Current Affairs

Website as Pitching Tool

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A number of people have alerted me to this news: a guy created a website to pitch his movie… and it worked. LAObserved has the story.

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer set up a
website called The Dionaea House
last year and posted a series of correspondence between characters in his horror
screenplay. After all, if the Internet is there, why not exploit it to create
some buzz? The site got a ton of hits. Tomorrow’s Hollywood
Reporter says the website helped "build the mythology" of the project — and
Warner Bros. Pictures picked it up for David Heyman to produce at Heyday Films.

Blog Blowback for Lori Prokop

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I’m not the only one amused by Lori Prokop and her ridiculous BookMillionaire reality show scam. Other blogs are having fun with it, too. For example,  Richard Cobbett took a look at the requirements to be one of the "contestants" on the informercial:

Onephoto_1You can apply if you meet any one of the following criteria:

You don’t need to have written your book or manuscript but you have an idea you feel would be a good book, or…

You may have been told by people that you should write a book, or…

You have a desire to become published and to live the incredible lifestyle of a rich, famous author, or…

You may have started writing your book, but it is not completed yet, or…

You may have your book written. It is completed but not published, or…

You may have published your book, but it has not sold like you wanted.

In
other words, you don’t need to write, you don’t need to have written,
you don’t need to know what you’d like to write, and a pulse would seem
entirely optional. According to the infamous host Lori Prokop – whose
name is an anagram of OIL PORK PRO – only about 5% of writing involves
writing, while the other 95% is buying her self-help books-oops, sorry,
business and marketing.

Applying to be a contestant also gets you on Lori’s coveted email list, as SeaWhyspers says.

Then you’ll be subscribed (forever) to the newsletter
which will solve ALL of your problems with writing: Become Best Seller
(does anyone else already feel nauseous over the pathetic grammer used
on this site?). I can’t say ANY of those bulleted items sounds remotely
like writing to me (scamming, sure), but what do I know? I’m not a Best
Seller, and I’m absolutely SURE it’s because I’m not getting this
newsletter.

 

For someone who thinks of herself as a marketing genius, she sure screwed up this campaign. Perhaps she’d have better luck targeting chiropractors again instead of writers.  If you’d like to add Lori to your own "Get Rich Quick" mailing list, her  oh-so-subtle, loaded-with-integrity, email address is: Cash@megabestseller.com.

(Click here and scroll down the page to hear  Lori pitch some of her get-rich-quick schemes as a tease for her presentation at the "Internet Gravy Train to Riches" conference that was held in 2003.)

Pilot Tape Crackdown

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The networks announce their fall schedules in a week or two and, usually, around this time tapes of the various pilots under consideration start floating around town. But this season, that has changed. Variety reports that studios are cracking down on the practice. The studios are getting so tight with tapes, even the producers of the pilots have a hard time getting screeners of their own shows.

"It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen," said one insider at a major
tenpercentery. "You hear rumors of execs telling assistants they could go to
jail if they leak something out."

Another said he can’t even get his hands on his own network’s tapes, at least
prior to the pilot’s official screening.  Studios and nets always make noises about not wanting tapes to be traded with
other studios or nets. So why are the rules actually being enforced this year?

Some trace it back to a dictate from top brass at 20th Century Fox TV, who
laid down the law last month when early copies of a couple of the studio’s
pilots started floating around town — even before the networks where the shows
are set up had had a chance to formally screen them.  Others speculate that Leslie Moonves’ control of Paramount Television has
further restricted the free flow of tapes. Moonves insists on a strict cone of
silence surrounding the development process at his units.

As frustrating as the crackdown has been for some, one studio exec said it’s
necessary in a world where "there’s a tremendous incentive for agents to try to
create a bad buzz" about projects with which they’re not associated.

"When you have people who’ve seen tapes calling network execs and saying, ‘Do
you really like that?,’ it starts to have an impact on your project," the
exec said.

One agent admitted he’s guilty of spreading bad buzz. "Everyone talks shit
about everyone’s pilot," he said.

I wonder if the crackdown will be as strongly enforced after the schedules are announced. Usually, tapes of  busted pilots start floating around town during the summer and you get a chance to see what didn’t  make the schedule and why. 

Last season, I was eager to get my hands on the Lost in Space pilot directed by John Woo and had a hell of a time tracking down a tape through my usual sources (When you’ve written a book on unsold pilots, and filmed two TV specials about’em, you have lots of sources). But once I did get the tape and put it in the VCR I could see why WB wanted to bury it.  It was horrendous, misguided, and stupid.  (I’m still trying to get a copy of The Time Tunnel revival pilot).

Many years ago, I really wanted to see the Stephen J. Cannell-produced  Hawaii Five-O  pilot starring Gary Busey and Russell Wong. But it was done for CBS, and Moonves is notorious about keeping his busted pilot under lock-and-key.  It took me a year or so, but I finally scored a tape from someone who made me promise not to tell anyone where I got it for fear that Moonves would crush him. It wasn’t so bad…but it wasn’t so good, either.

