Film and Television

Website as Pitching Tool

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A number of people have alerted me to this news: a guy created a website to pitch his movie… and it worked. LAObserved has the story.

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer set up a
website called The Dionaea House
last year and posted a series of correspondence between characters in his horror
screenplay. After all, if the Internet is there, why not exploit it to create
some buzz? The site got a ton of hits. Tomorrow’s Hollywood
Reporter says the website helped "build the mythology" of the project — and
Warner Bros. Pictures picked it up for David Heyman to produce at Heyday Films.

The Drool Doesn’t Go Both Ways

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Networks and studios always drool over big-name screenwriters and dangle pilot deals in front of them…then, inevitably, pair them with experienced showrunners if the pilot goes to series. Veteran showrunner, and now Oscar-nominee, Paul Haggis is finding the drool doesn’t go both ways. Movie studios don’t clamor for TV writers.
 

Take the case of "Million Dollar Baby" writer Paul Haggis and his new film "Crash," which debuted in U.S. theaters on Friday.

Haggis,
a veteran television writer, saw his screenplay for "Million Dollar
Baby" turned into Oscar’s best film of 2004 by Clint Eastwood. It
earned three other Oscars: best director for Eastwood, actress for
Hilary Swank and supporting actor for Morgan Freeman.

But when it
came to "Crash" — a film he wrote and directed that looks at race and
class among Americans in Los Angeles — he said no major studio would
give him the money to shoot it because, among other things, Hollywood
saw him as a TV guy.

"The stigma is still there. No matter how
many times someone breaks through, they still think that is the one
exception," Haggis said, referring to studio executives.

I wonder why that is?

Randall Wallace went from moderate success in TV ("Sonny Spoon," "JJ Starbuck," etc.) to much bigger success in film ("Braveheart," "We Were Soldiers," "Pearl Harbor" etc.) And, of course, there are TV writers like Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose, Rod Serling, Alvin Sargent and other folks from TV’s so-called "Golden Age" who went on to big careers in film.  On the other hand, TV heavyweight David E. Kelley’s two forays into film have been big duds. And neither Steve Bochco nor Steve Cannell have been able to get a major studio film off the ground.

Can you think of anyone recently who has been a success in TV and who has earned equal success in film? Some guys, like Terry Winter (Sopranos) and Paul Bernbaum (A-Team) are poised for it with upcoming films…

Pilot Tape Crackdown

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The networks announce their fall schedules in a week or two and, usually, around this time tapes of the various pilots under consideration start floating around town. But this season, that has changed. Variety reports that studios are cracking down on the practice. The studios are getting so tight with tapes, even the producers of the pilots have a hard time getting screeners of their own shows.

"It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen," said one insider at a major
tenpercentery. "You hear rumors of execs telling assistants they could go to
jail if they leak something out."

Another said he can’t even get his hands on his own network’s tapes, at least
prior to the pilot’s official screening.  Studios and nets always make noises about not wanting tapes to be traded with
other studios or nets. So why are the rules actually being enforced this year?

Some trace it back to a dictate from top brass at 20th Century Fox TV, who
laid down the law last month when early copies of a couple of the studio’s
pilots started floating around town — even before the networks where the shows
are set up had had a chance to formally screen them.  Others speculate that Leslie Moonves’ control of Paramount Television has
further restricted the free flow of tapes. Moonves insists on a strict cone of
silence surrounding the development process at his units.

As frustrating as the crackdown has been for some, one studio exec said it’s
necessary in a world where "there’s a tremendous incentive for agents to try to
create a bad buzz" about projects with which they’re not associated.

"When you have people who’ve seen tapes calling network execs and saying, ‘Do
you really like that?,’ it starts to have an impact on your project," the
exec said.

One agent admitted he’s guilty of spreading bad buzz. "Everyone talks shit
about everyone’s pilot," he said.

I wonder if the crackdown will be as strongly enforced after the schedules are announced. Usually, tapes of  busted pilots start floating around town during the summer and you get a chance to see what didn’t  make the schedule and why. 

