Film and Television

Bochco Blues

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Ygp682c If anyone needed proof that ageism rages in Hollywood, all you need to do is look at Steven Bochco.  According to a story in yesterday’s LA Times, he’s having a hard time getting shows on the air these days…or even getting his pilots shot.

By his own admission, he can be a difficult to work with…citing his clashes with ABC after they hired him to "save" COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF after creator/showrunner Rod Lurie was booted:

"Oh yeah, they wanted me out. They couldn’t stand me. It did a great deal of damage, probably, to my relationship with that network. It was not fun."

But there are lots of producers who are a pain-in-the-ass, clash with executives, and don’t have 1/10th of his talent or his accolades…and the networks still line up to business with them (we ALL know who they are).  The LA Times story suggests that its because Bochco has fallen out-of-step with what the networks are looking for these days:

Bochco is a reality-based drama producer in a business now crawling with "high-concept" fantasists who draw their inspiration from comic books. "You’re looking at 400-year-old cops and detectives who are vampires. . . . It’s fine. I don’t have any disdain for it. It’s just not what I do."

I don’t buy that. It’s not like his brand of story-telling has fallen out of favor. THE SHIELD, THE SOPRANOS, NIP/TUCK, THE WIRE and scores of other ‘gritty’ and ‘envellope-pushing’ shows owe an enormous debt to Bochco, who broke new ground with HILL STREET BLUES and NYPD BLUE (Bochco did try, disasterously, to jump on the high-concept bandwagon with BLIND JUSTICE, a show that started out as a joke in his novel DEATH BY HOLLYWOOD). I think the truth behind Bochco’s slump lies in this observation:

The network executives stay the same age and I keep getting older, and it creates a different kind of relationship. When I was doing my stuff at NBC with Brandon [Tartikoff] and ‘Hill Street,’ we were contemporaries. . . . When I sit down with [the current network bosses], they’re sitting in a room with someone who’s old enough to be their father. My kids are their age. That’s a different reality, and I’m not sure they want to sit in a room with their fathers."

I’ll have a chance to chat with Bochco about it. We’re both guests next month at the Cologne Conference.

(The photo above is from an MWA event…pictured are Bob Levinson, William Link, Bochco and yours truly)

Slush Hour

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Blofeld4 I saw RUSH HOUR 3 today. The story made no sense at all, but I Flashweb005 had a good time anyway…mostly because of Chris Tucker. He was the movie. He made lines funny that weren’t funny. Max Von Sydow was in the movie, too, which I also found amusing. If you cast him in a part, you might as well hang a sign around his neck that says: ——-

Well, you know what it should say. 

News on the Fast Track

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Now that FAST TRACK is finished, we are deep into post…working on the score, etc. I’ll be flying to Montreal later this month to record actor Andrew Walker’s ADR (to replace poor tracks and to record new dialogue) and to meet with potential Canadian broadcasters for the show. And then, in early September, it’s back to Berlin to record the ADR with our European cast. We’re also actively trying to find a U.S. broadcaster for the show…but more on that later. In the mean time, here are some publicity stills from the movie, taken by photographers extraordinaire Gordon Muehl and Stefan Hoederath.

Fasttrack023 Fasttrack393 Fasttrack233 Fasttrack185 _sth8516 _sth8575

Catching up

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I finally saw LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD and BOURNE ULTIMATUM.  DIE HARD was over-the-top, by-the-numbers, and dull. BOURNE ULTIMATUM was fresh, invigorating, and exciting…I loved it. I wish more movies were as smart and exciting as the BOURNE trilogy.  The geek in my can’t wait to get ULTIMATUM on DVD so I can watch all three movies back-the-back in one sitting (as if I will ever have the time for that).

I also caught up with the last five episodes of THE SOPRANOS. They were definitely a big improvement over last season’s episode, a real return to form dramatically and comedicly for the series. But like everyone else, I don’t really get the point of the abrupt ending that felt more like a technical/broadcasting error than a scripted, dramatic moment.

Next on my Tivo… JESSE STONE: SEA CHANGE and the last five episodes of the season of HEROES and LAW AND ORDER: SVU.

The Cut

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_gmu2194 I’ve finished my producer’s cut of FAST TRACK: NO LIMITS. The  studio loved it so now we’re just making some tiny, technical tweaks before I screen the cut for the network on Wednesday. Then I get their notes, do my final cut…and await the word on whether we go to series or not.

I really enjoy the editing process…the frustration, the exhiliration, and the discovery that comes  with it.

It all starts with the show you imagine…and then it becomes the show you’ve  written, which is always a bit different because it evolves as you are writing it. Then there’s the show that’s shot…which is never quite what you imagined, since you are taking a dream and asking hundreds of people to help you make it real. Their creative work, along with the reality of taking what’s on the page and making it live, shapes the show into something new.  And, finally, there  is the show you create in the editing room. You can’t expect to see the show that you first imagined. As you cut, rearrange, choose angles, drop dialogue, add dialogue, etc., you discover the show amidst the footage. Yes, the show I created  is still there…but it has become something else…and, luckily for me, something much better.