Month: September 2008

The Ex-List Ex-Producer

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Showrunner Diane Ruggiero walked off the new CBS series THE EX-LIST, a one-hour  adaptation of a half-hour Israeli series, and gave Alan Sepinwall of the Star-Ledger all the juicy details (the network and studio told the trades  that they were caught by surprise by her exit). Basically, she got noted to death and didn't like it:

Ruggiero said CBS executives – the same ones she said had claimed to
want her unique take on the material – kept pushing her to stick as
closely as possible to the Israeli show, even though it only ran for 11
half-hour episodes, featured a heroine with no job and no life outside
of her romantic quest, and other issues that would get in the way of
doing a long-running one-hour series.

"They would keep coming to me talking about how they wanted the
Israeli version, they wanted the Israeli version, and I'm going, 'Test
audiences loved the psychic, who was only in one scene (in the
original). They loved her sister; she didn't have a sister in the
original. They loved the flower shop; she didn't have a job in the
original.'

[…]The breaking point came early last week, when CBS hired Segahl Avin,
creator of the original show, to consult on the series. Ruggiero
realized CBS wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than an exact
copy, and she quit.

"I'm not a f—ing transcriber," she said. "Why would you hire me if
you wanted a transcriber? I'm a pain in the a–. I have a specific
thing that I do. If you don't want that, go hire someone else."

Her experience is not unusual. Far from it. But what is a surprise is that she's gone whining to a reporter, which may have felt good at the time but definitely wasn't the smartest career move. Quitting wasn't either…it's better to stick it out until they fire you so you can get paid off.  She's figured that part out already.

In quitting the show this early, she said, "I walked away from all of
the money they were offering me, which was a lot. Now I'm thinking,
maybe I should have tried to get some of that money, seeing as I did
all that work."

[…]"I'll never work at CBS again," said Ruggiero.

And I bet it's not going to be easy at any other network for a while, either.

The First Episode

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There's been a lot of talk about pilots lately — all of it sparked by TV Guide's list of the Ten Best Pilots of All-Time (which was written by someone who apparently thinks TV has only existed for the last decade or so). Now the Elburn Herald has listed some of the worst, many taken from my book UNSOLD TV PILOTS.

For me, some of the best pilots (which led to series) that are not on the TV Guide list are The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In the Family, Hill Street Blues, The West Wing, The Rockford Files, Law & Order, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Hawaii Five-O, Monk, St. Elsewhere,  Crime Story, Murphy Brown, Married With Children, Boomtown, Thirtysomething and Cheers.

Become the Next Norman Lear

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This November, Emmy Award winning comedy writer Ken Levine is hosting another one of his phenomenal SITCOM ROOM writing classes:

With all the writing classes and books around, I realized there’s one thing none of them teach – what it’s actually like being in a sitcom writing ro>Practically all sitcoms are “room written” these days (even single camera shows like 30 ROCK). That’s
when a dysfunctional group of funny, creative people somehow manage,
collectively, to craft a brilliantly funny (or at least not
embarrassing) script while suffering from incredible time pressure and
personality clashes.
[…]I found myself imagining a weekend workshop that gives you the hands-on
experience you could only get in a professional writing room […]A cross between a seminar/workshop and comedy writing fantasy camp.

If you want to be a TV comedy writer, you've got to take this class. There are still a few spaces left, so sign up fast.

The Fine Print of Self-Publishing

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Fineprint
Mark Levine has just published the third edition of  THE FINE PRINT OF SELF-PUBLISHING. I was a fan of the first edition and this one is even better. Particularly useful are the updated and expanded  examinations of the various self-publishing companies, their services and their contracts.

Anybody who is thinking about self-publishing must read this book first.  Even authors who aren't interested in self-publishing will come away, as I did, with a deeper understanding of publishing contracts and what the various clauses actually mean for you.

I strongly recommend this book.

