Current Affairs

Hillary, I Feel Your Pain

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6a00d8341c669c53ef00e54f31b7048833-640wiSecretary of State Hillary Clinton tripped and broke her elbow earlier this week. Today she had surgery and is facing weeks of physical therapy. Fox News reports:

“The most common fracture you get from a standing-height fall will either be an olecranon fracture or a radial head fracture,” Alberta, who specializes in shoulder and elbow surgery, told FOXNews.com. “If she landed on her elbow and fell back on the point of her elbow, she most likely fractured her olecrenon, which is the bony point of your elbow. If she fell with her hand stretched out to catch the fall, then it may be a radial head fracture. […]"

In general, elbow surgery can last anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple of hours.

“There’ll be an incision depending on where the fracture is, and we’ll use anything from a plate and screws, all the way up to replacement of the joint to repair the injury,” Alberta said.

As far as recovery, Clinton is facing anywhere from six weeks to three months of physical therapy.

God, does that bring back some bad memories. Five years ago I broke both of my elbows, my right one so severely that I was in surgery for six hours while they put it back together with three plates, a dozen screws and a titanium radial head (that's my x-ray in the picture. You can click on it for a larger image). I wasn't Secretary of State, running all over the globe, but I was writing & producing a weekly TV series and a few weeks away from the deadline on a novel when the accident happened.  

I was told that implants would remain in my arm for the rest of my life. But after six months of physical therapy, my arm was still locked at a 90 degree angle… so they took all of the implants out again…and I had another six months of therapy. The surgery was a success, but I was left with only about 40% mobility in the arm, and some pain and numbness where my elbow used to be (not to mention a big scar), so not a day goes by when I am not reminded of the accident.

Hillary, I feel your pain.

Uncle Burl Barers All

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Carl Brookins recently interviewed my Uncle Burl Barer, the Edgar Award-winning author of such true crime bestsellers as MOM SAID KILL and MURDER IN THE FAMILY. It's a fun interview. Here are some excerpts: 

What’s the hardest thing about being an author? Making money.

What surprised you the most when you became a published author?

I was surprised that authors don't have groupies such as the ones who pursue rock stars and famous actors, or even disc jockeys. Never be an author to pick up chicks.

Have you ever collaborated on a novel? Would you consider it?

Yes, I collaborated on a novel (unpublished) with someone who wasn't a writer. I would love to collaborate with someone who is a writer. I did contribute to one of Lee Goldberg's pulp fiction novels that he wrote under an assumed name. I helped him with one of the sex scenes. He was, at that time, not as experienced with that topic as he has since, no doubt, become. When his Nana complained that the book was nothing but sex and violence, Lee wisely shifted the blame to my brother and me. My brother deflected criticism by insisting that he only helped Lee with the legal/courtroom scenes. When Mom called me, she asked How could you pervert your little nephew that way? I told her Mom, I only helped him write one sex scene, honest! She replied, It was the one with the ice-cream wasn't it? She was right. It was.

A TV Truism

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Canadian TV writer Denis McGrath posted on his blog a simple TV truism that is nonetheless often taken for granted in this business:

The process of making a Friday Night Lights, or The Wire, or The Shield, is exactly the same process that results in Being Erica. It’s just as much work to conceive of, break story for, and execute a little confection like Ugly Betty or Reaper or Cupid as it is to make The West Wing.

No matter what the show is, whether it’s winning Emmys or going unnoticed, it still boils down to a showrunner and a bunch of writers in a room, breaking stories that can be told in four acts and shot in X number of days for X amount of money.

Diane Dives Into More Mind Games

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I was delighted to see in the trades today that Bruce Evans (MR. BROOKS) will direct DIVER, a thriller written by my friend Diane Ademu-John, with whom I worked on the TV series MISSING. The script is about an ex-cop who enters the minds of dead people to read their final thoughts and use them to solve crimes. Diane is no stranger to these kinds of mind games — after MISSING, about an FBI agent who has visions of missing persons, she went straight into several seasons on MEDIUM.

Congratulations Diane!

German Nets Abandon Local Drama

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Bad news for TV writers in Germany. The network RTL is shutting down their in-house fiction and comedy departments entirely after their slate of homegrown show flopped miserably in the ratings, according to the Hollywood Reporter. 

While imported U.S. series such as "House" and "CSI" continue to draw audiences for the channel, RTL has for years been unable to produce a new German-language fiction hit. Instead, it relies almost entirely on German adaptations of international reality formats such as "Supernanny" and "Pop Idol."
RTL has also been hit hard by the sharp drop in TV ad sales that have followed the economic recession. CEO Anke Schaferkordt has evidently chosen cheaper imports over the economic risk inherent with local production.

