My Blog

WhyDo So Many Movies Suck Lately?

by

…Jim Warren had lunch with a couple of film-makers and left with the answer:

How can these guys expect to make great movies if they’re basically unfamiliar
with what has come before? And it’s not really their fault, either; they’re both
bright and talented young men. They’re victims of a society that does not reward
substance. We’re immersed in a culture that puts a premium on novelty rather
than on creativity, one that places a higher value on the breadth of trivia than
it does on the depth of knowledge, one that prefers spectacle over vision, and
videogame hand-eye coordination over book-perusing eye-brain comprehension.

Looking for the Short Cut

by

I got this email today:

Hello Lee,
               My name is Mark Coulter, pen name M.W.C. Coulter. I recently
wrote a book and got it published through "Publish America". I have been on one
book signing and have two others upcoming. The book is called "The Folding of
Time", about two astronauts on a first deep space mission, they encounter an
anomaly, wormhole, that takes them on a journey through time and alternate
universes.I would like some advice of how to contact studios’ on making this into a
series or movie. Can you give me some advice on how to do this?
                                                        Sincerely
Mark.

First off, you never should have gone to PublishAmerica. You were looking for a short cut and this one leads to a dead end as you’ve undoubtedly discovered. You could contact various studios and production companies, ask for the names and addresses of their development executives, and send them your book.  Ordinarily, you’d have a one-in-a-million shot of selling the movie or TV rights. But since it’s a self-published, POD book, your odds against  interesting any studio in it have probably become one-in-a-billion.  I don’t know if your book is good or bad, but unfortunately, no one in Hollywood is going to take PublishAmerica title (or any vanity press publication)  seriously. 

On the other hand, if you can sell 10,000 copies, get some great reviews from respected publications, and get a bunch of newspapers and magazines to write profiles about you, that could change. That’s what happened with ERAGON... and the movie is in production now (of course, ERAGON wasn’t a PublishAmerca, iUniverse, or xlibris POD title, either).

UPDATE (10-12-05): I got this reply. My reply follows.

Well how about if I write another manuscript, on a movie idea not associated with the
book, and send it in raw and unpublished? Would I stand a better chance of
getting a read?

Nope.  Studios buy hot novels (ie bestselling and well reviewed) and
they buy scripts. They buy pitches, but only from established screenwriters
which, I assume, you are not. So, if I were you, I’d write a script. Even then,
though, you need an agent to submit it to the studios on your behalf.  They certainly aren’t going to read a raw, unpublished manuscript from an unknown writer…at least not without a powerful agent, producer, director or actor attached to it.

Christmas on Television

by

027598331501_sclzzzzzzz_Christmas is a time for families to come together to count their blessings and enjoy the love, joy, and
spirituality of the holiday season.  The same thing goes for your
favorite TV characters and their families. Just about every TV family has
celebrated the holidays in their own special way… giving us some of the most
memorable, touching, and truly surreal moments in television history.

Now TV critic Diane Werts has collected them all – more than 700 episodes, specials, TV movies, reality shows, cartoons, and commercials — in her book CHRISTMAS ON TELEVISION. To tell you the truth, I’ve been kicking around the same idea for a book since I was a kid, recording Christmas episodes and sticking them in a box for the day I’d finally get around to writing it. Well, that day never came and now Diane has beaten me to it. I’ve already ordered my copy and can’t wait to read it.

A Touch of Class

by

Today, for reasons I will never understand, I got an email offering me the amazing opportunity to buy an I DREAM OF JEANNIE bottle autographed by the cast:

The incomparable magnetism of this 2nd-thru 5th Season Metallic Purple I Dream
of Jeannie Brass Bottle is a must-! YES, Dreams DO come true, as you will
discover upon adding this classic and breathtaking Jeannie Bottle to your
collection.

ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY!
A "SIGNED LIMITED EDITION" SIGNED BY BARBARA
EDEN, LARRY HAGMAN, BILL DAILY, AND THE OFFICIAL BOTTLE ARTIST!
"YES" SIGNED BY THE CAST JUST FOR “YOU”!!!!!!
THIS IS THE OFFICIAL 40TH ANNIVERSARY BOTTLE, METALIC PURLE, BRASS
GALLERY EDITION ‘I DREAM OF JEANNIE’ BOTTLE!

It’s hard to believe, but for the cost of self-publishing your unsaleable book, you can have this amazing bottle! That’s right…you can own this masterpiece for just  $549! But wait, there’s MORE! Foronly $25, you can get a priceless photo of the celebrities signing your bottle! But wait, there’s even more MORE reasons to buy this destined-for-the-Louvre artistic masterpiece of fine art!

MOST IMPORTANTLY, BECAUSE 10% WILL ALSO GO TO VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA, AND
WHAT A WAY TO HELP SOMEONES WISH COME TRUE, BUT WITH A JEANNIE BOTTLE!

Don’t waste a second.  Think how wonderful this will look next to your STAR TREK salt shakers, Elvis ashtray, and BABYLON 5 nosehair clippers. It’s just the touch of elegance your basement needs. Show your parents that although you never moved out of the house, you’ve got class.

Room 222

by

Enrollment has begun for our next online session of Beginning Television Writing. The four-week course begins Oct. 24th and is a lot of fun…at least for your humble instructors. Here’s the listing from Writers University:

In this four week course, two established executive producers/showrunners
[That would be William Rabkin and me ] will give you an inside look at the world of episodic television. You will
learn—and practice— the actual process involved in successfully writing a spec
episodic script that will open doors across Hollywood. You will learn how to
analyze a TV show and develop “franchise”-friendly story ideas. You will develop
and write a story under the direction of the instructors, who will be acting as
showrunners… and then, after incorporating their notes, you will be sent off to
write your outline. Finally, you will develop and refine your outline with the
instructors, leaving you at the end of the course ready to write your episodic
spec script…the first step in getting a job on a TV series.

