Current Affairs

Let’s Make a Movie

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My friend David Carren, with whom I worked on DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MARTIAL LAW, has written & directed a low-budget student film called THE RED QUEEN that features another good friend of mine, author/actress Harley Jane Kozak, who blogs today about her experience making the movie.

I loved making the film, working with students. Really talented, nice students. At least, I’m pretty sure they were nice. A lot of communication was in Spanish, Edinburg being on the Mexican border. I liked to think there were deep conversations on the works of Pedro Almodovar and Carlos Saura, but it’s possible they were saying, “If I ingest more vending machine Skittles, I shall go mad.”

I can't wait to see it.

Nosebleed Heights of Adventure

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Hunt at the Well of Eternity
My friend James Reasoner, one of the most prolific authors on earth, just got a starred review from Publishers Weekly for his HUNT AT THE WELL OF ETERNITY, the first in a new series of pulp adventures from Hard Case Crime. Each book is written by a different author under the "Gabriel Hunt" pen name, but it's James who kicks off the series with a bang:

James Reasoner (the Civil War Battle series) is the first to take the shared Hunt pen name and launch an adventure series that raises the action bar to nosebleed heights. After a mysterious beauty delivers a bloodstained Confederate flag and a whiskey bottle full of water to the Hunt brothers at a fund-raising reception, millionaire adventurer Gabriel Hunt and beautiful, gun-toting museum director Dr. Cierra Almanzar follow clues and an ambiguous map from Manhattan to Guatemala, only certain they're on the right path when somebody's shooting at them. Hunt, armed only with his fists, bullwhips, a Colt .45 double-action Peacemaker and a vintage Civil War muzzle loader, is often outnumbered but never outwitted. Pulp adventure fans will be thrilled to see the genre so smashingly resurrected.

Congratulations James! It's great to see him getting the recognition he so richly deserves.

Variety Slams Bloggers

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Today, Variety is taking potshots at the industry bloggers who, over the last year or two, have made the daily trade magazine irrelevant and, worse, revealed how beholden it is to the studios and networks it fails to objectively cover.

Sadly, all Variety is showing with their pitiful whining, and their desperate plea to still be taken seriously, is how right the bloggers are. They are particularly bitter about how Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily frequently breaks stories that Variety either didn't notice, failed to cover, got wrong, or completely hushed-up. Variety is trying to make the case that bloggers are reckless and mean, Finke in particular. Cynthia Littleton reports about one dust-up as an example:

Nothing is too minor or petty to spark a verbal fusillade. And next to bashing their own kind, there's nothing Web newsies likes better than hammering the veracity and integrity of the traditional media. Variety has certainly found itself in the crosshairs, as have the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, among others.

On March 11, Finke posted an item saying Summit Entertainment was eyeing Juan Antonio Bayona to direct "Eclipse," the third installment of its "Twilight" vampire pics.Variety got an off the record confirmation of the deal, and reported it in a story that ran only online.

March 12: Goldstein, in the L.A. Times' Big Picture blog, debunked the Bayona hiring. Goldstein quoted his lunch partner of that day, Summit president of production Erik Feig, as denying that anyone had been hired to direct "Eclipse."

Goldstein's post took Finke and Variety to task, alleging the stories ran without getting confirmation the story.

Finke's response to Goldstein was swift, even demanding an apology from Feig. Shortly before 10 p.m. that night, her update featured Feig claiming to have been misquoted by Goldstein, at least according to Finke. 

March 13: Goldstein responds with a post saying that he and Feig had been "bludgeoned" by Finke, and he even linked to another blogger's take on the Finke vs. Goldstein spat.
March 15: Goldstein added a "Sunday update" that quoted Feig giving a mea culpa to Finke, after which Goldstein took yet another swipe at Variety for supposed journalistic recklessness.

So, in other words, Finke was right, the LA Times was wrong. So what point, exactly, was Variety trying to make?
In another Variety story, Michael Fleming recounts this anecdote:

A little over a year ago, I found out Brad Pitt might fall out of Universal's "State of Play." The studio's toppers argued that a Variety story would cement his exit. They asked for a couple of days to let it play out, a request that seemed reasonable. Days later, Variety.com broke Pitt's exit. (Later that day, Deadline Hollywood Daily wrote about my sitting on the story and cited it as proof Variety was in the pockets of the studios.)

In other words, Finke was right. Fleming sat on the story because the studio asked him to. He put their business/PR interests above his responsibility to report news. He cow-towed to an advertiser. The only point Fleming is making here is how compromised Variety's reporting has truly become (which was obvious to anyone who read the trades during the Writers Strike).

