Current Affairs

Lies are the new Truth

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BL asked in a comment on another post here:  "i’m surprised you haven’t blogged about Frey and LeRoy yet. i’m curious to see what you have to say."

I haven’t written about it because I have nothing to add that hasn’t already been said. They are liars and they got caught. Lying is very much in vogue these days, not just here, but all over the world (eg  President Bush saying Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction, President Clinton saying he  didn’t have sex with Monica Lewinsky, the South Korean geneticist who made up all his research results, Jayson Blair making up news reports for the New York Times, etc. etc.) I’ve written here before about how blithely and unapologetically people are "anti-factual" and "disembling" and "honesty-challenged" nowadays. What amazes me is that Frey et all actually think that they can perpetuate a very public, widely repeated lie and get away with it. The fact that these unabashed liars simply don’t care is the disturbing new wrinkle.  Perhaps what we are seeing is an evolution…the beginning of lies as the new truth. Who needs truth anyway?

Press Tour Madness

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The winter press tour, when the nations TV critics descend on L.A. for press conferences and parties, has started and Matt Zoller-Seitz and Lisa De Moraes are writing about the madness. De Moraes writes:

Winter TV Press Tour 2006 had not begun auspiciously.

More
than 100 of the Reporters Who Cover Television, from around the country
and even Canada, descended on Loopyville West this week to spend two
weeks discussing Ideals and the Future of Television at the gorgeous
old Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel.

It was a homecoming of
sorts for the group, which for a decade had held its semiannual confab
at the Huntington, chatting up suits and celebs in freezing ballrooms
by day, dining on the networks in the Horseshoe Garden at night —
followed, weather permitting, by a little late-night viewing from room
balconies of TV celebs swimming and engaging in other activities in the
pool.

But, as with so many other beautiful relationships —
Brad and Jen, Jessica and Nick, Renee and Kenny — this one began to
crumble and about three years ago reporters decided to take their
business to a hotel across the street from a Hooters in Hollywood.
Monday night, at the National Geographic Channel Check-In Party, they
celebrated their return to the site of so many happy, happy times.

The
next morning the tour officially got underway when Billy Ray Cyrus and
his 13-year-old daughter, Miley, got up onstage to hawk their new
Disney Channel series, "Hannah Montana." It’s about a girl who, unknown
to her fellow students, lives a double life as pop singer Hannah
Montana, entertaining legions of prepubescent fans with songs written
by her manager-dad.

It’s hard to focus on Ideals and the Future
of Television after you’ve just watched a clip of Billy Ray Cyrus —
who will now try to do for the Neo-Prince Valiant with Tips and Streaks
what he did in the ’90s for the mullet — singing:

I like to sing,

I like to dance,

But I can’t do it with poopy in my pants.

Billy Ray said he swore after doing Pax’s "Doc" he’d never do another
series but decided to audition for the "Montana" role after reading the
script because "it all begins with what’s on the page."

Uh-huh.

(Thanks to Alan Sepinwall for the heads-up)

TV Execs Actually Read Books

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GalleyCat reports that there seems to be a flurry of books being adapted into TV series. In addition to the midseason shows LOVE MONKEY (based on the book by Kyle Smith) and EMILY’S REASONS WHY NOT (based on the book by Carrie Gerlach), there’s more on tap. DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER (based on the book by Jeff Linsay) is being developed by HBO and YOUNGER (based on the book by Pamela Satran) is being developed for Lifetime by my friend Debra Martin Chase, who sold the same network MISSING (based on the books by Meg Cabot) and produced the book-based features SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS and PRINCESS DIARIES.

Extending the 24 Franchise

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The gimmick of the Fox series 24 is that the stories play out in real time over 24 hours. Entertainment Weekly reports that the producers of 24  are seriously considering a feature film version that would follow a story that unfolds in real time over two tense hours. They also forsee the possibility of extending the 24 brand into spin-off series, ala LAW AND ORDER and CSI, with any number of different heroes in different settings in stories that play out over a single day.

I see a real difference between the LAW AND ORDER branding and what has been done with CSI. The three LAW AND ORDER shows are essentially stand-alone, unique series that share the same name, music cues, and style. The three CSI shows, however, are exactly the same show set in different cities. 24 could, concievably, strike a middle ground between the two approaches to branding…only the storytelling device is the same and everything else is different. But will viewers tire of the real-time gimmick? They haven’t lost their interest in the three identical CSIs yet…

DaVinci Mania

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On the eve of the release of the DAVINCI CODE movie, Publishers Weekly reports that the book is finally coming out in mass paperback…with a five million copy first printing (that’s few more than the print run for my new book, MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE).

