My Blog

Condensing

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Author Lewis Perdue is condensing his 347 different blogs into just three ( I don’t now how he can even do that — I have a hard enough time maintaining just one). His new, main blog is The Crock Pot. He’s keeping his DA VINCI CODE lawsuit blog and his Dan Brown blog as standalones. The inaugural Crock Pot post is about the Author’s Guild lawsuit against Google.  Lew is one of the few authors to come out publicly in favor of Google scanning books without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holders.

From all the misleading sturm, drang und hype coming from the plaintiffs,
you’d think that Google was planning to out-pirate Johnny Depp by stealing every
published word on the planet and posting it on a Kazaa or BitTorrent
file-sharing service.

But … no.

Google is being sued for having
the good sense to scan books in order to make them searchable online much as
Amazon has done. The books would then be available for purchase with appropriate
payments to copyright holders.

Think back a little. When Amazon made books searchable, the industry freaked
out, afraid of a new idea that had dropped from the sky like a Coke bottle in
the African bush. I thought it was a good idea then and a better one now. My
books are searchable on Amazon and, if anything, it has helped sales. I’ve used
the Amazon searches for research and ended up buying books I would never have
considered otherwise.

 

The Runaway Train

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Corey Miller, a story editor on CSI: MIAMI, has an excellent post on his CBS blog this week about the pressures of series production.

Our shooting schedule lasts ten months out of the year. The writers
work eleven. The writers spend the month of June spitballing stories,
thinking about possible character arcs, and honing in on breaking the
first few episodes. We try to get as ahead as we can during this
period, because once shooting starts, there’s no turning back. We have
to have a new script completed every eight working days until the end
of the season. And we’re doing twenty-five.

As far as when the episodes air in relation to when they were shot, there is no pat
answer. It really depends on a number of things. This season, we began
filming our first episode on July 18. But it didn’t air until September
19. So there were two months in between. The episode that I’m doing
that shoots on December 7th is tentatively scheduled to air on January
30th. So you can see how that window has shrunk a bit, the deeper we
get into the season.

It’s all due to that pesky train, because once it is in motion, it’s a runaway.

He uses the runaway train metaphor and for good reason.  When I’m producing a series, I inevitably have the nightmare that I’m on a train, shoveling scripts into the boiler to keep the engine going…and that I just can’t keep up.

…And in other news, Michael Jackson is launching a program to help parents protect their children from pedophiles.

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From today’s news:

DENVER (AP) — Former FEMA
Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency’s slow response to
Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help
clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

”If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their
homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to
the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way,” Brown told
the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.

(Thanks to Ed Gorman for the heads-up)

ALIAS Axed

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Thanksgiving was death day in TV land.  TVSquad reports that ALIAS has been cancelled.

UPDATE: USA Today confirms the news. The series will end with a "big finish" in May.

"Alias is not going to wind down as it comes to an
end, it’s going to rev up, and we’re going to make it the event it deserves to
be," ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson said in a statement.

CBS Reaches Threshold of Patience

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TVSquad reports that CBS has cancelled THRESHOLD, one of the three alien invasion dramas launched this season (SURFACE and INVASION have both been picked up for the back nine).  Carla Gugino was terrific  in KAREN SISKO, but her talents were wasted in THRESHOLD, which tended to be the same episode every week.  Let’s hope she gets a third shot at a TV series…and that the next one works.

Nippletastic!

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Sarah Weinman stumbled on this hilarious review of George R. R. Martin’s new book A FEAST FOR CROWS. Apparently, it should have been titled A FEAST OF NIPPLES.

A FEAST FOR CROWS has to be the most nippletastic book I’ve read
since, oh, Candy. It felt like not a page went by that a pair wasn’t
being pinched, suckled, eyed, prized, fondled, lopped off (seriously) or
otherwise palpated. Boys’ nipples, girls’ nipples, big brown nipples, fulsome
nipples, nipples like black diamonds, lactating nipples, male pepperoni-style
nipples. All kinds of nipples. It makes me wonder if a retread of Lord of
the Rings isn’t in order, with 100% more detail on the hobbit nipples.

Cluck Cluck

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I’m heading down to La Quinta soon for Thanksgiving with my family. My brother Tod and his wife Wendy are hosting the feast this year, to be attended by my mother, my sisters, and their families. I heard that steak and lobster are on the menu, along with some Julian Apple Pies and other assorted diet-busters (alas, no turkey this year). Over the next couple of days, you won’t find me around here muhc, I’ll be hanging out with my Mom at the nickel slots at the Fantasy Springs Casino or catching THE ICE HARVEST (based on our friend Scott’s terrific book) with Tod at the local multiplex.

Doubling Up on Mediums?

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Variety reports that Lifetime has shelled out $1.3 million an episode for MEDIUM reruns, which is interesting, considering the network pays  only a little more than that for new episodes of MISSING, their first-run show about an FBI agent/medium who finds missing persons. In fact, MISSING is their only remaining first-run series. So the question I have for psychics out there, crime-solving and otherwise:…will Lifetime double up on mediums and keep MISSING, or does this pricey rerun deal spell doom for the show?

Can You Introduce Me to a Showrunner?

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I got this email today:

I have a
friend who’s pitching a show to NBC and they want him to deliver a sitcom
writer/show runner.  Do you know of any looking for
shows?

The sitcom writers I know are interested in pitching shows of their own — besides, I would never pass along their names and contact information to a stranger.
 
I suspect the reason why NBC wants your friend to bring in a showrunner is
because they have no faith in him to deliver a series. The network needs someone
they can trust…and your friend doesn’t have the experience or skill yet.

Showrunners work hard to earn that trust — it takes years of work on sitcoms to get it. Naturally, writers who have reached that point in their careers are reluctant to let someone ride on their hard-earned coat-tails — unless it’s someone who
brings something worthwhile to the table like a star with an enormous following or
a successful stand-up comic with a development deal.

Most showrunners can get pitch meetings on their own. They don’t need your friend, or his series ideas, for that.