Weep for the Scammer

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Get-rich-quick huckster Lori Prokop is "saddened" that aspiring writers,  whose desperation for publication makes them easy prey, aren’t falling for her transparent BookMillionare Reality Show scam. She writes:

We
are building both a television show, television viewing audience and
online community to highlight the writing community. To see this
slammed by members of the writing community is a sad situation.

It certainly is for her…and probably a real shocker, too.  She was counting on the proven gullibility of aspiring writers.  But I had no idea that all Lori, whose personal email address is Cash@megabestseller.com, really wanted to do was help the community of writers and promote world peace. I feel so guilty.

This
type of slamming saddens me as I can see people who write and
communicate in this manner are hurt, frustrated and need help healing
past wounds. My heart goes out to them but I also request they refrain
from further slams and instead speak directly to me to receive the
facts.

Translation:  "Stop talking about my scam in public, you’re scaring away all the suckers!"

Good-Riddance to Star Trek

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It’s about time STAR TREK was cancelled, or so says bestselling science fiction author Orson Scott Card in the Los Angeles Times. He was no fan of the original series, either.

The original "Star Trek," created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few
exceptions, bad in every way that a science fiction television show
could be bad.

Yikes, is he in for it from "The Fen. " And he takes a shot at them, too.

And then the madness really got underway. They started making
costumes and wearing pointy ears. They wrote messages in Klingon, they
wrote their own stories about the characters, filling in what was left
out — including, in one truly specialized subgenre, the "Kirk-Spock"
stories in which their relationship was not as platonic and emotionless
as the TV show depicted it.

He’s certainly one author who isn’t afraid to express a controversial opinion that could, uh,  alienate his readers.

Flying Without a Pilot

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TV Writer Paul Guyot tells all about the demise of his TNT pilot THE DARK, which he wrote and produced with Stephen J. Cannell and that was directed by Walter Hill. So what went wrong?

Who knows what happened – you can speculate and Monday morning
quarterback forever – but the bottom line was once the thing was shot,
edited and presented to the network, the original script and story just
wasn’t there. The first thing the network said when they saw the cut was "Where’s the script we bought?"

Now, I’m not saying it was awful. I don’t love the finished product,
but I will say that, overall, I’m happy with about 70% of it. These
days that’s not a bad percentage. But it was that other third that
killed us.

A few years ago, we shot a two-hour, back-door pilot on DIAGNOSIS MURDER starring Fred Dryer as the Chief of Police of Los Angeles. The co-star was an unknown actor named Neal McDonough, who has since gone on to star in BAND OF BROTHERS, BOOMTOWN and MEDICAL INVESTIGATIONS (as well as a three-episode arc on MARTIAL LAW for us). The pilot was called THE CHIEF.

Since DIAGNOSIS MURDER was, itself, a spin-off of JAKE AND THE FATMAN (which itself was a spin-off of MATLOCK), Fred Silverman demanded that we do at least one pilot per season imbedded in an episode of the show. 

ChiefopThis is a cheap way to make a pilot and allows the studio an opportunity to recoup their costs in syndication. You also go straight to film without all the intermediate steps in the development process. The other advantage is that the pilot will air and the ratings, if they are high enough, can be a valuable sales tool.

The downside is that backdoor pilots-as-episodes have a much harder time being taken seriously at the network because they usually aren’t developed through the usual channels and, therefore, there’s no one championing them internally at the network.  (Of course lots of pilot-as-episodes have sold… CSI:MIAMI and MORK AND MINDY are a few such examples, my book UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS is littered with others that haven’t, like ASSIGNMENT EARTH from STAR TREK and LUTHOR GILLIS form MAGNUM PI)

THE CHIEF had a lot going for it. For one thing, we had Fred Dryer, a proven star with HUNTER and this role was absolutely perfect for him (and I have to say, he was great in it). For another, the two-hour pilot aired during sweeps and got fantastic ratings, ranking something like #14 for the week, a tremendous accomplishment for us. And finally, we tested the show with audiences at ASI and the scores were amazing, among the best our partner Fred Silverman (former head of ABC, CBS and NBC) had ever seen. We were sure we had a slam-dunk sale at CBS…and if they were foolish enough to pass on it, we definitely land at another next network. Little did we know…

We met with Les Moonves at CBS…and he passed. He didn’t want to work with Fred Dryer. We met with Jaime Tarses at ABC. She didn’t want to work with Dryer. We met with Dean Valentine at UPN. He didn’t want to work with Dryer.  And so it went at every network. What killed us wasn’t the execution,  the concept, the acting, the ratings, or the testing. What killed us was bad blood between Dryer and execs he’d worked with before on other projects.  Basically, we were victims of the burned bridges Dryer had left in his wake.  The television audience loved Fred Dryer, but the major network execs didn’t. Had we known that going in, we would have cast someone else as THE CHIEF. Then again, we might not have enjoyed the same terrific ratings and sky-high testing…not that they did us any good in the end.  (Ironically, CBS ended up doing a similar show with Craig T. Nelson
called THE DISTRICT. And from what I hear, Nelson was no picnic)

I’ve since had another experience like that with another star which is why, from now on, we call around about the actors we’re thinking about working with so we aren’t derailed from the get-go by burned bridges or a history of "difficult behavior on the set.

