Current Affairs

Is it Okay to Have an Opinion?

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My comments on this blog about Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS has sparked a spirited debate here, on Sarah Weinman’s blog, and several other blogs out there. A number of people… authors, in particular… are upset that I posted my criticisms of the book publicly. Author Charlie Stella, on Sarah’s blog, wrote:

Goldberg doesn’t get what all the excitement is about? Okay, fair enough. Like some of the commentators, I don’t get what all the excitement is about some other writers … and I’m sure there are people who upchucked their lunch at reading my stuff as well. I have to wonder why Goldberg took the public potshot, though … unless the guy is just another jerkoff.

To which, Jennifer Jordan wrote:

I didn’t interpret Mr.Goldberg’s post as a pot shot but perhaps you feel any opinion made in a public forum is such. What I got from it, in the end was more a feeling of tiredness with the P.I. genre. It could well be that he hoped to incur the reactions that he’s gotten because, as Sarah said, these very reactions say a lot about Bruen’s writing. He could have made these comments about quite a few authors and not had the ‘public outcry’ that he has here. The outright anger is a testament to Bruen, who is the only author that can instill fear in me by saying he’ll come into town for a drink. That is the biggest damn drink you’ll ever take. Oddly, I don’t see many jumping to Kathy Reichs defense.

I think that’s because Kathy Reichs doesn’t hang out at Bouchercon or at other "crime writer events" socializing with other authors and mystery lovers. Ken Bruen does.

And he’s also a very, very nice guy with a strong literary voice and sharp prose. Kathy’s prose isn’t as accomplished.

He’s greatly admired by a tight-knit group of noir lovers and authors. Kathy Reichs isn’t.

He’s also received numerous accolades for his work from respected novelists and crime writing organizations. Kathy Reichs hasn’t.

But I think the most significant difference, as far as Kathy being fair game and Ken being off-limits, is that she’s a lot more successful, commercially, than he is. Far more, in fact.

Which raises an interesting issue, one that John Rickards, on his blog Empire of Dirt, discusses:

Patricia Cornwell brings out Trace and everyone slates it. Everyone. Come to that, everyone freely uses her, along with Dan Brown, James Patterson etc. etc. as examples of kinda crappy commercial fiction.

No one objects. At least, not round here, virtually speaking.

Is there some ‘upper ceiling’ of commercial success or profile above which a writer becomes fair game for those outside? Is it because few, if any, of us – the reader, the other writer, the reviewer – know these people in person and can therefore say what we like without fear of reproach?

Is there, at least amongst people ‘in the industry’ – and this is where Craig’s comment comes in – a sense that you shouldn’t shit where you sleep? Rather like Hunter S Thompson’s observation of the Washington press corps in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 that they were too chummy with the politicians they were covering and that so much was kept ‘off the record’ because journos didn’t want to offend their friends on the Hill – are we so cosy with one another that we’re afraid of saying what we think?

Why?

I’d be curious to hear your answers to that question.

Personally, I think if Kathy Reichs hung out at conventions, was more active in professional organizations (PWA, MWA, SinC) and was friends with lots of authors, and crime writing aficionados, she’d "off-limits" as well, regardless of the creative merits or commercial success of her work.

TV Themes R.I.P.

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Once again, the press is declaring the death of tv themes.

Despite such attempts at revival, the theme song is dying. Once a siren’s call
that heralded the beginning of a show and drew people to the TV set from all
over the house, the theme song is fast going the way of Harbert’s cassette
tapes.

Network executives point to several causes of death: There are
more commercials per half hour of TV, leaving less time for programs. The first
thing to go is often the theme song. It’s costly to hire a good composer to
write a song and pay the residuals due with each airing. Viewers have shorter
attention spans and won’t sit through theme songs. And they can seem
unsophisticated in this era of savvy audiences.

