In the Trades Today

TV Review: The Best TV Shows That Never Were
Fri Aug 13, 2004 02:06 AM ET

By Marilyn Moss
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – It’s not a new idea, but it’s still a funny one: to sew together a slew of “almost made it” pilots that never hit the air and until now would never have been missed or mourned.

But now, in this hilarious (not to mention educational, in the funniest sense of the word) one-hour compilation of never-was, never-happened pilots, we get a treat. “The Best TV Shows That Never Were” is must-see TV.

The hour is divided by genres, of course, such as the crime show, the sitcom, the drama. We open with detective crime series that never made it, and we see Dennis Franz riding a horse (and not too well at all) in a failed pilot (are you ready?) called “NYPD Mounted.” That one rode off into the sunset really fast. Then we find out that a detective drama called “Bunco” never made it off the assembly line because the network, which like all the others remains nameless, thought its two stars, Robert Urich and Tom Selleck, could not carry a show.

We also find Marilu Henner, post-“Taxi,” starring as a woman just released from a mental institution who ends up running a television station (this one’s a comedy, of course). Let’s not forget John Denver as a singing detective in another lost and sterling television creation. The list goes on, and tuning in is highly recommended.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

The DGA reports that TV drama series producers have notched a 61% improvement in delivering scripts on time.

The percentage of on-time scripts for single-camera one-hour dramas had increased to 61% for the 2003-04 season, up from 47% in the previous season. The DGA also said the proportion of scripts delivered more than two days late had been cut to 23% from 41% and the number coming in five to 15 days late dropped to 8% from 20%.

By “on time,” the DGA means having a script ready for the first day of pre-production, aka “prep.” Episodic TV directors have seven days to scout locations, cast actors, etc. before beginning the actual shooting of their episodes. It doesn’t seem like a lot of time when compared to features… but in TV shows, the majority of actors are already in place (the regular weekly cast), the major sets are already built (the standing sets, like the hospital in ER), and the production team is already a well-oiled machine. But if a director is new to the show, a week can seem like precious little time… even to a director who has worked on the show before, it can be tight.

It’s even tighter when the script isn’t ready for prep. Not only is the director screwed… so are the location scouts, the wardrobe department, the production designer etc… everyone is pressed for time and can’t possibly do their best work.

But mostly, it’s terribly unfair to directors. Because when the director delivers their show, and its mediocre, nobody at the network or studio is saying “yeah, well, he only had four days to prep.” The director gets the blame… and everyone conveniently forgets he was sabotaged from day one.

And I’m saying all this as a producer who just delivered a script one day late for prep.

Guild said the writers for eight series — “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Law & Order,” “The District,” “JAG,” “Judging Amy,” “She Spies,” “Hack” and “Strong Medicine” — delivered all scripts on time in 2003-04. “Six Feet Under” was the only series to deliver all its scripts on time in 2002-03.

Guild also singled out “Ed” and “The Gilmore Girls” as not delivering a single script on time and pointed to five other shows — “Charmed,” “Everwood,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “NYPD Blue” and “The Practice” — as delivering more than 70% of their scripts late.

The number one priority of any showrunner, I believe, is the make sure a shooting script is ready on the first day of prep. Ideally, the teleplay should be in well before prep, so all the department heads … casting, production design, wardrobe, etc… have plenty of the opportunity to do their best work and to be thinking about the episode even before the director arrives. You get better guest stars for the parts if the casting director has two weeks instead of one to find the right actors for the role…if the location scout has an extra week to find best places to shoot… if the set designer has the extra week to create interesting sets. You get the idea.

There are times when events beyond a producer’s control make it impossible to deliver a script on the first day of prep… one of your stars takes ill, a storm makes it impossible to shoot an “outdoor” episode outdoors, the network re-arranges air order of the episodes at the last minute, etc. Inevitably, on every series I’ve been on, at least one or two scripts are delivered late.