(You can read the two-part pilot script here and here or watch a five minute sales presentation culled from the two-hour movie here, just go to THE CHIEF logo and click on it). 

Hot Sex and Gory Violence

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Graham at My Boog Pages has unearthed my sleazy past of Hot Sex and Gory Violence,  which I wrote about in Newsweek.

[The article]  detailed Lee’s work on a timelessly classic men’s adventure series, .357 Vigilante." I’d only read a few lines when I was shocked to realize that I had read this piece when it came out.  21 years ago.

Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.

I
was a big fan of the Mack Bolan, "The Executioner" series back then,
and when I stumbled across the article in a doctor’s office waiting
room I read it. At that time Lee was a disaffected college student who,
instead of partying or dating, spent his time writing about a man with
a large, loaded, concealed weapon.

At the time, I liked to think of myself as a man with a large, loaded, concealed weapon. Sometimes I still do.

The Bottom Line

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A reader alerted me to this "blowback" from my Hot Buttons post from last week. Vera, on her blog, thinks an interesting issue got lost in the 164 comments about fanfic the post generated.

He was reporting on a mystery writer’s knees-up and wrote some stuff
about controversial yet unspoken opinions among mystery writers such as
the inappropriately open membership of MWA (Mystery Writers of
America?) and how many mystery writers objected to fan fiction but were
too scared to ever say this to fans. What followed in comments was
mostly the expected back and forth between a reasonable pro-fan-fiction
writer and a crazy-arse anti-fan-fiction writer with some side comments
from other people.

But what interested me most of all was that no-one – NO-ONE – addressed
the issue of why the mystery writers weren’t going to bring the subject
up with fans they met at cons and signings and things. These pro
writers Lee references behave as though they believe that the people
who are writing the fan fiction are the people who buy their books, and
all the associated merchandise should they be so successful to justify
it, and that to alienate those fans is to kiss good-bye to income.  When it comes down to the line, it’s the bottom line.

So, what do you think?  Are authors afraid to speak their minds on controversial issues for fear of losing readers or awkward encounters with fans?

Don’t Hire This Spenser

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Bob Sassone reports over at TV Squad that Rykodisc is releasing the four, made-on-the-cheap-in-Canada SPENSER reunion movies  on DVD. Those crappy, flatly-directed, and exceedingly dull MOWs shouldn’t be mistaken for the underappreciated SPENSER FOR HIRE  series (and I’m not just saying that because I wrote for it).

Robert Urich and Avery Brooks were the perfect Spenser and Hawk,
the scripts were literate and intelligent, and the on
location filming in Boston added a lot of atmosphere and color. But
then the show was cancelled, and they decided to make these rather
so-so movies, and they don’t include Barbara Stock as Susan Silverman
(sorry again: Wendy Crewson and Barbara Williams just aren’t the same).
The good news? They aren’t the lame Joe Mantegna Spenser
flicks that A&E produced later, and it’s great to see Urich and
Avery together again. The bad news? It’s not the TV series.

I hope the TV series comes out on DVD soon and not just because I’d like pristine copies of my episodes. It was a very good PI series and seems to have dropped out of syndication a few years ago.

Unlike Bob Sassone, I actually liked Joe Mantegna as Spenser a lot (and I love his readings of the Parker novels on CD) …but he was teamed with lousy actors as Hawk and, once again, the movies were shot on the cheap in Toronto with bland Canadian actors. The scripts weren’t so hot, either.  I think if they’d cast Mantegna and Avery Brooks, and shot the movies in Boston, and hired better writers (like Bill Rabkin & me!), the movies might have worked…

Tom Selleck, who did a bang-up job playing Parker’s Jesse Stone on TV recently, would make a good Spenser. So would Robert Forster who, incidentally, does a great job reading the Jesse Stone novels on CD.

The Thought Police

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CBS News reports that some neanderthal lawmaker in Alabama has introduced a bill that would ban all books from public school libraries by gay authors or about gay characters. 

"I don’t look at it as censorship," says Republican State Representative
Gerald Allen.  "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of
our children."

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee
Williams, Truman Capote  and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker’s novel "The Color
Purple" has lesbian characters.

Allen originally wanted to ban even some
Shakespeare. After criticism, he  narrowed his bill to exempt the classics,
although he still can’t define what a classic is. Also exempted now
Alabama’s public and college libraries.

Librarian Donna Schremser fears
the "thought police," would be patrolling her shelves.

"And so the
idea that we would have a pristine collection that represents one  political
view, one religioius view, that’s not a library,” says Schremser.

"I
think it’s an absolutely absurd bill," says Mark Potok of the Southern 
Poverty Law Center.

First Amendment advocates say the ban clearly
does amount to censorship.

"It’s a Nazi book burning," says Potok. "You
know, it’s a remarkable piece of work."

But in book after book, Allen
reads what he calls the "homosexual agenda," and he’s alarmed.

"It’s
not healthy for America, it doesn’t fit what we stand for," says Allen. "And
they will do whatever it takes to reach their goal."

He says he sees this
as a line in the sand.