Last season, I was eager to get my hands on the Lost in Space pilot directed by John Woo and had a hell of a time tracking down a tape through my usual sources (When you’ve written a book on unsold pilots, and filmed two TV specials about’em, you have lots of sources). But once I did get the tape and put it in the VCR I could see why WB wanted to bury it.  It was horrendous, misguided, and stupid.  (I’m still trying to get a copy of The Time Tunnel revival pilot).

Many years ago, I really wanted to see the Stephen J. Cannell-produced  Hawaii Five-O  pilot starring Gary Busey and Russell Wong. But it was done for CBS, and Moonves is notorious about keeping his busted pilot under lock-and-key.  It took me a year or so, but I finally scored a tape from someone who made me promise not to tell anyone where I got it for fear that Moonves would crush him. It wasn’t so bad…but it wasn’t so good, either.

Stop Looking For A Short Cut

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I received a reply from the guy with the great idea for a TV show who needed someone with "industry credibility" to team up with.

Feel the need to vent?  No problem!  Since we don’t each other, it can’t be
personal.  A simple, "not interested" would have done the trick though. 
The television saying you mentioned….we say that same thing in
marketing and advertising!  Since I’m a professional in my chosen field too
(no, really), I receive numerous offers to partner from people looking to break
in.  Though it almost never goes anywhere, I usually offer some slight
encouragement.  The upside is so much greater than the downside and the cost to
let it play out is so insignificant…..so why not?

Instead of offering encouragement, I offer honesty and reality. Obviously, you didn’t want to hear either. You can’t expect to scrawl a drawing of a car on a napkin and sell it to Ford… why should you expect it to happen with a TV series idea? The way to break in is not to look for shortcuts, for a way to start at the top…which is what you are trying to do.  The way to break in is to write a terrific script, get hired as a freelancer on a show, get picked up on staff, then work your way up the writer/producer ladder until you reach the point in your career when someone from a studio or network calls and says "Hey, got any ideas for a series?"

As for the networks buying years of
experience and a track record……I sincerely hope that is true (means better
television).  The jury seems to be out though:  Overnight
successes…..Schwartz, who at 27 created The O.C….Trey Parker and Matt Stone
created South Park while they were still in college.

I figured that’s where you were coming from.  You didn’t do your homework.  Josh Schwartz worked on other shows and wrote other pilots before THE OC.  Parker and Stone made a short animated film, THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS,  that wowed the industry. That short film proved their skill as animators/writers/performers and  they got a series… based on that short film. They weren’t car salesmen from Topeka with a really great idea for an animated TV series.

What must I have been thinking when I contacted
you?  I mean…how on earth could a professional television writer really be
interested in what someone from outside the industry has to offer? 
". CSI, the No. 1 show was created by relative newcomer, Anthony
E. Zuiker…. CBS hired experienced writer-producers Carol Mendelsohn and Ann
Donahue to run the show…"

Again, you aren’t doing your homework. Zuiker didn’t sell his idea by emailing producers with a come-on saying he had a great idea for a show and he just needed someone with "industry credibility" to sell it for him.  He wrote a script.  From the CSI Files Website:

Zuiker himself got his start when childhood friend Dustin Lee Abraham, now a CSI scribe but then an actor, would get Zuiker to
write him monologues for auditions. "I wrote a speech about a man, mentally
retarded, watching his wife give birth. He’s a degenerate gambler, and he went
into an announcing [mode, a play by play]," Zuiker says of the monologue that
got him attention in Hollywood. The speech was turned into a movie, The
Runner, which was made for seven million dollars. It turned out to be
Zuiker’s gateway to Hollywood.

You’re wowed by what you think are strike-it-big-in-Hollywood-quick stories that really aren’t.  Stop looking for a short-cut.  The best way to sell a series is to write some great scripts. Don’t look for someone with "industry credibility," earn some of your own instead.

