Television

Where Have All The Cool Heroes Gone?

by

avengersthiefThere’s nobody cool on television any more.

Not so long ago, the airwaves were cluttered with suave spies, slick private eyes, and debonair detectives. Television was an escapist medium, where you could forget your troubles and lose yourself in the exotic, sexy, exciting world inhabited by great looking, smooth-talking, extraordinarily self-confident crimesolvers.

You didn’t just watch them. You wanted to be them.

When I was a kid, I pretended I had a blow-torch in my shoe like James T. West. That I could pick a safe like Alexander Mundy, seduce a woman like Napoleon Solo, and run 60 miles an hour like Steve Austin. I wanted to have the style of Peter Gunn, the brawn of Joe Mannix, the charm of Simon Templar, and the wealth of Amos Burke, who arrived at crime scenes in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.

But around the time coaxial cable and satelite dishes made TV antennaes obsolete, television began to change. Suddenly, it wasn’t cool to be cool. It was cool to be troubled. Deeply troubled.

TV cops, crimesolvers, and secret agents were suddenly riddled with anxiety, self-doubt, and dark secrets. Or, as TV execs like to say, they became “fully developed” characters with “lots of levels.”

You can trace the change to the late 80s and early 90s, to the rise of “NYPD Blue,” “Twin Peaks,” “Miami Vice,” “Wiseguy,” and “The X Files” and the fall of “Magnum PI,” “Moonlighting,” “Simon & Simon,” “MacGyver,” and “Remington Steele.”

None of the cops or detectives on television take any pleasure in their work any more. They are all recovering alcoholics or ex-addicts or social outcasts struggling with divorces, estranged children, or tragic losses too numerous to catalog and too awful to endure.

FBI Agent Fox Mulder’s sister was abducted by aliens, his partner has some kind of brain cancer, and he’s being crushed by a conspiracy he can never defeat.

CSI Gil Grissum is a social outcast who works knee-deep in gore and bugs while struggling with a degenerative hearing disorder that could leave him deaf.

Det. Lennie Briscoe of “Law and Order” is an alcoholic whose daughter was murdered by drug dealers.
Det. Olivia Benson of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” is a product of a rape who now investigates the worst forms of sexual depravity and violence.

“Alias” spy Sydney Bristow’s loving boyfriend and caring roommate were brutally murdered because of her espionage work, she’s estranged from her parents, one of whom just might be a murderous traitor.
I’ve lost track of how many of Andy Sipowitz’s wives, children and partners have died on horrible deaths on “NYPD Blue,” but there have been lots.

Master sleuth Adrian Monk solves murders while grappling with his obsessive-compulsive disorder and lingering grief over his wife’s unsolved murder. And Monk is a light-hearted comedy. When the funny detectives are this psychologically-troubled and emotionally-scarred, you can imagine how dark and haunted the serious detectives have to be not get laughs.

Today’s cops, detectives and crimesolvers work in a grim world full of sudden violence, betrayal, conspiracies and corruption. A world without banter, romance, style or fun…for either the characters or the viewer. Robert Goren, Bobby Donnell, Vic Mackey, Chief Jack Mannion… can you imagine any kids playing make-believe as one of those detective heroes? Who in their right mind would want to be those characters or live in their world?

And that, it seems, is what escapism on television is all about now: watching a TV show and realizing, with a sigh of relief, your life isn’t so bad after all.

I think I preferred losing myself in a Monte Carlo casino with Alexander Mundy or traveling in James T. West’s gadget-laden railroad car… it’s a lot more entertaining than feeling thankful I don’t have to be Det. Joel Stevens in “Boomtown” or live in the Baltimore depicted in “The Wire.”

At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon at my tender young age, I long for a return to escapist cop shows, to detectives you envied, who live in a world of great clothes, sleek cars, amazing apartments, beautiful women and clever quips. Detectives with lives that are blessedly free of angst and anxiety. Detectives who aren’t afraid to wear a tuxedo, sip fine champagne, confront danger with panache, and wear a watch that’s actually a missile-launcher. Detectives who are self-assured and enjoy solving crimes, who aren’t burdened with heartache and moral ambiquity.