I think the Daily Beast sums it up best:

This weekend, Variety launched an extraordinary three-part attack that was ostensibly aimed at blogging in general but clearly was aimed at one influential online journalist in particular.[…]Thanks in part to a loyal cadre of sources and to the enormous vacuum she filled during the writers’ strike, Finke’s column has become a must-read in Hollywood. And clearly, Variety’s Bart cannot take it anymore.[…]The fact is Variety—like the Los Angeles Times (which has also taken an increasing number of shots at Finke lately)—too often lags behind the news. How is it possible, to pick just two easy examples, that both well-staffed institutions missed the Silverman-to-NBC story and the Chernin-is-out story? Perhaps, as they claim, they’re handicapped by their desire to verify information before slapping it up on the web. But maintaining a high journalistic standard hardly explains the type of anemic coverage too-often found, or not found, on the pages of either Variety or the Times. Bart’s attack—indeed the whole whiny Variety package—sounds too much like the enraged cry of an old-media dinosaur trying to defend what’s left of its terrain.

(Hat-tip to Denis McGrath for leading me to the Daily Beast post)

UPDATE:  Nikki Finke is reporting today that Daily Variety's publisher Neil Stiles made overtures to buy her out on February 27 and bring her into their fold. The deal didn't happen. 

Stiles admitted that his company had done a survey only to find that DHD was a bigger showbiz destination site on the Internet than Variety. He also noted that Variety was embarrassed when the trade publication missed the Peter-Chernin-resigning-from-News Corp story which I had broken a few days earlier. (It took Variety several hours to get online with a matching story…) Stiles' idea was that I would remain independent, but Variety would own DHD and link to my scoops, etc.[…]

She reports that Bart wasn't consulted about the offer and was furious when he found out, immediately ordering not one, but three articles trashing her. How embarrassing…for Variety.

TelevisionWeek folding?

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Nikke Finke reports that Crain Communications' mag TelevisionWeek, formerly known as Electronic Media, may be folding. This is sad news for me. I was a reporter for Electronic Media twenty years ago. Even then, the weekly occupied a strange niche, primarily serving station programming executives. It was certainly the most informative publication out there when it came to syndication news (I was the first to break the news about Paramount reviving "Star Trek" in first-run with a whole new cast, an item that was picked up by newspapers around the country). In the mid-to-late eighties, first-run and off-network syndication was still very big-business and there were plenty of glossy, full-page, full-color ads to justify the magazine's existence and support its editorial offices in LA, Chicago, NY and DC. The magazine could never successfully compete with Daily Variety or the Hollywood Reporter when it came to "breaking news," so what they offered was more indepth business reporting…offering the story behind the news. And, for the most part, they did it very well…and got very little credit for it, though their stories were often poached by the other trades and newspapers. I didn't read TV Week much over the last few years, but whenever I did stumble on a copy, I was impressed with the detail and depth of their coverage…even if they were clearly stumbling for relevancy in a TV landscape that has changed massively since the magazine's inception.

Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

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William Rabkin talks on his blog about the animated and the live episodes of DIAGNOSIS MURDER that we almost did…and the reasons why we didn't end up producing them. Here's an excerpt from his discussion of our animated episode idea:

Then someone had the idea — and I’m pretty sure it was me, because I’d been watching a lot of Dennis Potter at the time — that we should team Dick up with the greatest sleuth ever to grace a television set… Scooby Doo.
After a long bout of giggles, the story fell into place almost immediately. Dick’s character, Dr. Mark Sloan, would witness a crime, but before he could get away the criminal would attack and leave him in a coma. While the rest of the team searched for his attackers, Dick would be solving the crime in a series of hallucinations… with the help of Scooby Doo. There was one little problem, of course — we didn’t really have a lot of money in our budget for animated sequences. Fortunately, Lee can pull up TV trivia faster than Google, and he remembered that an animated version of Dick had “guest starred” in a Scooby Doo episode back in the 70s. All we’d have to do was get the rights to the footage, then write new dialogue, with our supporting cast doing the voices for Shaggy and the rest.

