Bereft of life, it's gone up the pole and shuffled off to meet its maker. This is an Ex-Genre.

And please, ValP or whatever mu-mu, caftan wearing keyboard ranger who's reading this right now, shuddering with rage at my callous disregard for all the people paying homage - don't send me the good stuff. I don't care. I really, really don't.

A writer, someone who trades in words, is always going to be rankled a bit by bad writing. But bad writing involving great characters that professional writers have worked at, invented, discussed, outlined, drafted, and pored over, is just -- yucky.

I think people trying to repaint Monet's waterlilies are yucky, too, by the way. Hell, I think anyone who tries re-painting Warhol's soup can is yucky, too. I would rather see someone's bad watercolor of the view of the bluejay in their yard than see their bad attempt at the Warhol soup can. I'd rather see their bad attempt at the bluejay than their pitch perfect copy of the Warhol soup can, too.

While we're at it, too, let's drop the intellectual dishonesty on the paying homage front, too. Because that's not the drift of most fanfic. Trying to find a neutral exploration of fanfic in any universe is like trying to find someone who's neutral on the subject of abortion or Israel or Islamic fundamentalism.

Read the rest, it just gets worse:

Wherein Kirk and Spock Make the Man Love With The Cast of Heroes and Jane Eyre pokes Rocky Balboa.

Definitions.

SO YEAH. I was writing a script till 5:30 this morning. I'm sitting here quietly waiting for my concept meeting, emitting random beeps and flutters that has Boy Wonder the story coordinator very frightened indeed.

Not to break into the tour of trouble, but I've put up a new poll on the side there about new phrases that could be popularized in Canadian TV, now that Ivan Fecan's "Reverse Simulcasting" is out there.

A couple of wags wrote in saying it's difficult to choose without having some sort of parameters of definition. Fair enough.

To define the terms, then:

• Mansbridgian - The act of sonorously declaiming something with gravitas which probably doesn't deserve it.

"I heard so and so on the CBC discussing Reality TV in such Mansbridgian terms that I just wanted to hurl." or "Don't you think all the Mansbridgian sturm and drang over the Hockey Night in Canada theme is a little over the top?"

• Gemini-neutral - A show that's either so good, so bad, or so typicaly Canadian that it will either be completely ignored, or win 135 Geminis spread over sixteen nights.

"Have you seen so-and-so's new doc on that left-wing- thing- people-in- Rosedale- care- about? " "I couldn't get into it." "Why not?" "Well, for one thing, it was really Gemini-neutral, don't you think?" or "I'm really hoping that that new CTV show is good and breaks the streak of all that Gemini-neutral stuff they've been doing lately."

• Canwesticular- pertaining to or describing a great bit of shameless spin.

"Did you see the angle so and so is trying to hawk on the C10 thing? Seriously, dude, it's postively Canwesticular." or "It's ironic that Ivan came up with that "reverse simulcasting" thing, because it was a really Canwesticular thing to put out there."

• Finckensteiniable - a position that you feel can be sold to the CRTC.

"I'm hearing that this whole "let's spend more money on homegrown shows thing is having trouble gaining traction because it's not Finkensteiniable." or "The Broadcasters tried their damndest to make their cash grab proposals Finkensteinable, but I don't think the commission bought it."

There you go. Now go vote.

Tour of Trouble Two: Hairy Eyeballs, Hey.

OOH, THIS PARTICULAR Tour of Trouble entry got me a bit of a caning from two writers I much admire, John Doyle and Chris Haddock. (Actually, I think I was responding to Doyle calling me out in his column.) Oh, and now that I reread it, this is also the entry that caught the attention of Tony Nardi, a guy who's put his own "J'accuse" out into the firmament with his "Letters." (Performance pieces about the problems with the Canadian Theatre, Film and TV industries. Go see'em if you get a chance.)

Haddock had some specific criticisms which I subsequently edited into the piece.

And Doyle feels free to continue to call me out when he thinks I've written something a bit arse-ful. And I don't collapse like a little flower at the crit, because hey, Irish blood means a good fight just gets the heart going.

From my grovelling apology:

For where I was unfair and conjectured unwisely, I apologize to Haddock -- and you know, though I've probably just pissed off one of the bigshots in this country, a guy who does have years more experience than me and who I admire, I still don't regret it. But nor do I back away from it.

Cause agreeing with someone, even 97% of the time doesn't mean you gotta agree with them all the time. And I still don't.

But I do count myself as one of those that hopes that Jimmy Reardon gets to get his shot ass out of the doorway of the Chickadee, and that Haddock and the CBC -- however they argue, through the media or in private -- continue a creative partnership that's set a very high bar of quality and a target for everyone else to aim for.