Yeah, I know it’s not real. Yeah, I know it’s a fantasy. But isn’t that what television is supposed to be once in a while?

Your Show Belongs to US, the Sequel

by

lwordLooks like some of the “Save Karina Lombard” organisers stumbled on my rant from a while back (“Your Show Belongs to US) and left some comments.

Who is Karina Lombard, you ask? Well, unless you’re watching THE L WORD (The L is for Listless), the lesbian soap on Showtime, you can’t be blamed for not knowing who she is. In fact, I doubt 95% of the people who do watch the show could tell you her name. Anyway, apparently her character isn’t coming back next season and it has a vocal minority of fans in a tizzy. On the Karina Lombard site, the welcome screen reads:

She has given us a priceless gift. The purity of her soul. We are drawn to her reality. Her spirit lives within us. We will not let her go.

Keep in mind, they’re talking about a TV CHARACTER. .. a sexually predatory bartender who seduces a guy’s fiance into the bliss of lesbian love…and, presumably, the purity of her soul. Or, worse, they’re talking about AN ACTRESS… who gives us the priceless gift of performing every scene as if she’s under heavy sedation.

Either way, it’s icky… and creepy.

Thank God Karina, or whoever she plays, can live on in the fanfic.

Hey, now there’s something to contemplate… listless lesbian soap fanfic. I wonder if anyone has started writing the QUEER AS FOLK/L WORD crossover fanfic yet…or, L WORD “slash fic”… where the characters have straight sex!

Creating a TV Series

by

I was a guest at Sleuthfest in Florida a few years back and after one of my panels, a woman approached me saying she had a great idea for a television series. Even better, she already had 22 scripts written and a list of actors she felt were perfect for the parts.

All I had to do, she said, was sell it and we’d both be rich.

I get this a lot.

So I asked her, what if I was an engineer from General Motors? Would you approach me with a sketch of a car and expect me to manufacture it?

“No, of course not,” she said. “That would be stupid.”

So was her suggestion that I run out and try to sell her TV series.

And I told her so. Politely, of course.

The thing she didn’t understand is that networks don’t buy ideas. They buy people.

Or, as the old saying goes, ideas are cheap and execution is everything.

Take NYPD Blue, for example. It’s about a bunch of cops in a precinct in New York. Not the greatest, most original idea in the world, is it? But that’s not what ABC bought. They bought Emmy winning writer/producer Steven Bochco doing a series about a bunch of cops in a precinct in New York.

The network was buying Bochco’s track record and experience in television. The idea was a distant second.
When the network buys a series, they are investing $50 million. They aren’t going to hand the kind of cash to somebody who hasn’t proved they can write, produce and deliver 22 episodes a season.

So, that’s what I said to her.

She told me I wasn’t listening. She already had the idea and the scripts. All she wanted me to do was sell the show. And produce it. And send her the big bags of money for her great idea and brilliant scripts.

I could see it from her point of view. She wanted a short-cut into television and finding a producer to hitch herself to seemed like a good one. A lot of other people have had the same idea, which is why I get pitched series all the time. From my mother. My gardener. My pool guy. The rabbi at Bill Rabkin’s wedding.

I even got pitched during a proctology exam. In middle of a very delicate procedure, the doctor started telling me his great idea for a TV show: the thrilling story of a proctologist who’s actually a suave, international jewel thief.

Honest.

The truth is, it’s highly unlikely that any TV producer wants to hear your ideas, whether it’s after a panel at mystery convention or while you’re shoving a camera up their rectum.

Why?

Well, for one thing, it’s rude.

