Film and Television

Battlestar Galactica

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I thought Friday night’s episode of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was great fun…the best yet. The show gets better every week and is evolving, after a rocky start, into an entertaining cross between LOST IN SPACE and the original STAR TREK.

Like LOST IN SPACE, the heroes are wandering through the cosmos without a home and no idea where they’re going. Dr. Baltar has become an  insane, less-cartoony, version of Dr. Zachary Smith…injecting some much needed humor (and, in a strange way, humanity) into the show.  The robot from the Jupitor II has been updated into the sexy, imaginary Cylon woman who exists only in Dr. Balter’s head…or is she more than that?

Like the original  STAR TREK,  there’s no preaching, no grand space opera, just action, adventure, fun
and sex. That’s right, sex. This week, we actually saw two characters writhing
around and, get this,  having orgasms (though one of the characters
is a Cylon who’s spine glows when she’s climaxing, but let’s not get into that).  Capt Kirk used to get laid every episode…but in the
recent incarnations
of STAR TREK, the pompous, aren’t-we-so-noble-you-could-vomit crewmembers have either been celibate… or
dealt with sex like uptight teenagers (when the producers weren’t engaged in cringe-worthy leering… like  those  ridiculous spongebath scenes in early seasons of ENTERPRISE..or the skin-tight uniform that hugged Seven of Nine’s enormous Borg Breasts on VOYAGER). After watching STAR TREK for
the last 15 years, I was beginning to think "Abstinance" was the new Prime Directive.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA   is  such a refreshing change from the stilted, self-important, sanitized scifi we’ve been getting over the last few years. Each episode reinforces just how calcified the STAR TREK franchise has become. It’s no coincidence UPN finally mercy-killed ENTERPRISE the same season that BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is injecting new life into the genre. It’s as if showrunner Ron Moore, an ST:NG vet, is intentionally rebelling against all the sanitizing, drama-smothering restrictions and formulas he had to endure while writing for TREK. How anybody could endure ENTERPRISE after watching BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is beyond me.

To be far, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA isn’t the first post-STAR TREK show to re-energize the genre.  FARSCAPE managed to muddy space up a bit it’s first season…but then wallowed in melodrama and overly complicated serial storylines, taking all the fun (and almost all of the humor) out of the show, alienating new viewers and some of the old ones, too.

If the writers of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA continue having this much fun with the stories and the characters, the series has the potential to be the next great scifi franchise… and attract more and more new viewers every week.

(This is one time where the revival is infinitely better than the original series that inspired it)

Everyone is Writing a Script

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Today, I drove up to San Francisco to speak at a writer’s conference this weekend. There’s a Borders next door to my hotel, so I went over to their coffee house  for a cup of tea while I proofed the copyedited manuscript of DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE, which I received yesterday and is due back in NY on the 23rd. Talk about "last minute"…

Anyway, I couldn’t help noticing all the folks around me with their laptops… working on their scripts.  There I was, 300 miles from Hollywood, and still everybody is toiling on a screenplay. It’s not like I was sitting in Vancouver or Toronto or New York, where there’s lots of production going on. This was San Francisco…

If that wasn’t disconcerting enough, I heard a woman (let’s call her Sally) and her friend (let’s call her Betty) talking over the script on the laptop. Sally was getting Betty’s advice… and the advice was absolutely terrible. Everything out of Betty’s mouth was wrong, lame, and screamed that she was an uneducated, uninformed, unschooled wanna-be.  For instance, she advised Sally to add a lot more elaborate and detailed camera moves, angles, and editing suggestions or "the director won’t know what to do."  She also kept recommending that Sally add exclamation points to her dialogue to make it "urgent and important."

It took tremendous willpower not to jump out of my seat, scream at Betty that she didn’t know what the hell she was talking about and urge Sally to delete  the camera moves and exclamations points and every other stupid thing her friend told her to add to her screenplay.

Instead, I moved to a different table…and silently prayed Sally never sent her script to me.

Extreme Make-Over for Bugs Bunny

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Bugs Bunny just isn’t hip anymore. So he’s getting a make-over and becoming Buzz Bunny. The "reimagined" Bugs Bunny will have "laser beam eyes" and incredible martial arts skills… and will star with other "reimagined" cartoon charactersBugsoldnew (Daffy Duck will have "built in sonar")  in a new series called "Loonatics." The only only Loonatics are the execs at Warner Brothers animation who think anybody is clamoring for this abomination.

"The new series will have the same classic wit and wisdom, but we have
to do it more in line with what kids are talking about today," says
Sander Schwartz, president of Warner Bros. Animation. The plots are
action-oriented, filled with chases and fights. Each character
possesses a special crime-fighting power.Buzzbunny

Oh goodie, ’cause that’s what was missing from those classic cartoons. Special crimefighting powers.

What’s next, Minnie Mouse with huge breast
implants and bionic limbs? How about Woody Woodpecker with a Titanium
pecker and incredible mud wrestling skills? Maybe Popeye’s eye could really pop out and maye fly around the room and shoot rockets…and instead of eating Spinach, wouldn’t it be so hip if he snorted coke instead?