And the rest of it? I guess I'll wear it. If you got a big mouth, you have to do that sometimes.

For the rest, read

The Hairy Eyeball, The Grumps, and The Day The Love Died

Tour of Trouble One: Vegas & The Room

LET'S START OFF the TOUR of TROUBLE with an oldie but a goodie. When I first wrote this, I took tons of shit from people at TV Without Pity or other Internet fans. I still believe every word.

(I'm linking to the original articles here to preserve their colorful comment trails. Comments will be closed on all these posts -- you want to say something, click through to the original post.)

Writers crave approval. They do. It's a lonely job, and it's natural to want approval. But the more I do this, the more I think that professional writers need to insulate themselves from their fan base. It's not just the disasters that ensue when Simpsons or West Wing writers get into dustups with their online fans; it's that the internet's ability to disseminate any little nugget of info renders what would be a small, entre famille feud (Like the LOST spat) into a huge freaking deal that will never go away -- and is picked over obsessively by fanboys who will never understand what they're talking about because they have not and never will be in the room.

When a writer says to another writer about LOST, "they know where they're going," a writer with any experience knows what that means. It means that they have the basics of their mythology sketched out. They know what the major mysteries are and how they will resolve. But the individual details of how A goes to B -- well, the fact that they don't know that yet doesn't mean they don't know where they're going, it's the air that feeds the flame of the creative process.

To say that you have a show where you have every detail of every episode worked out over five years perfectly ahead of time -- well...uh...that's kind of going into Beautiful Mind schizophrenic territory. Of course you don't. Yes, I know that JMS had a five year plan for Babylon 5. But that five year plan was broad strokes, not every freaking detail...that's why he was able to adjust to things like cast departures.

But the problem is that to a fan, they look at TV like they look at a novel. It exists, and if "you're just making it up as you go along," then the moment something happens that they don't like, they ascribe it to desperation or "not having a plan."

In short...there's just no talking to these people.

To read the rest of the post, or leave a comment, click below:

"Why the Room Is Like Vegas."

Trouble!

IN RIVER CITY. That's what we all fear, isn't it? My friends, I've just come back from the Shangri-la land where "you wanna know what I think?" is always a rhetorical question. Where people speak their mind, and, yo, shit gets done!

Before my hellish airplane ride home (Seriously, Air Travel in the USA? It's over.) today I got to have lunch with a lovely old friend down in the Meatpacking District. She, once upon a time, was a publicist here in merry old T.O. And then she jumped ship and made a grand new start of it.

So we got talking, as is the wont, about risk, and the risk averse, and how maddening it can be when no one will say what's wrong, and when chances won't get taken, and when everything seems to be guided by... don't cause trouble. don't make waves. here's why we shouldn't do that.

I swear, we weren't talking about any countries in particular. Nosiree.

It's part of the refrain I've heard from this blog from the beginning. Don't cause trouble. Don't make waves. You can't say that!

Well, almost three years in and the occasional spot of trouble hasn't killed me yet.

All that's the way to say that, um, I'm actually in trouble right now. Crunch time to get a first draft out that has been judged, "not quite up to snuff" (It happens, baby, it happens -- 'specially when you have to write it on set.) So blogging as a priority has once again, slipped somewhere south of "get a life."

But this time, it's not just any repeat posts. Oh no, Chickens. For the next few days, we're going to revisit posts that got me a good hiding. I've often said that sometimes, shooting from the lip means having to walk something back. So you do, and you know what? It's not the worst thing in the world. We're all still here. Better to issue a correction or take your lumps than to never speak up and speak the truths that need saying, say I. Passive Aggressives of the world -- well, no fine, I guess that's okay, you manage to make that work, you really do. Wouldn't be my choice, but I suppose it's fine. It's fine. Yes. Fine.

For those who won't dare to squeak, and for those who just like to see me in pain, today we kick off the DTOS

TOUR OF TROUBLE, or, WHEN THE DEAD THINGS LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE GOING TO BE ME.

These are the posts that sparked the most negatory reaction from readers, or on the net, or from people in the industry, or from my mom, or whatever.

First one is up later today.

I know this might not seem like much to somebody like Henshaw, for whom every post is its own smart bomb, but consider this a good old fashioned warts and all fest.

As Bill S wrote:

Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?/

I bite my thumb, sir.

Enjoy my foolishness.

Oh yeah.

DAMNIT, I ALSO, in my travels, forgot about Canada Day.

Good thing I can just linkslut Jim.

Those of us who work in the story telling trade in Canada are often asked why we stay here. The weather's crappy. Nobody seems to need the tales we come up with and pay you poorly for them when they do.

Writers who become ex-pats often bemoan the fact that more Canadians are exposed to their work after they leave the country than when they were resident. That's hardly ever the motivation for their move, but it's still a truth we all find hard to fathom.

