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Two Jews in Kentucky Part 2

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The day started with a BBQ brunch at the Moonlite BBQ. I was disappointed this time…the meal didn't live up to my memory of the place or my high expectations. Did I just imagine how good it was last year? After lunch, I browsed at the two used bookstores in town, didn't buy anything, then went down to the Riverpark Performing Arts Center  to lead a workshop on TV writing and sign some books. That was fun. 

Afterwards, I chatted for an hour with the Firesign Theatre's David Ossman and Judith Walcutt, their son Orson (who placed Mapes in the stage version of THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE), and the very talented Amy Walker, the  woman of a thousand voices. 

I did a quick rewrite of the script for the Sunday Awards show, then ran out for some more BBQ, this time at a place called Old South BBQ, that was even more  disappointing that Moonlite was. I changed my clothes and returned to the Riverpark Center to host an outdoor screening of THE BEST TV SHOWS THAT NEVER WERE. It was so great to see that with an audience and to hear their laughter. 

While I was doing all of that, David Breckman was writing and casting his short film, which he will be shooting tomorrow in Owensboro. The script is terrific (a light-hearted murder  mystery,of course, set in a theatre) and the cast and crew are absolutely thrilled to be doing it. David took some of the folks out for a late night snack and their enthusiasm was palpable. They see this as an amazing opportunity. I'm going to enjoy watching them all at work.

Tomorrow, I actually have the day off, but I am going to spend it at  a desk somewhere at the Riverpark Center, working on my movie script, but I'll be available if David needs a hand. I might also catch two of the four plays being  performed during the Festival. 

Saturday I'm leading a panel with Sue Grafton and hosting a dinner  in her honor, and then Sunday I am hosting the awards ceremony. I shall report back to you tomorrow.  

Who is the Clueless Moron now?

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Back in 2004, under the heading "Clueless Morons," I blogged about a group calling themselves the Colonial Fan Force, who took out a full-page ad in Variety clamoring for a BATTLESTAR GALACTICA movie starring the original cast. The ad read, in part: 

Millions of fans still dream of seeing the Battlestar Galactica roam the heavens once more in a big screen continuations of the epic story that began in 1978 with the original cast and characters leading a new generation of warriors

I wrote:

Yeah, right… there are millions, no TENS of millions, of fans clamoring for the return of Herb Jefferson, Laurette Sprang, Dirk Benedict, and Richard Hatch (who is not nearly as powerful an actor as the nude guy of the same name on "Survivor"… nor as successful). I suspect the real audience is about 100 fat guys in their 40s, who at this very moment are busily duping all their Heather Thomas videos onto DVD..

[…]I am always amused by the losers who spend their comic book money on pointless ads like this (or, worse, the ones who publish a synopsis of, or excerpt from, their unsold screenplays)

[…] the folks at "The Colonial Fan Force" urge the readers of Variety (most of whom are entertainment industry professionals) to write writer/producer Glen A. Larson and Tom DeSanto, a guy who once tried to launch a movie version of the TV show. This shows just how little the people who paid for this ad understand about how the business works…and even sillier when you consider the SciFi Channel is already in the midst of shooting a new "Battlestar Galactica" TV series from NBC/Universal Studios with an all-new cast led by Edward James Olmos.

And that was the nicest thing I had to say about the Colonial Fan Force. 

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the joke is on me. Today Variety reported that Universal, Glen A. Larson, Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto are mounting a feature film version of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA that will be a "complete re-imagining" that is unrelated to the recently wrapped series.

While this isn't the reunion the Colonial Fan Force was clamoring for, and it's happening after the end of the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA series, and it isn't the result of a letter-writing campaign, it is a feature film and it's likely to be closer to the original series than the SciFi Channel series was.

So who is the clueless moron now? It looks like it is me.

Two Jews in Kentucky

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MONK writer/producer/director David Breckman and I arrived in Owensboro, Kentucky today for the International Mystery Writers Festival. Everybody has treated us wonderfully but I've only been here a few hours and already have an anecdote to share (or, as David said afterward, "as it was happening, I knew I was living an anecdote that I would be telling for years."). After a screening of MONK clips on a giant, outdoor screen, a fan came up to us with his family and asked us to signed his set of MONK dvds.