(You can read more about this  here, here and here.)

The Power of “Yes”

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Craig Mazin at The Artful Writer offers this piece of advice to working screenwriters:

If you’re a professional screenwriter and you’re asked to make a change that you think is awful, say “Yes.”

Always say yes.

Destroy the main character? “Yes!” Change that brilliant ending that
brings everything full circle with a twist-and-a-half? “Sure!” If the
producer or director has an idea that’s just god-awful, death-dealing,
movie-wrecking, story-killing, your answer to the request should be a
charming and pleasant “Okay!” Say it with pride. Alacrity, even.

Why?  Because saying yes costs you nothing, and gains you much.

When I say “yes,” I’m not agreeing to be slavish.  I’m simply agreeing to try.
If I determine that their suggestion is not to be done, I can explain
why. When you remove that initial “no,” you remove 99% of the hostility
and disfunction from the writer-employer relationship while ceding 0%
of your authority and power. And it’s funny. Ever since I began saying
“yes” a few years back, two interesting things have come to pass.

I haven’t had to write anything I didn’t believe in…

…and no one’s fired me.

I don’t agree with this advice… and I’ve never been fired.  What I don’t do is say "No." What I might say is "That’s an interesting thought, but here’s what will happen to the story if I do it," or "I don’t think that’s a good idea, and here’s why," or "Let me think about it."  But I never say yes to a note I have no intention of doing. But that’s if I’m writing a TV movie or a feature or a pilot. 

On the other hand, if I am writing a freelance episode of a TV series, I might respond to a bad note by saying  "if I do that, here’s how it will impact the story," but I won’t press the point if the executive producer disagrees. I will always say "Yes." I will always do the note, gladly and with no argument, no matter what. Why? Because your job on a TV series is to do what the showrunner wants. It’s his  show, his  characters, not yours. You are a carpenter. You have come to do a job in his house.  Your job is to do what the customer wants to the very best of your ability.

The Real James Patterson

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Variety reports novelist James Patterson is developing a reality show with LMNO, the folks behind "Temptation Island." And no, it’s not going to be about a writer and his factory of scribes. The proposed series will focus on "the generation gap that exists within families."

"It could be about how a father and son look at things differently," said LMNO
prexyprexy-chief
exec Eric Schotz, explaining that one episode might take a parent and child and
have them both teach a sex-ed class.

Patterson said he decided to jump into the waters of reality TV because he
"had what I consider to be an irresistible idea. I couldn’t resist it, as much
as I tried."

He believes writing novels isn’t that far removed from
producing unscripted TV shows.  "When reality TV is done well, as it is in the case of ‘The Apprentice,’ you
can’t stop turning the pages," he said.

Computer Generated Romance

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I saw one of those computer-generated movies today. I don’t mean INCREDIBLES or SHARK TALES… I’m talking about HITCH, of course.  It’s the "romantic comedy" starring Wil Smith and Kevin James that may be the first movie written entirely by a computer. It  sticks to all the formula story elements and, of course, has the obligatory expository best friend, the effeminate gay friend, the father figure boss, and, the number one cliche of all, the romantic lead character who is either:

a)  a writer (novelist or journalist)
b) in publishing (books or magazines)
c) in advertising

Can’t screenwriters (or the software that churns out these bland romantic comedies) think of any other careers for their characters? It is possible for people to live in NY or LA and not be in one of those professions. But you wouldn’t know from these movies:

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE (she’s a writer)
SOMEONE LIKE YOU (she’s a writer)
AMY’S ORGASM (she’s an author)
SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE (she’s a writer)
AS GOOD AS IT GETS (he’s a writer)
YOU”VE GOT MAIL (they are both booksellers)
NOTTING HILL (he owns a bookstore)
WE LOVE TROUBLE (they are both writers)
NEVER BEEN KISSED (she’s  a writer)
DOWN WITH LOVE (she’s a writer)
13 GOING ON 30 (she’s a magazine editor)
HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN TEN DAYS (they’re both writers)
BRIDGET JONES (she’s an editor)
BRIDGET JONES II (she’s a journalist)
ONE FINE DAY (he’s a writer)
KISSING JESSICA STEIN (she’s an editor)
ALEX AND EMMA (he’s a writer)

And those are just a few, off the top of my head. I’m willing to bet there are twice as many others that fit the same, tired mold (One or both lead characters are writers, in publishing, or in advertising). Come to think of it, it works like that in TV, too. Remember the spate of simultaneously airing romantic comedy sitcoms… SEX IN THE CITY, SUDDENLY SUSAN, JUST SHOOT ME, NAKED TRUTH… all about women journalists?

Hollywood writers have to get out in the world more…

And the software they are using to "write" romantic comedies needs serious tweaking. Then again, HITCH made $45 million last weekend, so what do I know?

Channel Flipping

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Some assorted TV news from the pages of Variety…

SciFi Channel is renewing BATTLESTAR GALACTICA for another season.