It’s quite common on the first season of a show for scripts to come in late. Everything seems to be conspiring against delivering the scripts on time.. a late-pickup from the network, last-minute staffing and especially, the creative process as a show “finds itself” while being battered from all sides by notes from the network, the studio, the stars. Plus, it takes some time for everyone to learn how to work together, to discover the unique production problems inherent in your show. It can take a while for a new series to get settled, creatively and from a basic production stand-point.

But after a show has been on a season or two, there’s really no excuse for 70% of the scripts being delivered late. “NYPD Blue,” “Charmed,” and “Law & Order SVU” have been on the air for years… with relatively little staff turnover. You’d think they’d have it down by now. I can’t imagine what their excuse is. (And in the case of “SVU,” they aren’t waiting around for a back-nine pick-up, they already have a multi-year renewal, they can bank scripts well in advance)

The lateness of “Gilmore Girls” and “The Practice,” I would guess, has more to do with the fact that most of the scripts are written or rewritten by one showrunner (ie David Kelley on “The Practice”) who is stretched too thin. This, to me, is a big argument against the “writer-auteur” in episodic television… unless, like British TV, all the scripts are written well before production begins.

I’m glad to see there’s been a concerted effort in the industry to deliver scripts in time for prep — it’s good for everybody.

I’m a big fan of Discovery’s AMERICAN CASINO reality show… and one of the major “characters’ is Michael Tata, the nasty, back-stabbing, scheming 33-year-old vp of hotel operations at Green Valley Ranch Casino. Today, Variety reports that Tata was found dead in his home. Now there’s a twist the producers never imagined.

Tata was often shown feuding with hotel manager Ninya Perna as they sought to maintain the hotel’s high standards for VIP guests. Production of the series is ongoing, and the sixth of the 13-episode run will air Friday. Discovery wasn’t sure if or how it would pay tribute to Tata in an upcoming episode.

If Tata was murdered, and if this was a scripted TV show, Perna would be the obvious suspect, but my vote goes to the mousy exec Tata humiliated in a meeting by calling him “a human toilet who lets everybody shit on him.”

The staff of the Green Valley Ranch has hardly come off well in this series….the casino execs would have to be insane to participate in a second season of this show on their property, especially after this. But the big question is, if the ratings spike, will other reality shows knock-off their most-hated “characters?”

Many years ago, when I was a supervising producer on Seaquest, we had a wildly enthusiastic story editor on staff who was justifiably frustrated by the scientifici silliness of our show. He was Naren Shankar, and I was thrilled to read in Variety of his recent success…

“CSI” scribe Naren Shankar has been upped to exec producer of the top-rated crime drama, inking a new seven-figure, multi-year deal in the process.
Shankar has been with “CSI” the past two seasons, most recently as co-exec producer. Deal with CBS, Alliance Atlantis and Jerry Bruckheimer Television is expected to keep the scribe with the show through May 2007.

“CSI” exec producer-showrunner Carol Mendelsohn — already at work on the fifth season of the Thursday-night blockbuster — said Shankar fits in well with “all of us on the show, who are preoccupied with death and murder. And he brought his own warped sensibility with him to the show.”Shankar also adds something else to “CSI” not usually associated with drama scribes — a Ph.D. from Cornell U. in applied physics. Scribe started out his showbiz career as a WGA intern and, later, a science consultant on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

So you can imagine what it was like for him writing on a show where the characters included a talking dolphin and a guy with gills. Still, he gave it his all… doing his best to make the show as good as it could be… against insurmountable obstacles (like, for instance, the concept of the show). Naren wrote arguably the best episode of the season, “Good Soldiers,” which revealed that goody-goody Capt. Bridger (Roy Scheider) was, in the past, the equivalent of a Nazi concentration camp guard who turned his back on horrific abuses.

It’s great to see nice guys… and friends of mine…doing so well!

Saw this headline on Variety.com and had to laugh…

Downsizing a super-sized deal

McDonald’s hungry for bugger studio pic promos

I’m assuming it’s a typo…

DMX charged with attempted theft of a car
From Reuters

After they drove through a tollgate barrier, the men were arrested by airport police, the spokesman said.