We look forward to seeing your in our virtual classroom.

TRIAL goes to Court

by

Lotbjpreview02Variety reports that Dick Wolf’s LAW AND ORDER: TRIAL BY JURY, cancelled after 12 episodes (one never aired), won’t disappear into oblivion with DEADLINE, FEDS, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and L.A. DRAGNET just yet. Court TV is playing $5 million for the 13 episodes…and will promote the airings by having Wolf appear on Catherine Crier’s show, among others.  While it’s unusual for a cable net… or any net…to pay so much for reruns of such a short-lived show, there are some other unusual aspects to the deal:

Court TV is ponying up $400,000 an episode for exclusive four-year cable-TV
rights to nine of the 13. For the four other episodes, Court TV will pay closer
to $300,000 apiece, with TNT shelling out the rest, because the four featured
the late Jerry Orbach, who had shifted over from the original "Law & Order"
series.

Orbach had inhabited the role of Det. Lennie Briscoe from the 1992-93 season
to the 2003-04 season of "Law & Order." Dick
Wolf Prods. series is one of TNT’s bellwether programs,
consistently one of the highest-rated rerun series on cable TV. Because Court TV
will take more runs of the Orbach episodes of "Trial by Jury," it will pay more
in license fees than TNT.

Court TV plans to run "Trial by Jury," which stars Bebe Neuwirth and Fred
Dalton Thompson, Saturdays at 7 p.m. in a two-hour block beginning in December.
There’ll even be one U.S.-premiere episode that never saw the light of day on
NBC.

When to Say No

by

Yesterday, I was a guest at writer’s conference at a hotel out in Simi Valley. It was one of those small-time conferences where the paid attendees were vastly out-numbered by the invited authors, 90% of whom were self-published (One of the authors there was published by Ellora’s Cave and let me tell you, those hideous CG covers look even worse in print than they do on screen). 

With the exception of having the opportunity to chat  with Leslie Klinger (author of the widely acclaimed and award-winning "New Annotated Sherlock Holmes"), the event was a complete waste of time. I didn’t sell a single book nor, it seemed, did anybody else. I also didn’t meet a single reader. Come to think of it,  I didn’t I even see one. The only people in the booksigning room were the authors… otherwise, the aisles were empty. I left when someone calling himself "The Peanut Man" went up to the microphone in the bookroom to read-aloud from his work.

On the drive back home, suffering from a skull-cracking boredom headache, I vowed to be much more
selective about the events that I agree to do. But it’s not easy to
determine, from the invitations alone, which events will be worthwhile
and which will suck the soul out of your body with a straw, cost you money, and take too much time away from your family and your writing.  My friend Harley Jane Kozak, who is on her way today to an event up in Fresno,  is also grappling with this issue:

I don’t have the experience to tell the waste-of-time gigs from the
worthwhile ones, or even figure out the criteria. Number of bodies that
show up? Books sold? Miles driven? Media interest? Quality of life
experienced by my husband and children while I’m on the road? Time
spent not writing my current novel? I operate on vague instincts.

I don’t judge the events solely on the basis of how many books I’m likely to sell. I try to guess whether it will be a good opportunity to establish relationships with booksellers, generate w0rd-of-mouth/publicity, meet readers, or network with other writers.

I also factor in the cost (how much will it cost me in gas, airfare, hotel, food etc.), inconvenience (do I have to drive to Fresno!?) and whether the event is for a good cause (fundraising for charity, educating aspiring writers, etc). And, finally, it comes down to gut instinct… do the organizers have a clue what they are doing? What are the odds that I will, at the very least, enjoy myself? Could any good possibly come from shlepping to Fresno?

I’m better at judging events than I used to be…but I still end up at conferences like the one yesterday, which raised $1200 for the homeless. That’s fine, but I suspect a good chunk of that money came from invited authors, who were pressured by the well-meaning event organizers to not only attend the conference, but pay $25  for breakfast. That should have been my first clue that this event was destined to suck…

Clueless Observations

by

Dm5_2Chadwick Saxelid is a frequent commentor here and he kindly gives my novel DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE a rave review on his new blog "Clueless Observations":

The
Past Tense spends most of its time in the past, with Sloan himself
narrating how he got started on his obsessive hobby (I guess that is what you
could call it) of solving murders.  The story also gives the reader a good
understanding of the pyschological needs that drive Sloan to do so.  Its 1962
portion is a simply wonderful murder mystery, filled with the to be expected,
and delighted in, twists and turns that keep the reader second guessing the
author.  However, the contemporary half of the story is less so.  I guessed the
identity of the killer the moment the character was introduced into the
narrative, but that didn’t make the final confrontation between the killer and
Sloan any less harrowing.  It’s the best in the series to date.  Goldberg also
stages a final reveal that, because it is subtly hidden inside a taunting
statement that the killer makes to Sloan, is utterly bloodcurdling in its
emotional intensity when Sloan later realizes what the killer admitted to
doing.  I really don’t know how Goldberg could top the emotional power of this
entry.

I didn’t, either. That’s why the follow-up, THE DEAD LETTER, is more in keeping with the previous entries in the series. It’s a straight-ahead mystery that’s more about the plot than it is about the emotional lives and psychological underpinnings of the heroes.

But the one I am working on now, THE DOUBLE LIFE, is closer to THE PAST TENSE in terms of exploring Mark Sloan’s inner life, so-to-speak. I’m not writing it in first person, but I am doing some experimenting with structure… you’ll have to tell me when it comes out next fall if I’ve succeeded or not.