Somehow we're a nation neither comfortable creating our own myths and heroes nor interested in going out of our way to celebrate those that we do have.

Around the time I was going to that first rodeo, my own hero was the Cisco Kid, a Hollywood version of a Mexican Caballero. Nothing about him was remotely "Canadian" but I still thought he was cool. I got my mom to save up some boxtops or coupons from something and sent them off to get my own Cisco Kid coloring book. Another odd choice since the Kid only dressed in black.

Instead of the book, I got a nice letter from the cereal company explaining that the offer wasn't available in Canada. That was the identical experience of another Canadian writer (whose name for the life of me I can't remember) who'd sent off a request for his very own "Captain America" decoder ring a couple of decades earlier, also discovering that it couldn't be sent across the border.

That writer's famous quote went something like. "Not only did they have heroes we didn't, they had codes we weren't able to solve".

Bugger.

WHOOPS. Blame it on hellish jetlag. I managed to miss the late, lamented Robson Arms in its series finale last night.

A great little show that will be missed. Here's hoping the other seasons make it to DVD!

MVP: Thank God The Americans Like It

SO IN THE interest of showing that I don't cherry pick bad reviews, (Still waiting for that guest column, by the way, Aaron,) Lee Anne Goodman has the reaction to MVP in the U.S.A. in a much grander light:

The most surprising American review, arguably, appeared in a recent issue of The New Yorker, the high-brow magazine popular among the intellectual set.

The show "calls to mind such past treasures as 'Dynasty' and almost every other nighttime soap you can think of," Nancy Franklin wrote. "I'm going to sit right down and send Canada a thank-you note."

Mark A. Perigard of the Boston Herald was in agreement: "Not since the glory days of 'Melrose Place' has a soap seemed like such a naughty pleasure," he wrote.

The CBC cancelled "MVP" in March after just a few weeks on the air because the show had failed to attract a large enough audience. But ABC's Soapnet - a cable channel devoted to soap operas - soon bought the rights to the show, and its premiere episode aired on the main ABC network following the daytime Emmy Awards on June 20.

ABC has apparently put its might behind promoting "MVP," including a massive billboard in New York City's Times Square featuring "MVP" star Dillon Casey - an economics grad who studied at McGill University and the University of Toronto - clad only in his tighty whities while clutching a hockey stick.

I must say that my U.S. approval radar goes extra tingly when someone swoons over a TV review in the New Yorker. I love the New Yorker, but come on, that review is like the puckish story they'll run once in awhile where somebody writes, "in defense of championship wrestling..."

And as for the billboard, I've been in Times Square twice in the last two days and I'll be damned if I can find it. Maybe it just lived through the premiere?

None of this changes the fact that I'd be a whole lot happier with lots of Canadian reviews and press when these shows launch in Canada. The Star, The Globe, and one chain wide Canwest article does not a publicity blitz make.

But hey, whatever. Look, the Yankees like us! They really, really, really like us!!!

Ugh.

WGC, The Border, & Wanderings

IT'S SCORCHING HOT in New York City. Which makes the walking to and fro sticky, but the cafe sitting and people watching glorious. And as always, the away leads the thoughts to swirl and move -- promises and ideas and ruminations all stirred together to be applied like tar in the unforgiving heat.

But there's also a couple things I wanted to remind you all about.

The first is for fellow members of the Writers Guild of Canada. By now you should have received your packages explaining the WGC proposal to extend our IPA -- the basic labour agreement between writers and Canadian Producers -- to December 31, 2009. (The current agreement expires Dec 31, 2008.) Jill has details here.

There's a very good reason to extend this agreement now: focus. Over the next year or so there are going to be several key regulatory hearings that promise to reshape Canadian Television and film. We've seen in the past that the bureaucracy in this country don't take the creatives that seriously -- such is the burden of a (nominally) sponsored cultural sector.

The point is that now is not the time to be fighting amongst ourselves. The Producers and Writers have common cause in the next year.

So in return, we've actually gotten a very good deal as incentive: a 3% bump in script fees and production fees across the board for all contracts in 2009.

I urge you to vote yes to the extension, and in great numbers, because a big yes vote shows that we are united, and strengthens our hand going forward. Most of the WGC's membership is concentrated in Ontario, and it seems like my fellow Ontario based writers have, in the past, led in apathy. Let's try to turn that around this time, shall we?

Secondly -- I just remembered that one of my episodes of Season One of THE BORDER, Bodies on the Ground, re airs on CBC tomorrow night at 9pm. If you didn't catch it the first time, now here's your chance to catch a fast paced tale of terrorists roaming Northern Quebec!

