Lee Goldberg

Call Me if Jessica Fletcher is Unavailable

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I just love going to conferences….people always say the strangest things to me. Today, I was a guest speaker, along with Harley Jane Kozak and Nathan Walpow, at the Anaheim Public Library’s HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME luncheon, which was attended by 350 people.  I had a great time and everyone was so nice. But here’s a sampling of the odd conversations I had before and after my panel:

A woman asked me if she could visit the set of MONK when she’s in Los Angeles with her family. I said it wasn’t open to the public.

"You mean it’s not filmed in front of a live audience?" she asked.

"No, it’s not," I said. "Haven’t you noticed that it’s shot outdoors as well as indoors and that you don’t ever hear anyone laughing or applauding?"

She shrugged. "I just thought they were being very quiet."

******

"How come the MONK show is called MONK?" a woman asked me.

"That’s the character’s name," I replied.

"But he’s not a monk," she said.

"No, he’s not. He’s a detective named Monk."

"That’s very confusing," she said. "I’m surprised the monks don’t sue."

* * * * * *

A man approached me carrying a half-a-dozen of my books. "So you wrote all these books?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you come up with the plots, too?"

"Yes, I did."

"Wow," he said. "I wonder how many other writers do that."

******

A man asked me to sign my books. As I signed them, he asked: "Do you get paid for writing these?"

I could see from the expression on his face that it wasn’t a rhetorical question or an insult. It was a genuine question.

"Yes, I do."

"Is that unusual? Or do all writers get paid?"

"They do if they are writing for a reputable, legitimate publisher."

He shook his head. "That’s hard to believe."

* * * * *

A woman told me she was an avid reader of my books and really enjoyed them.

"Thank you," I said.

"I think the mysteries are terrific," she said. "They are brilliantly plotted and so twisty."

"That’s very nice of you to say. Plotting the books is the hardest part for me. It’s really gratifying for me to know all that work isn’t for nothing."

"Do the police ever contact you to solve murders?"

"No," I said.

"They really should," she said. "You’re so good at it."

* * * * * *

A big man came up to me and Harley at the signing table, told us he had a lot of "Tarantino movie ideas," and that he’d been asked to play Bigfoot in a film by a screenwriter that he’d met at Starbucks.

"All I have to do is roar and look menacing," he said. "But I want to do it in an environmentally conscious way, like Steven Segal."

Hey, Did You Know That if Fanfiction Went Away, There Would Be No More Gays or Lesbians? What would we watch late at night on Cinemax?

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I got a long email the other day. It turns out it’s from the same blogger who thinks I’m a sad little man who longs to write fanfiction.  She writes, in part:

I am a fanfiction writer, a slash fanfiction writer at that, I am not as illustrious or ambitious or zealous as some but I am glad to be one. I am as proud to be a slash fanfiction writer as I am to a lesbian and let me tell you it is very much the same feeling.

[…]At fifteen I bumped into my very first piece of fanfiction and it was like a bolt of lightening and then a few weeks later when I read my first piece of slash- its was very much like the first time I ever consider that I might be gay. It’s that monumental feeling of freedom, of knowledge; you finally know why the world seems a little off.

[…]My point is that fanfiction to you and (I’ll be presumptuous and say) I get the impression writing is too, nothing more than a hobby or a job and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you have to understand that for a lot of fans this writing helps shape who they are.

[…]Do you hate gay people Mr. Goldberg? I don’t think that you do, even if you just objected to slash fanfiction, I still would not think that. But what is the difference between what you do and a father who tells his 15 year old son it’s not okay to be gay? If there is one I can’t see it and you can hide behind all the copyright laws that you wish, but I assure you it will be no different then how the church hides behind over-zealously translated bible script.

Why is it that the people who write & publish fanfic feel that if I oppose what they are doing I must be either homophobic or have no passion for writing myself?

I love writing and am passionate about it.  I’m extremely fortunate that it’s also how I make my living and support my family, too. But believe it or not, loving to write…and making money doing it…aren’t mutually exclusive. 

But now by opposing fanfiction, I’m not just a passionless hack who writes only for the money…I am also preventing people from discovering their sexuality.