It just keeps getting better…

A week after Peter Bart wrote about how he would have protected Michael Ovitz from ruining himself if the ex-agent had given his interview to VARIETY instead of VANITY FAIR….the VARIETY editor writes today that:

After 15 years of editing Daily Variety, I will regrettably admit the following: I do not believe every word that’s published in my own newspaper.

Join the club, Pete.

He blames the problem, like Brian Lowry did few days ago, on people lying to his reporters. He forgets to mention his own questionable journalistic ethics, which he presumably imposes on his staff. Here’s a gem from the controversial Los Angeles Magazine story on him a while back..

He may hate it when people lie to his reporters, but apparently he doesn’t mind lying to reporters himself, like this whopper he told the LA Magazine writer….

Consider what happened when we discussed the infamous Patriot Games incident of 1992, when Variety film critic Joe McBride wrote a blistering review of Paramount Pictures’ Tom Clancy adaptation. The studio, apoplectic over the review’s potential dampening of interest among overseas exhibitors, pulled its advertising from Variety. Bart got mad, but not at the studio. He decreed that McBride would no longer review Paramount films.
The New York Times wrote a story about the McBride dustup that said Variety staffers were aghast that their boss would curry favor with Paramount. The article quoted from a private apology that Bart had sent to Martin S. Davis, the studio’s then chairman and CEO. “Marty Davis and I have known each other for 25 years,” Bart told the Times. “I simply dropped him a friendly note.”

Nine years later, however, when I first ask Bart about the note, he insists it never existed. “I never wrote any,” he says, adding that he disliked Davis intensely, so “the idea that I would contact these people was bizarre.” How to explain the Times story, written by veteran reporter Bernard Weinraub? “It was a reminder to me about the nastiness of journalists toward each other,” Bart says, shaking his head.

A few weeks later I obtained a copy of the letter. Bart’s lie didn’t make sense. Had he forgotten that it was typed by his own secretary on Variety stationery?

Perhaps its embarrassing revelations like this that has inspired his policy of letting some interviewees change their quotes before publication (as he offered to do for Ovitz, as he admits in last weeks column)…

People who have worked with Bart say he would call his favorite sources–Guber, Ovitz, Weinstein, Evans, producer Arnon Milchan–and vet stories that mentioned them, letting them make adjustments. When confronted by the reporters whose bylines topped the altered stories, Bart would say he got better information after deadline. “This is my paper,” one remembers him saying. “I’ll do as I please.”

No wonder Peter Bart doesn’t believe what he reads in his own “newspaper.”

On Tuesday, Variety editor/publisher Peter Bart wrote that Michael Ovitz made a fool of himself in his controversial interview with Vanity Fair… if Ovitz had talked to Variety instead, Bart would have made sure that Ovitz came off well. Bart’s column article explicitly stated what everyone already knows about Variety: that it won’t publish anything that might upset anyone with power in the Industry.

The very next day, in the same space that Bart revealed that the magazine had no journalistic integrity whatsoever, Brian Lowry had the gall to whine about how wrong it is for publicists and execs to lie to Variety reporters.

Leading the pack were the folks at Comcast and E!, who not only insisted for weeks that network prexyprexy Mindy Herman wasn’t going anywhere but were positively indignant that anyone would suggest otherwise — right until they announced her departure.

In similar fashion, Viacom president Mel Karmazin stated as recently as five weeks ago that he had no plans to leave the company — after endless gossip about his fractious relationship with chairman Sumner Redstone — before the rumor finally became reality Tuesday.

This casual relationship with truth — down to the Clinton-esque parsing of words like “is” — might sound like no big deal, especially when it comes to fending off pesky reporters. Yet I’d argue there is a potential price to be paid.

Why should anyone at Variety care? (For one thing, they never reported… as the LA Times did… about Mindy Herman’s questionable behavior at E!) Had Ovitz talked to Variety, would we have read a true account of what he said? No, because unlike Vanity Fair, Peter Bart would have sanitized what he said…for Ovitz’s own good. Did Bart care about the truth? Of course not. He cared about preserving his relationship with a powerful industry player. Why? Because the over-riding journalistic mission of Variety is to make sure the studios keep buying self-congratulatory ads in their publication.

