Television

Suck Ups

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There was an essay in the LA Times magazine this weekend by Sharon Bordas, an aspiring sitcom writer talking about "staffing season," that hectic period after the series pick-ups in May when shows hire all their writers. But the essay wasn’t really about that. It was about sucking up. Her first interview didn’t go well, so she lavished praise  on the next showrunner she met with.

I prostrated myself before him, calling him the best writer
of his generation. Without a trace of irony. It worked. My agent called
to give me the good news: Boy Wonder Two (BW2) loved me.

She didn’t get hired as a writer, though. She got hired as a writer’s assistant. Not surprisingly, she lost the job on her first day when she pitched story ideas to the co-exec producer.

The next day I was fired. "It’s not going to happen," my agent told me,
explaining that showrunner-for-a-day had found me presumptuous and
overbearing.

She’s at a loss to understand why they got this impression of her and goes on and on blaming her career troubles on the inflated egos and duplicity of the showrunners she meets.

I didn’t even try to eat the day of my meeting with my third Boy
Wonder. I complimented everything from his writing to his shoes. Soon,
an offer was on its way, and my agent was thrilled…
The next day, one of the show’s producers announced that he had promised my job to the son of a friend. I was out. Again.

It never occurs to her that maybe the third Boy Wonder called around about her and didn’t like what he heard — so came up with a lame excuse for backing out before compounding his mistake. The whole point of the essay is that TV shows are run by assholes and talented, good-hearted people like her don’t get a break.  (She clearly thinks she’s coming off as lovable, funny, and sympathetic in her essay. She’s not).

She looked down her nose at each showrunner before she even stepped in the door for her  interviews. Each prospective employer was a "Boy Wonder," implying she thinks they got their show on the air not because of any talent or smarts,  but because they kissed the right asses and sold out. They don’t deserve her respect, honesty, or good-will. They are frauds. She is the real deal. (Even the co-exec producer is shrugged off as "showrunner for the day" when he should have prostrated himself in front of her awesome talent).

What was her interview strategy? To be a manipulative, lying little weasel, lavishing false praise on showrunners to hide her contempt for them. And when she finally snares an assistant position,  she has the gall on her first day to suggest story ideas to the co-exec producer when, in fact, her job is to answer the phones, type scripts, and get everybody lunch.

And she wonders why she was fired? Hollywood isn’t the problem, lady. It’s you.

The Joys of Pitching…again

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I had a pitch yesterday, and for some reason, it’s got me thinking of all the bad pitching experiences I’ve had (not that the pitch yesterday went badly, it didn’t, but that’s not to say he leaped out of his seat, kissed me on both cheeks, and said "My only goal in life now is to make this project happen!").

Okay, so here’s my story, which I’ve told here before. This goes back a few years. 

I was in middle of pitching three TV
series ideas when the newly minted network exec – formerly a lawyer,
rock musician, accountant and personal trainer—interrupted me.

“You have no clue what makes a good TV series concept,” the exec said. “And your pitches suck.”

I smiled. “But does the rest work for you?”

“You
want to hear a pitch? This is the perfect pitch, I just bought it.” the
exec continued. “There’s a cop. He’s a rebel. He’s a rogue. He doesn’t
play by the rules. He’s also an incredible slob. He’s teamed up with a
new partner who’s a stickler for the rules, a team player, and a neat
freak. His new partner is…a dog.”

I stared at him. “A dog?”

“A dog,” he said proudly.

“Does the dog talk?” I asked.

The exec’s eyes lighted up. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

Cowboys and Indians

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I told this story a while back, when I first started this blog — but most of you weren’t around then, so it’s going to seem fresh and new.

We were writing an episode of a series for a Major Television
Producer who had dozens of hit shows to his credit. This particular
series, however, was not destined to be one of them.

For this
episode, he wanted to do a “modern take” on a “cowboys and indians”
story. He wanted to see “indians on the warpath” only with “a
contemporary sensibility.”

