Current Affairs

Directing Is a Drag

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Director Lee Tamahori ("Die Another Day," "Along Came a Spider") was arrested in Hollywood  for prostitution  and not simply because he’ll direct whatever dreck comes along if the paycheck is high enough. They’re saying he’s a a real whore.

According to law enforcement,
Tamahori was allegedly dressed in drag, approached an undercover
officer who was in his car, entered the vehicle and offered to perform
a sex act for money.

Defamer’s comments on the arrest were amusing.

After the assuredly harrowing experience of directing xXx: State of the Union,
even Orson Welles would rather swear off Hollywood’s dirty money, dig
out his mother’s best evening gown, and go looking for supplemental
income on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Hey, it could have been worse. Tamahori could have been arrested with Eddie Murphy or Hugh Grant in his mouth.

 

Mr. Monk and the Creative Process

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Writer Jack Bernstein does a great job describing what it’s like breaking a story with the writing staff of MONK.

I arrived in Newark on a Sunday evening at 6 p.m., having weathered the
embarrassment of going through security with my inflatable writing
partner. I had been given the choice of staying in a hotel in Manhattan
or Summit, N.J. It was a no-brainer. Soon after checking in to my
deluxe micro-suite at the Summit Super 12, I got a phone call from Monk
Executive Producer Andy Breckman. Andy told me that
they were going to start at 11 a.m. Monday morning and was that a
problem? I told him if he wanted to start that early, I guess I could
do it…

…The creative process is difficult to describe, mostly because I don’t
really understand it. I think I’d have better luck understanding a
lecture on biomolecular kinetics from a beaver, but honestly, where
would you find a beaver that understands biomolecular kinetics? I mean,
really understands? So basically, the creative process consists of all
of us shouting out ideas for the story until Andy scratches his head
and says, "That might work" and writes it down. Your initial reaction,
of course, is to think, "Really? You actually think that would work?"
Which translates to, "Yeah, I think it would work, too."

Jack is a very funny writer. He and I worked together many years ago on a short-lived series called DEADLY GAMES. That was an odd show. The scripts were hilarious but the episodes were never as good as what was on the page thanks to bad casting (the star, whose name I have forgotten, was wooden), bad directing and a pitifully low production values.

Do Mystery Novels Suck?

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My brother Tod is going to get in big trouble. In a post today, he explains why he doesn’t ready mysteries any more. Because, in his view, most of them suck.

I used to read a lot of mystery novels but in the last several years
have found myself easily disappointed by the easy conventions I find in
what are acclaimed as the finest in the genre…

…Part of it is a craft issue: I find a lot of mystery novels lazy in
characterization and lazy in drama, relying more often on tricks than
truth…

For instance, Tod recently read the acclaimed new bestseller by a beloved mystery author:

It had plot holes on every page, as if
someone had been fisting it. I solved the mystery in the first ten
pages. The villains were stock. The hero was suitably flawed but easily
redeemed and the ending was so schmaltzy that I literally said aloud,
"Oh, come on!" I then went and looked at the reviews of the book and
was stunned to learn it was the writer’s "best book in years." That the
novel was the "finest mystery of the year." That the writing was
"superb" and evoked "Chandler." That the twists and turns of the plot
kept reviewers "constantly guessing." That the ending packed "an
emotional wallop that will keep fans chatting for months!" Had I read a
different book?

He wonders if critics and readers go easier on mystery novels because they expect less from them than they do from other literary works. He also has a problem with the stagnant character development in some mysteries.

Most mystery novels I’ve read lately feel like just another episode,
the characters stuck in a commercial break until the next book comes
out. That, certainly, was the case with the novel I read…a continuing
series character, widely loved, widely praised, widely selling and so
cliched and trite now that it makes the previous works by the author
now seem something less. It’s a bland book, inoffensive in every way,
except that it made me wonder what mystery reviewers (and readers)
truly consider classic or brilliant anymore.

While I agree with Tod in some ways (look at the lambasting I got for not jumping on the Ken Bruen bandwagon) I think there’s a big difference between a series novel — which is, indeed, intended to be like an episode of a TV series — and a standalone thriller. 

Like TV shows, readers expect a series novel to be the same book as the one they read before in the series — only different. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but we TV writers do it every day. A TV series gives you the same episode week after week, year after year, but with enough differences in the individual stories to make the show seem new and fresh.  Marshall Matt Dillon was essentially the same guy in 1955 when GUNSMOKE premiered as he was when the show was cancelled in 1975…and none of the relationships in his life had really changed. The same is essentially true of most other non-serialized TV series and most series novels.

Stephanie Plum, Nero Wolfe, Phillip Marlowe, Shell Scott, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Reacher, John Rain, Inspector Rebus… none of these characters have really changed in the course of their respective series. That’s one of the pleasures and comforts of the books…you know exactly what you’re going to get when you open one up.

Can it get dull? Yeah. Can the writers get sloppy and complacent? Sure. Are readers and critics more forgiving of successful series books and the authors who write them? I think so, because the authors and their characters are so beloved. You are pre-disposed to like the book and to cut it a lot of slack (whereas someone coming to the book fresh, without having read the previous titles, might judge it far more harshly and see the cliches the long-tme reader doesn’t).

The problem, perhaps, is that too many new mystery novels these days are reading like pilots for prospective book series rather than as strong, individual novels. You can feel the writer’s burning desire to create a franchise in every paragraph. In some ways, this goes back to the earlier discussion here about creating suspense. Nothing kills a book faster for me than the sense the author is more interested in marketing and promotion than in actually creativing vivid characters and telling a compelling story. He’s looking ahead to the hoped-for series rather than concentrating on writing a fresh, powerful, and provocative book.

