They aren’t quite as hot as the photos hacked from Paris Hilton’s sidekick, but Aldo captured the mob scene surrounding Robert Crais’ signing at Mysteries To Die For.
My Blog
Big Deals For TV Scribes
Lots of good news for TV writer/producers today…
Former LAW & ORDER producer Barry Schindel has signed a multi-year pact with Paramount that includes taking over as the showrunner on NUMBERS.
THE SHIELD creator/producer Shawn Ryan has signed a three-year deal with Fox that will net him "the high seven figures."
Production is about to begin on "Locked and Loaded," the feature starring 50 Cent that was written by my buddy Terence Winter and directed by Jim Sheridan. Terry wrote some of the best-loved, and most honored, episodes of THE SOPRANOS…proving that having THE NEW ADVENTURES OF FLIPPER on your resume isn’t necessarily a career-killer… which is a big relief for yours-truly.
And Ben Affleck is in talks to play actor George Reeves in "Truth Justice and the American Way," a movie written as a spec by my buddy Paul Bernbaum (who once owned the original Superman suit and displayed it in a glass case in his living room). Adrien Brody and Diane Lane also star. Paul and I worked together on LIKELY SUSPECTS and MARTIAL LAW… proving that having those two shows in your past won’t stop you from enjoying success in feature films… which is also a big relief to yours truly.
Left Coast Crime
I’m off to Left Coast Crime in El Paso tomorrow. I will try to send you some dispatches from the convention…but don’t be surprised if there are fewer posts than usual over the next few days.
The Artful Writer
Thanks to John August, I discovered Craig Mazin’s The Artful Writer, one of the most interesting and fearless blogs around about the business of screenwriting…or, more accurately, the issues being discussed among the various factions of the Writers Guild of America. While I don’t always agree with the views expressed on the site, I am enjoying the lively debates… and learning some things along the way.
In recent days, they’ve tackled the influence of rarely-employed members on Guild policy, the pros and cons of listing all contributing writers in movie credits, and the conflict between WGAw and WGAe.
If you’re a member of the WGA, or curious about the issues facing professional screenwriters, I urge you to check out the site.
Keep Your Spock Ears At Home
The instant UPN cancelled the low-rated STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, the fans immediately began mounting the inevitable campaign to save the show. They’ve raised $35,000 so far and took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times. Their goal is to either get the series renewed… or raise the $35 million it will cost to make this dream come true:
I want you to sit down in front of your TV this October. To hear the
rising sounds of instruments beginning to play in harmony. To see the
vibrant colours of scenery fade into life. I want you all to see Enterprise‘s fifth season explode on to your TV screens in a magnificent blaze of sound and passion signifying everything.
Everything? They must have asked the folks at the Colonial Fan Force for help writing up their call-to-arms.
However, there are at least a couple people associated with the campaign who have dipped their toes in the real world: as part of their plans for a Feb. 25th rally outside the Paramount gates, the folks at SaveEnterprise.com are asking Trekkers to leave their Spock ears at home.
Although we think that coming in dress would be great, We also
think this would stereotype us all as "Hardcore" Trekkers and
would hurt more than help. Please wear your daily wear.
The frightening thing is, for some people the Star Trek uniform is their daily wear, like that nutcake who wore her Federation garb, complete with phaser and tricorder, to jury duty (and who still wears her halloween get-up in her day job at — where else?– Kinkos). The folks at Zap2it have another take on it:
People willing to donate $10,000 of their hard-earned money (mostly refundable
if they don’t reach their goals or Paramount shuns their overtures) for a
low-rated series don’t look desperate but, apparently, those same people in
costumes do.
They want to raise $35 million for a fifth season of a crappy TV show… and Trekkers wonder why people ridicule them.
Okay, I’ll tell them.
It was one thing when they were fighting to renew, and then resurrect, the original STAR TREK back in the 60s. It was a campaign that made sense, that people could get behind.
Wake up, Trekkers. It’s not 1969 anymore. You won that battle. STAR TREK isn’t the under-appreciated TV series that was treated so unfairly… it’s a multi-billion dollar industry.
It’s hard to work up any sympathy for your cause, or share your righteous
fury, when there’s so much STAR TREK out there. There have been five STAR TREK TV series, hundreds of novels, a dozen
movies… enough already. There have been 500 episodes of the show. There’s plenty of Star Trek out there. Too much, in fact. And now you want people to get all worked up over the fact that the fifth series is being canceled after their fourth season?
What the hell is the matter with you people?
It’s more obvious now, than ever, that Trekkers have absolutely no perspective. With so many worthy causes out there needing our time, money and attention, seeing people going to all this effort for a fifth season of a TV show in franchise that has already been milked to death for billions of consumer dollars is beyond pathetic, embarassing, and moronic…
It’s wrong.
Battlestar Galactica
I thought Friday night’s episode of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was great fun…the best yet. The show gets better every week and is evolving, after a rocky start, into an entertaining cross between LOST IN SPACE and the original STAR TREK.