That’s why you’ll never read anything even remotely approaching actual, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-dig-deep reporting in the pages of Variety.

More significantly, this comes when trust in the media and particularly the press has been rightfully shaken. Part of that stems from transgressions by reporters — the New York Times’ Jayson Blair, the New Republic’s Stephen Glass, USA Today’s Jack Kelly

Where’s Brian’s out-rage about Peter Bart’s admission that he would have protected Ovitz? About Bart offering Ovitz the opportunity to vet his quotes before publication?

Bart’s column certainly shook my trust in Variety, not that I had much to begin with.

Early in my reporting career, I remember asking a source about a rather unpleasant rumor that was making the rounds. “See, I’m never sure when I should lie to you,” he said, to which I responded: “That’s easy: Never — at least, if you want me to believe you ever again.”

All this brings to mind a favorite scene in “Excalibur,” where Merlin tells nasty King Uther why the world has caved in around him. “You betrayed the Duke, stole his wife and took his castle,” the wizard hisses. “Now no one trusts you.”

The same could be said about Variety.

Brian Lowry should read Peter Bart’s column … and then he might realize why its laughable for anybody at Variety to whine about not being told the truth.

In Daily Variety, editor Peter Bart talks about the disappearance of Michael Ovitz… as if anyone misses him. But the most interesting thing about the article is what it reveals about Variety’s editorial policy.

I argued that Variety would lend him the audience that he most wanted to reach, including, no doubt, some of the people he perceived as having brought down his company. Our paper would certainly not endorse Ovitz’s charges, but we could offer him a chance to vent. The decline and fall of Michael Ovitz, after all, was a damn good news story.

Understandably, he responded that Vanity Fair offered him a vastly wider audience. Over lunch at Ago one day, I decided to try one last tactic. “Look, Mike,” I said, “you’re out of control. You’re saying some wild things.”

“They’re all off the record,” he protested. “You and I have known each other a long time. I can speak freely…”

“If you say these things to Vanity Fair, they’ll kill you. If you want to do an interview in Variety, I will see to it that your direct quotes will be read back to you so you can verify their accuracy. You can’t, of course, read the article ahead of time.”

In other words, if Ovitz talked to Variety, they’d protect him, they’d make sure he wouldn’t say anything he’d regret later (how reading his quotes back to him is any different than reading him the article ahead of time is beyond me). The Ovitz-vetted article they would have written wouldn’t have been the scathing expose Vanity Fair wrote, it wouldn’t have truly depicted the “damn good news story” of Ovitz’s rise and fall. Bart would have seen to that…

A few days later I got word that he’d decided to talk to Vanity Fair. Predictably, the story contained all of the Ovitz “crazy talk” — the paranoid diatribes about the “Gay Mafia,” plus accusations against Eisner and against his lethal enemies (and former proteges) at CAA. “They wanted to kill me. If they could have taken my wife and kids, they would have…,” he ranted.

The net effect of all this was inevitable: Ovitz had punched all the self-destruct buttons it was possible to punch. He had instantly isolated himself from his Hollywood power base. He’d totally blown it.

In seeking out his story, was I trying to protect Ovitz from himself? I suppose so, on one level.

Gee, I wonder if Pete would do the same for me… or anybody else in The Industry who doesn’t have $100 million in his checking account. The editorial policy at Variety is clearly to kiss up to execs and stars and not say or do anything that could possibly offend or embarrass anyone in a position of power. Remember, Bart used to run a studio himself…and no Variety reporter wants to damage their chances to become a screenwriter or studio exec.

This is why nobody takes Variety seriously…and why the only real reporting about the Industry is done in the LA Times business section. There was a time when Variety was more than just a collection of press releases… when they did real reporting. But that time, sadly, seems to be long gone…

(If you want a clear example, just compare the stories the LA Times and Variety ran about Mindy Herman, the ex-CEO of E!)