For another, television is a writers’ medium. The majority of TV producers are writers first and producers second. Every one of us wants to sell a TV series of our own. It’s the dream. It’s the chance to articulate your own creative vision instead of someone else’s. It’s the chance to not only write scripts and produce episodes, but also have a piece of the syndication, merchandizing, and all the other revenue streams that come from being an owner and not an employee. It’s the chance to become the next David E. Kelly, John Wells, J.J. Abrams, Stephen J. Cannell, Dick Wolf, Aaron Spelling, Donald Belisario, Glen A. Larson, Steven Bochco, or one of the other members of that very small, very elite, very wealthy club of creator/owners.

Getting to the point in your career that networks are interested in being in the series business with you isn’t easy. You have to write hundreds of scripts, work on dozens of series, and build a reputation as an experienced and responsible producer (Or you have to write and produce a huge hit movie, which often leads to an invitation to work your same magic in television). The point is, you don’t work that hard just to share the success with someone else who didn’t have to work for it.

Which brings us back to the basic rule of television: ideas are cheap, execution is everything. We want to sell our own ideas to the networks. Producers like me aren’t interested in your idea unless, of course, you’re asking me to adapt your best-selling novel or hit movie into a TV series. But that’s different, because you’re bringing something valuable to the deal, a pre-sold commidity with commerical and promotional value.

I told her all of that, too.

She just glared at me.

“You just don’t get it,” she said to me. “I’ve got a great idea. I’ve got 22 terrific scripts. You won’t have to do any work.”

No, I said, you’re the one who doesn’t want to do any work. You don’t want to learn the craft of screenwriting. You don’t want to struggle to get that first freelance script assignment. You don’t want to compete to get on a writing staff. You don’t want to work for years on a series, moving up from staff writer to producer, gaining experience and skill and becoming someone the networks want to be in business with. You want to bypass all of that and go straight to having your own series on the air.

“Well,” she said. “Yeah.”

At that point, I gave up. I did what anybody in my position would do. I pointed across the lobby at Jeremiah Healy.
“Go tell him your idea,” I said. “Maybe there’s a book in it.”

And then I ran away.

Forgive me, Jerry!

Writing for TV vs Books

by

hardboiled_credit2When you sit down to write a mystery novel, there are no limitations on where your characters can go and what they can do. Your detective hero can appear on every single page. He can spend all the time he wants outdoors, even at night, and can talk with as many people as he likes. Those may not seem like amazing creative liberties to you, but to someone writing in television, they are amazing freedoms.

Before a TV writer even begins to think about his story, he has to consider a number of factors that have nothing to do with telling a good mystery or creating memorable characters.

For one thing, there’s the budget and the shooting schedule. Whatever story you come up with has be shot in X many days for X amount of dollars. In the case of Diagnosis Murder, a show I wrote and produced for several years, it was seven days and $1.2 million dollars. In TV terms, it was a cheap show shot very fast.

To make that schedule, you are limited to the number of days your characters can be “on location” as opposed to being on the “standing sets,” the regular interiors used in each episode. On Diagnosis Murder, it was four days “in” and three days “out.” Within that equation, there are still more limitations – how many new sets can be built, how many locations you can visit and how many scenes can be shot at night.

Depending on the show’s budget, you are also limited to X number of guest stars and X number of smaller “speaking parts” per episode. So before you even begin plotting, you know that you can only have, for example, four major characters and three smaller roles (like waiters, secretaries, etc.). Ever wonder why a traditional whodunit on TV is usually a murder and three-to-four suspects? Now you know.

Then there’s the work schedule of your regular cast to consider. On Diagnosis Murder, Dick Van Dyke only worked three consecutive days a week and he wouldn’t visit any location more than thirty miles from his home. Co-star Victoria Rowell split her time with the soap opera Young and the Restless, and often wasn’t available to shoot until after lunch.

On top of all that, your story has to be told in four acts, with a major twist or revelation before each commercial break, and unfold over 44 minutes of airtime.

It’s astonishing, given all those restrictions, that there are so many complex, entertaining, and fun mysteries on television.

