My Blog

Lots of TV News Today

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Variety reports that CBS has given early renewals to GHOST WHISPERER, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, CRIMINAL MINDS, NCIS, COLD CASE, WITHOUT A TRACE, NUMBERS, TWO AND A HALF MEN, THE AMAZING RACE, SURVIVOR, and all three CSIs for next season. None of those pick-ups are surprises, what’s news is that CBS decided to make those decisions so early. Typically, networks wait another two months before making those announcements. The fates of COURTING ALEX, STILL STANDING, CLOSE TO HOME, KING OF QUEENS, 48 HOURS, and YES DEAR are still up-in-the-air. LOVE MONKEY is a dead monkey and there are a handful of show mid-season shows set to premiere in the coming weeks.

NBC has officially cancelled BOOK OF DANIEL, which they yanked a few months ago after just three episodes. The lesson I’ve learned from this is not to do a series featuring Jesus as a character (thus forcing me to scrub my terrific pitch JESUS P.I.).

TNT has canceled WANTED but picked up SAVED to pair with CLOSER or THIEF. The lesson I’ve learned from this  is that TNT wants more one-word titled shows.  Two other pilots are still in contention: TALK TO ME and GRACE. My money is on GRACE (If I were the producers of TALK TO ME, I’d quickly retitle it TALKER).

HBO has renewed DEADWOOD for a fourth season before the third has even aired. The lesson I’ve learned from this is that the fucking execs at fucking HBO can do whatever the fuck they want and buy the fucking shows that they fucking enjoy (and that I fucking enjoy, too).

UPDATE 3-8-06:  TV Critic Aaron Barnhart reports on his blog that CBS has axed "King of Queens," "Still Standing," and "Yes, Dear" and new shows
"Close To Home" and "Out of Practice."

Boy, the way they’re wrapping up
CBS’s business, you’d think Les Moonves and company had another network
to run.

“Ang Lee also directed The Hulk, which is odd because Ang Lee has never been a green monster…”

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My brother Tod tackles one of the dumbest questions ever posed to Letters to Parade, from Peter Jones of New York City:

"Brokeback Mountain’s Ang Lee is the favorite to win an Oscar for Best
Director. How did a Chinese person gain such an
understanding of homosexual American cowboys?"

Among Tod’s many observations:

1. Ang Lee also directed the Civil War film Ride With The Devil (based
on a great novel by Daniel Woodrell, incidentally), which is pretty
surprising because Ang Lee isn’t a Civil War vet and, in fact, lived
part of his life in Pinko China, and, I’m fairly certain, never once
listened to a 38 Special album and thought about how cool it would be
to grow up in the old South, where he would have been lynched. At any
rate, the pop singer Jewel co-starred in Ride with the Devil and her
longtime beau is cowboy Ty Murray. Perhaps one drunken night on the
range turned into a sexual bacchanal. Perhaps Ty rode Ang like a
bucking steer. Perhaps Ang woke one morning with a longing for the feel
of a rawhide saddle and the touch and feel of a man. Perhaps he read
the fucking short story.

The Oscars

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There was a big article by Patrick Goldstein in yesterday’s LA Times talking about how viewership for the Oscars has dwindled over the years.

The hissing you hear is the air going out of the Oscars’ balloon. The
usual aura of Academy Award anticipation dissipated weeks ago. Wherever
I went last week, the talk was about how bad the ratings would be.

He put the blame on the fragmentation of the viewing audience — distracted by 500 satelite channels, iPods, DVDs, xboxes, the Internet, even books —  and on the poor quality of theatrical movies lately. I have a more radical view. People have stopped watching the Oscars because it’s an incredibly dull show with virtually no entertainment value…even when fast-forwarding through most of it (thank the Lord for Tivo).

The opening skit was fun and it went downhill from there. That said, it was nice to see so many "TV faces" among the winners and nominees. I’m sure Paul Haggis, when he was writing WALKER TEXAS RANGER and DUE SOUTH, never imagined he’d be getting an Oscar for best picture…or that Dan Futterman, while toiling as an actor on JUDGING AMY, envisioned being nominated for an Academy Award for his first screenplay.

CRASH getting best picture was certainly a surprise… as was best song going to "It’s Hard for a Pimp" instead of the safe, middle-of-the-road, crowd-pleaser sung by the robot that vaguely resembled Dolly Parton (Dustin Hoffman looked more like Dolly Parton).

I’ll stop there. If you really want to low-down, check out Ken Levine’s hilarious Oscar wrap-up:

Leave it to a writer to show up in jeans.

Running from The Walk

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I’ve been too busy to post as often as usual…preparing for a pitch meeting (it went well), preparing for a meeting for a possible writer/producer gig (it also went well), and I’ve been working hard on MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU (going well as well…and I’ve now broken my personal record for using the word "well" in a single paragraph).  I’m also a judge in a short story contest and been reading hundreds of submissions. Anyway, that’s a long-winded way of justifying yet another rerun post from my blogging past…

This is a true story.

I was in  the offices of a major movie producer who had just read  my book THE WALK
and wanted to talk about a possible screen version. The story is about
a TV producer who is stuck in downtown Los Angeles when a major
earthquake decimates the city and has to walk back home to the suburbs.

The executive loved the book, the human drama, and the action-adventure elements. He only had a few thoughts and concerns.

“Does the guy have to be a TV producer?” he asked.

I
was prepared for that question. I knew the character might be “too
inside,” meaning too much a part of the entertainment industry, to
connect with a wider audience.

“No,” I said, “Of course not. We can give him a different profession.”

“How about if the TV producer was a team of cheerleaders instead?” the executive asked.

I laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t. But he wasn’t done with me yet.

“And what if the earthquake was a tidal wave?”

The book remains unfilmed.

Oh no, my dream job was a fake

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From the Writer’s Guild of Canada:

It has come to our attention that several members have received an
email from a Japanese company – the Hashimoto Group – soliciting film and TV
scripts with the purported intention of production.  Please be advised that this is not a
legitimate proposal and is in fact a scam.  We recommend that you do not respond to
the email.

Please see www.joewein.de/sw/419-script-writer.htm
for further information.

I think Lori Prokop should contact Saito Komatsu of the Hashimoto Group about investing in Book Millionaire.