#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
The jury has found Scott Petersen guilty of killing his wife, Lacy. I guess this means that Scott and OJ can’t team up as PIs — the ex-fertilizer salesman and ex-football star — to track down the Columbian Drug Dealers, Satanic Cult Members, or Sociopathic Weirdos who may have killed their wives. Excuse me, I have to go cancel my pitch meeting at ABC…
Variety reports that Susan Lyne is stepping in to run Martha Stewart’s company.
Former ABC Entertainment prexy Susan Lyne is going from the Mouse House to Martha’s, effective today. Lyne was appointed president and CEO of Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia at a board meeting Thursday, replacing Sharon Patrick who informed the board she wished to resign. Appointment comes five months after Lyne joined MSO’s board and nearly seven months after she got the ax at ABC along with ABC Entertainment TV Group chair Lloyd Braun.
"I had the summer to really think about what I wanted to do next," Lyne told Daily Variety. "This is a company that has everything it needs to grow. It is a really strong brand and has a deep relationship with its core customers."
This news comes on the heels of Carole Black’s announcement that she’s leaving as head of Lifetime Television at the end of her contract this winter. How are these two stories related? Rumor was that Lyne was in the running to replace Black… or perhaps to fill the vacancy left by Barbara Fisher, who left as vp of programming six months ago. Now Lifetime finds itself looking for two high-powered female execs to fill two major posts at the network.
Of course, I have a personal interest in how the Lifetime exec hunt goes… they are the network that’s running MISSING, the series I’m working on…
I’m not in the hospital yet… but William Rabkin, who will be blogging for me while I am, offers this observation on today’s cancellation news:
On the heels of canceling DR. VEGAS, Variety reports that CBS axed CLUBHOUSE. Two of the networks three new dramas this season… the only ones without CSI in the title… have failed.
With the exception of JOAN OF ARCADIA, the only shows that have clicked on CBS over the last season or two have been police procedurals in the style of CSI… like CSI MIAMI, CSI NEW YORK, NCIS, COLD CASE, and WITHOUT A TRACE.
Considering that, it’s probably very wise that CBS is going with another police procedural, NUMBERS, to take the place of DR. VEGAS.
After 12 years in municipal government, The Acton Beacon reports that Town Treasurer Stan Smith will step down to pursue his passion of mystery writing.
"I’ve always thought I’d like to give it a shot, and now that I’m about to turn 45, it seems like the right time of life as well as the right opportunity to make a change of this kind," Smith wrote in his letter to Town Administrator Natalie Lashmit. Smith commended the town and wished his colleagues the best of luck.
We wish you luck, too, Stan. Maybe if you hit it big, other politicians will follow your lead.
This has been a sad year in the world of television and film music — already we’ve lost Jerry Goldsmith, David Raksin, Fred Karlin and Elmer Bernstein. Now Variety reports that composer Gil Mille has died. Mille is perhaps best known for his TV scores for KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, NIGHT GALLERY, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, and THE QUESTOR TAPES as well as the feature film THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, among others.
I’m a huge fan of TV and film music… I listen almost exclusively to soundtracks as I write. I’ve been listening to a lot of Goldsmith, Raksin, Karlin and Bernstein over the last few month…Mille never quite attained their legendary status and wide appeal, but his scores were powerful, ground-breaking and memorable. He will be missed.
A little known fact: my brother Tod does an incredible impersonation of Michael Silverblatt, host of NPR’s “Bookworm.” It’s better in person, but he recently replicated it on the blog Elegant Variations in a mock interview with himself on Bookworm:
Michael: Tod, in your transcendent novel “Living Dead Girl,” you stretch the boundaries of fiction in such a way that the world seems to lack…order…and love, like that poem by Rilke, becomes something like an infection of the soul, a commentary on the socio-economic role we all play in that God and money and danger and the all-encompassing nature of what I like to call “the bukakke” becomes almost a parable from the Bible; or a tone poem; or perhaps it’s like a song you hear on the day your dog dies and that song become synonymous with the death of your dog, until dog, becomes…God. Is that what you were trying to do?
Tod: Uh. Yes.
…was courtesy of Elegant Variations:
AND HE’S POPULAR ON THE DATING SCENE, TOO
A man in India can write independent thoughts using both hands at the same time. Sir, in about 15 minutes a man named James Patterson is going to call you to see if you’d like to help him on his next seven book projects. Say yes.
The TV biz won’t have Sarah Michelle Geller or Joss Whedon to kick around any more.
Geller’s movie THE GRUDGE was a surprise hit this weekend, pulling in $40 million. Anyone who can open a movie that big is officially a movie star. I doubt she’ll be considering any TV series offers now.
And BUFFY creator Joss Whedon, who is currently making a movie version of his short-lived Fox series FIREFLY, announced today that he is getting out of the TV series business.
“Twentieth Century Fox TV has approved Whedon’s request to halt his overall deal at the studio, effectively shuttering his Mutant Enemy production shingle. Besides wanting to focus on his feature career, Whedon said he decided to take a break from TV because, quite simply, he had run out of series ideas.
“I spent a lot of time trying to think what my next series would be,” Whedon said. “I couldn’t think of anything. When that happens, it generally means something is just not working. I didn’t feel like I could come up with anything that the networks would want.”
It’s not surprising that his decision to get out of the TV biz comes while he’s in the midst of writing/directing the movie version of FIREFLY, his only other TV series that wasn’t a BUFFY spin-off. It must be bringing back some unpleasant memories of his dealing with the Fox network. It was a troubled project from the start. The original pilot was scrapped, effectively changing the creative direction of the series…and the series never quite recovered, not that it was given much of a chance. Fox canceled the series after only a handful of episodes. I imagine that experience, as well as the WB’s surprising cancellation of ANGEL, undoubtably had an impact on his decision to stop toiling in TV for a while. That, and the current state of television…
“I have a bitter taste in my mouth with where TV has gone in the past five years,” said Whedon, who called TV’s reality trend “loathsome.”
My writing partner William Rabkin and I had just turned in the seventeenth draft of a screenplay based on .357 VIGILANTE, a novel I’d written under the pseudonym “Ian Ludlow” (so I’d be on the shelf next to Robert Ludlum). We were a few weeks away from pre-production on the movie. The producer called us in, saying he only had a few minor notes that would only take a few minutes on the computer.
“I just need a tiny polish,” he said. “Just a few little nips and tucks.”
”I’m ready,” I said, having already figured out where I was going to put the framed movie poster on my wall, and how I was going to spend my production bonus. 
“I’d like you to flip Act Two and Act Three,” he said.
I laughed. He didn’t. “You are joking, right?”
“No,” he said. “It will be easy with your computer. Just flip the two acts, make Act Three Act Two, and make Act Two Act Three.”
“But you can’t do that,” I said.
“Why not?” He asked, genuinely perplexed.
I walked out and never came back, leaving Bill behind. I’m not sure he’s ever forgiven me for that, by the way. Other writers came in, including Michael Blake, who would later win an Oscar for “Dancing With Wolves”. Not surprisingly, the movie didn’t get made… though every few years the producer will call us up with some new scheme to resurrect it.