Anchor Books will print a total of 5 million copies of the paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code
when the company publishes the mass market and trade paperback editions
of the huge bestseller. The company has confirmed Friday’s PW Daily report that it will release the paperback editions of Da Vinci
March 28, about seven weeks ahead of the release of the movie on May
19. The mass market edition, which Anchor is calling the movie tie-in
edition, will sell for $7.99, while the trade paper will have a $14.95
price.

In addition, Broadway Books will issue a 200,000 copy printing for the trade paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code Special Illustrated Edition on March 28. And leaving no stone unturned, Broadway will print 200,000 copies of the trade paper edition of The Da Vinci Code Illustrated Screenplay May 19, while Doubleday will release 25,000 copies in hardcover.

In Jennifer’s Shoes

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Jennifer Weiner wonders on her blog  why audiences didn’t embrace the movie version of her book, IN HER SHOES.

It wasn’t enough to make a well-crafted, beautifully written,
wonderfully acted, heartwarming, uplifting drama. If that was true,
CINDERELLA MAN would have made a hundred million dollars, and IN HER
SHOES, although cursed with a surplus of estrogen and all of the
built-in dismissiveness that comes free with the label “chick flick”
along with it, might not have been far behind.

But these days,
to actually get butts in seats, you need sex or violence, or violent
sex (or violent, furtive gay sex, a la BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN). You need
raunchy humor, a shocking surprise ending, a real-life singer’s
addiction portrayed by an actor who developed a real-life addiction.
You need a whiff of scandal – Jessica Simpson, pre-divorce; Tom Cruise,
post-couch, Brangelina. You at least need romance. Or, barring that, an
animated chicken, or a pubescent wizard (believe me, I spent a lot of
time kicking myself for not having included either in the novel).

A
film about relationships between women, not women and men, that
featured not much sex, very little violence, no drug use, no
dismemberment and not much to slap the clammy flab, didn’t have much of
a chance.

For the record, I enjoyed the movie. I think it failed because it was soft and, with movie-going  as expensive and hassle-filled as it is,  it didn’t offer anything you couldn’t see for free at home. I bet a lot of folks stuck it on their "wait for the DVD" list.

Mad Max

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Ed Gorman posted an appreciation of novelist Max Allan Collins, co-founder of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, on his blog today:

I wouldn’t be blogging today if it weren’t for Max Allan Collins.
Twenty five years ago, I made a cold call to him to tell him how much I
enjoyed his novels…

… Naturally,
we talked about writing and why I, who’d sold a lot of short stories to
magazines of varying repute, hadn’t ever written a novel. I told him l
I’d started about a hundred of the damned things but that I always got
stuck at some point and started backtracking and then just gave up. He
gave me the single most useful piece of writing advice I’ve ever ever
received. Don’t look back. Finish the first draft straight through and
then go back and do whatever needs to be done in the revisions.

Ed also talks about advice he’s gleaned from other writers… all of it worth taking to heart.

Grey’s Blog

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The writers of GREY’S ANATOMY have their own blog. The latest post from Krista Vernoff tells the story behind her "Christmas" episode:

So
here’s a funny thing: we were never going to do a “Holiday episode” of
Grey’s Anatomy. Shonda, in particular, (though many of us agree) is not
a big fan of Santa Claus in the E.R. and elves in the operating room
and the kinds of things you most often see on medical show holiday
episodes. So, the mandate was: we can have a tree, we can acknowledge
the holiday, but we’re not doing a “holiday episode.” And then Harry and Gab walked into the writer’s room and pitched this: “A cranky, angry little boy needs a heart transplant because his heart is TWO SIZES TWO SMALL.”

Come on. That’s brilliant. The Grinch boy? How do you not make a holiday episode now? So that’s how this episode was born.

She goes into much more detail, but I especially enjoyed this observation:

I don’t know why I’m telling you all this… Maybe because I’m so often asked “How do you guys come up with this stuff?” The
answer is, we come up with it in a largely convoluted, fabulously
meandering, highly collaborative way where bad ideas lead to good ones
and good ideas lead to other ones and nothing is set in stone until
about a week before you see it on TV. Which is why I love working in TV.

This new trend towards blogs (eg CSI:MIAMI, SCRUBS) and podcasts (eg LOST and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) from  the writers room of TV shows isn’t just great PR and fun for the fans — it’s an incredible opportunity for aspiring writers, offering an inside look at how TV series episodes are conceived, written and produced.