Lee Goldberg

WGA Still Doesn’t Get It

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Variety reports that The Writers Guild of America’s board voted 11-3 to rescind their decision to honor ex-WGA president Victoria Riskin with the Valentine Davies Award for her contributions to the industry and the community at large.

The big question is why they voted in favor of it 7-6 before, considering that Riskin resigned in a scandal that revealed she wasn’t an active member and, therefore, was  never qualified to be President in the first place (Her successor Charles Holland was forced to resign two months later when the LA Times revealed he’d, um, fictionalized his military service record and his college football achievements).

Despite the vote, there are still members of the WGA leadership… including secretary-treasurer and current presidential candidate Patric Verrone…who don’t get why it was a really, really stupid idea to honor Riskin so soon after she’d embarrassed the Guild with her actions.

Allan Burns [Chairman of the Awards Panel] told Daily Variety he was "stunned" at the board’s vote. He
insisted the awards panel tapped Riskin strictly because of her qualifications
and asserted that there was no concern that naming Riskin would create any
subsequent controversy.

"It’s a slap in the face to the awards committee," Burns added. "I don’t
think the board understands what the award is about."

How clueless can Burns be? He didn’t realize the choice would create controversy? How couldn’t he?? Apparently, even Dan Petrie, our current president and a man I greatly respect, doesnt’ get it either.  He told Variety:

"I would hope that these judgments would be tempered by compassion for someone
who has already suffered and, for that matter, for a Guild that has already
suffered."

She brought the suffering on herself by running for office when she knew she wasn’t qualified to serve. And The Guild brought the suffering on itself by not doing their job confirming her work status before she ran and, now, by naming her for this award so soon after the scandal. I won’t even go into the miss-steps surrounding Holland and their vote of confidence in someone who was so clearly being dishonest. I haven’t been very proud of my Guild membership lately.

But some good has come out of this latest embarrassing episode:  It’s going to help me, and a lot of other members, make up our minds about who to vote for in the upcoming election.

Killshot Shot

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Variety reports that production has begun in Toronto on KILLSHOT, the Weinstein Co. adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel. Diane Lane, Thomas Jane and Mickey Rourke star in the movie, which was written by Hossein Amini and is being directed by John Madden. 

For the most part, adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s contemporary novels over the last twenty years have sucked unless they are written are written by Scott Frank or Quentin Tarantino. Remember BE COOL? Or BG BOUNCE? Or CAT CHASER? Let’s hope this one breaks the curse.

Intercutting

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I got this email today:

I’m having trouble presenting a multiple location event in my screenplay. Let’s say, for example, there are 5 peace rallies in 5 US cities all going on at the same time. At each event there is some action and dialogue. We stay only briefly at each location. How the heck is that written? Every way I try to present it seems awkward. Thanks for your time.

Here’s how I replied. I think one reason it’s awkward is that the situation isn’t very conducive to good story telling. It’s hard to create conflict, or reveal much character, or tell a story, while cutting back and forth between five very similar events. My first bit of advice would be to restructure your story so you DON’T have to cut between five nearly identical events. But, barring that, you need to make it as simple as you can.

EXT. LOS ANGELES PEACE RALLY – DAY

Griffith Park is crowded with THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE (don’t you just love CGI? How did people make movies before?) It’s pouring rain. Biff and Joan make love in the mud while everyone around them sings Koombaya. Joan has great breasts. INTERCUT WITH:

EXT. CHICAGO PEACE RALLY – NIGHT

Convention Center. There are TENS OF THOUSANDS of peace-loving people here. But we don’t care about them. We FIND Jake creeping under the stage, carrying the BOMB that’s hidden inside the
INFLATABLE WOMAN. She has great breasts, too. INTERCUT WITH:

INT. SEATTLE PEACE RALLY – DAY

Hundreds of people mill around the base of the SPACE NEEDLE, holding hands and chanting. We PAN UP to the observation tower of the Space Needle, where HOYT, 12, is about to pour a cup of STARBUCK COFFEE on the people below, some of whom have great breasts and some of whom don’t. INTERCUT WITH:

and when you’re done visiting your five locations (I am exhausted just thinking about it), you end the sequence with a simple END INTERCUT.

Good News for Mystery Writers in LATBR

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I heard David Ulin, the new editor of the LA Times Book Review,  interviewed on KCRW. He promises that, in his revamped LATBR, there will be greater attention paid to contemporary novels, including mysteries and thrillers. He said he loves hardboiled  mystery novels, which he called an "indigenous L.A. art form" and "the literary equivalent of the blues." It all sounds very encouraging to me.

The Decline of the Western Writers of America

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For some time now, legendary western writer Richard S. Wheeler has been charting the demise of the western and, sadly, the preventable decline of the Western Writers of American (which should stand as a cautionary tale of what could happen to the Mystery Writers of America if we aren’t careful). On Ed Gorman’s blog, he notes that prominent agent Nat Sobel has resigned from the WMA as both its agent and as a member.