Good-Riddance to Star Trek

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It’s about time STAR TREK was cancelled, or so says bestselling science fiction author Orson Scott Card in the Los Angeles Times. He was no fan of the original series, either.

The original "Star Trek," created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few
exceptions, bad in every way that a science fiction television show
could be bad.

Yikes, is he in for it from "The Fen. " And he takes a shot at them, too.

And then the madness really got underway. They started making
costumes and wearing pointy ears. They wrote messages in Klingon, they
wrote their own stories about the characters, filling in what was left
out — including, in one truly specialized subgenre, the "Kirk-Spock"
stories in which their relationship was not as platonic and emotionless
as the TV show depicted it.

He’s certainly one author who isn’t afraid to express a controversial opinion that could, uh,  alienate his readers.

Flying Without a Pilot

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TV Writer Paul Guyot tells all about the demise of his TNT pilot THE DARK, which he wrote and produced with Stephen J. Cannell and that was directed by Walter Hill. So what went wrong?

Who knows what happened – you can speculate and Monday morning
quarterback forever – but the bottom line was once the thing was shot,
edited and presented to the network, the original script and story just
wasn’t there. The first thing the network said when they saw the cut was "Where’s the script we bought?"

Now, I’m not saying it was awful. I don’t love the finished product,
but I will say that, overall, I’m happy with about 70% of it. These
days that’s not a bad percentage. But it was that other third that
killed us.

A few years ago, we shot a two-hour, back-door pilot on DIAGNOSIS MURDER starring Fred Dryer as the Chief of Police of Los Angeles. The co-star was an unknown actor named Neal McDonough, who has since gone on to star in BAND OF BROTHERS, BOOMTOWN and MEDICAL INVESTIGATIONS (as well as a three-episode arc on MARTIAL LAW for us). The pilot was called THE CHIEF.

Since DIAGNOSIS MURDER was, itself, a spin-off of JAKE AND THE FATMAN (which itself was a spin-off of MATLOCK), Fred Silverman demanded that we do at least one pilot per season imbedded in an episode of the show. 

ChiefopThis is a cheap way to make a pilot and allows the studio an opportunity to recoup their costs in syndication. You also go straight to film without all the intermediate steps in the development process. The other advantage is that the pilot will air and the ratings, if they are high enough, can be a valuable sales tool.

The downside is that backdoor pilots-as-episodes have a much harder time being taken seriously at the network because they usually aren’t developed through the usual channels and, therefore, there’s no one championing them internally at the network.  (Of course lots of pilot-as-episodes have sold… CSI:MIAMI and MORK AND MINDY are a few such examples, my book UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS is littered with others that haven’t, like ASSIGNMENT EARTH from STAR TREK and LUTHOR GILLIS form MAGNUM PI)

THE CHIEF had a lot going for it. For one thing, we had Fred Dryer, a proven star with HUNTER and this role was absolutely perfect for him (and I have to say, he was great in it). For another, the two-hour pilot aired during sweeps and got fantastic ratings, ranking something like #14 for the week, a tremendous accomplishment for us. And finally, we tested the show with audiences at ASI and the scores were amazing, among the best our partner Fred Silverman (former head of ABC, CBS and NBC) had ever seen. We were sure we had a slam-dunk sale at CBS…and if they were foolish enough to pass on it, we definitely land at another next network. Little did we know…

We met with Les Moonves at CBS…and he passed. He didn’t want to work with Fred Dryer. We met with Jaime Tarses at ABC. She didn’t want to work with Dryer. We met with Dean Valentine at UPN. He didn’t want to work with Dryer.  And so it went at every network. What killed us wasn’t the execution,  the concept, the acting, the ratings, or the testing. What killed us was bad blood between Dryer and execs he’d worked with before on other projects.  Basically, we were victims of the burned bridges Dryer had left in his wake.  The television audience loved Fred Dryer, but the major network execs didn’t. Had we known that going in, we would have cast someone else as THE CHIEF. Then again, we might not have enjoyed the same terrific ratings and sky-high testing…not that they did us any good in the end.  (Ironically, CBS ended up doing a similar show with Craig T. Nelson
called THE DISTRICT. And from what I hear, Nelson was no picnic)

I’ve since had another experience like that with another star which is why, from now on, we call around about the actors we’re thinking about working with so we aren’t derailed from the get-go by burned bridges or a history of "difficult behavior on the set.

