My wife stumbed on a website that lists the addresses of celebrities...and even includes aerial photos of their homes. Privacy is clearly a thing of the past.
Current Affairs
Mr. Monk Gets Another Nice Review
Gary Mugford at Mugshots gives MR. MONK IN OUTER SPACE a thumbs-up. He says, in part:
Goldberg has lots of fun at the expense of the typical SF convention-goer, but there seems be a respect deep down. […]But it’s really almost an Ambrose book. It’s Ambrose who provides the needed insight into the TV series, since he’s an expert on the show. It’s little insights into Ambrose that makes this something different rather than the same old, same old. That’s why this book gets a thumbs up. Goldberg continues to expand the tight little world that is Adrian Monk. As we head to the eighth and final TV season, it’s going to get harder and harder to find new sides to the mystery that is Monk. But for the time being, Goldberg continues to deliver solid entertainment in new and surprising ways.
Thanks, Gary!
Rehashes, Reworkings and Reimaginings
Once again, there are quite a few British remakes, shows based on movies, and "reimagined" old TV series among the pilots greenlighted to film for the 2009-2010 season.
NBC, burned badly by THE BIONIC WOMAN and KNIGHT RIDER, seems to have sworn off re-imaginings this season, though they are shooting a pilot based on the movie PARENTHOOD, which already inspired a flop 1990 sitcom on the same network.
CBS seems to have lost interest in foreign remakes (after getting burned with ELEVENTH HOUR, WORST WEEK and THE EX-LIST) and reimaginings (though they haven't tried any yet), passing on proposed remakes of HAWAII FIVE-O, LOST IN SPACE, and STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO. That said, their sister netlet the CW is shooting a MELROSE PLACE remake to capitalize on their success with BEVERLY HILLS 90210.
ABC is shooting pilots based on the movie THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, the 1983 NBC series V, and a stateside version of the BBC hit sitcom NO HEROICS.
Fox is shooting a U.S. version of ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS and resurrecting THE HUMAN TARGET, a comicbook franchise that inspired a flop Rick Springfield series on ABC back in 1992.
To see a complete list of the networks' various pilots, click on the individual network links above.
You Are Sitting in a Chair in the Sky
I'm not a fan of the comic Louis CK, but his bit on Conan about how little we appreciate the marvels of modern technology is hilarious…and absolutely true.
Hosing Yourself
Author John Gilstrap doesn’t understand the desire to self-publish at all.
I don’t understand why people would pay the thousands of dollars necessary to make self-publishing happen. If the goal is to get one’s book into the hands of friends and family, a Kinko’s would serve as well as a self-publishing house. If the desired audience is bigger than that, the writer is hosed. Selling a hundred copies to people who all know where you live is not really publishing, is it? Isn’t the point to sell not tens of copies, but tens of thousands of copies? It’s impossible to get that kind of distribution without a legitimate publisher.
He’s right, of course. But some argue that pros like John are looking at this from the wrong angle. Some authors aren’t interested in making any money on their art, they are in it for the creative expression. Well, if that’s the case, why not just post the book for free download on a blog?
doesn’t understand why anyone would self-publish.
Tie-ins: The Final Frontier
Author Vonda McIntyre blogs about breaking-in as a tie-in writer with her STAR TREK novels and the snobbery she encountered.
Back in the 1980s, I wrote a bunch of Star Trek novels. I thoroughly enjoyed writing them. Pretty much the only drawback was that some of my colleagues took exception to my polluting my precious bodily fluids with evil tie-in novels. You’d’ve thought they believed they had to save my soul, blathering about the improvement in my moral character that would result if instead I took an honest job as a waitress.
But mostly she shares a lot of amusing and interesting anecdotes about her tie-in days in the post and subsequent comments. Her post sparked a debate over at Metafilter and at John Scalzi's blog. He writes, in part:
With very few exceptions, media tie-in SF outsells original SF, often by a significant amount. Now, we can argue about why this is and whether this is a good thing for the genre or not, but at the end of the day, it’s a fact and it’s something authors give serious consideration to, in terms of its value to their overall career. […]I don’t write tie-in SF for my own reasons, but it’s not to say I wouldn’t if the right project came along. I have quite a number of friends who do or have written tie-ins, and you know what, when all is said and done they’re generally getting paid well to do work they love in universes they’re fans of, for audiences who well appreciate their efforts. Maybe some people want to crap all over that and call them hacks. I heartily raise a middle finger at them.