Those limitations become so ingrained to a TV writer/producer, that it become second-nature. You instinctively know the moment you’re pitched a particular story if it can be told within the budgetary and scheduling framework of your show. It becomes so ingrained, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to let go, even when you have the chance.

I’m writing a series of original Diagnosis Murder novels for NAL. I am no longer bound by the creative restrictions of the show. I don’t have to worry about sticking to our “standing sets,” Dick Van Dyke’s work schedule, or the number of places the characters visit.. Yet I’m finding it almost impossible to let go. After writing and/or producing 100 episodes of the show, it’s the way I think of a Diagnosis Murder story.

And if you watched the show, it’s the way you think of a Diagnosis Murder story, too –whether you realize it or not. You may not know the reasons why a story is told the way its told, but the complex formula behind the story-telling becomes the natural rhythm and feel of the show. When that rhythm changes, it’s jarring.

If you watch your favorite TV series carefully now, and pay close attention to the number of guest stars, scenes that take place on the “regular sets,” and how often scenes take place outdoors at night, and you might be able to get a pretty good idea of the production limitations confronting that show’s writers every week.

And if you read my Diagnosis Murder novels, feel free to put the book down every fifteen minutes or so for a commercial break.

“The Best TV Shows That Never Were”… Will Be

by

GoldRetroLogoOn Monday, Aug 16 at 8 pm, ABC will air the one-hour special “The Best TV Shows That Never Were.”

For the last two years, I was convinced the show would live up to its title.

The special, which I wrote and produced with Bill Rabkin and Steve Gerbson, is based on my book Unsold Television Pilots and is a collection of clips of memorable samples episodes of proposed series from the last twenty years.

We delivered the show for May sweeps two years ago… and then ABC sat on it. They never told us why. Anyway, now it’s finally airing…and you can see clips from such memorable bombs as “A Dog’s Life,” “Samurai District Attorney,” “Higher Ground,” “Mandrake,” “Fuzzbucket,” and “The People.”

Don’t miss it!

UPDATE: Here’s an old announcement for the show…from Morty’s TV Archive.

ABC to Air Unseen Pilots!

[June 11, 2002] This fall ABC will air a special called “The Best TV Shows That Never Were,” a collection unseen TV pilots. It’s actually the second edition of “TBTVSTNW,” the first aired in the 90’s. This collection will feature “Great Day,” starring “Happy Days'” Al Molinaro, “about what fun it was to be a skid row bum in New York City,” an Aaron Spelling TV show called “Velvet,” about four aerobics instructors who are really only working for “Polly Bergen’s Velvet International” health spas as a cover for their jobs as secret agents and “Shivers,” about a divorced man (“Beverly Hills, 90210” dad James Eckhouse) who, with his two children, moves into a house haunted by a Revolutionary War-era troublemaker and his girlfriend. The special, which according to an ABC source may turn into a series, is based on author and entertainment writer Lee Goldberg’s book Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw , an addictive collection of the “best” of the bad high-concept TV pilots that, in most cases, never saw screen time. No date has been announced yet.
Now as much fun as all this sounds, my problem with it is that it’s a clipfest, and I want to see the whole show. Let’s hope it does become a regular series. There are thousands of hours of unaired pilots, and ABC has nothing exciting to run anyway, so why not show a different one each week? Ever see Bette Davis in “The Decorator?”

Another Reason to Go in the Furniture Business

by

A fellow writer-producer, with years of experience in series television, shared this incredible conversation with me…

Lee,

Absolutely, positively 100% true dialogue from yesterday’s meeting with
a Hollywood agent:

Agent: “I can’t sell this courtroom stuff. You got anything supernatural?”

Me: “I’ve done a treatment for a time travel Civil War story.”

Agent: “Time travel’s good, but don’t make it a period piece.”

Me: “So how do we travel in time?”

Agent: “Don’t go back so far.”

Me: “Ahhhh.”

Agent: “You want to do courtroom stuff, how about a murder trial in
outer space? ‘Alien’ meets ‘Presumed Innocent.'”

