#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
If I was still writing DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels, this would be the next one:
The scars on Craig Buford’s abdomen hinted at the shooting that almost took his life 35 years ago in Denver.[…]But the shooting resurfaced last week when the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office ruled Buford’s Dec. 29 death a homicide, stating that it was caused by multiple organ failure due to complications from his wound.
I love anecdotes like the one writer/producer Earl Pomerantz shares on his blog today about the "reward" CBS gave him for the success of his sitcom MAJOR DAD:
Maybe you can help figure out what the reward was. I still don’t get it.
The deal went like this: I would write two scripts as the prototypes for two television series. CBS would guarantee that one of those scripts would be produced as a pilot.
Unless they didn’t like either of them. (Oops. There goes the guarantee.)
If they were unhappy with both shows, as a consequence of, you know, obliterating the guarantee, CBS would be required to pay a financial penalty.
To the studio I was working for.
Not to me.
They don't teach you about this sort of stuff in film school…which is a shame, because that's the kind of knowledge you really need to know to survive in this business. I'm still trying to learn it myself…
William Rabkin has launched his own blog and starts it off with a humorous post ribbing author Neale Donald Walsch for stealing someone else's work. I love Walsch's excuse:
“All I can say now — because I am truly mystified and taken aback by this — is that someone must have sent it to me over the Internet ten years or so ago,” Mr. Walsch wrote. “Finding it utterly charming and its message indelible, I must have clipped and pasted it into my file of ‘stories to tell that have a message I want to share.’ I have told the story verbally so many times over the years that I had it memorized … and then, somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience.”
I am thinking of internalizing John Grisham's next novel as my own experience. I'd like to internalize his wealth as my own experience, too, but haven't figured out how to do that yet.
Gary Scott Thompson, showrunner of the rebooted KNIGHT RIDER, talked to MediaWeek about the hard road the show has traveled. The biggest problem has been NBC's tinkering with the concept and the abrupt decision, based on plummeting ratings, to cut back the number of episodes ordered and to make the show more like the David Hasselhoff original than a Galactica-esque " reimagining."
(Thanks to TV Squad for the link)
I guess that next time I see my editor, I'm the one who is going to have to buy us lunch. The New York Times reports:
Nobody expects one of the staples of the business — the long lunch — to die off completely because of these straitened circumstances. But publishers, editors and literary agents, who have often been among the best diners in the city, are now reconsidering their favorite restaurants.
“We’ve all naturally been thinking about whether it’s absolutely essential to have a lunch here or there,” Mr. Burnham added, “or whether it can be a phone call or a meeting.”
Bookseller reports the very sad news that owner/author Maxim Jakubowski's legendary Murder One bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London is closing down, a victim of plunging sales.
"Over the last few years our sales have deterioriated," he said. "I was planning to retire this year, but this is earlier than expected. For the benefit of staff, publishers and suppliers, I would rather close the shop now and go out voluntarily with my head held high and no debts."
There's a nice piece in the Los Angeles Times today on the Archive of American Television. They even mention my interview with Dick Van Dyke:
Fans of classic TV likely will find much of interest in the full interviews, which somehow seem to reveal more than the usual celebrity Q&A, possibly because the informal video format allows more of a celebrity's personality to shine through. Van Dyke, for instance, is charmingly Rob Petrie-esque in his 2005 interview, whereas Dick Clark, interviewed years before his debilitating 2004 stroke, reveals his driven, media-entrepreneur side. […]Fred Silverman's lengthy interview provides a rare glimpse of the mind-set of a top network programmer.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Dark days are upon the book industry. Last month alone, Random House announced a massive restructuring; Simon & Schuster laid off 35 staffers; the adult division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt stopped acquiring manuscripts for the rest of the year; and HarperCollins sent comedian Sarah Silverman a contract worth $2.5 million to write her first book.
(Thanks to Bill Crider for the link)
The dumbest product of the xmas season. Unless you want to sit in your recliner looking like a Monk. Not Adrian Monk, a real monk.
TV Writer/Producer Kay Reindl has an amusing and informative post on the state of the TV biz going into 2009 and her hopes about what will change. One of her observations is that even though procedurals and detective show are doing well, the networks don't want to hear pitches for lighter detective fare…
Talk to almost any TeeVee writer about what show they wish they could sell and they'd invariably say a light detective show. Remington Steele, Magnum PI, Hart To Hart, Simon & Simon, hell, even Riptide. We all want to do this show! But it's virtually impossible to sell. And believe me, we've all f–king tried. But executives turn a deaf ear to these pitches. They do NOT want to hear the word "detective."
She also says that pitches about thieves aren't selling (art thieves in particular), but that's to be expected after the monumental failure of so many thieving shows (remember SMITH, THIEF, and THE KILL POINT anyone?) She also makes many other sharp observations…as usual.