Like LOST IN SPACE, the heroes are wandering through the cosmos without a home and no idea where they’re going. Dr. Baltar has become an insane, less-cartoony, version of Dr. Zachary Smith…injecting some much needed humor (and, in a strange way, humanity) into the show. The robot from the Jupitor II has been updated into the sexy, imaginary Cylon woman who exists only in Dr. Balter’s head…or is she more than that?
Like the original STAR TREK, there’s no preaching, no grand space opera, just action, adventure, fun
and sex. That’s right, sex. This week, we actually saw two characters writhing
around and, get this, having orgasms (though one of the characters
is a Cylon who’s spine glows when she’s climaxing, but let’s not get into that). Capt Kirk used to get laid every episode…but in the
recent incarnations
of STAR TREK, the pompous, aren’t-we-so-noble-you-could-vomit crewmembers have either been celibate… or
dealt with sex like uptight teenagers (when the producers weren’t engaged in cringe-worthy leering… like those ridiculous spongebath scenes in early seasons of ENTERPRISE..or the skin-tight uniform that hugged Seven of Nine’s enormous Borg Breasts on VOYAGER). After watching STAR TREK for
the last 15 years, I was beginning to think "Abstinance" was the new Prime Directive.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is such a refreshing change from the stilted, self-important, sanitized scifi we’ve been getting over the last few years. Each episode reinforces just how calcified the STAR TREK franchise has become. It’s no coincidence UPN finally mercy-killed ENTERPRISE the same season that BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is injecting new life into the genre. It’s as if showrunner Ron Moore, an ST:NG vet, is intentionally rebelling against all the sanitizing, drama-smothering restrictions and formulas he had to endure while writing for TREK. How anybody could endure ENTERPRISE after watching BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is beyond me.
To be far, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA isn’t the first post-STAR TREK show to re-energize the genre. FARSCAPE managed to muddy space up a bit it’s first season…but then wallowed in melodrama and overly complicated serial storylines, taking all the fun (and almost all of the humor) out of the show, alienating new viewers and some of the old ones, too.
If the writers of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA continue having this much fun with the stories and the characters, the series has the potential to be the next great scifi franchise… and attract more and more new viewers every week.
(This is one time where the revival is infinitely better than the original series that inspired it)
A Writer’s Life
This weekend was a good example of what life is like for a professional writer:
- I wrote an article about writing DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE WAKING NIGHTMARE for MJ Rose’s excellent Backstory blog.
- I traveled to San Francisco to speak at a writers conference.
- I proofed the copyedited manuscript for my fifth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which has to arrive in NY no later than Feb. 23.
- I proofed the galleys for my novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, which have to arrive on my editor’s desk no later than Feb. 23.
- I revised the manuscript for my sixth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which is due March 1, but that I need to finish by Feb 22, so I can stick it in the FedEx packet with the copyedited manuscript for DM #5… because I am leaving on Wednesday to attend & speak at Left Coast Crime in El Paso.
- I drove back to L.A. from S.F…and thought about the plot for my seventh DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel. I made some notes when I stopped for lunch.
- I posted some articles on my blog.
- I wrote some notes for a network pitch meeting that’s set for Tuesday.
And this was a light weekend… I didn’t have to write a script or write a chapter in a book.
The Morons of the World Have a New King
While I was up in the Bay Area, I clipped this story from the San Francisco Chronicle:
Jonathan Fish, a 20-year-old San Francisco resident, was cruising across the upper deck
of the Bay Bridge at 10:40 a.m., smoking a cigarette. When he got near the
Harrison Street off-ramp, he rolled down the window of his white 2004 Ford
Expedition SUV and tossed out the butt, authorities said.
Instead of bounding along the pavement, however, the still-lit cigarette
blew back in and set the interior of Fish’s $30,000 SUV ablaze. Black smoke filled the vehicle. Fish pulled over to the far left-hand
lane about 100 feet from the Harrison Street exit and leaped from the
Expedition — leaving the SUV in neutral instead of park. The flaming Expedition rolled driverless into a guardrail by the exit,
where it crashed to a stop and burned to the frame.
California Highway Patrol officers and fire crews arrived and closed the
off-ramp until 11:45 a.m., tying up traffic all the way back to the toll plaza.
Fish had his hair singed but was otherwise unharmed.
The guy is being charged with littering… and criminal stupidity.
Grumpy Goldberg
Ian Hamet over at Banana Oil regularly reads my blog and thinks I’ve been grumpy lately (though he thinks I wasn’t grumpy enough with the people I met at the San Francisco Writers Conference. Did I mention that they didn’t have a single copy of any of my books for sale in the conference bookstore? Grumpier writers than me would have walked away from the conference in a huff… but I’m not prone to huffs).
So I did a quick scan of my posts here over the last few weeks… and Ian is right. It looks like I’ve been using my blog mostly to whine and complain (which proves, I suppose, that I really am a professional writer). I’ll try to be more upbeat in future posts.
The Lit Nazis
These are some very scary people. Let’s hope nobody ever teaches these morons how to rub two sticks together and make fire, or lots of books are gonna be burned.
Among the books they think are "vulgar titles" and "pornography" include I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, BELOVED, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, and CATCHER IN THE RYE.
If they think those are bad, let’s hope they never get around to reading THE BIBLE.