Me: “Ahhhh.”

Agent: “Okay, okay…how about this? A lawyer discovers the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court is really Satan.”

Me: “I don’t do non-fiction.”

As Primitive As Can Be

by

Bob Sassone alerted me that Telepictures is now casting for real people to become the fictional characters on Gilligan’s Island… a milionaire and his wife, a movie star, etc… for a new reality series.

Here’s the casting call…

CALLING ALL CASTAWAYS!

Get ready to take a three-hour tour and end up on an uncharted desert island.

That’s right — Gilligan’s Island is coming back on TBS — and this time, you can be a part of it!

The producers of “Gilligan’s Island” are teaming with the producers of the “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” to bring you The Real Gilligan’s Island.

This all-new version of the classic sitcom will feature real life versions of the original show’s characters: a real-life skipper, first mate, millionaire couple, movie star, professor and Kansas farm girl. And one of them could be you!

Just like the original show, the castaways will work together to get off the island, and episodes will include situations drawn from the original series.

So if you’re the perfect Gilligan, Skipper, Thurston or Lovey Howell, Ginger Grant, Mary Ann, or The Professor (just what was his name, anyway?), fill out the application and mail it in, along with a video of yourself telling us why you’d make a great castaway.

Who knows, it could be you who takes the fateful trip to that tropic island nest.

Got questions? Call our Casting Hotline: 888-634-4550

Please submit tapes by 6/30/04

REAL GILLIGAN’S ISLAND OPEN CASTING CALLS

Saturday, June 12th
Towne East Square
7700 East Kellogg
Wichita, Kansas
10am-4pm

Saturday, June 19th
Boston, MA
location and times TBA

Thursday, June 24th
Tampa, FL
location and times TBA

We’ll be adding location details — check back often.

DON’T FORGET TO COME DRESSED AS YOUR FAVORITE CASTAWAY! (Here are some examples of what we’d like to see: Gilligan-red shirt
and sailor hat, Ginger-evening gown, Mary Ann-daisy dukes and pig tails, Skipper-captain hat and blue shirt, Professor-something scholarly, The Millionaire and his wife-come dressed up to the nines. Be creative!)

I can’t wait until they do the reality version of “Hogan’s Heroes.”

Your Show Belongs to US

by

This ad ran in today’s VARIETY:

An Open message to:
Irene Chaiken & Showtime Networks
We listened. We subscribed. We watched.
We then became the driving force behind The L-Word’s Season One success and unprecedented renewal.
So why aren’t you listening?????
Marina Ferrer, as played by Emmy-worthy Karina Lombard, is a vital part of your success!
Keep KARINA LOMBARD!
Save MARINA!
Or COUNT US OUT!
Over 4,400 Showtime subscribers can’t be wrong: www.petitiononline.com/Karina/
For More Information, visit www.savemarina.com or www.karinalombard.net
Paid for by Save Marina! Campaign and Karina Lombard fans Worldwide!

I’m not bothered by fans expressing their enjoyment of a particular actor or character… what ticks me off is the tone of this note. It is so similar to the kinds of emails and letters we get from a vocal minority of fans every day…

Some fans think they own the show and the characters, that we are their employees, that they are the executive producers of the program they are watching. Note the key line in the ad: these fans aren’t just watching the show, they have christened themselves “the driving force behind the shows success,” not the acting, not the writing, not the direction…not the tens of thousands of other viewers who aren’t part of their newsgroup. I also like the line” “So why aren’t you listening?” In other words, these fans are chastizing the producers for not doing as they were told.

I must have missed the revolution. When did TV shows stop being the creative expression of a handful of artists… and instead the property of the most fanatical viewers? Since when do David Milch, John Wells, Steven Bochco, Dick Wolf or even Irene Chaiken need “fan permission” to make creative decisions on their shows?

Don’t worry, Marina fans. If they boot her, you can still have the last word. You can keep her alive in the fanfic!