Court Rules in Rowling’s Favor

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Deadline Hollywood reports that a New York court has ruled in favor of Warner Brothers and J.K. Rowling in their lawsuit against RDR books, a publisher attempting to cash in with an unlicensed, unauthorized Harry Potter "lexicon" that drew heavily from Rowling's work. The Judge determined that the book, which he barred from publication, did not qualify as "fair use" and violated her copyright.

J.K. Rowling today issued the following statement: "I took no pleasure
at all in bringing legal action and am delighted that this issue has
been resolved favourably. I went to court to uphold the right of
authors everywhere to protect their own original work. The court has
upheld that right. "

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The New York Times reports that Steven Jan Vander Ark , the creepy fan (pictured on the left) who wrote the book, still lives in a dream world. He told the Times that he'd like to have a chat with   Rowling some time:

“I have been a huge fan of
the Harry Potter series and Ms. Rowling for 10 years; that’s not going
to change,” Mr. Vander Ark said by telephone on Monday from his home in
Brighton, England. “We had a disagreement about the definition of a
particular book. It was a legal disagreement. I would rather that it
wasn’t personal.”

[…]For now, however, Mr. Vander Ark has his sights on his next Harry
Potter project: his book “In Search of Harry Potter” is scheduled to be
released next month. It is a memoir of his travels to locations similar
to the ones described in the Rowling books.

You might wonder why I think he's creepy…beyond the fact that he tries to look like Harry Potter and actually believes Rowling would want to chat with him. Here's an example from the trial, as reported by the Times.

Like a true fan, Mr. Vander Ark treated even Ms. Rowling’s
assertions that he had made mistakes as wonderful revelations rather
than embarrassments.

When [David Hammer, the lawyer for RDR Books] told him that Ms. Rowling
had testified on Monday about the etymology of “Alohomora,” an
unlocking spell, Mr. Vander Ark — who had been sequestered during her
testimony — blurted, “Oh, really?”

In her testimony, Ms. Rowling
said Mr. Vander Ark’s link between the spell and the Hawaiian “aloha”
was “errant nonsense,” explaining that it actually had come from West
African dialect.

“That’s exciting stuff for someone like me,” Mr.
Vander Ark said from the witness stand. “Did she happen to mention
which dialect?”

Any day now this goof is going to tattoo a lightning bolt to his forehead…if he hasn't already.

UPDATE: A reader reminded me of these examples of Vander Ark's creepiness and cluelessness  from the New Yorker:

Last summer, at a “Harry Potter” convention in Toronto, a fan named
Steve Vander Ark made a similar mistake when he dared to compare
himself to Joanne (J. K.) Rowling. “It is amazing where we have taken
‘Harry Potter,’ ” he said to a crowd of dedicated “Potter” fans. Many
readers dislike the epilogue in the final book; Vander Ark urged them
to disregard it entirely, and even invented his own spell to do so
(“expelliepilogus”). “Jo’s quit, she’s done,” he told the audience.
“We’re taking over now.”

[…]From the witness stand, Vander Ark directed beseeching glances
toward Rowling, who was sitting a few yards away, but she slowly shook
her head. After several hours of intense questioning in front of his
idol, Vander Ark broke down and cried.

“I really wish we had had a different kind of meeting,” he said
later. “There were a couple times I kind of gave her a half-smile. She
didn’t smile back.”

Attracting the attention, and the wrath, of his hero is a surprise for
Vander Ark, who at the age of fifty maintains the air of a serious
child, with a mushroom-cut head of hair parted in the middle. A
self-described “massive ‘Star Trek’ fan,” he wrote a book, in the
nineteen-eighties, called “The Complete Encyclopedia of Star Trek the
Next Generation Season One,” and sold forty copies.

That's 40 more than he's going to sell of his Harry Potter Lexicon.

Airleaf Reborn?

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Bonnie Kaye, who was a key player in the demise of the Airleaf vanity press scam, is now leading the charge against Jones Harvest Publishing, a sleazy vanity press run by Brien Jones, a former Airleaf exec (who is also doing business as Author Celebrity, Starred Review, Great Concept Books, Book Wheat  and Author Profile, to name just a few).

