My Blog

Directing Is a Drag

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Director Lee Tamahori ("Die Another Day," "Along Came a Spider") was arrested in Hollywood  for prostitution  and not simply because he’ll direct whatever dreck comes along if the paycheck is high enough. They’re saying he’s a a real whore.

According to law enforcement,
Tamahori was allegedly dressed in drag, approached an undercover
officer who was in his car, entered the vehicle and offered to perform
a sex act for money.

Defamer’s comments on the arrest were amusing.

After the assuredly harrowing experience of directing xXx: State of the Union,
even Orson Welles would rather swear off Hollywood’s dirty money, dig
out his mother’s best evening gown, and go looking for supplemental
income on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Hey, it could have been worse. Tamahori could have been arrested with Eddie Murphy or Hugh Grant in his mouth.

 

THE F WORD

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Showtime is staging an unusual promotional event, inviting fans of THE L WORD to help a writer on the show pen a spec script for an episode. The press release calls it "the first network-sanctioned collaborative fan event."

During the sponsored, multi-week event,
the show’s millions of fans will be invited to collaborate on an
original script for the show.  Each week, fans will write short scenes
based on an instructive "scene mission" provided by the writer from THE
L WORD.  Each week, fans will vote on their favorite scenes.  At the end of each week,
the winning scene will be added to the script in progress. The process
will repeat each week with a new "scene mission" until the entire
script is complete.

Once the script has been pieced together, the L WORD writer will
perform a final polish to complete it. Contributors of highly rated
scenes and other winners will be featured prominently online during the
event, giving them a taste of online fame. FanLib’s innovative system
enables Showtime to maintain control of THE L WORD brand while
establishing an incomparable consumer generated media community where
fans can interact with each other and with their favorite show.

A couple of people who emailed me about this called it a "breakthrough for fanfic." It’s not. The key phrase in the release is that the program "enables Showtime to maintain control of THE L WORD brand."  In other words, this "fan event" is a licensed tie-in, done with the full participation, consent, and control of the network, studio and writer of the show.

At the conclusion of the event, Showtime and FanLib will publish a free
commemorative eZine (a downloadable digital magazine) featuring the
completed script, plus a number of alternative scenes and editorial
features including profiles of the winning contributors and other
participants. Each fan whose work is included in the eZine will receive
an exclusive gift package from the show and the sponsors of the event.
The eZine will be distributed online to all of the participants and
voters and other members of the show’s online community as a pass-along
memento of the event.

Though the script will not be produced as part of the show’s upcoming
third season which will have wrapped production before the start of the
event, Showtime and the producers of THE L WORD have the option to
produce the finished script in the future.

It will be interesting to see how "event" works out, if the fans embrace the corporate managing of their fanfic, and if the cobbled-together script is the least bit readable. My guess is that the L WORD writer is going to take a pretty heavy pass through the material and that it will probably never be shot.

Mr. Monk and the Creative Process

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Writer Jack Bernstein does a great job describing what it’s like breaking a story with the writing staff of MONK.

I arrived in Newark on a Sunday evening at 6 p.m., having weathered the
embarrassment of going through security with my inflatable writing
partner. I had been given the choice of staying in a hotel in Manhattan
or Summit, N.J. It was a no-brainer. Soon after checking in to my
deluxe micro-suite at the Summit Super 12, I got a phone call from Monk
Executive Producer Andy Breckman. Andy told me that
they were going to start at 11 a.m. Monday morning and was that a
problem? I told him if he wanted to start that early, I guess I could
do it…

…The creative process is difficult to describe, mostly because I don’t
really understand it. I think I’d have better luck understanding a
lecture on biomolecular kinetics from a beaver, but honestly, where
would you find a beaver that understands biomolecular kinetics? I mean,
really understands? So basically, the creative process consists of all
of us shouting out ideas for the story until Andy scratches his head
and says, "That might work" and writes it down. Your initial reaction,
of course, is to think, "Really? You actually think that would work?"
Which translates to, "Yeah, I think it would work, too."

Jack is a very funny writer. He and I worked together many years ago on a short-lived series called DEADLY GAMES. That was an odd show. The scripts were hilarious but the episodes were never as good as what was on the page thanks to bad casting (the star, whose name I have forgotten, was wooden), bad directing and a pitifully low production values.

Do Mystery Novels Suck?

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My brother Tod is going to get in big trouble. In a post today, he explains why he doesn’t ready mysteries any more. Because, in his view, most of them suck.

I used to read a lot of mystery novels but in the last several years
have found myself easily disappointed by the easy conventions I find in
what are acclaimed as the finest in the genre…

…Part of it is a craft issue: I find a lot of mystery novels lazy in
characterization and lazy in drama, relying more often on tricks than
truth…

For instance, Tod recently read the acclaimed new bestseller by a beloved mystery author:

It had plot holes on every page, as if
someone had been fisting it. I solved the mystery in the first ten
pages. The villains were stock. The hero was suitably flawed but easily
redeemed and the ending was so schmaltzy that I literally said aloud,
"Oh, come on!" I then went and looked at the reviews of the book and
was stunned to learn it was the writer’s "best book in years." That the
novel was the "finest mystery of the year." That the writing was
"superb" and evoked "Chandler." That the twists and turns of the plot
kept reviewers "constantly guessing." That the ending packed "an
emotional wallop that will keep fans chatting for months!" Had I read a
different book?