"I just knew Monk was written by Jews," the fan said.

"Excuse me?" David said.

"Breckman, Goldberg, you're Jews," he said. "Monk is so Jewish.  Jews write the best stuff in Hollywood.  All the greatest entertainment comes  from Jews. Star Trek was created by a Jew.  We just love what you Jews do."

The man obviously meant well and to compliment our work, and he was nervous, so we didn't take offense. David signed the box:  David Breckman, a grateful Jew.

David is a super busy Jew these days.  In addition to his MONK works, he's also got pilots at USA and NBC. He'll also be writing, casting,  shooting and screening a ten minute  mystery between now and Sunday. It will be done entirely with local actors and aspiring film-makers, so it should be a lot of fun. Jews are so talented.

MWA Teams with Writer Beware

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The Mystery Writers of America announced today that its co-sponsoring Writer Beware. I’m sure it will be no surprise to regular readers of this blog to learn that I spear-headed this effort.  I’m thrilled that we’re able to help support Writer Beware…and I hope it leads to other professional writers organizations following our lead. Here’s an article I wrote for the MWA newsletter about it:

The Mystery Writers of America is joining the fight against writing scams by contributing $1000 towards Writer Beware, a website & blog created by the Science Fiction Writers of America to expose fraudulent publishing practices and educate authors on how to protect themselves from being swindled.

“We are pleased to be able to support the important work that Writer Beware is doing on behalf of all writers, professional and aspiring, by exposing scams aimed at defrauding authors,” said Frankie Bailey, the MWA’s executive vice president.

Writer Beware’s website, which was launched by SFWA in 1998, can be used by20any writer anywhere, regardless of whatever genre, fiction or non-fiction, that they work in…or their professional standing. And Writer Beware blog offers up-to-the-minute information on specific scams and schemes, along with essential advice for writers. They also help authors who have questions about individual agents, publishers, or contests.

“We are not only showing our support and making Writer Beware stronger, but sending a message to scammers that we won’t stand by and let them take advantage of authors,” said Lee Goldberg, the MWA board member who will act as the MWA liaison with Writer Beware.

“It’s vital that organizations like SFWA and MWA team up on these kinds of challenges,” said Russell Davis, President of SFWA. “We can accomplish far more working together than we can working on our own, and I hope other organizations will see this as an invitation to join in these types of group efforts.”

I will be reaching out to the International Thriller Writers and the Romance Writers of America to ask them to join us in supporting Writer Beware and fighting scammers.

UPDATE: Publishers Weekly has picked up the news…which is great. The more word spreads about Writer Beware, the less likely it will be that people will be taken advantage of by scammers.

Me on Me

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The second part of Lori Ham's interview with me is now up on her No Name Cafe site. Here's an excerpt:

Café: What do you like best and which is harder — writing novels or TV? 

Lee: They are entirely different experiences. Television is very much a group effort and what you are writing is a blueprint that lots of other people are going to use as the basis for their creative work, whether it’s the actor, the director, the production designer. And when you write a script it’s not locked in stone. It’s going to change. It’s going to change because everybody has notes. It’s going to change because production concerns force rewrites. It’s going to change because of actors and directors. 

A book is entirely my own and unaffected by production concerns or actors. I’m the actors, the director, the production designer […] It’s not a blueprint. It is the finished product and it won’t change much once I am done with it. It’s not a group effort — I plot it myself and I write it by myself. It’s entirely in my head and I live it for months. Creatively speaking, there’s a big difference between writing prose and writing a script. In a book, you are seducing the reader. You are bringing them into your imagination and holding them there for as long as they’re reading the book. You construct everything. You construct the sets, the wardrobe, the world. You’re God. You can even read a character’s thoughts. 

.357 Vigilante Returns….

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Vigilante2I admit it…I’ve got the Kindle fever…and I’ve got it bad. I don’t mean reading books on the Kindle, I mean creating Kindle editions of my out-of-print books. The idea of making easy money from stuff that was buried in boxes in my garage is too good to resist (thank you, Joe Konrath!).

