Television

As The Crow Flies

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Crow_business_card My friend Bryce Zabel talks about the development of his TV series version of THE CROW, which is about to be released on DVD. It’s fascinating stuff (what’s even more fascinating is that he saved his business card):

What do you do when the incredibly violent film you are asked to adapt to a TV audience is based on cruelty, and the main character is driven by a thirst for revenge?

My answer? You expand the premise to fully explore the nature of life after death, and you change the character quest from revenge to redemption.

And how do you handle the fact that the cult film was made infamous by the horrible on-set death of its star, Brandon Lee?

That was a tougher question because the idea behind the TV series was to use the Eric Draven character, the one who’d been in the comics and that Brandon Lee had played. My take was that, tragic as Lee’s death was, George Reeves’ tragic death did not prevent Christopher Reeve or Dean Cain from playing Superman, and that we would just have to proceed and hope that our own version stood intact on its own.

The Only Crime is the Cover Price

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0275988074_01__ss500_sclzzzzzzz_ I stayed up almost all night reading Douglas Snauffer’s CRIME TELEVISION. This is the latest in Praeger’s excellent line of television books (which includes SPY TELEVISION and CHRISTMAS ON TELEVISION, two other books I loved). Snauffer’s fascinating overview of television crime shows is much, much more than a look at the histories of particular shows over the decades. He offers a unique and revealing perspective on the history of television as a medium, a story-telling form, and as a reflection of our society and culture. It’s also a step-by-step examination of the evolution (and, you might say, the maturing) of the crime show genre. It’s packed with interesting facts, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and interviews with some the top writer/producers of our time. There are some errors, and you could quibble with the shows he choses to focus on, but those are minor drawbacks. It’s a valuable book for cop show fans, tv scholars, film students, and even writer/producers working in “crime television” today. The only problem is that the book costs $50, which is way, way, WAY over-priced for what it is and that’s going to limit its potential audience.

Fast Track

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One of the reasons I have been jetting back-and-forth to Europe a lot lately is because I’m writing and producing a two-hour movie/pilot for Action Concept that will be shot in Berlin in May for  broadcast on ProSieben (a big German network) and worldwide in international syndication. I’ve waited until we got the firm greenlight before sharing the news with you (I’m superstitious that way).

The project is called FAST TRACK and is about urban street racing (yes, I’m being intentionally vague). The movie will be packed with amazing, street-racing action (check out the Action Concept website to see what these guys can do!) and shot entirely in English. The leading roles are being cast in Los Angeles by Burrows/Boland,  who did LORD OF THE RINGS, KING KONG, CAST AWAY, 21 JUMP STREET, CONTACT, A-TEAM, DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MARTIAL LAW, to name a few.

I’ll bring you reports from the set as production moves along.

Interview with Roy Huggins

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My six-hour Archive of American Television video interview with legendary writer/producer Roy Huggins is now up on Google Video. The interview was conducted back in 1998, not long before Roy’s death.

Roy created and produced such series as MAVERICK, 77 SUNSET STRIP, THE FUGITIVE and THE ROCKFORD FILES…and was Stephen J. Cannell’s mentor in the business.  He was a mentor of mine, too.

I put myself through college as a freelance journalist. I snagged an assignment from a magazine to do an article on the complete history of the TV series MAVERICK. So I tracked Roy down at Warner Brothers, where he’d just been fired as showrunner of the BLUE THUNDER TV series. His misfortune was my good luck — he had time on his hands.  He invited me down to the studio and, over the next several weeks, screened every single episode of MAVERICK for me, giving me a running commentary. And each day he’d take me to lunch and tell me stories about his days in TV. I was  in TV heaven. I couldn’t believe it. 

A few years later, I interviewed him again at length for Electronic Media magazine (now known as Television Age). He was the showrunner of HUNTER at the time, working for apprentice Steve Cannell. And not long after  that, I became a TV  writer and actually ended up as a story editor on HUNTER. The first thing I did was give Roy a call to share with him my pleasure (and astonishment) that I’d gone from being a "Roy Huggins fan" to writing on a show that he’d  produced. He was very happy for me and gave me some good advice about dealing with the various people he knew who were still working on the show. I told him I hoped we’d get a chance to work together some day. Sadly, that day never came.

But we stayed in touch and I was thrilled to have the chance to interview him for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Archive of American Television.

Inside The Writers Room

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Writer/producer Matt Witten talks with Deutsche Welle about the Media Exchange "Writers Room" seminars I’ve been doing with Action Concept in Germany. Matt sums it up pretty nicely:

American shows tend to be pretty fast-paced and vigorously structured,
and the way we structure the action and the conflict for our main
characters has been thought through in ways that are fresh for German
writers, they haven’t necessarily heard it described in these terms. So
it gives them a new way of looking at the writing they’re doing. They
were also intrigued by the fact that in America we have staff writers
who meet every day, and we have a head writer responsible for the
consistency of the show — "the show-runner." These concepts are new in
Germany, where there is no cohesion of writing staff. Instead, episodes
are written by freelancers who turn in maybe just two a year. Another
thing in American TV is that directors don’t have the power to change
the script without talking to the writer.

