On Other Blogs

Let’s Make a Movie

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My friend David Carren, with whom I worked on DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MARTIAL LAW, has written & directed a low-budget student film called THE RED QUEEN that features another good friend of mine, author/actress Harley Jane Kozak, who blogs today about her experience making the movie.

I loved making the film, working with students. Really talented, nice students. At least, I’m pretty sure they were nice. A lot of communication was in Spanish, Edinburg being on the Mexican border. I liked to think there were deep conversations on the works of Pedro Almodovar and Carlos Saura, but it’s possible they were saying, “If I ingest more vending machine Skittles, I shall go mad.”

I can't wait to see it.

Nosebleed Heights of Adventure

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Hunt at the Well of Eternity
My friend James Reasoner, one of the most prolific authors on earth, just got a starred review from Publishers Weekly for his HUNT AT THE WELL OF ETERNITY, the first in a new series of pulp adventures from Hard Case Crime. Each book is written by a different author under the "Gabriel Hunt" pen name, but it's James who kicks off the series with a bang:

James Reasoner (the Civil War Battle series) is the first to take the shared Hunt pen name and launch an adventure series that raises the action bar to nosebleed heights. After a mysterious beauty delivers a bloodstained Confederate flag and a whiskey bottle full of water to the Hunt brothers at a fund-raising reception, millionaire adventurer Gabriel Hunt and beautiful, gun-toting museum director Dr. Cierra Almanzar follow clues and an ambiguous map from Manhattan to Guatemala, only certain they're on the right path when somebody's shooting at them. Hunt, armed only with his fists, bullwhips, a Colt .45 double-action Peacemaker and a vintage Civil War muzzle loader, is often outnumbered but never outwitted. Pulp adventure fans will be thrilled to see the genre so smashingly resurrected.

Congratulations James! It's great to see him getting the recognition he so richly deserves.

TelevisionWeek folding?

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Nikke Finke reports that Crain Communications' mag TelevisionWeek, formerly known as Electronic Media, may be folding. This is sad news for me. I was a reporter for Electronic Media twenty years ago. Even then, the weekly occupied a strange niche, primarily serving station programming executives. It was certainly the most informative publication out there when it came to syndication news (I was the first to break the news about Paramount reviving "Star Trek" in first-run with a whole new cast, an item that was picked up by newspapers around the country). In the mid-to-late eighties, first-run and off-network syndication was still very big-business and there were plenty of glossy, full-page, full-color ads to justify the magazine's existence and support its editorial offices in LA, Chicago, NY and DC. The magazine could never successfully compete with Daily Variety or the Hollywood Reporter when it came to "breaking news," so what they offered was more indepth business reporting…offering the story behind the news. And, for the most part, they did it very well…and got very little credit for it, though their stories were often poached by the other trades and newspapers. I didn't read TV Week much over the last few years, but whenever I did stumble on a copy, I was impressed with the detail and depth of their coverage…even if they were clearly stumbling for relevancy in a TV landscape that has changed massively since the magazine's inception.

Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

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William Rabkin talks on his blog about the animated and the live episodes of DIAGNOSIS MURDER that we almost did…and the reasons why we didn't end up producing them. Here's an excerpt from his discussion of our animated episode idea:

Then someone had the idea — and I’m pretty sure it was me, because I’d been watching a lot of Dennis Potter at the time — that we should team Dick up with the greatest sleuth ever to grace a television set… Scooby Doo.
After a long bout of giggles, the story fell into place almost immediately. Dick’s character, Dr. Mark Sloan, would witness a crime, but before he could get away the criminal would attack and leave him in a coma. While the rest of the team searched for his attackers, Dick would be solving the crime in a series of hallucinations… with the help of Scooby Doo. There was one little problem, of course — we didn’t really have a lot of money in our budget for animated sequences. Fortunately, Lee can pull up TV trivia faster than Google, and he remembered that an animated version of Dick had “guest starred” in a Scooby Doo episode back in the 70s. All we’d have to do was get the rights to the footage, then write new dialogue, with our supporting cast doing the voices for Shaggy and the rest.

I don't know whether the episode was Bill's idea or mine…but my memory of how we were going to use the cartoon in an episode is a bit different than his.  At first we considered having Dr. Sloan imagine himself in the cartoon…but realized he was too old to be a fan of SCOOBY DO.  It made no sense for his character. So we decided instead that his young protege Dr. Jesse Travis (Charlie Schlatter), while doing some sleuthing for Mark, would get bonked on the head and tossed of the Santa Monica Pier…and while unconscious, and fighting for his life in the hospital, that he'd imagine Dr. Sloan, himself, and the rest of the gang investigating a similar crime with Scooby-Doo (with Jesse as Shaggy, Steve as Fred, Amanda as Velma, and Jesse's girlfriend Susan as Daphne). Once Jesse awoke, he'd tell Mark the story and unknowingly give him the vital clue he needed to solve the real murder mystery.