He wonders if critics and readers go easier on mystery novels because they expect less from them than they do from other literary works. He also has a problem with the stagnant character development in some mysteries.

Most mystery novels I’ve read lately feel like just another episode,
the characters stuck in a commercial break until the next book comes
out. That, certainly, was the case with the novel I read…a continuing
series character, widely loved, widely praised, widely selling and so
cliched and trite now that it makes the previous works by the author
now seem something less. It’s a bland book, inoffensive in every way,
except that it made me wonder what mystery reviewers (and readers)
truly consider classic or brilliant anymore.

While I agree with Tod in some ways (look at the lambasting I got for not jumping on the Ken Bruen bandwagon) I think there’s a big difference between a series novel — which is, indeed, intended to be like an episode of a TV series — and a standalone thriller. 

Like TV shows, readers expect a series novel to be the same book as the one they read before in the series — only different. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but we TV writers do it every day. A TV series gives you the same episode week after week, year after year, but with enough differences in the individual stories to make the show seem new and fresh.  Marshall Matt Dillon was essentially the same guy in 1955 when GUNSMOKE premiered as he was when the show was cancelled in 1975…and none of the relationships in his life had really changed. The same is essentially true of most other non-serialized TV series and most series novels.

Stephanie Plum, Nero Wolfe, Phillip Marlowe, Shell Scott, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Reacher, John Rain, Inspector Rebus… none of these characters have really changed in the course of their respective series. That’s one of the pleasures and comforts of the books…you know exactly what you’re going to get when you open one up.

Can it get dull? Yeah. Can the writers get sloppy and complacent? Sure. Are readers and critics more forgiving of successful series books and the authors who write them? I think so, because the authors and their characters are so beloved. You are pre-disposed to like the book and to cut it a lot of slack (whereas someone coming to the book fresh, without having read the previous titles, might judge it far more harshly and see the cliches the long-tme reader doesn’t).

The problem, perhaps, is that too many new mystery novels these days are reading like pilots for prospective book series rather than as strong, individual novels. You can feel the writer’s burning desire to create a franchise in every paragraph. In some ways, this goes back to the earlier discussion here about creating suspense. Nothing kills a book faster for me than the sense the author is more interested in marketing and promotion than in actually creativing vivid characters and telling a compelling story. He’s looking ahead to the hoped-for series rather than concentrating on writing a fresh, powerful, and provocative book.

Pilot Parade

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Perseverance pays off. Five years ago, writer Jed Seidel wrote a sitcom pilot for Fox called MORE PATIENCE, about a NY psychiatrist named Patience More who has troubles in her personal life. The title turned out to be prophetic. The pilot was shot with Mary McCormack in the lead role, but Fox didn’t pick the show up.  Seidel didn’t give up — he  convinced the network to redeveloped it as an hour-long drama.  That version failed, too.  But Seidel, who went on to VERNONICA MARS among other things, didn’t give up. Now MORE PATIENCE is back again…Fox has given a cast-contigent pick-up on another pilot version of the show.

In other pilot news, ABC is developing a TV series version of MR. AND MRS. SMITH, which will be directed by Doug Liman and written by Simon Kinberg, the same team behind the movie.

Spike has ordered 13 episodes of BLADE, based on the the movie that starred Wesley Snipes and the comics by Marv Wolfman. Kirk Sticky Jones (FX’s "Over There") stars as the vampire hunter in the TV version.

Killer Podcast

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Author Lewis Perdue is podcasting his own audio version of his recent novel THE PERFECT KILLER. You can download the first two chapters for free and hear Lew reading the book himself.  Lew tells me that he’s found the experience "far harder than he ever imagined" but that he’s getting better at it as he goes along. Give it a listen and judge for yourself.

Hawaii Lee-O

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The Honolulu Star-Bulletin ran an interview with me today, pegged on the series of library visits I’ll be doing in Hawaii next week.  There are quite a few inaccuracies (eg. I never saw an unreleased HAWAII FIVE-O movie, I saw the unaired revival pilot) and misquotes (eg. I never wrote spec scripts for DIAGNOSIS MURDER), I’m still very pleased with the article.

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.

The Pot of Gold

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I got this email today:

love your blog.  could you give me a rough ballpark range of how much money a show creator makes when the successful show hits 100 episodes and goes into
syndication.   5 mil?  25 mil?  50 mil? is it based on a percentage of what they pay for the rights?

It all depends on how good a deal the creator’s agent managed to strike for his client when they did the pilot.  It also depends on how big a hit the show is and how much it sells for in syndication. What a creator makes could be any of those figures you mention…or much, much more…or much, much less. 

For instance, the creator of  TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT probably didn’t make as much as Larry David did on SEINFELD, though both sitcoms reached 100 episodes and went into syndication, . JAKE AND THE FATMAN ran for five years…but has never been in syndication.  IT TAKES A THIEF ran only three seasons but has been rerunning for decades.