Battlestar Craptica

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It happens on even the best shows and, on Friday night, it happened to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. They had a truly awful episode. Flat, obvious, speechy, boring and illogical. For those of you who saw it, I had one big question while I was watching the episode:  how did Buckshot or the Cylons know where the
Galactica was? And if they knew, why didn’t they send three or four Basestars there to blast it out of space? Wouldn’t that have been a better plan?

The only nice bit was the implication that Balter is having a menage-a-trois with two Cylon women. I wish we could have seen that episode instead.

UPDATE: I’m not alone. TV Critic Alan Sepinwall agrees with me.

Okay, I’m starting to get just a little bit
concerned about the post-exodus portion of the season. The virus
two-parter had some interesting moments and ideas but never quite
clicked, and "Hero" felt like a mess from start to finish.

 

Serial Killers

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The big media story lately is the death of all the new serialized dramas the networks have launched over the past two years in an attempt to captue the success of LOST, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and 24.  Basically, nobody seems to have the time, energy, or trust to commit to a deep, lasting and meantingful relationship with more than one or two of these series. After the death of shows like SURFACE, KIDNAPPED, REUNION, THIEF, INVASION, SMITH, and the anemic ratings of VANISHED, THREE DEGREES and THE NINE, The New York Times reports that the networks are finally getting the hint:

In every television season
some new lesson about the American audience is imparted. This season’s
lesson was clear within the first weeks of the fall: you can ask people
to commit only so many hours to intense, dark, intricately constructed
serialized dramas, to sign huge chunks of their lives away to follow
every minuscule plot development and character tic both on the air and
on Internet sites crowded with similarly addicted fanatics.

“The message we received was that people have strains on their
lives,” said Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment. “People
are saying, ‘I’ve got my handful of shows like this, and I don’t want
more.’ ”

[…]Dana Walden, president of the 20th Century Fox Television studio,
said: “What the audience seems to be saying is: ‘Enough. We can’t get
involved with more of these.’ ”

Logically this result should have been expected. But logic often
runs aground in the offices of television executives who endlessly try
to anticipate the future by repeating the past. Or, as Preston Beckman,
executive vice president for entertainment for the Fox network, put it,
“In this business we always overcompensate.”

 

Even LOST is feeling the heat. The Los Angeles Times notes that CRIMINAL MINDS, which is in the same time slot, is drawing almost as may viewers these days.

…conventional wisdom would dictate that "Criminal Minds," now in its
second season, should be moldering on TV’s rubbish heap.  So why
is the series growing into a bona-fide hit that last week delivered its
most-watched episode ever, with 16.8 million total viewers, just a
shade behind the still-formidable "Lost" (17.1 million), according to
Nielsen Media Research?

"This was the year of serialized dramas trying to recapture lightning in a bottle the way
that ‘Desperate Housewives,’ ‘Lost,’ ’24’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ did,"
said John Rash, director of broadcast negotiations for
Minneapolis-based ad firm Campbell-Mithun. "But almost all of them were
rejected by the audience."

The growth of "Criminal Minds" is
maybe the most convincing proof that not everyone wants to be chained
to a dense, character-packed drama that unspools like a Dickensian
novel. And even those who do have their limits. There is a reason why
formula sells, why genres become generic in the first place.

Brilliance

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What would happen if Aaron  Sorkin wrote a series about baseball? Emmy-winning writer  Ken Levine gives you a brilliant example.

EXT. KAUFMAN STADIUM — NIGHT

THE
MANAGER, LEO, TROTS OUT TO THE MOUND TO TALK TO BELEAGURED PITCHER,
DANNY (THERE’S ALWAYS A DANNY). THE BASES ARE LOADED. THE CROWD IS
GOING NUTS. IT’S GAME SEVEN OF THE WORLD SERIES.

LEO
You can’t get a good lobster in this town.

DANNY
Last I checked we were in Kansas City.

LEO
4.6 billion pork ribs sold every year and 18.9 tons of beef consumed annually since 1997 –

DANNY
They like their beef, what can I tell ya?

LEO
But you’d think just for variety’s sake.

DANNY
I can still throw my curve.

LEO
For strikes?

DANNY
I’m not throwing enough?

LEO
I’ve seen more lobsters.

There’s more… much much more…and it’s hilarious.

Why I Love Main Title Sequences

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Main Titles create an emotional link between the viewer and the show. But for a writer, they are so much more. Here is an excerpt from SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING, the book I wrote with William Rabkin. The excerpt will be followed an example, along with text from the book.

Main titles are created to introduce the audience to the show they are about to see. But for the writer, there is much more information to be gleaned.  It is a chance to read the mind of the executive producer.  How does he perceive the show?  How does he perceive the characters? 

How does he perceives the tone?  What kinds of stories does he want to tell? Most main title sequences will answer all those questions and more.

There are basically three different kinds of main title sequences:  Format sequences, that actually tell you in narration and in writing what the show is about; Mood sequences that convey the type of feeling and tone they are going for; and Character sequences, which delineate who the characters are and how they interact.  Many main titles are combinations of these three sequences. 

Since TV changes so fast, we’ve chosen some examples from some established series you probably know very well and, if not, can easily find in reruns…

The rest comes after the jump…

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