My Blog

Law & Order: New & Improved

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Nup_109286_0194
I used to be a big fan of LAW & ORDER, but over the last five years, the show has been going steadily down-hill (even with the addition of Dennis Farina, who I have liked ever since MANHUNTER and CRIME STORY). The 2006-2007 season was an all-time low. The last thing I expected was to fall back in love with it, especially after this seasons flat premiere. But each episode since then has been dramatic, surprising, compelling…and even funny.
I don’t know whether it’s the return of Rene Balcer as showrunner/head writer, or the new cast members, or the revamped sets & lighting & camera angles that have re-energized the franchise, but it doesn’t really matter.  LAW & ORDER is back and as good as it ever was.

Oddly enough GUNSMOKE, the only show  that’s lasted longer than LAW & ORDER, also had a resurgence in quality in it’s 17th-19th seasons…though that’s not to say LAW & ORDER is on its way out.

(LAW & ORDER may someday match, or beat, GUNSMOKE’s 20 year reign….but it’s not a fair contest. There’s nobody on the cast of L&O today that was on the show it’s first season. By comparison, three of the GUNSMOKE’s four stars… James Arness, Amanda Blake and Milburn Stone… stayed with it for 19 seasons, Arness and Stone to the very end. By that measure, GUNSMOKE will always have  L&O beat.)

Authors Always Get Screwed

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The Los Angeles Times reports today about how CHEETAH GIRLS novelist Deborah Gregory got screwed by Disney. Hollywood cheating novelists isn’t a new story, but the timing of this
one, on the same day the strike ends, underscores why screenwriters
need the Writers Guild of America:

Gregory expected to get a piece of the action when she signed a 2001
contract promising her 4% of the net from all of this activity. But
like many other authors who have signed away dramatic rights, she says
she never got a penny of the profits. Unlike screenwriters, who were
backed by a strong union in their recently ended strike, most literary
writers are at a disadvantage when negotiating with Hollywood. And it
is difficult, if not impossible, for them to crack the safe.

Indeed,
Gregory said she’s pocketed $125,000 over the last nine years in option
fees and payments for her title as co-producer of the movies. Although
she’s asked for them, she has never gotten "net profit participation
statements" from Disney, spelling out details of expenses and revenues.
If anyone is getting rich on this formidable franchise, Gregory noted,
it’s not the woman who created it.

[…]The stakes are high because 43% of Hollywood movies in the last five
years were adapted from books and other written materials, according to
estimates by the Writers Guild of America. What makes Gregory’s case
unusual is that she didn’t simply write a book, she wrote bestsellers
that led to a movie and marketing bonanza.

The article says she got $180,000 in advances for her 16 CHEETAH GIRLS novels, which have sold 2 million copies. What the article doesn’t say is whether she earned out and, if so, how much she has made in royalties thanks to the huge marketing push behind the movies, DVDs and CDs. Even so, whatever that figure is, it doesn’t come close to the financial bonanza that she ought to be sharing in as the creator of the franchise.

I Knew This Was Coming

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Victoria Strauss reports that BookWise has gone — surprise! surprise! — into the vanity press business, a natural extension of their multi-level marketing scheme. They are charging gullible aspiring writers $6000 to "publish" their books and for "intensive training" at their WriteWise (aka PublishStupid) seminars taught by "Industry Experts" who, outside of BookWise founders author Richard Paul Evans and get-rich-quick huckster Robert G. Allen, have no actual industry experience.

Their "expert" faculty consists of the teacher of the Info-Preneuring Teleclass for the Enlightened Wealth Institute, a self-published cookbook author, and three authors who write fiction exclusively for the "LDS market"  ("work consistent with the standards and principles of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ").  I guess Lori Prokop, Michael Drew, and Brien Jones were unavailable.

You will also get such amazing benefits as "an official BookWise review" and your photograph taken  with BookWise founders Evans and Allen. Wow! Where do I sign up?

BookWise thinks that "anyone who is a serious writer" would gladly pay $20-30,000 for all of this,   so six grand is a bargain. But "serious" writers know better than to take seminars from vanity press publishers and industry know-nothings who have a clear profit motive and glaring conflict-of-interest behind their "teaching."

This is no ordinary vanity press scheme. To lure in as many suckers as possible, BookWise is offering a $1000 bounty for every paying sucker their multilevel marketing associates can bring in. Prepare to be spammed. But wait, there’s more, as Victoria reports:

There’s another twist to the story. For writers accepted into
WriteWise, Richard Paul Evans and Robert G. Allen will become their
literary agents, receiving, according to the WriteWise brochure, "the
standard agency fee [of] 15% of the royalties that an author receives
from the publisher." The brochure makes it clear, however, that not
every book will be shopped: "…depending upon circumstances, BookWise
Publishing may also present your book to other major publishers." In
this arrangement, most of the benefit is on the agents’ side: they
don’t actually have to do anything for you (unlike in a normal
author-agent relationship), but if they do, they get paid twice.

These guys are taking the vanity press scam to a whole new, and truly sleazy, level.

Goldman Shakes Down a Great Review from PW

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Shakedown
Congratulations to my buddy Joel Goldman on the rave review in today’s Publishers Weekly for his new novel SHAKEDOWN. They say, in part:

A killer identified via a fleeting facial expression and behavioral cues turns a middle-aged FBI agent dealing with a disruptive disability into an unexpected hero in Goldman’s latest terrific thriller […]Goldman’s surefooted plotting […] make this a fascinating, compelling read.

“We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat”

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Seaquest
Roy Scheider died today at the age 0f 75. I worked with him briefly on the NBC series SEAQUEST and one of the things I remember most about him was how he’d sit on a folding chair outside of his trailer, soaking up the sun wearing nothing but a g-string sized Speedo.  Apparently, Richard Dreyfuss has similar memories:

Dreyfuss recalled Sunday a time during the filming of ‘Jaws’
when Scheider disappeared from the set. As the filming was on hold
because of the weather, Scheider "called me up and said, ‘You
don’t know where I am if they call.’

"He’d gone to get a tan. He was really very tan-addicted. That
was due to a childhood affliction where he was in bed for a long
time. For him being tan was being healthy," Dreyfuss said.

Do Unto Others

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I wonder if "The Insider" will take the same glee in their host Pat O’Brien checking into rehab (again) that they enjoy when Kirsten Dunst, Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan, or any other Hollywood star does the same thing. I don’t like to see people suffer, but I have to admit I feel a certain poetic justice when evangelists (like Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart etc.) political commentators (like Rush Limbaugh), politicians (like Larry Craig, Tom DeLay, etc.), and tabloid reporters (like O’Brien) are caught doing exactly the same things they rail against….adultery, drug abuse, tax evasion, corruption, gay sex, etc.

Strike Ends, Awards Given

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In an odd bit of timing, the strike ended (more or less officially) on the same day that the WGA awards for excellence in screenwriting were announced. I am pleased to say that three of my friends earned awards….Terence Winter won Best Episodic Drama script for his SOPRANOS episode "The Second Coming" (he also shared an award for Best Episodic Drama Series writing) and Bryce & Jackie Zabel won the Best Original Miniseries screenplay statuette for PANDEMIC. Congratulations to them all!