Film and Television

I was in middle of pitching three TV series ideas when the newly minted network exec – formerly a lawyer, rock musician, accountant and personal trainer—interrupted me.

“You have no clue what makes a good TV series concept,” the exec said. “And your pitches suck.”

I smiled. “But does the rest work for you?”

“You want to hear a pitch? This is the perfect pitch, I just bought it.” the exec continued. “There’s a cop. He’s a rebel. He’s a rogue. He doesn’t play by the rules. He’s also an incredible slob. He’s teamed up with a new partner who’s a stickler for the rules, a team player, and a neat freak. His new partner is…a dog.”

I stared at him. “A dog?”

“A dog,” he said proudly.

“Does the dog talk?” I asked.

The exec’s eyes lighted up. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

A good friend of mine, Terry Winter, writes for the Sopranos. He’s a very funny writer, and not surprisingly, writes the funniest episodes of the show. Despite best-known for running the Pines Barrens episode last season. Anyway tonight he wrote episode that was pure Terry. Besides being damn funny, it was full of TV references. Including nods to that’s life, which was written and produced by former Sopranos writer Frank Renzuli, as well as Nash Bridges, which was written by John Wirth, who Terry also worked with. There were also some sly references to law and order, Dick Wolf, and Rene Balcer. There was also a clip on the TV in one of the flashbacks to episode of Cannon — and it wouldn’t surprise me if David Chase worked on it at one point in his early career. In an episode a season or two ago, Terry had junior watching diagnosis murder. I still can’t figure out why Terry didn’t use a clip from the episode he wrote for us!

From the Evening Post

Rebus show killed off by ITV bosses

A spokeswoman for ITV said: “Four episodes were commissioned and they did very well. But we are not obliged to make any more.”

In other words, she’s saying the show sucked. I don’t disagree. I’m a huge rebus fan and I was really looking forward to the series. But John Hannah was miscast, the direction was flat and the scripts didn’t capture the feel of Ian Rankin’s wonderful books at all (it reminded me of the lousy Blood Work adaptation…it, too, sounded so good on paper and was so bad in execution). It wasn’t the Inspector Morse/Nero Wolfe sort of adaptation all of us rebus fans were waiting for. I hope they try again — with new writers and a new star .

This is a true story:

I was working on Murphy’s Law, a light-hearted detective series starring George Segal as an insurance investigator when I got this call from the network censor with notes on our script:

“You’ve got one of your characters calling another character a moron,” the censor said.

“Yeah, so?”

“You can’t do that,” he said. “We’ve approved ‘dolt,’‘dummy’ or ‘dink,’ as acceptable alternatives.”

“What’s wrong with calling somebody a moron?”

“You’ll offend all the morons in the audience,” he said.

I thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

So I said, “Don’t worry, all the morons in the audience are watching Hunter.”

Three months later, Murphy’s Law was cancelled… and I got a job on Hunter.

I got this note in response to my “Fiction is Reality on Television” post:

I was amused by your post on CSI, because I work in a forensics lab [name and location omitted] and CSI has affected our business, too, albeit in different ways than it’s affected yours. One problem we have is that with CSI and NEW DETECTIVES and the like, everybody’s an expert (as Briscoe
wise-cracked on one episode of LAW & ORDER). Except, of course, they’re not.

The good news: CSI’s success means a) funding and b) jobs. The bad news: people actually *believe* what they see on the show, down to the bizarre plots.

I’m sure people on jurys now consider themselves forensic experts, too. I wonder what impact the show is having in America’s courtrooms.

Used to be you could watch a TV mystery and have a shot at figuring out whodunit. Not anymore. Not unless you have a crimelab in your family room. Eric Deggans wrote an interesting article about the murder of the whodunit.

On the heels of saying most execs we deal with are bright, funny, and a pleasure to work with… that’s not always the case. Here’s one of those cases…

We were writing our first episode of a detective series. We turned the script in to the network executive for his notes. The first note was in scene one, act one.

“The hero doesn’t know what’s going on,” the executive said.

“That’s right,” I replied. “Because it’s a mystery.”

“You can’t do that,” the executive said. “The hero should be ahead of the story.”

“Ahead of the story?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“The hero should know,” the executive said.

“Know what?” I replied.

“Everything,” The executive said.

“But he just arrived at the scene,” I said. “He’s taking his first look at the body… and you want him to already know everything?”

“Is he a hero or a complete moron?” The executive asked. “Nobody wants to watch a show about a guy who’s lost, confused, and stupid.”

“It’s a mystery and he’s a detective,” I said. “He’s going to show us how smart he is by solving the crime.”

“If he was smart,” the executive said, “he wouldn’t have to solve it. He’d already know.”

“So what’s the mystery?” I asked.

“There isn’t one,” the executive said.

“So what’s our show about if there’s no mystery to solve?”

“You tell me,” the executive said. “You’re the writer.”