“Call’em Native Americans instead of
injuns,” the Major Television Producer instructed us, “that’ll make the
story instantly relevant.”

He also wanted it hip, sexy, and edgy. And he wanted women, lots of beautiful women.

I
joked that we could have seven super-models lost in the desert. His
eyes lit up. “Yes,” he said. “That’s perfect. That would give the show…
sophistication.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t kidding around. We
were stuck with seven super-models. I learned an important lesson. I
never joke about the story in a meeting… or the joke could become the
story.

We went off and worked on the outline for our script.
We came up with a scene in which some bad guys destroy some sacred
Navajo ruins, upsetting the Native Americans, causing them to go “on
the warpath” and attack the bad guy’s camp. But when the Major
Television Producer read our scene, he was outraged.

“You can’t
have the bad guys destroy Navajo ruins,” he bellowed. “It’s
unthinkable. Those ruins are priceless, historical artifacts. The
American public will never stand for it. You’ll offend our entire
audience!”

We apologized, explaining all we wanted to do in the scene was provoke the Native Americans into attacking the bad guys.

“Why not have the bad guys rape the seven supermodels,” the Major Television Producer said.

“Sure,” I replied. “That won’t offend anybody.”

“Exactly,” the Major Television Producer said. “Now you’re learning how to write television.”

Losing Patients

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I really enjoy GREY’S ANATOMY but for me, their big two-parter jumped the shark. A doctor was giving birth, a doctor’s husband was having brain surgery, a doctor (who previously had a brain tumor) had an apparent heart attack, and another doctor had her hand inside a patient who had a live bomb in his chest.

I think there should be a moratorium on doctor shows doing stories where their own doctors, and their families, become patients. Is there anybody left on GREY’S ANATOMY who hasn’t become a patient yet?  If so, they soon will be. The same thing happened on ER. Every doctor and nurse on that show has been treated in the trauma room for a medical emergency over the years. It’s tiresome and a cheap way to generate conflict…God knows, the GREY’S ANATOMY writers are talented enough to come up with stories that don’t make their doctors the patients.

That said, I must admit I’ve made Dr. Mark Sloan a patient at his hospital many times in my DIAGNOSIS MURDER scripts and books.  I figured if he’s going to be injured during an investigation, he might as well be treated at his own hospital.  Is that convenience or laziness? Oh, and come to think of it, I’ve made his son a patient, too. Mea Culpa.

Archive of American Television

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For years now, Academy of Television Arts and Science’s  Archive of American Television project has been taping in-depth, four-to-six hour interviews with the writers, producers, directors, actors, and executives who have made a lasting impact on the television medium… people like Grant Tinker, James Arness, Fred Silverman, Norman Lear, Stephen J. Cannell, Roy Huggins, Mike Wallace, Norman Felton, Dick Van Dyke, Sherwood Schwartz, Bob Newhart, Carroll O’Connor, Jim McKay, Carl Reiner, Joseph Barbera, Stephen Bochco, Julia Child, Phil Donahue, Robert Guillaume, Alan Alda, Fred Rogers, Larry Hagman,Ed Bradley, Jonathan Winters, Leonard Stern, Delbert Mann, James Garner, and William Shatner to name just a few. Many of those interviews are now available to view for free on Google. This is a tremendous resource, of which I have been a proud contributor and interviewer, and I highly recommend it to any student of television.

Blowjobs in Space

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On last week’s episode of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, we learned
that one of the heroes has been seeing a hooker and paying for sex. In and of
itself, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. We’ve seen characters to do
this on TV before…but can you imagine one of the noble heroes of the last four STAR TREK series or the two
STARGATE shows paying for blowjobs, much less admitting they need, want, and
have sex? I just love the way BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is taking a sledgehammer to
the boring cliches, stale formulas and
cardboard heroes that have hobbled TV scifi series for decades. 