… it is
not hard to fathom why a successful New York agent would abandon the western
writers. For decades, WWA conventions were marketplaces in which New York
publishers, editors and agents gathered with solidly professional authors to do
business. That is how I got launched, and how many other western novelists got
going.

At the last convention, only one editor showed up, and he came
because one of his authors had won a Spur Award. When I first joined WWA in the
early eighties, there would be ten to twenty editors and publishers on hand, all
of them ready to do business, plus various agents, and often a few publishing
executives as well. Part of the reason they have vanished is that western lines
have shut down due to shifts of fashion. But there is more: A few years ago WWA
amateurized itself, at first covertly in defiance of its own membership bylaws
and then as a result of a bylaws amendment that permitted self-published authors
to join. That brought a flood of new members, so WWA is fat financially, but it also
meant that it was no longer a guild with clout in the publishing world or that
western literature was significant. Thus, Library Journal, diligent about
listing literary awards in other fields, no longer bothered to list Spur Awards.
What it also meant is the end of the western marketplace at WWA conventions.
Where once editors came to conventions to look for talent and good stories, now
they don’t come at all. It is pointless for them to show up.

I am a strong believer in limiting MWA membership to published mystery authors — and what’s happened to the WMA is a good example of the reasons why. Allowing self-published writers to become members diminishes the professional stature and legitimacy of the organization, not just among its members, but to the industry as a whole. This is going to make me very unpopular, but I also I believe associate memberships should be limited to people in the industry ( booksellers, editors, critics, publishers, etc).

Best Wishes to Ed Gorman

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Author, editor, and publisher Ed Gorman reports on his  must-read blog that he’s about to undergo radiation treatment in his battle against cancer.

I noted a while back that I wouldn’t be commenting on my health unless things
changed. I’m about to go through three five day weeks of radiation therapy. I’ll
work in the morning and have my radiation session in the afternoon. I’m hoping
to get 1,000 words a day done on my book so I don’t fall out of its rhythm. But
I won’t have the energy for the blog. So I’m doing Blog’s Greatest Hits, pieces
by contributor’s that I thought were particularly noteworthy. And if anybody
wants to submit anything original, I’ll be very grateful to run it. Thanks,
everybody.

So please send Ed your best wishes and if you’ve got some thoughts on publishing or the mystery genre, send him a post for his blog, too.

He-Men and the Masters of the Universe

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My friend Gregg Hurwitz and his family came over to our house yesterday afternoon for BBQ, swimming, and lazing around.  When it got dark, the kids went inside to play and the grown-ups stayed outside to talk. We were having a nice conversation when Gregg’s wife very calmly pointed out that there was a tarantula crawling by Gregg’s feet. I don’t know who yelped louder or jumped higher out of his seat — me or Gregg.

We’ve seen rabbits, scorpions, mice, squirrels, rattlesnakes, bobcats, deer, lizards, coyotes, and swarms of bees in our yard but never, ever, EVER a tarantula. The spider was huge and black and terrifying. And moved very fast.

Gregg and I, squeeling and whining like little girls, finally managed to trap the spider in a jar and dump him out on the hillside behind our house. But I found the whole thing very funny. Here are these two men — guys who’ve written all kinds of books and TV shows about tough-guy action heroes —  who turned into complete blithering sissies at the sight of a gigantic, but harmless, spider.

Just goes to prove that those who can’t do don’t teach…they write about it.

Cliche City

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On my flight to Seattle, I read a book by a bestselling author. The plotting was good but the dialogue was so unbearably cliche-ridden that I left the book behind on the plane. I couldn’t bear to continue reading it.  Here’s an example (the character names have been removed to protect the guilty):

"Your deal will be history if you don’t make sure this goes off without a hitch. Blow this and you’ll wish you were in a cell with XYZ and a blowtorch. When we get to DC, we are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting. The next time you make the slightest wave you are going to find yourself up shit creek. Is that clear?"

I count, conservatively, four cliches in that paragragh alone (not counting the character himself was a cliche).  There were pages and pages like that. The book did make me wonder about one thing — what’s the magic sales figure you’ve got to hit before editors stop bothering to edit your work?

PublishAmerica Sued

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PublishAmerica is in more trouble. This time, they are being sued for trademark infringement by Encyclopedia Britannica. Sarah Weinman, subbing over at Galleycat, reports that the lawsuit filing includes lots of references to articles about PA’s questionable business practices.

Seems that PA has an imprint that they originally called PublishBritannica,
which is supposed to be the UK arm of their Vast Empire. But alas, PA didn’t
seem to understand the whole concept of trademark infringement…

There are LOTS of things the dimwits at PA don’t understand…