Film and Television

The Expository Friend

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Over the last two days, I’ve seen the Expository Friend everywhere…in books, TV shows and movies. I’m thinking that, for the sake of good writing, the WGA should put a ban on the Expository Friend into our next contract with the studios and networks.

The Expository Friend is the character who exists only so the hero or heroine can reveal what they are thinking and feeling, what they are conflicted about, and what they intend to do about it.

The Expository Friend also comes in handy for telling the hero things they already know  that we, the audience, do not (the big clue is when the Expository Friend starts any sentence with the words: "As you know" or "As we discussed," or "Remember when we," or "You realize that if you do this you," etc. etc.).

The Expository Friend is usually the frumpy single or married best friend/co-worker/next-door-neighbor/sibling of the romantic lead and is, in every case, a completely pointless character that could be removed from the movie/tv show/book without losing a thing.

Any time you see the Expository Friend, you are looking at tangible evidence that the screenwriter is either incredibly lazy or doesn’t have the talent to reveal character in any other way except, well, to have them step up and tell us directly who they are and what they are feeling.

The Expository Friend violates the basic rule of good screenwriting: Show don’t tell.

Pilot Bait-and-Switch

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I haven’t seen the new TNT series WANTED yet, but in today’s LA Times review, Paul Brownfield talks about the common practice of pilot bait-and-switch.

Television pilots, particularly the ones with action, are real productions these days, sometimes upward of $10-million affairs with chase scenes and blow-’em-ups and helicopter shots.

They’re like features — better than features since they last only an hour and there’s no mall parking. The bait and switch of these lavish premieres, of course, is that two or three episodes in, the big-name director that the producers got for the pilot is gone and the budget is pinched back,

The producers know that. The networks know that. And increasingly, the viewers know that, too. The problem is, a pilot isn’t entertainment. It isn’t the first episode of a series. What it is, first and foremost, is a sales tool aimed at the key decision makers at the network…perhaps a dozen people in a screening room.  The studio will do whatever it takes to wow them…and get on the schedule… then worry about the license fee and the deficit later.

But those worries will come… and when they do, the pilot that was filmed on location in New York moves to a warehouse in Vancouver, the big-name movie director who shot the pilot becomes a non-directing executive producer, and the stories become much smaller (and more produce-able in scope). THE FUGITIVE was one recent series that suffered from the pilot bait-and-switch and the network still couldn’t understand why viewers abandoned it. 

The question is if the producers/studios deliver a pilot that truly represents what they will actually be able to afford on a weekly episodic budget, will the network be wowed by what they see?  Probably not. So they go balls-out for the pilot — the 60-minute sales pitch — pretending that if the network likes it, they will cough up the bucks to deliver that same show every week. But both sides, buyer and seller, know that isn’t true. 

The downside is that viewers aren’t part of that tacit understanding. The audience tunes in for the pilot, which they don’t see as a sales tool. They see it as the first episode of a show they may, or may not, make time for every week. If they like the first episode, they will expect that show every week. If the viewers return and get a cheaper, less ambitious, show they will be disappointed and, in this highly competitive entertainment marketplace, won’t come back for episode three.

Must Love Cliches

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From today’s LA Times review of "Must Love Dogs:"

Ah, movie divorce. The dinner over the sink loneliness. The ice cream out of a carton sadness. The bad date montages. About three-quarters of the way through "Must Love Dogs," Sarah (Diane Lane) suffers her first big romantic setback, at which point my viewing companion keeled forward and croaked, "Oh my God. Of course she’s wearing bunny slippers."

"Must Love Dogs" must not love movies very much because it takes Lane, John Cusack, Dermot Mulroney, Elizabeth Perkins, Stockard Channing and Christopher Plummer and forces them to reenact the entire unabridged Encyclopedia of Treasured Romantic Comedy Clichés and Chestnuts, Revised Second Edition.

And the studios wonder why fewer people are going to movies these days…

Character Short-hand

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TV Writer Paul Guyot talks about character short-hand or, as he calls it, character gadgets. Network and studio development execs love them.

On the new TNT show The Closer the lead character has a weakness for
junk food.

That’s it.

Take that little gadget away and that "unique" character is suddenly very
similar to several other female TV leads. But network and studio folks like
gadgets. They think it makes the character unique. It’s easy. It’s simple. And
much safer than doing something deeper, or darker, or less mainstream.

It also leads to rampant cliches. How many times have you seen the character who loves junk food? A hundred times? A thousand. I’ve lost count (I remember seeing it in the pilot for THE STRIP  a couple years ago on UPN and throwing my dinner at the TV).  How about the cop who is a slob? It was old when THE ODD COUPLE was on the air and it hasn’t become any fresher with each new iteration. But character short-hand/gadgets  gives a development exec something to latch on to…"Oh yeah, Det. Nick Waters. I get him. He’s the hard-nosed cop who actually spends his free time ballroom dancing. That gives the character depth, levels, shading. Yeah, I like Nick. He’s got an edge."

Not a real edge, or any tangible depth,  just a quirk that’s easy to grasp, that quickly defines the character for the development exec. (And not just development execs, but editors, too. How many loner cops have you seen in novels who love classic rock music, drink too much, and are estranged from their wives?) The danger is when weak writers start relying on those quirks as a replacement for developing an actual character.   And I see that happening more and more…

David Montgomery expands on Paul’s thoughts, talking about writing gimmicks in mystery novels and offers this great advice:

Gimmicks lead to a "sameness" in writing, making a particular book sound like
every other book you’ve read. As a result, gimmicks diminish the author’s
individual voice and style. They also have a tendency to take the reader out of
the story, disrupting the flow and rhythm of the book.