To be fair, FARSCAPE started the cliché-breaking trend in TV
scifi, but then fell into a blackhole of hopelessly maudlin melodrama and
needlessly confusing story-arcs  that
sucked the fun out of the show and actively discouraged new viewers (for a
while, there were two versions of the lead character on two different ships…as
well as two versions of the main villain, one of whom only existed in the mind
of one version of the hero). FARSCAPE became so self-involved and groaningly
angst-ridden that even regular viewers like myself needed healthy doses of
No-Doze and Advil to make it through an episode.

BATTLESTAR manages to sustain involving story arcs, and be
gritty and dark, without losing the exhiliration and the pure fun. And, unlike
FARSCAPE, the show can deal with weighty issues and human drama without taking
itself so damn seriously.   

I think BATTLESTAR may be my favorite show on the air right
now (at least until DEADWOOD and THE SOPRANOS return).

By the way…how anyone could watch the new BATTLESTAR and still pine for the crappy, corny, campy show from the late 70s is beyond me. This is one case where the remake is far, far, far better than the original in every conceivable way.

Oops for OPs

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Screenwriter John August does a post-mortem on his aborted Fox pilot OPS. His post provides a  fascinating glimpse into the world of television development.

When a pilot is announced, it shows up in Variety.  Everyone knows about it. 
When a pilot dies, it dies quietly in the corner…

… the show was announced as a “put pilot,” which means that when Fox
made the original deal with Jordan and me, one of the conditions was
that they basically promised to shoot the pilot. In reality, I’m not
sure there is such a thing as a put pilot.

In the case of Ops, there was a substantial penalty that Fox agreed
to pay in the event they didn’t end up shooting the pilot. In a few
months, I’ll get a check with a few zeroes for my trouble. Given how
much time and money it would have taken to shoot the pilot, it’s almost
certainly for the best the train stopped where it did. There’s no sense
producing a pilot if the network didn’t want the show.

Giving Your Life to TV

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I was looking for something on my hard-drive and came across this article I wrote for "Written By," the WGA Journal, back when I was an executive producer on DIAGNOSIS MURDER. At the time, I’d read a number of interviews with showrunners, boasting about how they worked days, nights, and weekends on their shows. So I wrote this piece and was inundated with letters from showrunners…and lowly staff writers…thanking me for it. I thought I’d share the article with you:

There’s a strange perception among writer/producers in TV that the quality of a person’s work increases when the quality of a person’s life suffers. Of course, no one says it that way, at least not in the interviews I’ve been reading with show-runners in Written By, TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly
and other publications the last few months. These writer/producers brag about how they work seven days a week, well into the night, to the detriment of family, health and sanity, purely to maintain the quality of their shows.

They believe the one thing that separates a true writer from a hack is a willingness
to sacrifice one’s marriage and health to the show. Quality demands absolute
dedication to the series, nothing else matters.

One writer/producer brags that when he’s in production, he has no life and that he regularly, and repeatedly, calls his writing staff over the weekend to go over story points, script notes, and other issues. Clearly, there is no escape from  quality.

Another attributes his years of drug addiction to the pressure of turning out “high quality” scripts for A-list series. Now he’s no longer on drugs, is remarried, and is content working on mediocre shows… the implication being if he returned to doing an acclaimed show, he’d be jamming needles between his
toes in no time.

The show runner of a cult hit boasts that success hasn’t weakened his resolve to do his best work, that’s why he still eats breakfast, lunch and dinner at his office nearly seven days a week. Thank God. If he ate a meal with his family, his series might never recover.

I’m a show runner, and my series is in the top 20, but now I know why it’s not a cult hit. Why I don’t have an Emmy or a WGA award. Why I’m not widely acclaimed and much admired.
Because I try to get home in time for dinner with my wife and daughter.  Because I try not to work on weekends. Because I try to put my family first and my show second.

