Current Affairs

Fan Fliction

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The New York Times reports today that lots of fans are making their own STAR TREK movies and episodes — which I hereby dub fan fliction– and that Paramount has turned a blind corporate eye to it as long as no one tries to make a buck from their work.

Up to two dozen of these fan-made "Star Trek" projects are in
various stages of completion, depending what you count as a
full-fledged production. Dutch and Belgian fans are filming an episode;
there is a Scottish production in the works at www.ussintrepid.org.uk.

There is a group in Los Angeles that has filmed more than 40 episodes, according to its Web site, www.hiddenfrontier.com, and has explored gay themes that the original series never imagined. Episodes by a group in Austin, Tex., at www.starshipexeter.com,
feature a ship whose crew had the misfortune of being turned into salt
in an episode of the original "Star Trek," but has now been repopulated
by Texans.

"I think the networks — Paramount, CBS — I don’t think they’re
giving the fans the ‘Trek’ they’re looking for," said Mr. Sieber, a
40-year-old engineer for a government contractor who likens his "Star
Trek" project, at www.starshipfarragut.com, to "online community theater."

"The fans are saying, look, if we can’t get what we want on
television, the technology is out there for us to do it ourselves," he
added.

And viewers are responding. One series, at www.newvoyages.com,
and based in Ticonderoga, N.Y., boasts of 30 million downloads. It has
become so popular that Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov in
the original "Star Trek," is guest starring in an episode, and George
Takei, who played Sulu, is slated to shoot another one later this year.
D. C. Fontana, a writer from the original "Star Trek" series, has
written a script.

I’ve seen "Star Trek: The New Voyages" and, as I posted here in December, I was very impressed:

The acting and writing are cringe-inducing but everything else is
amazing. I can’t believe what these imaginative and extremely talented
film-makers were able to accomplish on a shoe-string budget (though it
helps to have the FX pros from STAR TREK ENTERPRISE over-seeing the
effects).

[…]Watching the first two episodes of NEW VOYAGES makes you realize what
ENTERPRISE should have been:  a return to the STAR TREK we all fell in
love with. Note to Paramount: It’s not too late. 

Star Trek Rebooted

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What would STAR TREK be like if J. Michael Straczynski (BABYLON 5) and Bryce Zabel (DARK SKIES, MANTIS) got their hands on the franchise? My friend Bryce has posted on his blog an unsolicited STAR TREK treatment that he and Joe wrote back in 2004. You can read it here. The two of them were developing a pilot together and, in the process, started talking about everything that’s wrong with STAR TREK:

Admittedly, it takes a lot of nerve to offer to resurrect the "Star Trek" franchise when nobody has asked you to do that, but that’s just what prolific writer/producer J. Michael Straczynski and I did […] we started talking about the state of the Trek universe and, before we could stop ourselves, we’d banged out a 14-page treatment called "Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe."

[…] I  have no real clue why we felt compelled to write what we wrote but, looking back, I think it’s because we had all these ideas and being writers we just felt compelled to write them down. Then, once that happened, we felt compelled to share them. Like buying lottery tickets, I guess.

It strikes me as a very fan-ish and geeky thing to do, especially considering the incredible success Paramount has had milking the franchise in movies, television, and publishing (and that STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, the fourth STAR TREK series, was still on-the-air at the time).  It’s not like they were talking about a dormant property like, say, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Then again, Bryce and Joe certainly had the credits, experience, and talent to make their pitch merit at least cursory consideration by the Paramount brass. But Bryce doesn’t say whether they submitted their proposal to Paramount or not and, if  they did, what the studio’s reaction to it was. I’d actually be just as curious to know what their agents’ reactions were to the unsolicited proposal…

Remainders

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Author Joe Konrath shares the dreaded "remaindered" letter that he received from his publisher for WHISKEY SOUR. Inevitably, every author gets one of these  letters. You’re given an opportunity to buy copies of your own book for a buck or two before its sold in bulk to close-out stores (like Book Warehouse, Book Market, Foogles, etc.) or the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble. I always agonize over how many copies of my own book I should buy for promotional purposes. I’ve erred by buying way too many (what the hell am I going to do with 600 copies of BEYOND THE BEYOND? What was I thinking?) and way too few. I’ve yet to strike the right balance. Though being remaindered has never driven me to the plight of the author in my  Amazon short story   "Remaindered"  (how’s that for product placement?).

What’s My Motivation?

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Sex worker-turned-neophyte porn filmmaker Audacia Ray is learning that characters are, like, maybe a good thing to have in a movie.

So the movie I’m making has a plot. In theory, I dig porno with a
plot, but in practice I typically fast forward through that shit
because seriously, I’m here for the fucking. So I’m attempting this
delicate thing, where I want there to be just enough plot so that the
viewer knows why these people are fucking each other, but not so much
that it’s like, “dude, shut up and bone already.”

In one of my early casting sessions, I interviewed a dude who also
has an off-off Broadway acting career, and he asked me a question I
hadn’t thought about in any great detail: “What’s my character’s
motivation?” It was pretty obvious that this had never occurred to me
before, and I stammered, “Uhhh, he wants to do it?” in reply. I don’t
think he was impressed.

[…] I saw how more developed characters could be a good thing and could
give the movie an interesting texture. So as I’m sitting down to write
my script, it’s something I’ll be thinking about an awful lot. Who are
these people, and what drives them?

What a great idea: thinking about characters "an awful lot" as you write a script for a movie.  She may be on to something.