As someone at Pro7, another German network told me, they can buy three American series for what it costs to produce one original German show. And there's a lot less incentive to make German shows when they keep bombing.
The only consistent homegrown, scripted drama hit on RTL is ALARM FOR COBRA 11, made by my friends at Action Concept, and that's now in its 16th season. Action Concept has a new series for RTL called LASKO: FIST OF GOD that is premiering later this month. I'm hoping that LASKO will buck the trend and be a big hit.

Hat in Hand

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The most interesting thing about Ken Follett's THE PILLARS OF EARTH mini-series isn't the international cast (Ian McShane, Donald Sutherland, Rufus Sewell etc) or it's location shoot in Hungary and Austria — it's the complex financing that had to be put together to get the German/Canadian coproduction made. As the press release notes:

TANDEM COMMUNICATIONS and Muse Entertainment's broadcast and home video partners on The Pillars of the Earth are ProSiebenSat1's German FreeTV Group, Canada's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Movie Network and Movie Central, Spain's Socable, Austria's ORF, Germany's Universum Film Home Entertainment, Hungary's TV2 and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment – to name a few. In addition, the financial entities involved were gap financier FIDEC, Germany's DZ Bank and The National Bank of Canada. Legal counsel for the project was Mathias Schwarz in Germany, Cari Davine in Canada, Randolph M. Paul in the USA and Monika Horvath in Hungary.

Did you notice that it says that those are just a few of the financial partners? And did you see that the deal-making itself is  such a big part of the production, that the producers feel obligated to thank their lawyers in the press release? Incredible. 

The folks at Tandem obviously had to go, hat in hand, all over the world to get the money for this. Even more surprising is that the mini-series doesn't even have a U.S. or U.K. broadcast yet. This illustrates just how difficult it is to raise financing for TV productions these days…and how global the business has become. Tandem's managing director Rola Bauer says in the press release:

"The fact that we have been able to raise the production financing in these economically challenging times is testimony to the enduring strength of fictional television Event programming […] and could not have been achieved without our international networks as well as our financial and production partners."

Scott Free TV president David Zucker told the Hollywood Reporter that putting together such a complex deal and going into production without a U.S. broadcaster is  "the new world order."

"Yes, there is more risk at the top, but there's more latitude on the creative side. It's not dissimilar to the indie film biz in this respect. Given how difficult the economy became here, we decided to plow ahead and get funding and casting done before trying to do a licensing deal in the States."

Zucker said there was "a lot of interest" among yank broadcasters, cablers and pay cablers but did not specify how close to a deal the producers were.

For what it's worth, the last big mini-series that Munich-based Tandem put together, LOST CITY RAIDERS, ended up on SciFi. 

UK Actors Flocking to US

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It's no secret that UK actors are swarming to Los Angeles to become leads in TV series (HOUSE, LIE TO ME, LIFE, LAW & ORDER, JOURNEYMAN, GREY'S ANATOMY, SARAH CONNOR, THE WIRE, etc.). Now Broadcast magazine reports in an interview with actor James Nesbitt that it's the  lack of jobs on UK television that's sending them overseas.

The Cold Feet and Murphy’s Law actor, who also stars in BBC1’s Occupation next week, told the Radio Times that the UK TV industry was in a “desperate state”, and that he was having to look to the US for work.

He said Hollywood did not naturally appeal to him – “the notion of waiting six months to play a baddie in a bad film just wasn’t my idea of career utopia” – but that he had now employed a US agent.

“I was challenged here, I enjoyed what I was doing. But the British TV industry is in a desperate state – not creatively but financially,” he said. “There’s so little work happening here, it [Hollywood] is not a door that I’d slam shut,” he said.

The Plan is Coming Together

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Variety reports that the cast is shaping up for the big screen version of my buddy Steve Cannell’s hit series THE A-TEAM. Liam Neeson is taken with the part of Hannibal (George Peppard’s role) and Bradley Cooper is being wooed to play Faceman (Dirk Benedict’s part). No word yet on who is being sought for the roles of Murdock (Dwight Schultz in the original) and “B.A.” Baracus, played by Mr. T. Joe Carnahan is directing, and Ridley Scott is producing with Jules Daly and Cannell from a screenplay by Carnahan, Brian Bloom and Skip Woods.

 

Mr. Monk and the Flattered Author

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Ed Gorman has always been an enthusiastic supporter of my books. But it still feels great, and is immensely flattering, whenever I discover that he's enjoyed one of my novels. Today he reviewed my next Monk book, MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP, which comes out in July. He said, in part:

Any novel that can make me laugh out loud six or seven times in the first chapter is one I'd recommend without qualification. And good as that first chapter is, MONK AND THE DIRTY COP only gets better partly because of the central idea's ingenuity and partly because of the wit with which it's used.[…]I've enjoyed all the Monk novels. Monk is my all-time favorite comic detective and Lee Goldberg has honored him by writing some of the finest tie-novels ever conceived. These have a richness of incident and backstory and place that give them real depth. And for me MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP is the best one yet.

Speaking of Ed,  there's  a great interview with him over at Western Fiction Review that  also include an overview of his many, many books.