But the loss is
significant. Anyone who has clapped along to the "Friends" theme or sat through
a middle school music class rendition of "The Greatest American Hero" song can
feel it. Good TV shows are made better by good theme songs and remembered more
fondly for them. Think of "Cheers" with its "Where Everybody Knows Your Name."
Or "The Golden Girls" and "Thank You for Being a Friend." Or the jazzy themes of
"Hill Street Blues" and "L.A. Law."

What I really think they mean is the death of TV theme songs, but even that isn’t true.
I’m a big TV theme fan and, while there are fewer memorable themes these days, there are certainly no shortage of  instrumental or vocal themes… just not as many as in days past, and not as many that are catchy enough to remember.

Recent shows with vocal themes include  Nip/Tuck, The Sopranos,  Missing, Monk,  Wild Card,  The O.C.  and Star Trek Enterprise.  (And that doesn’t include shows using pop songs for their themes, like the three CSI shows). Recent shows with memorable instrumental themes include Six Feet Under, Deadwood,  The West Wing,  and, dare I say it, Survivor.

I think networks and studios are making a mistake not recognizing the importance of a strong theme tune/song.  All it takes is a few notes of a memorable theme to create an immediate, emotional reaction in viewers, immediately evoking their affection for the show and its characters.

There’s a story, I don’t know if it’s true, that Scott Rudin wanted to ditch the finger-snapping Addams Family theme from the movie and its trailers. But when he saw the immediate reaction the first few notes had with preview audiences, he changed his mind. A strong theme is instant brand recognition…forever.

What makes the Mission Impossible movies, well, Mission Impossible is that classic Lalo Schifrin theme and the incidental score (which was also used in the film). Addams Family, Star Trek, Friends, Hawaii Five-O, Cheers, X-Files, Seinfeld, Law & Order… those are just a few of many, many TV themes that have become part of our shared culture, whether you’re a regular viewer of those shows or not.   

When studios buy the remake rights to old TV series, I would argue what they are really buying is the format and theme music/song.  What would Hawaii Five-O be without the Morton Stevens theme? What’s The Brady Bunch without the opening song and the incidental score? 

The importance of the theme music/song also extends to most movie franchises. A James Bond movie simply isn’t a 007 film without the James Bond theme (what Bond fan didn’t long for it in NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN?).  What would the Man With No Name be without Ennio Morricone’s haunting score? What people remember most about Shaft isn’t the movie… it’s Isaac Hayes theme song.

The TV theme isn’t dead…it’s just not as appreciated as it should be by the very people, the networks and studios, who have the most to gain by supporting it. The problem is, the gains aren’t as immediately tangible as using the money that would have gone into the music budget on designer wardrobe, big-name guest stars, or a more elaborate action sequences…

Top Fives

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Mystery Ink polled over 50 fiction writers, reviewers and other assorted
readers, asking them to name their five favorite books they read during the
year. A list of those, well, lists are up at their website.  T. Jefferson Parker’s CALIFORNIA GIRL,  Scott Phillips COTTONWOOD and Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS show up a lot. Here’s my list of five.

My brother Tod’s LIVING DEAD GIRL also shows up in a couple of the  lists…including this mention, from author Thomas Perry:

Living
Dead Girl by Tod Goldberg — Probably the most skillful and unusual
piece of crime fiction by a young writer I’ve read in years.

If I were to expand my list to include, say, the top ten books I read this year, it would also include:

  • Larry McMurtry’s four Berrybender novels (which I think of as one book spread out over four volumes).
  • Frederick Manfred’s  The Scarlet Plume.
  • Paul Quarrington’s Fishing with My Old Guy
  • Dan J. Marlowe’s One Endless Hour
  • Lawrence Block’s Hitman novellas and short stories (which I also think of as one book. I thought the novel he wrote with the character, though, was rather weak).

That’s not to say I didn’t read a lot of other great novels this year, including many listed by others at Mystery Ink,  but these are the ones that will stick with me for some time to come.