Battlestargalactica_1 The series has averaged more than 3 million total viewers in its Friday at 10 p.m.
timeslot. "Battlestar" has also ranked No. 1 among cable shows in adults 25-54
and men 25-54 for every week the show has been on the air.

"We all really felt there was something special about this show, that the
creators delivered on their promise to take a new approach to space opera. But
we honestly weren’t sure if the show was going to be embraced," said exec VP of
programming Mark
Stern . "The show is dark and gritty and sexy and, first and
foremost, a character drama. Yes, there is a lot of action, but it certainly
wasn’t the typical space opera our viewers expected. Thankfully, they get it and
they keep showing up in big numbers."

… no word yet from the honchos at the  Colonial Fan Force on how this will impact their important campaign to convince the Hollywood suits to do a big-screen version of the original show with the original cast.  Herb Jefferson and Laurette Sprange stand ready to clear their busy schedules to be in the movie.

MGM is desperately trying to raise DEAD LIKE ME from, well, the dead. Showtime cancelled the series,  which doesn’t have enough episodes to syndicate… meaning its worthless. So MGM is trying to strike a deal… somewhere, anywhere… to crank out new episodes so they have
enough to sell the series in reruns.

An MGM spokeswoman declined to comment, but 29 hourlong episodes for Showtime
(including the 75-minute pilot) are too small a number to make the reruns of any
series salable in basic cable or TV syndication. But if a network such as Sci Fi were willing to pony up a license fee to
bring "Dead" back from the beyond, MGM would do a package deal with that network
that would include the reruns.  Time is running out, however, because the options on the services of the
stars Mandy Patinkin and Ellen Muth are close to an expiration date.

The studio tried this some years back when CBS cancelled a new version of  THE TWILIGHT ZONE… MGM took the show up to Canada, churned out 22 episodes on the cheap, and hired Page Fletcher, the star of the erotic thriller anthology THE HITCHHIKER, to be their new Rod Serling.  Maybe they can get Herb Jefferson and Laurette Sprang for DEAD LIKE ME.

MissinglogoopLifetime has cancelled WILD CARD and it looks likely that they will renew MISSING for a third season, which could be good news for yours truly (I have been a writer/producer on the show for two seasons).

Blogging Hell

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Twice today I have tried to publish a post on this blog about the TV development season and the pilots the networks are considering.

This morning, I wrote a long, detailed article full of brilliant observations, interesting TV pilot trivia, and stunningly insightful commentary on the Industry (if I do say so myself)… and through an idiotic computer mishap, lost it all.

I nearly stuck my fist through my computer monitor.  Clicked off and busied myself with other things.

So I sat down tonight and attempted to resurrect the article from memory and, although it wasn’t half as good as the earlier version, I was happy with it… and I was nearly done, about to insert another link and… clicked the wrong window to close,  and lost that !@#$%^  article, too.

So the hell with it. 

I probably shouldn’t have been writing about pilots anyway. I might need a job on one of the shows I was criticizing…

The TV Writers Social Contract

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What is it, exactly?

The folks at TVGasm believe it’s this:

We watch their shows and make them
rich. In return, they promise to work hard and prevent that show from
sucking.

But my writing/producing partner William Rabkin is confused.

I thought our social contract with the viewer required us to write
whatever storylines the "real" fans demand… to slavishly adhere to
the "rules" they set down in their fanzines… and to realize that
their fanfic is infinitely better than our produced work, because we’re
just doing it for money and they’re doing it for love. How many damn social contracts do we have with our fans?

So which is it? Hurry up and tell me, okay? Because I need to know before we start writing/producing another TV show.

Straight Guys Don’t Watch Queer As Folk…

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…but they’ll watch THE L WORD.  Gee, I wonder why. The show’s creator Ilene Chaiken, in an interview in the NY Times this weekend, makes passing mention about how popular her show is with straight guys who fast-forward pass the yak-yak-yak and the whine-whine-whine to the hot girl-girl action.

LwordBut if everyone agrees that the sex looks good, some have objected
that it looks, well, too good. With classically beautiful actresses
like Jennifer Beals, Pam Grier and Mia Kirschner, Ms. Chaiken
diplomatically said, "There are those viewers who perhaps rightly take
issue with the attractiveness of the cast."

The underlying
accusation is that she is playing to men, a charge she says she finds
mildly annoying since she is, after all, creating a show about sexy
young women in Los Angeles, not a documentary about asthmatic mill
workers in Pittsburgh.

I suspect most guys would watch female asthmatic mill workers getting it on…  if they all looked as good as Jennifer Beals. What’s wrong with playing to men, too? Ratings are ratings.  Of course, Chaikin’s comments imply that lesbians aren’t interested in watching attractive women having sex.  I suspect lesbians would watch female asthmatic mill workers going at it, too, if  Halle Berry was one of them.

(Shockingly, the wide-ranging discussion didn’t make any mention of the strident demands made by the "Save Karina Lombard" campaign  last June.  Could it be because nobody is going to miss her?)