Call me crazy, but I think there are lots of ways you can discover and explore your sexuality without taking  characters you didn’t create or own, writing stories about them, and publishing them on the web without the author’s permission. It’s one thing to write fanfic for yourself to fantastize about or as a writing exercise, it’s another when you publish and/or post the stories on the web without the original authors’ consent. 

I believe it’s theoretically possible that women will still discover that they are lesbians without writing and publishing/posting stories about Buffy and Xena exploring the joys of sapphic love together…and that men might continue to discover their gay selves without writing and publishing/posting stories about Harry Potter giving Ron blowjobs…

King of the Hill

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For a guy who says he doesn’t want people to know that Stephen King is his Dad, Joe Hill is making sure everybody knows it.  From Publisher’s Weekly to yesterdays Los Angeles Times,  he seems to be coming out everywhere as King’s s0n to promote his new book "Heart-Shaped Box." Publisher’s Weekly wrote:

Joe Hill, whose debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, will be published by William Morrow in February 2007, is so intent on not trading on his father’s fame that he years ago stopped using his given name, Joseph Hillstrom King. And before setting up an interview with the author, Morrow publicist Seale Ballenger warned, "Joe really doesn’t want to talk about his relationship with Stephen King."

Fair enough. But in the battle to win attention for an emerging writer, it’s pretty hard to resist using such a potent weapon. So when Ballenger sent PW an e-mail stressing the importance of reviewing Hill’s book, he wrote, "This is a huge book for us (two-book deal and he is Stephen King’s son)."

Now he’s talking about it in interview after interview. The LA Times wrote:

Hill, 34, took on his secret identity to test his writing skills and marketability without having to trade on the family name.

"I really wanted to allow myself to rise and fall on my own merits," he said.

Apparently, that’s changed. But I don’t blame him or his publisher. Finding a promoteable angle for an author and his book is tough…so why shouldn’t he use the fact that he’s following in his Dad’s famous footsteps to get some attention? More power to him. What I find disingenuous, however, is that he keeps trying to maintain the notion that he’s not doing it…even while he’s doing it, over and over.

Comment Moderation

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The amount of comment spam I am getting lately from porn sites is huge… so, until it abates, I am unfortunately going to have to continue moderating the comments here…especially since I will be traveling so much in the coming weeks.

Me on TV…again

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I’m back again as a guest on Steve Murphy’s INSIDER EXCLUSIVE with NY criminal defense attorney Laura Miranda. I come in about mid-way through the episode to talk about MONK, DIAGNOSIS MURDER and  my daughter’s literary aspirations. And stick around after he says good-bye to me…because I come right back, teaming with Laura.

And if you missed me on INSIDER EXCLUSIVE with famed criminal defense attorney Tom Mesereau, you can see it here.

On The Way

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Howdy from the British Airways first class lounge in Heathrow. This lounge feels like a low-end Las Vegas buffet…and is more crowded than the terminal. It also smells like split pea soup. Luxurious, huh? I am grabbing a newspaper, a scone, and heading for my flight.  The next time you hear from me, I will be back in L.A., working on my tan and my jet-lag.

Playing with Toys

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Greetings from Berlin…

Here’s the latest scoop from the production of FAST TRACK, the two-hour movie/series pilot that I wrote and am exec producing for ProSiebenSat1 and Action Concept.

I spent the day in meetings with our director, the line producer, the second unit director, stunt coordinator and the driving supervisor discussing how we are going  to do the races and chases in FAST TRACK. 

These are the professionals who have  been doing  the hit  German series ALARM FOR COBRA 11, so they really know their stuff when it comes to doing incredible car action. But what we are going to be doing in FAST TRACK is stylistically very different from COBRA 11…and, we hope, from what viewers have seen in the FAST AND THE FURIOUS movies (for one thing, we don’t have $60 million to spend!).

We want to  create a unique look that is entirely our own. It starts with character, character and more character…and then cool driving stuff.  So we got out a box of toy cars and began talking about how we are going to do it.

There we were, a bunch of grown men, sitting around a table playing with cars.

Vroom! Crash! Boom!

And in that moment, I was a kid again with my Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, dreaming of being a writer some day…

I’m such a lucky guy.