The Joys of Stock Footage

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I was channel-surfing last night and stumbled on SUBMERGED,  a schlocky Fred Olen Ray movie from 2000 about a hijacked plane that crashes into the ocean, and the attempts to rescue the passengers. If the plot sounds identical to Universal’s cheesy AIRPORT  ’77, that’s not surprising. SUBMERGED was built entirely around AIRPORT ’77 stock footage. There’s nothing illegal about it… Fred simply bought/licensed the footage from Universal. What’s surprising is that Universal sees so little value now in their AIRPORT franchise that they’d allow a virtual remake to be made by another studio using their footage.

Stock footage is a wonderful thing, especially if you’re working on a tight budget.  I’ve certainly used my share of stock footage over the years, particularly on a  low-budget  syndicated action series called COBRA, starring Michael Dudikoff, that we wrote & produced for Steve Cannell up in Canada. We had virtually no money… so we relied on stock footage from the vast Cannell library to make our show look bigger than it was.  For example, we took an action sequence from the WISEGUY episode…used the same Vancouver location, matched the cars and the wardrobe, and crafted a new sequence using the same footage.  To make our scene a bit fresher, we used alternate takes not used in the WISEGUY episode.  The new footage and the stock matched perfectly.  The trickery was unnoticeable to the untrained eye, or someone unfamiliar with the WISEGUY episode.

For another episode, our hero’s car was trashed…so he drove a Corvette Stingray…which allowed us to use lift several action sequences from Cannell’s series STINGRAY.  That was probably our least creative use of stock…on the same level as SUBMERGED. But we saved a huge amount of money and it made us heroes around the Cannell building.

In still another COBRA  episode, we used stock footage from an action sequence in RIPTIDE, which used stock footage from an episode of HARDCASTLE AND MCCORMICK, which used stock footage from a STINGRAY. So our sequence was created from footage patched together from three other series.  I remember Steve Cannell watching the sequence in the screening room with a huge grin on his face… he’d never seen stock footage used so well. We looked at it as a challenge…and had a wonderful time.

My favorite use of stock footage was for a two-hour sweeps episode of  DIAGNOSIS MURDER about a plane crash in a corn field. We used stock footage of a plane crash, and sweeping, overhead shots of the wreckage, from the movie FEARLESS. We then bought out a cornfield in Oxnard, set it aflame, and  filled it with scorched airplane wreckage.  We also put our actors in the cornfield.  Our original footage matched seamlessly with the stock.  It gave our episode a scope we never could have managed on our tight budget…and I doubt the average viewer was the least bit aware of our trickery, even if they were among the few who’d seen FEARLESS.

I see stock footage used all the time in feature films and TV shows…mainly because the best stock (mostly explosions, battle sequences, car chases, establishing shots, etc.) gets used over and over again.  When it’s used well, the viewer rarely notices. When it’s used badly, it makes whatever you’re watching look like hack work… which, of course, it probably is or they wouldn’t have needed the stock footage in the first place!

Still More on Publish America

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On Ed Gorman’s wonderful blog, novelist Richard Wheeler mentioned that he had dusted off an old, unpublished novel entitled BIG APPLE, and that it was being published by Publish America.

This intrigued me. Why? Because Wheeler is a very successful author, with dozens of well-respected, Spur-Award-winning westerns from major publishers to his credit. And he’s got several new hardcovers coming from St. Martin’s/Forge as well as another series of paperbacks from Pinnacle Books. 

He certainly doesn’t fit the profile of a typical Publish America customer/author. So, given the recent controversy surrounding the company, I asked him about his experiences with the  company. Here is what he said:

I was attracted to PublishAmerica because there is no initial fee and they even offer a one-dollar advance, thus providing some semblance of a trade publisher.