So the 1985 “men’s action action novel” .357 VIGILANTE #2: MAKE THEM PAY by Ian Ludlow is now available as a $2.99 Kindle edition. Here’s the scoop on the book:

“As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort […] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!” West Coast Review of Books 

 Brett Macklin is justice — a one-man judge, jury and executioner, wiping out the L.A. street scum that the police can’t catch, that the law can’t hold — dealing sweet revenge from the barrel of his .357 Magnum.
Now Macklin’s target is Wesley Saputo, child porn kingpin and murderer who has slipped through the courts time after time, only to kidnap, rape and kill again…and again. Macklin’s mission: locate and brutally destroy Saputo before he finds another little girl blue…

This Kindle edition includes a special Afterword essay, “Hot Sex, Gory Violence: How One College Student Earns Course Credit and Pays His Tuition,” which was originally published in Newsweek magazine and that explains the origins of the “.357 Vigilante” series and the “Ian Ludlow” pseudonym.

I’ve found the manuscripts for the other two books in the series, as well as the unpublished fourth novel, and will upload them over the coming weeks.

UPDATE: Here are some blog reviews of MAKE THEM PAY…from Chadwick Saxelid, S. Michael Wilson,  and Marty McKee.

The GI Joe Cartoon

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07_gijoe_lg Roy Scheider once complained on SEAQUEST that he was a live actor stuck in an animated cartoon. That's how the cast of GI JOE must have felt… only much, much more strongly. 

At least 90% of the movie –100 % if you include the computer-generated sets — is a cartoon with a few living, breathing people (the actors at least, not their characters) matted in. There wasn't even an attempt to make the animated/CGI portions appear the slightest bit realistic (or the characters, for that matter). 

The best parts of the movie — and I use the terms "best" and "movie" very loosely — are the computer-generated battles. When the CGI action stops for some "emotional" moments, the movie becomes unbearably dull. The backstory flash-backs are so heavy-handed, cliche-ridden and obvious that I found myself longing for the CGI to return. The comedy bits, mostly lame one-liners badly delivered by Marlon Wayons,  portraying a steroid-pumped Stepin Fetchit, were only slightly less painful. Marlon wasn't the only guy playing a caricature, not by far (I kept waiting for the sharpnosed, penny-pinching Jew to show up). With the emphasis on CGI, caricature seems to be all that's left to quicky and effectively convey character…or at least what passes for it. 

CGI is no longer a tool in story-telling — it has become the story-telling. It's the Michael Bayification of cinema. Who needs acting, character, plot or the emotional investment of the audience when you have CGI? Every big movie coming out of Hollywood now is a videogame or a toy commercial masquerading as a film. A movie can be big without being 99% CGI and 1% cardboard characters.

On the way to the theater, my wife and I remembered how we used to go to the movies every week. Now months can go by without us seeing a movie. What changed? Well, watch GI JOE and you'll see.

I'm sure GI JOE will make 100 gazillion dollars…and its a damn shame.

Busy Week

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I have been absent from the blog, working hard on my screenplay and my latest Monk novel, because I have a very busy week head of me. On Tuesday, I am leading a seminar on episodic TV writing & producing for representatives of China Central Television…which should be a very interesting experience…and then on Wednesday, I'm heading off to Owensboro, Kentucky with my buddy David Breckman, writer-producer-director of MONK,  to participate in the third annual International Mystery Writers Festival. I'll be moderating several panels, and doing Toastmaster duties, while David will write, producer and direct an original short film with a group of theatre students. Kentucky native Sue Grafton will also be on hand for panels and such. It should be a lot of fun.  

I'm looking forward to the flights to and from Kentucky because it will be my first opportunity to really try out my Kindle. I haven't had any time to read since I got it…

Gunsmoke to ride again

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CBS Films is developing a theatrical version of GUNSMOKE, and they’ve hired Gregory Poirier, screenwriter of NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS to write it:

The action-adventure will re-imagine Marshal Matt Dillon, the hero of the classic Western, for modern audiences. The story will be set in the same American West as the original but will feature a contemporary look and modern action twists.
Poirier is said to be close to completing a first draft of the script.

(Thanks to Thierry Attard for the heads-up.)