It would have been ridiculously cheap and easy for us to simply revoice the cartoon with our own actors and dialog…and come out of it with an episode that was 50% animated and far less than our usual episodic budget (we could have used it in place of one of our dreaded six day shows — episodes shot over six days instead of seven — that we did each season to save money). As I recall, even Dick was excited about the idea…in retrospect, maybe it wasn't so much the idea, but rather the notion of having so many days off that he liked. Charlie was already doing lots of voice-over and cartoon work at the time, so he was also game for the idea. 

I still remember Bill & I writing the letter to Warner Brothers, trying to convince them to let us use the footage. As I recall, Fred Silverman signed the letter, too, and even made a few calls trying to convince the studio to grant us the rights.

Warner Brothers asked us for an outline, so we even went so far as to pick the clips we wanted to use and sketch out the story in broad strokes…but we weren't about to plot out the whole thing until we got the rights. Alas, it didn't happen, for all the reasons Bill goes into on his blog.

Here's a clip from the Dick Van Dyke episode of SCOOBY DOO…

“Take Me To Your Leader, Lee Goldberg”

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One of the biggest, most persistent, and bone-headed cliches in TV & movie science fiction is the alien and/or robot who enunciates every syllable when he speaks, doesn’t use contractions, and calls everyone by their full name. Where did these aliens learn English? From watching movies about space aliens coming to earth? They can master travel at light speed, but can’t figure out how to say “don’t” instead of “do not?” Or why doesn’t someone, as William Rabkin laments, ever tell them:  

“In English, we have a last name that we share with our family and a first name that uniquely identifies us. And if you want to pass unrecognized as an alien, it’s important that you learn this distinction.” 

So why does this ridiculous conceit continue in movie after movie? Pure laziness […]it’s such a hideous cliche by now that you’d think even the aliens would have figured it out…

Apparently, the new WITCH MOUNTAIN remake is the latest offender to perpetuate this hoary cliche…

Of course, the cliche that comes next is the alien asking “what is this thing humans call love?” If I recall, the bad remake of DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL pulled that one, too. 

Customer Support Lines… for books?

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William Rabkin blogs that he got contacted by the "Consumer Communications Department" at Penguin Books with a complaint about his PSYCH book:

We have a consumer complaint about pages 210-213. The consumer states that these are the only pages in the entire book that mention characters by the name of Kent Shambling and Nancy, and he says that there is no mention of these two characters leading up to this point and they seem to have nothing to do with the story.

It wasn't the complaint that surprised Bill…it was that Penguin has a "Consumer Communications Department."

Who knew that […]if I found a bit of a book I didn’t like, there were operators standing by to take my complaints? If I wrote to the CCD at Farar Strauss Giroux and pointed out that after almost a thousand pages of 2666, I still didn’t know who killed all those women in Mexico, would they send me back the name of the murderer?

I've never heard of this either. I wonder if all publishers have these hotlines and if they outsource their customer support to India like the computer companies do ("Hello, this is Rajneesh, how may I assist you with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today? Is this a plot-related or prose-related problem?").

The Canadian Invasion

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The attitudes of the major U.S. networks towards Canadian programming has changed dramatically since the success of the CBS import FLASHPOINT and the global economic crisis. Canadian TV distribution exec Noreen Halperin told The Globe & Mail:

"It's an extraordinary change in the lay of the land from even a year ago[…] The shift with some of the network presidents has been exceptional."

Last year's strike by the Writers Guild of America, she says, "paved the way, and allowed a show like Flashpoint to be sold. Once it aired and was a success, it made people take notice. That, coupled with the economic downturn, means all broadcasters are looking for interesting alternatives. The Canadian way is one of these," adds the TV veteran, who says Americans can save up to 50 per cent by splitting costs.

She brought Canadian showrunners Tassie Cameron and Ilana Frank to L.A. to meet with network chiefs to pitch their pilot script COPPER in hope of finding a U.S. home…and co-financing.

A year ago, Halpern adds, it would have been ludicrous to assume that Cameron and Frank – both highly respected on their home turf – would get easy face time with big U.S. players. But times have changed. CBS will make six fewer pilot episodes this year than in 2008, when 15 were produced. And everyone's feeling the pinch from the freefall in advertising.

"The U.S. networks, like the ones in Canada, are clamping down in an enormous way to find cost savings," says one veteran Toronto producer, who asked not to be named. "They're all pulling back on the kinds of salaries that actors, directors and writers are being paid. They're taking a week-by-week approach to green-lighting new shows or renewing old ones.