Pilot Parade

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Perseverance pays off. Five years ago, writer Jed Seidel wrote a sitcom pilot for Fox called MORE PATIENCE, about a NY psychiatrist named Patience More who has troubles in her personal life. The title turned out to be prophetic. The pilot was shot with Mary McCormack in the lead role, but Fox didn’t pick the show up.  Seidel didn’t give up — he  convinced the network to redeveloped it as an hour-long drama.  That version failed, too.  But Seidel, who went on to VERNONICA MARS among other things, didn’t give up. Now MORE PATIENCE is back again…Fox has given a cast-contigent pick-up on another pilot version of the show.

In other pilot news, ABC is developing a TV series version of MR. AND MRS. SMITH, which will be directed by Doug Liman and written by Simon Kinberg, the same team behind the movie.

Spike has ordered 13 episodes of BLADE, based on the the movie that starred Wesley Snipes and the comics by Marv Wolfman. Kirk Sticky Jones (FX’s "Over There") stars as the vampire hunter in the TV version.

What is Suspense?

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Author Joe Konrath gave some advice on his blog on how to create suspense. It read, in part:

Writing is a lot like teasing your younger brother with a secret.

The longer you hold it over his head, the more worked up he gets.

All
stories, no matter the genre, can benefit from suspense. The tension
doesn’t have to be in the form of the bad guy stalking the hero. It can
be much simpler, much less dramatic, but still make the reader want to
keep reading. For example:

"You seem upset," Jack said. "What’s up?"

"I’ll tell you later." Herb said. "In private."

And we have suspense.

No, what you have is bad writing and an irritated reader. I like Joe a lot and, ordinarily, I think he  gives very good advice.  This time, I have to disagree with my friend.   The example he shares isn’t suspense… it’s a cheat, something weaker writers use when they don’t know how to generate any real suspense, which comes from character and conflict, not gimmickry.

Suspense is about conflict, about the obstacles between the hero and his goal. Suspense is about stakes — personal, physical, and emotional — and a race against the clock. Suspense is about the unknown and a head-long dive into it. Suspense is not about contrivance and word-games.

The example Joe gives is the literary equivalent of the TV moment when the heavy opens the drawer in his desk to gaze at his gun…or the serial killer sticks a knife in a picture of his next victim…or the bad guy picks up the phone and says to someone "Sgt. Hooker is nosing around. He must be eliminated before he stumbles on our evil plan"… or having key plot points happen during the commerical so the viewer won’t be aware of them.

I was about to leave a comment telling Joe why I think his advice this time is dead wrong but several other novelists, like Rob Roberge and my brother Tod, beat me to it (they also teach writing at UCLA and UC Riverside). Here’s what Rob said on Joe’s blog:

this so misunderstands the nature of suspense…suspense occurs when
the reader says "What will happen next?" It doesn’t occur when the
reader says "What is happening?" This is a cheap gimmick…and good
writing, no matter the genre, avoids gimmicks…to not say what’s going
on (as in the example you use where a character asks a question and
then have it unanswered), is the sign of an insecure text that doesn’t
trust there’s enough story to hold the reader with good writing and
characters, so they use manipulation and beginner’s tricks.

And here’s what Tod said:

I read a book recently by a crime novelist of some renown who shall
remain nameless and this is exactly the sort of drama building he did
— cryptic conversations that augered for a big reveal somewhere later
on, but which only served to annoy me as a reader, primarily because
the narrator knew all the answers but chose not to share them with the
reader. It felt like a short cut in place of actual emotion and drama.
As a writer, I knew what this writer was doing, could see it taking
shape 100 pages before the big reveal came and I thought, in my writer
hat, Oh, this is a silly thing to do. As a reader I thought, as I sat
out by my pool, Oh, give me a break, just tell me the damn piece of
evidence!

What are your thoughts?

Oops for OPs

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Screenwriter John August does a post-mortem on his aborted Fox pilot OPS. His post provides a  fascinating glimpse into the world of television development.

When a pilot is announced, it shows up in Variety.  Everyone knows about it. 
When a pilot dies, it dies quietly in the corner…

… the show was announced as a “put pilot,” which means that when Fox
made the original deal with Jordan and me, one of the conditions was
that they basically promised to shoot the pilot. In reality, I’m not
sure there is such a thing as a put pilot.

In the case of Ops, there was a substantial penalty that Fox agreed
to pay in the event they didn’t end up shooting the pilot. In a few
months, I’ll get a check with a few zeroes for my trouble. Given how
much time and money it would have taken to shoot the pilot, it’s almost
certainly for the best the train stopped where it did. There’s no sense
producing a pilot if the network didn’t want the show.

The Case for Hard Case Crime

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Bookgasm has a Q&A with Hard Case Crime editor/author Charles Ardai, who discusses the evolution of the imprint and the impact that publishing Stephen King’s COLORADO KID has had on their visibility inside, and outside, the industry.

this book has been very important to us. While we got plenty of media
coverage before publishing THE COLORADO KID, we got a lot more
afterwards. And with a print run in excess of one million copies, the
book was simply seen by a lot more people than our books normally are.
Far more people know about Hard Case Crime today than would have if
Steve had never written that book for us. How many of them will become
regular readers of our other books? That’s hard to say. But I imagine
some will, and we’re very grateful for that.

Flying Without a Pilot

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I didn’t write a pilot this season, but this post from Ken Levine reminds me of what I’m missing… notes, notes and still more notes.

This conference call features eleven people – one more David and three Katies. These are the network notes but the lower tier (development department) notes. Once these are done to all eleven peoples’ satisfaction it goes up the ladder, usually to the middle tier VP’s. Writing a pilot is like playing Super Mario Brothers.