Reboots of classic TV series are all the rage now. Here are the original main titles sequences of eleven popular series…and the opening themes of their re-imagined, re-booted, and sometimes regurgitated reincarnations.
Stella Green is one of my wife’s closest friends. Stella showed me the manuscript for her novel Awakening Snakes. The book was great, and her voice was so strong and self-assured, that I couldn’t believe it was her first novel. So it was a no-brainer for me to offer her an assignment writing the 21st Dead Man novel. Her novel, The Rising Dead, has just been released by Amazon’s 47North imprint…and is the final “regular” installment in the bi-monthly series before the series returns with REBORN, a big Dead Man Amazon Kindle Serial that’s coming in early 2014. Today I invited Stella to talk about her experience writing The Rising Dead…
When Lee asked if I wanted to write a Dead Man book, I wasn’t sure I could write an action book, but I certainly wanted to try. Who doesn’t like stories with tortured characters battling evil, especially when the bad guys are rotting from the inside out?
My biggest hurdle came quickly — the plot. A detailed outline was something new for me. Of course, this type of planning is absolutely necessary in a book series with multiple authors. Unfortunately for me, the group of fine writers that proceeded me had already put Matt Cahill through many varieties of Hell. Most of my ideas were shot down because they were similar to those of other writers who were in different stages of finishing their books. Some of my other inspirations were, well, let’s just say Lee wasn’t feeling them — especially the ones with pirates. Working with someone else’s characters is quite different than working with your own. You have to respect the world they’ve created. After a few weeks of flailing, I wondered if I was ever going to get it right, but Lee didn’t give up on me. Eventually something better came along: the Stranger.
I liked the idea of a character who had lived a dark and difficult life — like Matt Cahill’s — for hundreds of years. A person would either go mad or become extremely hard. During drives through the desert between Los Angeles and Phoenix I’ve seen dangerous looking drifters. They make me remember to lock my car doors; they also make me wonder what their stories are. I began calling my character the Stranger because I hadn’t decided on a name. Later, I realized he had worked hard to isolate himself and become the unknown, so I let him stay The Stranger.
Lee and Bill were open to a new character, and with their help, I finally had that detailed outline. The actual writing flowed. Now I understand the value of all that prep work.
So I think I’ve finally got an angle on those pirates that Lee is really going to love…
In the mean time, here’s more on my novel The Rising Dead. I hope you like it!
Matt Cahill was an ordinary man leading a simple life until a shocking accident changed everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that exists within our own. Now he’s on a dangerous quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become…and engaged in an epic battle to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.
In the blasted hell of the Arizona desert, Matt hitches a ride with a young couple who meets a terrible fate that he’s powerless to stop. The bloody encounter leads him to a mysterious stranger with a terrifying history…who may know the reason for Matt’s resurrection and hold the key to finally ending his lonely quest. But first they must survive in an unforgiving wasteland to do battle with a gang of heavily armed smugglers who trade in human flesh.
Everybody thinks their life is a movie or TV series. That’s why every screenwriter I know gets unsolicited emails from strangers urging them to write their life story because it’s so unique, tragic, bizarre or compelling. And then you get pitches like this from “Louis”:
Hello I hope you can help in putting my story into script,hopefully into film ,story starts 1970,to 2013
Story starts out in holland amsterdam goes all over the world in the magic bus trade,,,if you know what I mean
Had real estate company family friends all over the world then paridise would tumble over the years
All with brotherhood and company of peace and love ,along the lines of mr nice ,,story our story
Has more action the good bad and unfortunate circumstances,, that’s life I hope to hear from you
Cheers
Yeah, that’s life, Louis…but not one you’ve given me or any other screenwriter a reason to care about. There’s no hook. You haven’t sold the one thing a writer cares about — the story. Everybody has a life, what makes yours so special that a screenwriter would devote a year or more pitching and writing it, that would make a studio spend $30 million to produce it, and that would make a moviegoer to pay $15 to see it?
Apparently, I am in the business of writing books and TV shows and giving them away, at least judging by the mail I’ve received this week. Here’s one about my book Unsold Television Pilots 1955-1989.
Hi Mr. Goldberg,
Thanks for producing an excellent book on a subject that is ignored. Question: Is there another book that adds to this edition? If so could you send me a complimentary copy? Thanks for your time.
I haven’t written a sequel. But even if I had, what makes him think I’d send him a free copy? I guess the same thing that makes this Monk fan think I’d answer his request:
I love your Monk books but my library doesn’t have them all. They are missing Mr. Monk is Miserable, Mr. Monk on the Road, Mr. Monk on Patrol and Mr. Monk Gets Even. Please send them to me at XYZ so I can read them.
Clearly, I’ve been working under the mistaken impression that the way this writing business works is that I write books and that people buy them. Maybe it’s all those free ebooks on Amazon that makes readers think that authors are just in this for fun and make money some other way.
I’ve been having fun with these TV theme posts. So here’s another one. There have been a few shows that began with instrumental themes…and then added lyrics to them…or that started with theme songs and then later dropped the lyrics. Here are five examples:
I had such a great response to my post 12 TV Shows That Changed Their Themes that I’ve collected fourteen more examples of shows that scrapped one theme tune for an entirely different one.
I love TV themes. The best ones become iconic, part of our cultural fabric… like Hawaii Five-O, Peter Gunn, Star Trek, The Addams Family and The Brady Bunchto name just a few. But several famous shows completed scrapped their opening themes… some early on as they were finding their way and some later in their runs to revitalize the series. Here are 12 examples (three of them shows that I worked on):