It was a grave mistake. They make their profit not by marketing the books but by gouging the authors. The shallow 20 percent discount, plus inflated shipping charges (around $5 per book), meant that I paid more than the list price of the novel unless I ordered very large quantities. Ditto retailers. A twenty percent discount for retailers, plus inflated shipping meant that no bookseller would stock the book. (That is why you find on-line retailers adding a surcharge.)

They are not in business to sell books to the public; they sell printing services and books to the amateur authors who come to them, and can make their entire profit from the author, without selling a copy to the public. The disincentives are deliberate. They don’t want to bother with booksellers and make it hard for a bookseller to order from them. They also don’t really care whether an author can earn anything from his books. Because of inflated shipping costs I could have ordered my books cheaper from a retailer than from PublishAmerica.

He goes on to say that iUniverse is "the gold standard in the POD field."

Through the Authors Guild back-in-print program I have put nine reverted titles back into print at iUniverse, and have seven more in process. They have done an excellent job with these. But always remember that all these POD publishers regard the author himself as their primary source of income.

At least iUniverse, unlike Publish America, is upfront about it.

It should be noted that the Authors Guild Back-In-Print program is free to authors of previously published, out-of-print, work (and are members of the Guild). Otherwise, iUniverse charges a stiff fee to publish original manuscripts, which is, presumably, what would have happened if Wheeler went to them with BIG APPLE, a book he wrote in the 80s but wasn’t able to sell.

Publish America doesn’t charge that stiff fee, they just get it out of you in other ways…

CBS Comes of Age

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Back when we were doing DIAGNOSIS MURDER for CBS, their big hit dramas were TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, WALKER TEXAS RANGER, and JUDGING AMY. They were barely competitive on  Thursday nights with DIAGNOSIS MURDER and 48 HOURS… and nothing else they put on that night could survive. Their attempts to draw a younger demographic, like CENTRAL PARK WEST, were embarrassing failures.  It seemed there was nothing CBS could to do to draw younger audiences to their network.

Then along came CSI…which changed everything.  The stunning, unexpected, overnight success of CSI was followed by WITHOUT A TRACE, COLD CASE, NAVY NCIS, and the other CSIs. Now,  CBS has accomplished something nobody thought possible… today Variety reports they’re the number one network in number of viewers and demographics.

In what Leslie Moonves called a "watershed moment" for his network, CBS has scaled to the top of Demo Mountain, sweeping November in all key ratings categories.

The Eye remains the oldest-skewing of the networks, but its big-tent strategy of delivering programs that attract viewers of all ages — and in both red and blue states — has worked to perfection so far this fall, including the four-week sweep period that will wrap tonight.

Net has been pacing well ahead of its rivals for a couple of years in total viewers, but started making a demo push last season when it eked out a victory in adults 25-54 while placing third in adults 18-49.

Now it has become the net to beat in 18-49, the demographic that most closely correlates to advertising revenue.

"Way back when I took this job (in 1995), I said there was no way CBS will ever win in 18-49," Moonves said. "It was something we didn’t even dream about."

How to Become Gay

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An East Texas school was forced to call off their "Sadie Hawkins" day after a Christian group complained that the "cross-dressing" event encouraged kids to become homosexuals.

Delana Davies, who has two children in the Spurger school, complained this year that the tradition could promote homosexuality and got the Liberty Legal Institute, a right-wing Christian legal group, to take up the cause.

“It might be fun today to dress up like a little girl — kids think it’s cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there [and] eventually it gets you,” Davies told reporters.

"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in east Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers,” institute litigation director Hiram Sasser said.

Next, Ms. Davies group is going to try to ban Halloween, because it clearly promotes serial killing, Devil-worship, and necrophilia. I don’t know what’s scarier — the ignorance of Ms. Davies and her supporters or the cowardace of the school board officials.

The Saviour Of Comedy: Joe Roth?