Obviously, I agree. I read some of the comments on Scalzi's blog and at Metafilter and the argument some folks are making against tie-ins is that they are so successful that they are squeezing better, original books off the shelves. It's a disingenuous and dumb argument. The fact is if the non-tie-in is selling well, it won't be pushed off the shelf by the latest STAR TREK novel. The reason the tie-ins are on the shelf in the first place is because people are buying them. If there wasn't a voracious market for them, they wouldn't exist.
You’ll Thank Me Later
David Breckman, a writer-producer-director on MONK, has started blogging.
My new blog. Question: Can I possibly keep this going? Answer: If the entries are brief enough, I think I have a shot. Toward that end I am determined to keep each post down to 350 words or less.
One thing you can count on is an inside look at the making of MONK, like this post about a recent visit to the New Jersy writers room by Tony Shalhoub, USA chief Jeff Wachtel, and co-exec producer Randy Zisk:
We were mainly in the writers' room, all of us sitting around the big table as Andy Breckman (my brother and, as MONK's creator and showrunner, also my boss) walked the three of them through most of the upcoming episodes of our eighth and final season. Andy gave them a detailed description of the first nine shows, thumbnail summaries of five or six more — the ones we haven't "broken" yet — and not so much as a peep about the finale. […] Andy held forth. We writers chimed in occasionally. And Randy, Tony and Jeff all scribbled continuousy in their legal pads, asking good questions and (bless their hearts) laughing in all the right places. […] Andy joked that because this was to be MONK's final season it was also surely Jeff Wachtel's last visit to New Jersey ever. Jeff laughed as hard as the rest of us but did not contradict him.
You should visit his blog regularly. You'll thank me later.
Lazy Days and Beloved Characters
I finished writing my latest MONK novel the other day and I felt like lazing around. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately and after writing a book I didn’t feel much like reading one. So I vegged out on television…some new, some old.
The “new” were the latest episodes of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES.
The BATTLESTAR episode was, astonishingly, one hour of pure exposition…mightily well-written, grandiose and flowery exposition, but exposition all the same….the dreaded “Irving the Explainer” taken to new, galactic heights by three Cylon-the-Explainers. Only a serialized series on it’s last episode or two that doesn’t give a damn anymore about drawing new viewers would dare film an episode like that and call it entertainment (though Marc Bernardin at Entertainment Weekly thought it was so “revelatory” that it “melted my Goddamn face off.”)
The TERMINATOR episode was merely dull and totally uninvolving, relying heavily on the over-used trick of having the hero (or in this case, heroine) talk to an imaginary character. Alan Ball should be shot for doing it so effectively on SIX FEET UNDER because now every TV series has to do it. Nobody seems to have noticed that it became a cliche three years ago and is now slipping into unintentional parody. At least the folks on GREY’S ANATOMY have raised the stakes by having the heroine fuck the character who isn’t there…oh, wait, I take it back, GALACTICA did that two seasons ago when it still had a sense of humor to go along with all of its dread and misery. The folks at TERMINATOR have forgotten what made the TERMINATOR movies so much fun…and have gotten mired in dreary angst…probably because angst is cheaper to shoot than Terminators destroying things. The John Connor character has become a morose, whiny, Excedrin headache come-to-life…but the two lady Terminators? They’re great.
The “old” TV that I watched was a private eye marathon that I staged for myself with episodes of HARRY O starring David Janssen, THE OUTSIDER starring Darren McGavin and THE ROCKFORD FILES starring James Garner.
THE OUTSIDER and ROCKFORD were, essentially, the same show, about a down-and-out ex-con turned private eye in L.A. Roy Huggins created THE OUTSIDER and co-created ROCKFORD with Steve Cannell, who brought more humor to the concept. I liked all three of them very much ..not so much for the plotting, which was often weak and predictable, but for the mood and the terrific anti-private eyes at the heart of those series (and the brilliant lead actors who played them). Nobody did world-weary heroes and lovable losers like McGavin, Janssen and Garner. It’s hard to pick a favorite among these three great series, but if I had to, I guess it would be HARRY O.
