Current Affairs

World’s Best Michael Silverblatt Impersonation

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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.

Buffy Vets Slay TV

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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.”

Stories from the Frontlines

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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. 357coversmall

“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.

TVBGone.com

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Tired of the TV blaring in your favorite restaurant or bar, making it impossible for you to have a conversation without yelling? You could ask the owner to turn the set off… or, now, you can do it yourself without anyone even knowing it was you who did it. According tothe LA Times, someone has come up with a handy, key-chain remote that will turn off any television set.

For someone who just wanted a little peace and quiet, Mitch Altman is causing quite a ruckus. The San Francisco entrepreneur, perennially irritated by televisions blaring in restaurants and other gathering spots, revealed this week that he had come up with a solution: a cheap remote that shuts down almost every model of TV.

After the story of Altman’s invention zapped around the Internet, so many people visited TVBGone.com that the website crashed. Even so, Altman had taken 2,000 orders by early Wednesday, accounting for the entire first production run. Through mobile phones, pocket TVs and other devices, gadget makers have spent two decades devising ways to keep people constantly "on." The buzz over Altman’s device shows that some people are eager to turn off.

"I can see it turning into a sort of punky instrument of disruption," Columbia University sociologist Todd Gitlin said of the $15 devices, "a sort of new-style culture jam that’s within a lot of people’s means."

Gitlin warned that with TV such a big part of daily life — Americans watch an average of more than four hours a day — incautious use of TV-B-Gone could be unwise. Picture, for example, a sports bar during Wednesday night’s decisive match-up between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

Altman started mulling over what became TV-B-Gone after he and some friends found themselves watching a soundless TV in a restaurant, abandoning what had been an entertaining conversation.

Altman, an engineer, tinkered in his studio apartment and then ordered as many of the keychain devices as his one-employee company could afford: 20,000. The gadget works by emitting every known set manufacturer’s signal to shut down. In his daily experiments in stores and elsewhere, Altman said, few people have objected.

"TVs are so ubiquitous that they don’t even think about it," Altman said. They see TV-B-Gone as giving them "some way of controlling their lives."

Amherst College sociologist Ron Lembo described Americans as ambivalent about TV. They want to turn it off, he said, but can’t stop watching. TV-B-Gone "plays into deeper resentment," Lembo said. But even if Altman’s gadget catches on, "you can’t turn off where television is and how important it is in the culture."

Along with customer orders, Altman said, he has been deluged with suggestions for follow-up products, including Car-Alarm-B-Gone, Booming-Bass-Speakers-B-Gone, and the clear favorite, Cellphone-B-Gone.

Altman has put some thought into that last one. "There are many possible ways to do it," he said, "but I don’t think any of them are legal."

“The Shield” Gets Close

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It used to be that movie stars wouldn’t slum in television…certainly not on a weekly drama series. Those days are long gone. James Spader, Gary Sinise, Sharon Stone, Rebecca DeMornay… those are just a few of the names that have shown up in episodic TV lately. The trend is picking up speed. Variety reports that Glenn Close is joining the regular cast of THE SHIELD.

Marking her first series regular role on primetime television, Glenn Close has joined the cast of FX cop drama “The Shield.” Thesp, who landed an Emmy nomination this year for her portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Showtime movie “The Lion in Winter,” will appear in every episode of the 13-seg fourth season. Production begins in January. Close will play Monica Rawling, the new captain of the Farmington precinct, who empowers Det. Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) to enforce her controversial community policies.

Could it be that stars have started noticing something viewers did a long time ago… that, by and large, TV shows are better written, produced and directed than most feature films these days? And not just on HBO, either…

There is a God

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Variety reports that NBC’s cop show HAWAII has been cancelled. 1hawaxn04

We should start seeing the full-page advertisements from the fans, clamoring for its return as a feature film with the original cast, appearing in the trades in about 25 years. Mark your calenders.

Ivan Sergei is now officially tied with Jason Gedrick as the kiss of death for any TV show.