Giddy Up

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Legendary western writer Richard S. Wheeler pointed me to a great interview at the American Enterprise with Elmer Kelton, justifiably proclaimed by the Western Writers of America as one of the best western writers of all time.

Saturating Kelton’s work is his love of West Texas. Kelton is no
flowery panegyrist of the tumbleweed; growing up amongst men who regard
poetical expression as effeminate will stifle one’s urge to write odes
to cacti. But he loves his land just the same. As he writes in The Day the Cowboys Quit,
"Some people would never understand the hold this land could take on a
man if he stayed rooted long enough in one spot to develop a communion
with the grass-blanketed earth, to begin to feel and fall in with the
rhythms of the changing seasons. There was a pulse in this land, like
the pulse in a man, though most people never paused long enough to
sense it."

Buck Kelton, Elmer’s father, "never was totally convinced that I was
making an honest living because there wasn’t a whole lot of sweat
involved. That’s how he measured work–by whether you sweated or not."

Writing 45 novels extracts its own measure of sweat. So, for that matter, does tracking down The Time It Never Rained. "The Western shelf is in the back of the store," says Kelton. "You gotta hunt for it."

Hunt for it. You’ll be glad you did. Elmer Kelton is a great American novelist–no "Western" modifier necessary.

All-Time Showkillers

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The clever, data-cruncking folks over at Trivial TV have perused their TV Guides and compiled a list of the actors who have killed the most shows in their careers. Names include Paula Marshall (7), Jon Tenny (7), Hector Elizondo (7),  and Joe Morton (8) among others. Joe’s list, for example, includes:

  • ”Grady ” (NBC, 1975; 9 eps aired)
  • ”Equal Justice” (ABC, 1990; 26)
  • ”Tribeca” (Fox, 1993; 7)
  • ”Under One Roof” (CBS, 1995; 6)
  • ”New York News” (CBS, 1995; 8)
  • ”Prince Street” (NBC, 1997; 2)
  • ”Mercy Point” (UPN, 1998; 7)
  • ”E-Ring” (NBC, 2005; 14)

Have Gun, Will Shoot Myself

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Variety reports that Eminem is planning to star in a big-screen, "contemporary" version of the classic western HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL, which starred Richard Boone as Paladin, a roaming gunfighter-for-hire.

Concept
will be updated to contemporary times and see Eminem playing a bounty
hunter. Setting could be Eminem’s hometown of Detroit, but those
details have yet to be worked out.

[Eminem’s manager Paul] Rosenberg told Daily Variety
that the vehicle will be revamped from the original, with some
characters based loosely on ones from the series as well as nods to
certain story points.

Oh. My. God. This might be even worse than Rutger Hauer’s "contemporary" version of   WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE. I can’t wait to see the Dixie Chicks in a "contemporary" version of BONANZA.

Easy Rawlins Going to HBO

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Variety reports that HBO Films is making a feature film version of Walter Mosley’s novel LITTLE SCARLET. Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def have been signed to star  though, in an unusual twist, it’s undecided at this point who will play PI Easy Rawlins and who will play Mouse, his sociopathic sidekick (Denzel Washington played Easy and Don Cheadle was Mouse  in the 1995 feature version of DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS). Mosley is writing the script himself and my friend Debra Martin Chase (who I worked with for two seasons on the Lifetime TV series MISSING) will produce.

Showkillers

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I’ve said it here a couple of times before — Jason Gedrick and Eric Balfour are showkillers.  Apparently Alan Sepinwall, TV Critic for the Star-Ledger, agrees with me:

For professional purposes, Gedrick’s fascinating to me as the reigning
champion among active male Show Killers on television (Paula Marshall,
I believe, is the female titleholder at the moment), one of those
people who, year after year after year, winds up in a project that’s
destined to fail.

Alan analyzes each of Gedrick’s failures and offers his take on what went wrong.

24 coming to a theatre near you

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24 is becoming a movie. Variety reports that Fox has signed creators Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, and my old friend Howard Gordon, to write the movie, which will be produced by Brian Grazer.

Execs at 20th should have a draft of the script in their hands by early winter, insiders said. Once they see the script — and look at ratings for the first few episodes of season six, which kicks off in January — they’ll be able to make a decision on greenlighting production of the film.

Under the most optimistic scenario, feature would be greenlit early next year and lense next spring and summer during the hiatus between season six and a likely seventh season of "24."

Current plan calls for the "24" feature to abandon the real-time conceit of the TV show, making Sutherland’s Jack Bauer, rather than the clock, the star.

This success of 24 couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys. I only know Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran casually… we all worked on shows for Steve Cannell at the same time so we bumped into each other a lot in the Cannell building and prepping shows up in Vancouver.  But Howard Gordon and I have known each other for twenty years.

I still remember when Howard was running both a fax delivery business and a SAT preparation course out of his Venice apartment. Two of his SAT instructors were Conan O’Brien and Greg Daniels, showrunner of THE OFFICE…who were writing partners and working on NOT NECESSARILY THE NEWS.

Howard and his then-writing partner Alex Gansa and Bill Rabkin & I all started out at the same time as freelancers on SPENSER FOR HIRE and grew up in the TV business together. 

Howard, Alex, Bill and I hung out a lot together during those earlier years but, as often happens, our lives got complicated and we saw each other less and less.  We all got busy on shows,  got married (though we all attended each others weddings), and three of us had kids. Now it’s been way too long since we’ve been in touch.  Even so, Bill and I carry on the tradition of naming a bad guy in every series we do "Gordon Gansa."

I’ve got to give Howard and Alex a call this week…