My Blog

Room 222

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Extreme Series Make-overs

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LeeandcastBlogger Brent McKee is talking today about what happens when TV shows undergo a major creative overhaul. One of the examples he uses is MARTIAL LAW:

The first season was brilliant with one
of the few sour notes being the inclusion of Arsenio Hall as a cast member. It
didn’t get good ratings and the show was handed over to Lee Goldberg and William
Rabkin, who were posting on rec.arts.tv at the time. The gutted the show –
tossed out every actor except Sammo Hung, Kelly Hu and Arsenio Hall – and
created a sort of mytharc which was so incredibly stupid that even devoted fans
were sickened. I swear that if Rabkin and/or Goldberg were standing in front of
me at the time I’d have gotten as many good shots as I could and I have the
feeling a lot of fans would have done the same thing.

I won’t waste time defending our creative decisions on MARTIAL LAW (anyone remember Louis Mandylor? I didn’t think so), but I would hardly call the first season "brilliant" by any stretch. By far the biggest problem with the show was that it starred a guy who couldn’t speak English and a talkshow host pretending to be an actor, neither of whom liked each other much and both of whom were very difficult people to work with.

I’ve been integrally involved in the revamping of three shows — THE COSBY MYSTERIES, DIAGNOSIS MURDER, and SEAQUEST — and in each of those cases, I’d argue the shows were greatly improved (of course!). However of the three series, only DIAGNOSIS MURDER enjoyed a big spike in ratings and critical acclaim as a result of our changes.

The truth is that a revamped show rarely survives… and for good reason. A revamp is an act of total desperation. If the show wasn’t already in serious creative or ratings decline, it wouldn’t need an extreme make-over — or, in some cases, two or three  (look how many formats ELLEN went through before it died). But there have been shows that have survived…and even thrived… after radical revamps, MANNIX being one of the best examples.

My favorite extreme TV series make-over revolved around a western called KLONDIKE…about cowboys in Alaska in the 1880s. The ratings sucked. So the show was pulled and it came back two weeks later as ACAPULCO. Same cast, different format, warmer setting. The change didn’t help and the show was cancelled after a few episodes…

Shake-Up at COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

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According to the Hollywood Reporter, there’s been a major shake-up behind-the-scenes of the season’s most successful new series. Steven Bochco is taking over as commander-in-chief of the ABC series COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, replacing creator/showrunner/director Rob Lurie, who is moving on to develop other series. This is one of the few times that someone of Bochco’s stature has taken over a series he wasn’t associated with before… a common rescue operation usually left to journeyman showrunners, not Emmy-winning writer/creator/prod co. chiefs who usually work in their own lucrative kingdoms. This would be like David E. Kelley taking over JUST LEGAL or  John Wells taking over INCONCEIVABLE though that isn’t entirely, um,  inconceivable. Wells was brought in by ABC a few seasons back in a desperate bid  to save their troubled series THE COURT, a show he previously had nothing to do with.

Over Directing

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2005_a_history_of_violence_003Director David Cronenberg thought the best way to direct the sex scenes between Viggio Mortensen and Maria Bello’ in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE was to demonstrate by performing them with his wife:

The director hoped his explicit displays of affection with his wife would help stars VIGGO MORTENSEN and MARIA BELLO, who play man and wife in the film, feel more comfortable during their sex scenes together. But, instead, the Cronenbergs just left everyone on the set stunned.

[Mortensen said:] "The crew and Maria and I just sat and watched while he and his wife
got into something comfortable – nothing – and they started to say, ‘We
want you to (do this).’ Maria and I were both going, ‘OK, we get it. This is a testament to their relationship, they kept going and
they kept going and then we broke for lunch and some time in the
evening Maria and I got to have a crack at it. Instead of putting us at ease, we actually were kind of freaked out… Maybe some things ought to stay private."