Film and Television

The Ex-List Ex-Producer

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Large_dianerug-2006
Showrunner Diane Ruggiero walked off the new CBS series THE EX-LIST, a one-hour  adaptation of a half-hour Israeli series, and gave Alan Sepinwall of the Star-Ledger all the juicy details (the network and studio told the trades  that they were caught by surprise by her exit). Basically, she got noted to death and didn't like it:

Ruggiero said CBS executives – the same ones she said had claimed to
want her unique take on the material – kept pushing her to stick as
closely as possible to the Israeli show, even though it only ran for 11
half-hour episodes, featured a heroine with no job and no life outside
of her romantic quest, and other issues that would get in the way of
doing a long-running one-hour series.

"They would keep coming to me talking about how they wanted the
Israeli version, they wanted the Israeli version, and I'm going, 'Test
audiences loved the psychic, who was only in one scene (in the
original). They loved her sister; she didn't have a sister in the
original. They loved the flower shop; she didn't have a job in the
original.'

[…]The breaking point came early last week, when CBS hired Segahl Avin,
creator of the original show, to consult on the series. Ruggiero
realized CBS wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than an exact
copy, and she quit.

"I'm not a f—ing transcriber," she said. "Why would you hire me if
you wanted a transcriber? I'm a pain in the a–. I have a specific
thing that I do. If you don't want that, go hire someone else."

Her experience is not unusual. Far from it. But what is a surprise is that she's gone whining to a reporter, which may have felt good at the time but definitely wasn't the smartest career move. Quitting wasn't either…it's better to stick it out until they fire you so you can get paid off.  She's figured that part out already.

In quitting the show this early, she said, "I walked away from all of
the money they were offering me, which was a lot. Now I'm thinking,
maybe I should have tried to get some of that money, seeing as I did
all that work."

[…]"I'll never work at CBS again," said Ruggiero.

And I bet it's not going to be easy at any other network for a while, either.

The First Episode

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There's been a lot of talk about pilots lately — all of it sparked by TV Guide's list of the Ten Best Pilots of All-Time (which was written by someone who apparently thinks TV has only existed for the last decade or so). Now the Elburn Herald has listed some of the worst, many taken from my book UNSOLD TV PILOTS.

For me, some of the best pilots (which led to series) that are not on the TV Guide list are The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In the Family, Hill Street Blues, The West Wing, The Rockford Files, Law & Order, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Hawaii Five-O, Monk, St. Elsewhere,  Crime Story, Murphy Brown, Married With Children, Boomtown, Thirtysomething and Cheers.

Become the Next Norman Lear

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This November, Emmy Award winning comedy writer Ken Levine is hosting another one of his phenomenal SITCOM ROOM writing classes:

With all the writing classes and books around, I realized there’s one thing none of them teach – what it’s actually like being in a sitcom writing ro>Practically all sitcoms are “room written” these days (even single camera shows like 30 ROCK). That’s
when a dysfunctional group of funny, creative people somehow manage,
collectively, to craft a brilliantly funny (or at least not
embarrassing) script while suffering from incredible time pressure and
personality clashes.
[…]I found myself imagining a weekend workshop that gives you the hands-on
experience you could only get in a professional writing room […]A cross between a seminar/workshop and comedy writing fantasy camp.

If you want to be a TV comedy writer, you've got to take this class. There are still a few spaces left, so sign up fast.

I’m Fraking Quoted

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Chris Talbott of the Associated Press picked up on my blog post a while back about the subversive power of "Frak"..and quoted me in an article on the topic that is showing up today all over the fraking place.

Lee Goldberg thinks Glen A. Larson is a genius, and not because the prolific
television writer and producer gave us "Knight Rider" and "B.J. and the Bear."

It was Larson who first used the faux curse word "frak" in
the original "Battlestar Galactica." The word was mostly overlooked back in the
'70s series but is working its way into popular vocabulary as SciFi's modern
update winds down production.

"All joking aside, say what you will about what you might
call the lowbrow nature of many of his shows, he did something truly amazing and
subversive, up there with what Steven Bochco gets credit for, with 'frak,' "
Goldberg said.

There's no question what the word stands for and it's used
gleefully, as many as 20 times in some episodes.

[…]Goldberg believes Larson should get more
credit for "frak" and has posted an appreciation on his Web site. He even sought
out Larson to let him know how he feels: "I told him, 'Frak is fraking
brilliant, Glen.' "

The reporter also talked to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA cast members, novelist Robert Crais, and he even  managed (with my help) to track down Glen for a quote or two.

"Our point was to whenever possible make it a departure like
you're visiting somewhere else," Larson said. "And we did coin certain phrases
for use in expletive situations, but we tried to carry that over into a lot of
other stuff, even push brooms and the coin of the realm."

The producers of the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fraking love to use the word, of course.

Co-executive producer and writer Michael Angeli, an Emmy
nominee for the episode "Six of One," said using the word in scripts is
satisfying for anyone who's been censored over the years.

"It's a great way to do something naughty and get away with
it," Angeli said.

That talented motherfraker is frakin' right.

They Love to Blow Up Cars

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The new season of ALARM FOR COBRA 11 is beginning next month in Germany and my friends at Action Concept pack more action into one hour than most U.S. series do in an entire season… and for half the budget. Here are two ads for the season opener:

All that action was just in the first ten minutes.

Is it time to start carving a tombstone for Network Television?

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Wired magazine thinks so. Last season, the three major networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) combined attracted their smallest audience since the advent of television. But the cable networks, which target a niche audience rather than aiming for the broadest possible reach, now claim more than half of total viewers.

It may be time to perform an autopsy on network TV, which some have
pronounced officially dead at age 60, the victim of a lifetime of big
spending, hard living, and bad planning. Here's the coroner's report:
The evening newscasts have been mowed down by cable's heat, spin, and
round-the-clock immediacy. In prime time, nobody watches reruns
anymore—and reruns, along with syndication, used to be the only way
comedy and drama series, the heart of a network's prime-time business,
made money. (The way they make money now is…well, the networks will
get back to you as soon as they figure that out.)

Speaking of old-school, half-hour sitcoms: Once, 50 of them were on
the air at a time. Today, they're all but gone. Suddenly, people just
stopped liking them. Prime-time news magazines? Barely holding on.
"Protected" time slots? Viewers accustomed to Web surfing and channel
flipping at hyperspeed aren't going to watch a new show just because
they're too lazy to change the channel after The Biggest Loser.
The audience for daytime soaps, a profitable staple since TV's infancy,
has shrunk so dramatically that the form may vanish within a few years.
This is all very bad news for a medium that hasn't come up with a fresh
format since 2000, when CBS launched Survivor, the gold rush in reality-TV competitions. (P.S.: Survivor isn’t what it used to be either.)

It's unlikely that a broadcast network is ever again going to create a megahit like The Cosby Show,
which at its mid-’80s peak drew as many as 50 million viewers an
episode. For several years now, TV's top event has been Fox's American Idol. Last season, it drew 28.8 million viewers a week.