So here’s my piece of advice for the day: if you find yourself using a
gimmick in your writing, stop it! Be creative instead. Be original. Think about
the problem and figure out how else you can solve it. Find a way to
make the plot work, or to get the reader the necessary information without
resorting to a trick or cliche.

The Mean Streets of Palm Springs

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Gun in hand, the Mayor of Palm Springs leans forward, contempt written all over
his face.

“You need to go,” he tells the child molester in a slow drawl,
his icy stare never wavering as he takes a long drag on his cigarette.

“I ain’t going anywhere,” the molester answers, his 6-foot, 230-pound
frame quickly rising above the smaller man. “Punk.”

Without hesitation,
Mayor blasts him, blowing his kneecap clean off.

That’s a scene, as reported in today’s Desert Sun, from MAYOR OF PALM SPRINGS, a spec TV pilot being shot by Melarkie Brothers, an independant film company in the  Coachella Valley. It’s not actually about The Mayor, the politician who runs the city. It’s just one of those TV titles that’s a play on words.   

The show follows the exploits of Mayor Task, a good-guy cop turned Palm Springs
pool man who’s been recruited by a secret society to dole out justice, vigilante
style…

Wait a minute. A vigilante pool man?

The scene Sunday depicted Mayor’s first assignment for the secret society:
confronting a known child molester.

“He wants to help people, that’s the
only thing he knows and loves,” Kienzle said of his character. “But he can’t do
it, because he was fired for dropping a gun at another crime scene to help out
another cop.”

The spec pilot is being directed by Bruce Carson, who makes a living shooting second-unit stunt work for feature films.  This is the second project for Melarkie Brothers. They did a 
short called “5 Minutes Alone” about what would happen if the state allowed the victims of crime five minutes alone with the criminals who have ruined their
lives.  I’m sensing a theme here. 

The Melarkie Brothers say they’re optimistic about the prospects for “Mayor of
Palm Springs,” but if it fails they say they’re not going to give up. This is
more than a hobby, and they are more than weekend warriors, they say.

“This is just about a bunch of guys that have a passion to make and tell
stories,” Miller said.

As long as they’re stories about people beating the crap out of criminals. Here’s my advice. If they really want to capture the way of life in Palm Springs, their next vigilante hero should be in his 70s. Or 80s.  Patrick MacNee lives in Palm Springs. Maybe they can talk him into starring. He was an Avenger, after all.  They could call it  RAGING WATERS… as in Nick Waters, an angry ex- cop with dentures of doom and arthritic fists of  fury who mows down bad guys with his slow-moving Buick Regal. Just a thought.

The Conservative View of Hollywood

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I got a laugh out of Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott’s description of how conservatives view us folks who work in the movie and TV industry:

the liberal radical Jewish homosexual Prius-driving ingrown stem-celled elitists
who look down on average Americans from their windows on David Geffen’s plane.

It came in a blog posting recommending that people read Kung Fu Monkey’s (aka screenwriter John Rogers) ruminations on politics and Hollywood: 

Having entered Mordor and dined in its commissaries, he is able to relay what
bubbles and festers behind the studio gates. And has little patience with those
who parrot the same old squawks of untruth.

Both Wolcott’s witty post and Kung Fu Monkey’s long essay are worth a read.

Dick Van Dyke is Back

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Dick Van Dyke, 80,  is returning to television in “Murder 101,” a series of  movies for Hallmark in which he plays “a criminology professor who is less than brilliant when it comes to everyday tasks though incredibly smart when it comes to solving crimes. He bumbles through life not knowing where his keys are, but when he gets involved in a case his mind is a steel trap." His son Barry will co-star. The movies premiere in January.

The Candyman Can

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Won1We Fc4ab593just got back from taking my daughter to CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY…
I much prefer the Gene Wilder version. Does that make me a stodgy old coot?

Update 7-23-05: Screenwriter Paul Dini shares my view. He blogs:

…Wilder’s Wonka seemed like an adult who had never lost a child’s
perspective of adults, and therefore knew how to skillfully parody them
while walking among them. He dressed in the clothes a child might
choose to give himself an air of wealth and worldiness among grown-ups,
and even spoke to them on a semi-intellectual level until it dawned on
the mystified adults that what they heard was an earful of nonsense and
veiled insults. Yet Wilder also made Wonka an obsessive workaholic who
saw human relationships as an impediment to his creative genius. It
wasn’t that Wilder’s Wonka disliked children (though he clearly didn’t
care for the four out of five he invited in) but he had simply created
a world where he had no time to have any kids of his own.

 

Homage or Rip-off?

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For_your_eyes_only Posterwire notes the similarity between the posters for THE Transporter_2TRANSPORTER  2 and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. It’s sad commentary on movies today that the poster for a cutting-edge, French action movie is actually tamer than a 20-year-poster for a geriatric Roger Moore 007 film…

I used to have the original pre-release FOR YOUR EYES ONLY poster, in which Bond is facing the woman and shooting at her, but it was destroyed in the Northridge earthquake, ripped by the broken glass from the shattered frame.

Dumb Career Moves

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Sharona I’ve been absorbed in all things MONK today… writing book #2, reading scripts for season #4, watching last night’s season #4 premiere, and catching up on some of the supplementary materials in the DVD boxed set of season 3.

And I’ve come to this c0nclusion. Bitty Schram leaving MONK is going to go Toma0down in history as one of the great dumb career moves, right up there with Tony Musante leaving TOMA, McLean Stevenson leaving MASH, Shelly Long leaving CHEERS, Valerie Harper leaving VALERIE, Wil Wheaton leaving STAR TREK, David Caruso leaving NYPD BLUE, Erica Eleniak leaving BAYWATCH, Herve Villachaize leaving FANTASY ISLAND, Redd Foxx leaving SANFORD AND SON, and George Lazenby walking away from James Bond, to name a few.