Hanson on Canadians and TV

IN THE MIDST of an entertaining profile article about Hart Hanson, Diane Kristine relates this telling quote:

"Part of me is very cranky that I felt I had to go the States to reach a larger Canadian audience. The Canadian audience on Judging Amy or Bones is higher than any Canadian show I worked on, and they were some successful Canadian shows. I don't know who to aim that crankiness at, that I had to become an ex-pat, to live in LA, to reach a Canadian audience. I don't understand it at all."

And that's it, aintit?

Kids, have yourselves a nice weekend. I'm going to New York City. Cause I can. Be safe.

NSI's new Digs

THE NATIONAL SCREEN INSITUTE has launched a spiffed up website that's got an online "Industry Centre" portion. A worthwhile effort to try and gather more information about the film and TV industry (such as it is) in Canada.

Check out the new NSI industry centre here.

"I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."

I KNOW. STILL treading water. But it's Act 5 water at least...

This is funny and wicked and oh so true. Konrad Von? You listening?



H/t to Trevor Cunningham

Travailler pour Moi

WELL, I'M NOW a little over halfway through my first draft for my second episode of The Border, Season 2. I'm also trying to work up some materials for other projects, and just cause I have so much copious free time, I have two days of WGC Council Meetings.

That's a whole lot of travailler. So while I struggle to keep all these balls in the air, why don't y'all just sit back and enjoy le hip hop.

H/T to Mohan



Back Friday at the Latest.

Random Blind Items

DISCUSSED AROUND THE ether in the last few days:

• $2 BILLION? REALLY?
  
  The big narrative around since the end of the WGA strike, and leading up to the chaos of the SAG contract negotiations, is that the WGA strike cost Hollywood "2 Billion Dollars."
  
  Now the same P.R. firms that were hired to pose as "regular people" and bomb comments to Nikki Finke and other blogs and letters pages are out there promo'ing the fact that Hollywood still hasn't staggered back and everything's a mess.
  
  But is it really the fault of the strike? Or is there a connection to the banking crisis in the USA? IE: Lots of the banks that float loans and help finance films have been so decimated by the Subprime thing that they're not playing ball anymore.
  
  So much for the marketplace...
  
  
• CITY-TV bye bye:
  
  For people like me who got a chance to work there -- even in the waning days of Znaimer glory, Toronto's Citytv was a special place. Creative people, working hard as hell, getting paid way less than they were worth, but hey, at least you got to have fun, work with cool people and sometimes see rockstars, or cadge free drinks.
  
  That hasn't been true for years, of course -- by the waning days of CHUM, the uniqueness of the CITY brand had been so diluted that it was a mere shadow. And everybody else, even CBC, had caught up to all the things that set CITY apart -- no anchordesks, hand-held shooting, POV style...
  
  But for anybody paying attention it's been a bad month for a place that used to be innovative. Today, the news that ED THE SOCK's been canned. Yup, it hasn't been a force for years, but still -- it was part of that old sensibility. Same thing with the weekly SPEAKER'S CORNER, the TV show that pretty much anticipated YouTube.
  
  Time was you could land on City and immediately knew you were on something different. With most of that now faded away, the question is how long before they just give up the ghost? What good is a brand if it's meaningless? How long before CityTV becomes RogersTV?
  
  
• KUNG FU: STRONG!
  
  I've still gotta stick my head down and get back to pumping out a draft, but those who actually DO have the time to watch the TeeVee seem to be unanimous -- at least the ones talking to me... John Rogers' LEVERAGE is the awesomeest of the so-far leaked shows.
  
  Enjoy your Hump Day. Tip your waitresses.
  
  
  
  
  

The Bible is Dead

FRIEND-OF-THE-STICKS DEBORAH NATHAN posted the Big Get on the previous Bible thread:

in the WGA-MBA, they are no longer called bibles, they are called formats. I think the change in wording is significant and we should opt for that here. A format is a general blueprint, not a paint-by-numbers document. Perhaps it is time for the WGC to educate the industry and initiate that change in the IPA.

That is, in simple terms, a Rockstar point.

But I don't think it should be something that waits for the next IPA. You be the change you want to make. Henceforth, I'm not gonna talk about Bibles anymore. Ever. When talk comes up, I'll ask for clarification: "what do you mean by a Bible?" And I'll say, "nobody does Bibles anymore." And then later I'll gently suggest, "oh, you mean a format. Oh, yeah, that we can do. Gosh, I thought you meant you expected us to come up with every plot point and beat of the season, and throw it into prose, and write the season before we actually write the season. Which we both know would be ridiculous. I mean they'd never do that down in Los Angeles -- not in a million years!"

Change the language and we change the thinking.

Showrunner, meet Format.

Hey, Reverse Simulcasting, who invited you to the party?