The Road to Sequels

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The prolific and charming Max Alan Collins is a remarkable writer… effortlessly moving between mediums… graphic novels, comic strips (he wrote “Dick Tracy” for years), mystery novels, movie novelisations, and TV tie-ins (he authors the “CSI” books now), among other things. He wrote the original graphic novel “Road to Perdition,” which became the Tom Hanks movie… and then he wrote the screenplay novelization of the movie based on his graphic novel. I don’t think that has ever been done before. Now he’s taking the idea of the sequel to a whole new level.

Collins has announced that “Road to Purgatory” (hardcover novel, Morrow, a book publishing group of Harper-Collins) and “Road to Perdition 2: On the Road” (graphic novel, DC Comics trade paperback) should begin hitting stores by late November and no later than Dec. 1.

“I don’t believe two sequels to the same work in two different mediums, by the same creator, has ever been done,” said DC Comics vice president Dan DiDio.

“I knew there’d be demand for a sequel,” Collins said.

But he debated as to what form to pursue — prose or graphic novel, a comics style form for which Collins has become nationally recognized. He decided to use both. “Road to Purgatory” follows the son of hitman Michael O’Sullivan into adulthood on his journey to a showdown with Al Capone, whom O’Sullivan’s son blames for the death of his own gangster father. “Road to Perdition 2: On the Road” is a new narrative that takes place within the structure of the original story.

Collins said that it’s too early to tell if there will be a film sequel to “Perdition.” However, he said DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox have expressed “strong interest.”

In TV, Imitation is the Sincerest form of Desperation

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Variety reports that the surprise success of ABC’s DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES has the networks scrambling to develop “housewife” shows of their own.

In the race to come up with the next big procedural hit (a la “CSI” and “Law & Order”), no one saw the mega-openings of ABC’s new drama hits “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” coming.

Now, just as they were about to finish buying scripts for next season, drama execs have made a U-turn and added a few more quirky female dramas and big-concept thrillers to the development mix.

“There’s always that Oct. 1 curveball that comes in, when everybody suddenly looks for the opposite of what they had been after,” says 20th Century Fox TV drama chief Jennifer Nicholson Salke.

By October, of course, development execs finally have a chance to digest what’s hot and what’s not. And although procedurals are by no means cold, webheads can’t help but take into account the excitement over “Housewives” and “Lost.”

As a result, nets and studios are taking a second look at projects they may have passed on earlier in the year, hoping to capture some of what made “Housewives” so appealing.

NBC and 20th took it one step further, redeveloping the 7-year-old Todd Holland/John Riggi script “Five Houses,” a single-camera comedy about families living in a Los Angeles cul-de-sac.

The success of LOST hasn’t been, um, lost on them either…

“The word right now is ‘eventize,’ ” says ICM’s Matt Solo. “People want pitches and projects that can be turned into events, and promoted as being really different.”

ABC Entertainment exec VP Francie Calfo says it’s clear everyone is now looking for the next show in the vein of “Lost” — even her own net.

You Don’t Bring Me Money Anymore

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There’s a rumor being reported by Billboard that Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand will be teaming up for a nationwide concert tour.

A planned tour by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond could set a new record for high ticket prices, Billboard reported Thursday. The duo has been guaranteed approximately $3.5 million per show, putting estimates for tickets to be $300 to $400 on the low end, an unidentified source told Billboard magazine.

VIP packages could sell for $3,000 or more, some industry executives said.

Streisand and Diamond, who collaborated on the 1978 No. 1 hit “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” reunited for the first time in 24 years last June for a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Diamond’s last tour, in 2001-2002, grossed $80 million.

Streisand is credited with breaking the $300 ticket barrier in the early 1990s and reportedly has charged as much as $750 per ticket in recent years.

The diva grossed $18.2 million for two 1999 New Year’s Eve shows to ring in the new millennium at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Insiders predict the proposed tour will be successful.

“Streisand and Diamond is the ultimate 60-year-old show,” an unidentified industry executive said.

I’m not 60, but I’ll be there. Considering I write Diagnosis Murder novels, this admission can’t come as a big surprise to anyone. I also wear Depends… for the comfort.