Soon the toy cars we’ll be playing with will be real ones!

I finally had a good night’s sleep last night…so, naturally, tomorrow I am leaving for L.A. so I can get hit with jet-lag going the opposite direction and attend casting sessions for two of our four lead roles.

Coming to Life

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Typepad recovered my earlier, lost post about the first few days of pre-production on FAST TRACK, so that saves me having to tell you all about that again. So here’s the latest news…

I love the prep period. That’s when the project finally feels real to me…figuratively and literally. Unlike writing a book, TV  is a collaboration. For example, the production designers are showing me sketches and concepts for the places that only existed before in my imagination…. how they will make those places real. But more  than that, these artists are bringing so much that’s new and
fresh, that comes  from their own talent and experience. I enjoy seeing
how my work has inspired them… it  makes me feel great. 

On Monday, I went to visit our production office for the first time (all my meetings so far have been in cafes and hotel rooms). It’s a building in  an  industrial  area of Berlin. I saw the two floors of empty offices and the adjoining buildings that will serve as the construction shop, car-tuning shop, etc. It’s a big complex…and within days, it will start  to fill up with people working on the movie. By the end of next week, it will be a bee-hive  of activity, everyone working towards a common goal — making what I wrote alone in my home-office into a movie.  But for the moment, it’s just the line producer,  his assistant, and me. I picked out a spot for myself and my assistant and tried to imagine what it’s going to look like in two weeks when it’s full of furniture, white boards, computers, printers, and shooting schedules. I felt both excitement and anxiety. There’s  so much work to do…and so many decisions to make.

I spent the day with my director, talking in detail about the pilot script and the hoped-for series…and about how I see the world and the characters and how he sees them. Then we met with the last candidate for production designer, played some Playstation racing games, and made some final hiring decisions.  That night, I reviewed more DVDs of actors, costume designers, etc. and prepared for my meeting today in Munich with the network.

The meeting went very, very well…we are amazingly in-synch about what the show is and will be…and about the people we’d like to hire to make it happen. But they are more than just a network, they are our production partner in this project so it’s a much closer working relationship, at least on a creative level, than you usually have in a "supplier and buyer" situation. I’m so lucky to have a clever and articulate network executive on the project whose creative contributions consistently make the show better. We decided on the production designer and costume designers  we wanted — and the network agreed — so  tomorrow we will close their deals and get them on-board.

Tomorrow I meet with the second unit director and stunt coordinators to have our initial concept discussions about the racing sequences…and then I return to L.A. for casting.

I have been having trouble sleeping. It’ s not just the jet-lag — I have  so much on my mind that it’s hard to "shut down." I know what I am about to say is a cliche, but….there’s just not enough hours in the day.

Oh, yesterday I also looked at the suite my family and I will be staying in when I return on the 30th and for the duration of production. It’s beautiful and perfectly located. The U.S. actors will also be staying at the same place and I think they will be very happy there. The location in Berlin can’t be beat. It’s going to be fun for my family and I hope an exciting experience for my daughter.

I apologize for rambling….I’ll try to report back again once more before I fly home.

This is Why Producers Like Shooting TV Shows in Canada

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The Drake Hotel in Toronto is offering sex toys on the room service menu, according to USA Today. Vibrators, massage oils, condoms, velvet restraints and how-to videos can be sent up the guests. The "pleasure kits" start at $35:

The 19 room Drake is a boutique hotel that attracts artists and actors. The aim is service that complements the hotel’s artsy image.

"We see ourselves as a bit of a trailblazer," owner Jeff Stober says. The racy room service menu […] is "in keeping with the theme of sex that has always played a role in artistic works. We are embracing that artistic spirit."

Actual embraces cost extra. They aren’t the only Toronto hotel that’s added sex-centives. The Grand Hotel, where our MISSING directors liked to stay, provides two channels of free, 24-hour porn, for their guests (for the record, I stayed at the Cambridge Suites, which offered no such goodies).

If Governor Arnold wants to keep movie production in California, he can forget about tax incentives and renegotiating with unions. Free vibrators for every member of the film crew! Sexual surrogates sent to the door of every screenwriter faced with a production rewrite!