Sure, I work late some nights, even some weekends, and so does my staff. But it’s the exception, not the rule. If it wasn’t, then I think that would make me a lousy show-runner.

I guess that means I’m doomed to mediocrity. I’ll never have to worry about forgetting someone in my Emmy acceptance speech.

Actually, I think what these show-runners are saying is ridiculous. It’s trendy, sexy and hip to say you’re suffering for your craft. It’s not trendy, sexy and hip to say you’re inept at balancing your personal and professional lives.

It’s sad, not admirable, that they are holding up their misery, and the misery they demand of others, as something to be proud of. The correlation they find between addiction, marital woes, and physical distress and “quality” is merely a rationalization for professional disorganization and personal weakness.

I’ve worked for show-runners like that, and I never will again.

These people not only work themselves to exhaustion, divorce, and cardiac arrest, but demand that everyone working for them do the same. Any staffer who puts their family before The Show (ie favors quality of his life over qualify of the work) is a coward, a slacker, a hack, and worst of all, not a team player. The truth is, these show-runners aren’t demanding enthusiasm, creativity, and devotion
from their staffs, what they are really looking for is co-dependence.

It is possible to have a hit show without sacrificing everything that’s important in life. It is possible to do “quality work” and still make it home for dinner. It is possible to win the acclaim of critics and the respect of your peers without having the numbers for a good divorce lawyer and an understanding drug counselor in your rolodex.

It just doesn’t look good. It doesn’t make you sound as tough, ballsy and dedicated. Writers, in fact, like the image. The problem is that too many of them are trying to live up to it.

Flying Without a Pilot

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I didn’t write a pilot this season, but this post from Ken Levine reminds me of what I’m missing… notes, notes and still more notes.

This conference call features eleven people – one more David and three Katies. These are the network notes but the lower tier (development department) notes. Once these are done to all eleven peoples’ satisfaction it goes up the ladder, usually to the middle tier VP’s. Writing a pilot is like playing Super Mario Brothers.

What Happens When the Mystery is a Mystery to the People Writing the Mystery

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The Fox show REUNION was supposed to be murder mystery that spanned decades in a single season.  But the show was cancelled in November, leaving the show’s handful of fans wondering whodunit. The problem is, the writers of the show didn’t know whodunit either. Zap2it reports:

When FOX lowered the boom on
"Reunion" in late November, the show’s creator says there was no way to
resolve the show short of a full season because of how "intricately
plotted" it was.  It was so intricately plotted, in fact, that the question of who committed the murder at the show’s center was still up in the air.

That, at least, is the word from FOX Entertainment president Peter Ligouri, who on Tuesday (Jan. 17) addressed the show’s early demise with reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour.

"’Reunion’ was particularly cumbersome in terms of trying to provide an ending for
the audience," Ligouri says of the show, in which each episode represented a year in the life of six friends, one of whom ends up dead. "How [creator Jon Harmon Feldman] was laying out the show to gap those additional 14, 15, 16 years was an incredibly complex path. There were a number of options, and he didn’t make a definitive! decision on which option he was going to go with as to who the killer was, and there was just no way to accelerate that time."

Feldman himself hinted at that in a statement following the show’s cancellation, saying that solving
the mystery of who killed Samantha (Alexa Davalos) was "partially reliant on characters we haven’t yet met — and events we haven’t seen."

Ligouri says the network and the show’s team talked about several ways to go with the killer’s identity, but "the best guess was at that particular time that it was going to be Sam’s daughter," whom she gave up for adoption early in the series. The why of the murder remains a mystery.

Especially to the show’s writers, which may be why the series didn’t work. If the show’s writers didn’t even know whodunit or why, then what were they writing about? If the clues led nowhere, how did they expect the story to actually payoff in the end? Is it any surprise viewers didn’t get hooked by the mystery since it, um, actually didn’t exist?

(Thanks to Bill Rabkin for the heads-up!)