Janssen is a pleasure to watch as beach-bum Harry Orwell, riding around San Diego on the bus, tie loose around his collar, a permanently pained expression on his tan, lined face. What a terrific character. Both Rockford and Ross were tougher than they looked, but not Harry. He wasn’t tough at all. Just bone-tired and lonely…and too caring for his own good. He couldn’t even run after a bad guy or a damsel in distress, not with that damn bullet permanently stuck in his aching back. What other private eye but Harry would turn down a willing Linda Evans by saying “I can’t make love unless I’m in love…just a little.” Ross and Rockford would have bedded her in a second…out of desperation and opportunity if nothing else. Not Harry.
Sure, the plotting in HARRY O was often lousy, but the show captured, better than any other before or since, the pure pleasure of reading a great PI novel. The show wasn’t as complex as a Ross MacDonald or even John D. MacDonald novel, but it aimed for that kind of emotional and psychological complexity…even when it pandered with a drooling psychokiller plot (starting with it’s pilot, “Smile Jenny, You’re Dead”).
Watching HARRY O, ROCKFORD and THE OUTSIDER, I realized what those old shows had over those two, recent episodes of GALACTICA and TERMINATOR. Character. Keep in mind, GALACTICA and TERMINATOR are two of my favorite shows (well, they were). But, at the risk of sounding like an old coot blogging from his bungalow at the Motion Picture Home, I think that too often shows today confuse angst with character, dread with depth, misery with complexity. A character doesn’t have to be in endless spasms of self-loathing, denial, heart-break and agony to be someone worth watching or caring about. That’s cheap and easy “complexity” for a writer, it’s writing a character rather than creating one…and it’s a beating for the audience. Characters are more than the sum of their pain, anguish and loss…and their capacity for cruelty to themselves and others. It’s not superficial or weak writing to explore more subtle conflicts…and to season them with humor, compassion, vulnerability, and some joy. There are people I love very much who are going through very hard times…and yet they haven’t lost their sense of humor or their ability to find joy in their lives, even in their darkest moments. If anything, it’s that capacity for humor and joy that is seeing them through it.
I love (or, I should say, loved) GALACTICA and TERMINATOR…but Captain Adama and Starbuck, Sarah Connor and John Connor….in the end, they aren’t memorable characters. They feel like writerly constructs. Pain masquerading as character. They don’t live and breath the way Lt. Columbo, Tony Soprano, Archie Bunker, Adrian Monk, Al Swearingen, Mr. Spock, Mary Richards, Matt Dillon, George Costanza, or even Dexter Morgan do, to name a few. Because despite all of the dark, angst-ridden conflicts that the writers have created for them, the characters on GALACTICA and TERMINATOR are incessantly one-note: Miserable. And too often than not, they leave the viewer feeling the same way.
Remakes A-Go-Go and Not-A-Go
Variety reports that Fox has cast Kathryn Hahn as Edie (played by Jennifer Saunders in the original) and Kristen Johnston as Patsy (originally played by Joanna Lumley) in their latest attempt to remake the hit UK sitcom ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS. Hahn was the neighbor in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and Johnston is best known for her work on 3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN.
Meanwhile, director king David Nutter, who has a perfect record of getting his pilots picked up to series, has agreed to helm the third try at a WITCHES OF EASTWICK series.
CBS greenlit a slew of pilots this week…but so far they haven't ordered the buzzed-about remakes of STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO or HAWAII FIVE-O.
Mr. Monk and the Mug Shot
Gary Mugford gave MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS a great review on his blog Mugshots. He says, in part:
Goldberg takes advantage of being a novelist to bring back Sharona in Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants. And that sets up a battle between assistant Past and assistant Present to see who will be assistant Future. In doing so, he captures Natalie’s insecurities perfectly. Afterall, he’s been inside her head for quite a while now. He also recaps most of those earlier book adventures in some small detail during this book, making it a good jumping on point for the series. Not suprisingly, this is apparently the best-selling of the series of novels to date.
It looks like the book is about to be eclipsed in sales by MR. MONK IS MISERABLE, but TWO ASSISTANTS is definitely a big favorite among the fans. I’m toying with a notion for bringing Sharona back, perhaps in book #11. But we’ll see….
Thanks for the review, Gary!