Where No Writer Has Gone Before…

by

Gerald So reports on his blog…

In last night’s season finale, the Enterprise destroyed a key sphere, saving the Xindi homeworld in the Expanse while Captain Archer destroyed the Xindi superweapon that threatened Earth. Finally, in a Planet of the Apes-style turn, Enterprise ends up in the midst of WWII, with a badly burned Archer found by Nazi Germany. For the last shot, the camera pans up to a sinister blue-faced alien. Ooh.

Oh, indeed. This entire season has been a desperate effort to save the show itself from a UPN superweapon — cancellation. While the stories were better (its hard not to improve on exciting episodes like… “Capt Archer spends a night in sick bay worried about his dying dog”), most of the plots still felt like re-heated left-overs from previous Star Trek series. The attempts to sex the show up — with backrubs, showers, and a visit by a bisexual alien who “x-rays” humans with heavy petting — seemed to have been written by horny teenagers who’ve never been laid.

But the ratings stayed lousy, and the future must have looked bleak to the producers…why else end the season with a ridiculous nod to Planet of the Apes? My guess, and its strictly a guess,. is that they figured the show was over, anyway… so why not?

That’s why we blew up the hospital in a season finale of “Diagnosis Murder.” We didn’t think the show was coming back… (and if it did, I wanted to shoot new hospital stock footage and this was one way to force the studio to pay for it).

Hell, I would have preferred if all the Nazis *were* apes… at least it would have shown some cheeky humor on the producers’ part.

What’s more amazing is that network execs looked at this episode and said “hey, let’s do more!”

Actually, not really.

The studio that makes the show just happens to own the network.

Selling Yourself

by

I sent an email to my editor the other day, listing the events I’ve got scheduled to promote my book and the ones in the works. He wrote me back saying how pleased and impressed he was that I was working so hard to support the book.

I can’t imagine an author who wouldn’t do the same thing… but, apparently, there are.

The way I look at it, writing the book is only half the job… you have to sell it to. Unless you’re already a bestselling author, or can afford a high-powered publicist, you have to go out there and sell yourself.

A lot of people cringe at the idea. Sell myself? How tacky.

The idea of promoting yourself, of actually selling your work, can make some authors hyperventilate.

But if you want your books to sell, you have to write booksellers, call booksellers, go out and meet booksellers… months before your novel actually comes out. You need to convince them, first and foremost, the stock your book… and then, perhaps, invite you in for a signing.

If you’re a new author, or a mid-list author like myself, you probably ask yourself why anyone would bother booking you for a signing. Who the hell is going to come to see me? I’m not Elmore Leonard.

But I learned a valuable lesson years ago… it’s not the books you sell at your signing that counts, but the books that are sold in the days and weeks after you leave. And you can’t beat the advertising a signing gives your books… without an event scheduled, you’re just six copies, spine out, on a shelf among thousands of other titles in the store. If the store is having you for a signing, you get a highly visible display of dozens of books, cover out, for days in advance of your appearannce… as well as days afterward. Think of it as in-store advertising. You will stand out in a way you wouldn’t without booking the event, whether a single person shows up or not. More importantly, you will get to know the bookseller who, if you’re lucky, will like you and your novel enough to recommend it to shoppers ie “hand-sell” it to customers.

I did a signing once where no one showed up… I sat in the store for two hours chatting with the owners and signed all the stock. A month later, they drop-shipped another box of books for me to sign… they’d sold out of their stock. (Of course, you want people to show up… that’s the best thing of all!)

It isn’t enough to simply schedule a signing… you have to let people know it’s happening. You need to promote yourself as well as sell yourself. Especially now, in this rough publishing climate. That means sending out mailings… establishing a website… and sending out press releases.

You also need to just get out there and network… that means going conventions, book festivals, and events in your genre (MWA events if you’re a mystery writer, for example).

Of course, you can go to far… and get the rep as a blatant self promoting whore. It’s a fine line… but one any writer who hopes to stay in print has to walk.