She has launched JonesHarvestFraudVictims, a blog for people who claim that they've been swindled by Jones. She writes:

In the aftermath of Airleaf Publishing's demise, the former Executive
Vice President, Brien Jones, has "re-invented" this system all over
again in his own publishing business.  Although Mr. Jones swore he was
not the man to be blamed behind Airleaf's fraudulence, the
investigation conducted by a number of members of the Airleaf Victims
support group has proven that this is not the case. Mr. Jones was no
innocent victim of Airleaf fraud as he proclaims like the authors who
bought their worthless promises—in fact, he perpetuated much of it.
According to a dozen ex-employees, Mr. Jones was the mastermind behind
the worthless promotions of Airleaf that he was pitching.

Brien Jones has cast himself as an innocent victim who is being trashed by "baseless and vicious attacks from competing publishers," even though his critics aren't publishers at all.

I was an employee of another publishing company and despite being
called the “mastermind” of this operation I was not in charge of
anything at all. I never had access that company’s check book, company
credit cards, accounts payable, or accounts receivable. I never saw a
bank statement, not one time. Most amazing of all, I was not allowed to look at the mail!

I also had no information, none, about book sales. Despite nearly constant pleas I never had any clue how many copies of client’s books were sold.  I had no clue how many of MY books were sold, even though I had to pay out of my pocket (just like the other authors) to print them! I DO know that I never got paid a percentage of any book sales, including my own.

[…]When
I left that publishing company it was up to me to decide how much of
the responsibility was mine. I decided I deserved my fair share of the
blame. So I sent out apologies. I published 30 books for free
(including the crusader’s), and 30 more at our hard cost. I also used
and use the same vendors that got stiffed by my former boss. In other
words I have done all I can to atone for my role in that other company.
Since many of our client’s now were clients there, I guess we must be
doing something right.

That's one way of looking at it. Another would be that he's suckered the same suckers again using the same schemes that worked so effectively at Airleaf (which seem primarily targeted at senior citizens). He's not the only one who has seemingly gone back to the Airleaf playbook for inspiration. As Writer Beware notes:

Airleaf has spawned several publishing enterprises run by ex-staff–including Fideli Publishing, a fee-based publisher whose marketing packages bear an eerie similarity to Airleaf's, and Brien Jones's Jones Harvest Publishing,
which also charges fees for publishing and offers many Airleaf-style
services (Writer Beware has gotten some advisories about Jones
Harvest's email solicitations,
and Mr. Jones has recently chosen to reimburse several Jones Harvest
authors who alleged performance problems). If you trace the family tree
backward instead of forward, you arrive at the Big Daddy of POD vanity
publishing, AuthorHouse, where Brien Jones was employed before he
co-founded Airleaf's predecessor, Bookman Marketing. It's a tangled web
indeed–which, sadly, is not unusual in the murky world of vanity POD.

Sadly, many of the desperate, and insanely gullible, aspiring authors who were swindled by Airleaf learned nothing from the experience…and have gone running from one vanity press scam right into others.

Kaye organized over 450 scammed authors against Airleaf and succeeded in getting the Indiana Attorney General to shut the company down. I wonder how many victims she will rally together this time…

My Further Pulitzer Adventures…

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Because time is not my friend, I quickly followed "Paul Tash's" Important Instructions for securing my surprising and unexpected Pulitzer Prize nomination.  He asked me, on his very impressive Columbia University letterhead, to write about the hardships that went into my reporting, why my article is so very important, and a brief bio. There's just one problem. I haven't written any articles lately. So I stole one from the Weekly World News that was written by somebody else and lied about how I came to write it. Since "Paul Tash" isn't the real Paul Tash, I'm sure he won't mind if my article isn't mine. Here's what I wrote to him (note my intentional miss-spelling of his name):

Dear Mr. Nash,

I am so glad to hear from you because I was beginning to suspect that
no one appreciated the global ramifications of my reports simply
because they weren't published in a "major" paper. It's so nice to know
that you were aware of my stories and appreciated their significance
and journalistic merit! I have attached the requested materials and
eagerly await your reply.

The rest of my material follows after the jump:

Read more