On Other Blogs

Touched by a Blog

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The multi-talented Bryce Zabel has felt the viral force of the blogosphere to rapidly spread information…or he’s felt the awesome power of STAR TREK. You decide. A funny thing happened after he posted his rejected STAR TREK REBOOTED treatment…

this blog averages only about 100 hits a day[…] These
are distinct "visits" from unique people and not just "page views" (we
get about 180 of those).
Yesterday, "For What It’s Worth" received 8,758 hits.

Star Trek Rebooted

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What would STAR TREK be like if J. Michael Straczynski (BABYLON 5) and Bryce Zabel (DARK SKIES, MANTIS) got their hands on the franchise? My friend Bryce has posted on his blog an unsolicited STAR TREK treatment that he and Joe wrote back in 2004. You can read it here. The two of them were developing a pilot together and, in the process, started talking about everything that’s wrong with STAR TREK:

Admittedly, it takes a lot of nerve to offer to resurrect the "Star Trek" franchise when nobody has asked you to do that, but that’s just what prolific writer/producer J. Michael Straczynski and I did […] we started talking about the state of the Trek universe and, before we could stop ourselves, we’d banged out a 14-page treatment called "Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe."

[…] I  have no real clue why we felt compelled to write what we wrote but, looking back, I think it’s because we had all these ideas and being writers we just felt compelled to write them down. Then, once that happened, we felt compelled to share them. Like buying lottery tickets, I guess.

It strikes me as a very fan-ish and geeky thing to do, especially considering the incredible success Paramount has had milking the franchise in movies, television, and publishing (and that STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, the fourth STAR TREK series, was still on-the-air at the time).  It’s not like they were talking about a dormant property like, say, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Then again, Bryce and Joe certainly had the credits, experience, and talent to make their pitch merit at least cursory consideration by the Paramount brass. But Bryce doesn’t say whether they submitted their proposal to Paramount or not and, if  they did, what the studio’s reaction to it was. I’d actually be just as curious to know what their agents’ reactions were to the unsolicited proposal…

Remainders

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Author Joe Konrath shares the dreaded "remaindered" letter that he received from his publisher for WHISKEY SOUR. Inevitably, every author gets one of these  letters. You’re given an opportunity to buy copies of your own book for a buck or two before its sold in bulk to close-out stores (like Book Warehouse, Book Market, Foogles, etc.) or the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble. I always agonize over how many copies of my own book I should buy for promotional purposes. I’ve erred by buying way too many (what the hell am I going to do with 600 copies of BEYOND THE BEYOND? What was I thinking?) and way too few. I’ve yet to strike the right balance. Though being remaindered has never driven me to the plight of the author in my  Amazon short story   "Remaindered"  (how’s that for product placement?).

What’s My Motivation?

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Sex worker-turned-neophyte porn filmmaker Audacia Ray is learning that characters are, like, maybe a good thing to have in a movie.

So the movie I’m making has a plot. In theory, I dig porno with a
plot, but in practice I typically fast forward through that shit
because seriously, I’m here for the fucking. So I’m attempting this
delicate thing, where I want there to be just enough plot so that the
viewer knows why these people are fucking each other, but not so much
that it’s like, “dude, shut up and bone already.”

In one of my early casting sessions, I interviewed a dude who also
has an off-off Broadway acting career, and he asked me a question I
hadn’t thought about in any great detail: “What’s my character’s
motivation?” It was pretty obvious that this had never occurred to me
before, and I stammered, “Uhhh, he wants to do it?” in reply. I don’t
think he was impressed.

[…] I saw how more developed characters could be a good thing and could
give the movie an interesting texture. So as I’m sitting down to write
my script, it’s something I’ll be thinking about an awful lot. Who are
these people, and what drives them?

What a great idea: thinking about characters "an awful lot" as you write a script for a movie.  She may be on to something.

Giddy Up

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Legendary western writer Richard S. Wheeler pointed me to a great interview at the American Enterprise with Elmer Kelton, justifiably proclaimed by the Western Writers of America as one of the best western writers of all time.

Saturating Kelton’s work is his love of West Texas. Kelton is no
flowery panegyrist of the tumbleweed; growing up amongst men who regard
poetical expression as effeminate will stifle one’s urge to write odes
to cacti. But he loves his land just the same. As he writes in The Day the Cowboys Quit,
"Some people would never understand the hold this land could take on a
man if he stayed rooted long enough in one spot to develop a communion
with the grass-blanketed earth, to begin to feel and fall in with the
rhythms of the changing seasons. There was a pulse in this land, like
the pulse in a man, though most people never paused long enough to
sense it."

Buck Kelton, Elmer’s father, "never was totally convinced that I was
making an honest living because there wasn’t a whole lot of sweat
involved. That’s how he measured work–by whether you sweated or not."

Writing 45 novels extracts its own measure of sweat. So, for that matter, does tracking down The Time It Never Rained. "The Western shelf is in the back of the store," says Kelton. "You gotta hunt for it."

Hunt for it. You’ll be glad you did. Elmer Kelton is a great American novelist–no "Western" modifier necessary.

All-Time Showkillers

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The clever, data-cruncking folks over at Trivial TV have perused their TV Guides and compiled a list of the actors who have killed the most shows in their careers. Names include Paula Marshall (7), Jon Tenny (7), Hector Elizondo (7),  and Joe Morton (8) among others. Joe’s list, for example, includes:

  • ”Grady ” (NBC, 1975; 9 eps aired)
  • ”Equal Justice” (ABC, 1990; 26)
  • ”Tribeca” (Fox, 1993; 7)
  • ”Under One Roof” (CBS, 1995; 6)
  • ”New York News” (CBS, 1995; 8)
  • ”Prince Street” (NBC, 1997; 2)
  • ”Mercy Point” (UPN, 1998; 7)
  • ”E-Ring” (NBC, 2005; 14)

Showkillers

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I’ve said it here a couple of times before — Jason Gedrick and Eric Balfour are showkillers.  Apparently Alan Sepinwall, TV Critic for the Star-Ledger, agrees with me:

For professional purposes, Gedrick’s fascinating to me as the reigning
champion among active male Show Killers on television (Paula Marshall,
I believe, is the female titleholder at the moment), one of those
people who, year after year after year, winds up in a project that’s
destined to fail.

Alan analyzes each of Gedrick’s failures and offers his take on what went wrong.