(You can read the two-part pilot script here and here or watch a five minute sales presentation culled from the two-hour movie here, just go to THE CHIEF logo and click on it). 

Don’t Hire This Spenser

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Bob Sassone reports over at TV Squad that Rykodisc is releasing the four, made-on-the-cheap-in-Canada SPENSER reunion movies  on DVD. Those crappy, flatly-directed, and exceedingly dull MOWs shouldn’t be mistaken for the underappreciated SPENSER FOR HIRE  series (and I’m not just saying that because I wrote for it).

Robert Urich and Avery Brooks were the perfect Spenser and Hawk,
the scripts were literate and intelligent, and the on
location filming in Boston added a lot of atmosphere and color. But
then the show was cancelled, and they decided to make these rather
so-so movies, and they don’t include Barbara Stock as Susan Silverman
(sorry again: Wendy Crewson and Barbara Williams just aren’t the same).
The good news? They aren’t the lame Joe Mantegna Spenser
flicks that A&E produced later, and it’s great to see Urich and
Avery together again. The bad news? It’s not the TV series.

I hope the TV series comes out on DVD soon and not just because I’d like pristine copies of my episodes. It was a very good PI series and seems to have dropped out of syndication a few years ago.

Unlike Bob Sassone, I actually liked Joe Mantegna as Spenser a lot (and I love his readings of the Parker novels on CD) …but he was teamed with lousy actors as Hawk and, once again, the movies were shot on the cheap in Toronto with bland Canadian actors. The scripts weren’t so hot, either.  I think if they’d cast Mantegna and Avery Brooks, and shot the movies in Boston, and hired better writers (like Bill Rabkin & me!), the movies might have worked…

Tom Selleck, who did a bang-up job playing Parker’s Jesse Stone on TV recently, would make a good Spenser. So would Robert Forster who, incidentally, does a great job reading the Jesse Stone novels on CD.

Kill Bill, Kill Cinema

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I enjoyed KILL BILL.  Well, at least parts of it. Was it a great movie? No. Was it visually interesting and fun? Sure. That said, I think Ron Rosenbaum’s observations in The New York Observer are absolutely correct:

I don’t blame you if any or all of these made it impossible for you
to stay awake for the eyeball-squishing, that moment of cinematic
mastery, the true climax of the two-part, four-hour Tarantino
"masterpiece."

Still, it’s too bad if you missed it, because it was the perfect
epitome of and metaphor for what I would like to call "The Cinema of
Pretentious Stupidity." The eyeball-squishing represented the crushing
of vision by lead-footed pretension, the blinding of creativity by
referentiality. The idea that ceaseless tedious references to obscure
martial-arts movies known mainly by video-store geeks adds up to art.

I’ve heard so many defenses of Kill Bill that depend on the
apparently marvelous and unheard-of-before wonder of its
referentiality. Dude, just because you make a reference—or many
references—doesn’t make it meaningful or worth four hours of our time.

(Thanks to Ed Gorman for the heads-up on this!)

Land of the Lost

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Variety reports that Will Ferrell will star in a feature film adaptation of the live-action children’s series LAND OF THE LOST, about a father and his kids who take a rafting trip and end up going back in time to when dinosaurs walked the earth. The movie will ditch the kids and is being directed by Adam McKay, who also helmed Ferrell’s ANCHORMAN. This will be Ferrell’s third big-screen, TV series remake — he’s also appeared in STARSKY & HUTCH and the upcoming BEWITCHED.  How long before he signs up to star in MR. ED and SHAZAM?