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Day Three of Love in the Time Of Tod Goldberg…

Variety reports that movie producer Joe Roth has inked a deal to develop sitcoms for CBS:

"My sole purpose in starting this company is to quickly" work on launching comedies, Roth told Daily Variety. "That’s what’s missing from TV right now. The networks have plenty of dramas, and I couldn’t develop a reality show if my life depended on it.  I’ve always found the best strategy in business is to focus on one thing."

There are plenty of sitcoms on TV, just not enough funny ones.

The last movie I walked out of and actually asked for my money back on (vs. just sneaking into something else) was the Roth "laffer" Anger Management, which nominally starred Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. I say nominally because neither actually did a whit of acting in it. It was just drivel. Anyway, after walking out on the movie I became interested in finding out the root of my hatred of this film and found, to my surprise, that it might be Roth himself. Of all the movies I’ve walked out of in my 33 years, a total less than 30, Roth has at least five: Nightbreed,  Low Down Dirty Shame, The Jerky Boys, Daddy Day Care and the aforementioned Anger Management. On the upside, I did love Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds In Paradise.

The Final Frontier

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Sexytrek I just finished watching the DVD "Trekkies 2," a documentary about STAR TREK fandom. But here’s one thing the documentarians missed… Fleshbot has uncovered Sexy Trek, a porn site for Trekkers. This is how they describe their site:

"Sexy Trek is the only sci-fi fan site dedicated to Trekkies. A universe of porn for the Trek Fetish Enthusiasts. You will get to know many people who live the Trek lifestyle to the fullest. It seems only natural for our passion to consume every area of our lives, including our sex lives. You will get to know those who live out their Trek fantasies. Our fleet command center is filled with sci-fi content. Step into the transporter. We’ll beam you up to a sci-fi galactic fantasy!"

Just when I thought fandom couldn’t get any creepier…

This Sounds Cool

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Zap2it reports:

"Law & Order" is reaching back to its first season, signing veteran actor David Groh ("Rhoda," "General Hospital") to reprise a role he first played in 1990. In that episode, based on the 1987 Joel Steinberg case, Groh played a psychiatrist convicted of abusing and eventually killing his daughter. Steinberg was paroled earlier this year, leading the show’s writers to revisit the character.

What a great idea! I hope they use some footage from the original episode for flashbacks…that would give the episode an extra punch. Either way, I’m there.

It’s rare when a show revisits an old episode… and reunites the guest cast. As it happens, I watched an old episode of GUNSMOKE today entitled "Mannon" which they revisited nearly twenty years later (with Steve Forrest back as Mannon) for GUNSMOKE: RETURN TO DODGE. They did it again in GUNSMOKE: THE LAST APACHE… revisiting characters and events from the old episode "Matt’s Love Story." It really gives the story emotional resonance… and solidifies the sense that the characters live within an evolving universe… that past events (which we share with them as an audience) still ripple through their lives. It doesn’t happen in television often enough… on most non-serialized series, it’s as if past episodes never occurred.

We sort of did what LAW AND ORDER is doing  when we had private eye Joe Mannix (Mike Connors) on an episode of DIAGNOSIS MURDER. We took a MANNIX episode from 25 years earlier, reunited the guest cast (Pernell Roberts, Julie Adams, Beverly Garland) and continued the story… using the old footage for flashbacks. Boy, was it fun.

Bill Rabkin and I always try to reference past episodes — even if only in passing –in the series we write & produce. On MISSING, our characters have spoken of past events (ie episodes), acknowledging those events the way you would any life experiences.

I’m also trying to do it now in the DIAGNOSIS MURDER books… I often have the characters refer to events that happened on the series and in previous books, though not so much that it would alienate readers who have never seen the show or read the earlier tales.

The book I just finished… DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE… revolves around Dr. Mark Sloan’s first case in 1962… and I explain some events only hinted at in some of the TV episodes, particularly one we wrote guest-starring Jack Klugman entitled "Voices Carry."

I love that kind of stuff. It brings out the TV geek in me.