I don't know whether the episode was Bill's idea or mine…but my memory of how we were going to use the cartoon in an episode is a bit different than his.  At first we considered having Dr. Sloan imagine himself in the cartoon…but realized he was too old to be a fan of SCOOBY DO.  It made no sense for his character. So we decided instead that his young protege Dr. Jesse Travis (Charlie Schlatter), while doing some sleuthing for Mark, would get bonked on the head and tossed of the Santa Monica Pier…and while unconscious, and fighting for his life in the hospital, that he'd imagine Dr. Sloan, himself, and the rest of the gang investigating a similar crime with Scooby-Doo (with Jesse as Shaggy, Steve as Fred, Amanda as Velma, and Jesse's girlfriend Susan as Daphne). Once Jesse awoke, he'd tell Mark the story and unknowingly give him the vital clue he needed to solve the real murder mystery.

It would have been ridiculously cheap and easy for us to simply revoice the cartoon with our own actors and dialog…and come out of it with an episode that was 50% animated and far less than our usual episodic budget (we could have used it in place of one of our dreaded six day shows — episodes shot over six days instead of seven — that we did each season to save money). As I recall, even Dick was excited about the idea…in retrospect, maybe it wasn't so much the idea, but rather the notion of having so many days off that he liked. Charlie was already doing lots of voice-over and cartoon work at the time, so he was also game for the idea. 

I still remember Bill & I writing the letter to Warner Brothers, trying to convince them to let us use the footage. As I recall, Fred Silverman signed the letter, too, and even made a few calls trying to convince the studio to grant us the rights.

Warner Brothers asked us for an outline, so we even went so far as to pick the clips we wanted to use and sketch out the story in broad strokes…but we weren't about to plot out the whole thing until we got the rights. Alas, it didn't happen, for all the reasons Bill goes into on his blog.

Here's a clip from the Dick Van Dyke episode of SCOOBY DOO…

“Take Me To Your Leader, Lee Goldberg”

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One of the biggest, most persistent, and bone-headed cliches in TV & movie science fiction is the alien and/or robot who enunciates every syllable when he speaks, doesn’t use contractions, and calls everyone by their full name. Where did these aliens learn English? From watching movies about space aliens coming to earth? They can master travel at light speed, but can’t figure out how to say “don’t” instead of “do not?” Or why doesn’t someone, as William Rabkin laments, ever tell them:  

“In English, we have a last name that we share with our family and a first name that uniquely identifies us. And if you want to pass unrecognized as an alien, it’s important that you learn this distinction.” 

So why does this ridiculous conceit continue in movie after movie? Pure laziness […]it’s such a hideous cliche by now that you’d think even the aliens would have figured it out…

Apparently, the new WITCH MOUNTAIN remake is the latest offender to perpetuate this hoary cliche…

Of course, the cliche that comes next is the alien asking “what is this thing humans call love?” If I recall, the bad remake of DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL pulled that one, too. 

Look up “Pathetic” in the Dictionary and this is what you will find

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19trek-600
Trekkies who watch Star Trek reruns while sitting in their replica Enterprise Captain chairs and wearing costumes are the walking — or should I say sitting — definition of pathetic:

So what, beyond pushing buttons, do these men — as all Kirk chair owners appear to be — do with the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room?

Some watch TV in theirs, or simply loll, and some seem to find the chair an empowering place from which to deal with others. “When we have a little family powwow — I have four children — I sit in it to lay down the law,” said Mr. Boyd, the auto parts manager.

And most, of course, indulge their fantasies, imagining doing battle with Klingons and otherwise cruising the cosmos. “Sitting in it,” said Mr. Bradshaw, the graphic designer, “I find myself striking an action pose quite unconsciously.”

To his regret, he must strike those poses in his home office. “My wife is not big on it,” he said. “I’ve actually been threatened with divorce if it comes into the living room.”

Customer Support Lines… for books?

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William Rabkin blogs that he got contacted by the "Consumer Communications Department" at Penguin Books with a complaint about his PSYCH book:

We have a consumer complaint about pages 210-213. The consumer states that these are the only pages in the entire book that mention characters by the name of Kent Shambling and Nancy, and he says that there is no mention of these two characters leading up to this point and they seem to have nothing to do with the story.

It wasn't the complaint that surprised Bill…it was that Penguin has a "Consumer Communications Department."

Who knew that […]if I found a bit of a book I didn’t like, there were operators standing by to take my complaints? If I wrote to the CCD at Farar Strauss Giroux and pointed out that after almost a thousand pages of 2666, I still didn’t know who killed all those women in Mexico, would they send me back the name of the murderer?

I've never heard of this either. I wonder if all publishers have these hotlines and if they outsource their customer support to India like the computer companies do ("Hello, this is Rajneesh, how may I assist you with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today? Is this a plot-related or prose-related problem?").