Canadian shows are continuing to find homes on cable networks like Lifetime, Ion and Oxygen, for whom shopping up north for cheap content is nothing new. But whether the high interest in Canadian programming at the Big Networks will continue probably depends more on economics than content, and whether CBS's second Canadian series, THE BRIDGE, and NBC's midseason pickup THE LISTENER (already an international success) can perform as well as FLASHPOINT. 

(Thanks to Denis McGrath for the tip)

The Skinny on Gun Monkeys

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You may have noticed that I haven't talked much here lately about my TV and screen work. That's because I don't feel comfortable talking about projects that are in development and not yet a certainty. But since CrimeSpree broke the news about me scripting the movie version of GUN MONKEYS, I've been getting a lot of emails asking about me about the project.

I've always been a huge fan of Victor's book. In fact, we first met at the Edgars, where GUN MONKEYS was up for an award, and have been good friends ever since. About a year or so ago, I optioned the book and wrote a spec screenplay adaptation, which my agent then shopped all over town.  The script was strong enough that it got me "meet and greet" meetings at studios and production companies everywhere…and nearly got me a gig rewriting a Major Studio Action Movie, but that fell through (however, the aborted Major Studio Action Movie rewrite got me into business with the Director, with whom I have been out pitching TV series concepts). More on that whirlwind experience another time…

Eventually Two Hot Young Producers with deals all over town eventually optioned my GUN MONKEYS script, and with it my underlying option on Victor's book. They spent several months in negotiations with A Major Hollywood Star who was interested in directing the film…but not starring in it. That deal fell through at the last minute. 

Now the producers have attracted the interest of a Major Distributor and a Major Hollywood Agency is packaging GUN MONKEYS. They've also signed director Ryuhei Kitamura, who has an astonishing visual style but is better known in Japan than he is here (his only U.S. film was last year's horror flick "Midnight Meat Train"). That will change soon, whether it's with GUN MONKEYS or another film. I'm told that the script and the director make an attractive package and, for the last few weeks, another Major Hollywood Star has been circling the project. If he signs on, things should come together very quickly…but that's a big IF.  

I don't know whether all of this will lead to the movie finally getting made, but it has been a interesting ride for Victor and me. It has also given me a refresher course in the feature film business, which I've discovered is a completely different planet than the TV world that I have been living on for so long. More on that some other time…

Mr. Monk and the Blogs

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I've been catching up on everything I missed while I was out-of-town and discovered some bloggers had some very nice things to say about my MONK books last week. The William-To-Jose blog liked MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY:

What a pleasant surprise it turned out to be. This is a funny, funny book! Goldberg has a fantastic grasp of the characters and reading this was almost like watching the show. […]The book also has it's serious moments, however, especially when Monk has to confront certain truths he'd rather not. This grounds the book so it doesn't come off as pure fluff.

I agree with him about the importance of grounding Monk…of finding something with emotional stakes for him in every story…otherwise he'd just be a cartoon character.

Author Bill Crider enjoyed Monk's adventures in Germany, too.

The book reads smoothly and quickly, with plenty of laughs and a smile on every page. Which is quite an achievement, considering that Monk is in reality a sad case, a slave to his phobias and compulsions. Even Natalie loses control in this one, but to good effect. And at the end, well, she pulls quite a stunt. […] Sitting in hospital waiting rooms is no fun at all, but Mr. Monk Goes to Germany brightened my time in them this week, and it might brighten your day, too.

I don't think there's any greater compliment that a writer could get than hearing that his stories have made someone's day brighter…and helped them forget whatever woes they have, if only for a while. Thank you so much, Bill…and I hope your wife is feeling better.

Karen Rainey draws a distinction between between "derivative" books, which she doesn't like much, and tie-ins which, in the case of Monk, she likes a lot.

A derivative book is NOT a tie-in book such as Lee Goldberg’s Monk books. He’s contracted to write those books based on the television series. (By the way, he goes way beyond the television character arc in his books and they’re really good.)

She defines "derivative books" as ones in which an author continues the work of another, using the same characters, the same world, etc, like sequels to Jane Austen's books or "Gone with the Wind." She says:

A book ends when it ends. A book ends when the author thinks it’s right to end it. Would I like a different ending to Gone with the Wind? It’s not my call. It’s Margaret Mitchell’s work, not Karen Ranney’s. It’s my opinion that no one else has the right to come along and “borrow” those characters.

I'm sure there are plenty of fanfiction writers out there don't agree with her and they've probably let her know in the strongest possible terms. In their minds, tie-in writing is simply "paid fanfic." I'm not sure whether they truly don't understand the significant differences between tie-ins (which are the equivalent of being a freelance writer of an episode of a TV series) and fanfic (which is the equivalent of stealing someone else's work and putting your own name on it) or if they simply don't want to acknowledge it. But I've talked enough about that already.