My Blog

Voyage to the Bottom of the Barrel

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VoyToTheBotOfTheSeaVariety reports today that Fox is mounting at VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM SEA revival…

The original show, as you may recall, was about a giant submarine exploring the sea and starred Richard Basehart and David Hedison. It was basically Star Trek underwater… with giant octopuses and algae monsters and space aliens (and, my favorite toy as a kid, "the flying sub.").

The new version, however, is going to be substantially different.

the world’s most advanced submarine is sent on a deep-sea salvage hunt, inadvertently bringing aboard a predatory organism from the ocean floor.

"They got that we wanted to jumpstart Irwin’s franchise not only with cutting-edge effects, but an intense story with a fantastic villain," Jashni said. "We were inspired by imagining what would happen if we put ‘Alien’ underwater."

So it’s two old ideas rehashed… ALIEN and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. But is it really going to capture the camp fun of the old series? Unlikely.

This is the third Irwin Allen TV series revival in recent years. An ABC revival of TIME TUNNEL died in development. The WB’s LOST IN SPACE revival, directed by John Woo, was scrapped. The New Line Pictures version of LOST IN SPACE was a critical and financial bomb.

So after a string of Irwin Allen remake failures, why the mad rush to develop another one?

The Mail I Get…

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Complete strangers from all over the world are always sending me emails asking me to “buy” or “represent” their scripts. This makes no sense to me. I’m a TV writer, not an agent or studio exec. I’m trying to sell my own work, not get other people jobs. Here’s one of the latest queries…clearly a mass mailing, since the fellow who sent it doesn’t even know if I am a man or a woman…

Respected
Sir/Madam,

I am very much interested in film script writing. I
would like to send the spec. script of a original,
Psychological-thriller story-Original Psycho for your
review and possible representation.

The story’s main antagonist is also the story’s
protagonist – Joy the psycho. Tom and Joy are
brothers who live together. Tom is proud and
dominates Joy and extracts work from him. Because of
this domination, Joy one day murders Tom. He looks at
Tom’s dead body for many days and becomes a psycho.
After a few years, at the start of college Joy is
ragged by his senior – Shaw, for this Joy murders
Shaw. After a few days a girl – Mono falls in love
with Joy. When Mono visits Joy’s house, he murders
her, has sex with her dead body, and reads a poem. The
Police start suspecting everyone and the Police
Investigators start a inquiry into the murders but
they are unable to find the killer. Joy kills a
poet(Mil), a military officer(Sky) and a
painter(Silver). When a investigating officer- Rom
visits Joy’s house, Joy captures the officer and ties
him in the house. Next Joy kills a politician (White)
and buries his body along with the other three bodies
in a single graveyard. Later he creates a pot with the
mud from the grave of his murdered victims. When Joy
drinks milk out of this pot, a Police officer shoots
the pot. Rom comes and holds the neck of the Police
office and asks “ why did you shoot the pot?” and
tells the officer that Joy wrote a poem, and killed
the characters found in the poem, and out of the mud
from their graveyard, Joy made this pot. His ambition
was to drink milk out of this pot, but you broke this
pot. Now his ambition is not fulfilled and he will be
a psycho always. At last, Police officers arrest Joy
and take him away.

If this spec. script – Original Psycho looks
interesting, please contact me.

Registration Number : 975354

Address:
Thanking you,

Yours Sincerely,
3-43-164,
Krishnapuri colony,
West marred pally, MR.U.LAXMINARASIMHASWAMY.
Secunderabad,
Andhra pradesh, India. 500026.

“The Best TV Shows That Never Were”… Will Be

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GoldRetroLogoOn Monday, Aug 16 at 8 pm, ABC will air the one-hour special “The Best TV Shows That Never Were.”

For the last two years, I was convinced the show would live up to its title.

The special, which I wrote and produced with Bill Rabkin and Steve Gerbson, is based on my book Unsold Television Pilots and is a collection of clips of memorable samples episodes of proposed series from the last twenty years.

We delivered the show for May sweeps two years ago… and then ABC sat on it. They never told us why. Anyway, now it’s finally airing…and you can see clips from such memorable bombs as “A Dog’s Life,” “Samurai District Attorney,” “Higher Ground,” “Mandrake,” “Fuzzbucket,” and “The People.”

Don’t miss it!

UPDATE: Here’s an old announcement for the show…from Morty’s TV Archive.

ABC to Air Unseen Pilots!

[June 11, 2002] This fall ABC will air a special called “The Best TV Shows That Never Were,” a collection unseen TV pilots. It’s actually the second edition of “TBTVSTNW,” the first aired in the 90’s. This collection will feature “Great Day,” starring “Happy Days'” Al Molinaro, “about what fun it was to be a skid row bum in New York City,” an Aaron Spelling TV show called “Velvet,” about four aerobics instructors who are really only working for “Polly Bergen’s Velvet International” health spas as a cover for their jobs as secret agents and “Shivers,” about a divorced man (“Beverly Hills, 90210” dad James Eckhouse) who, with his two children, moves into a house haunted by a Revolutionary War-era troublemaker and his girlfriend. The special, which according to an ABC source may turn into a series, is based on author and entertainment writer Lee Goldberg’s book Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw , an addictive collection of the “best” of the bad high-concept TV pilots that, in most cases, never saw screen time. No date has been announced yet.
Now as much fun as all this sounds, my problem with it is that it’s a clipfest, and I want to see the whole show. Let’s hope it does become a regular series. There are thousands of hours of unaired pilots, and ABC has nothing exciting to run anyway, so why not show a different one each week? Ever see Bette Davis in “The Decorator?”

That’s a Mighty Nice Hat, Partner…

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I’ve been on a western kick lately, devouring books by Elmer Kelton, Frederick Manfred and Larry McMurtry among others… and gobbling up western movies and TV shows, too. Tonight, I went to a book signing/reading of western authors at Dutton’s in Brentwood. Virtually all the authors who showed up (45 minutes late, by the way) were wearing cowboy hats and western garb. I thought it was a little silly… and they looked terribly out of place.

I’m a crime writer… I don’t show up at signings in a cop’s uniform… or dressed as a crime scene tech… or wearing in a trenchcoat and Fedora. Why do western writers feel they have to dress the part? If they don’t, will readers think their work isn’t authentic?

The Waking Nightmare

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I finished the fourth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, tentatively titled “The Waking Nightmare,” today and sent it off to my publisher… two weeks ahead of my deadline. I wrote the book in four months, despite breaking both my arms and working by day as a writer/producer on MISSING.

It was real important to me to make my deadline, even though my editor offered to extend it. I think the book helped me recuperate faster than I might have otherwise. But now I’m afraid I’ll never be able to get a deadline extension from my editor in the future. He can always say “how bad can it be? You made your deadline before with two broken arms!”

The rush to finish the book is also why you’ve seen fewer postings here lately. I’ll try to contribute more frequently…

Paul Quarrington is Back

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My friend Paul Quarrington has written two of the best, and funniest non-fiction books about fishing ever (Fishing With My Old Guy, From the Far Side of the River: Chest-Deep in Little Fish and Big Ideas )… along with a bunch of novels that have earned him well-deserved comparisons to John Irving and Robertson Davies. He’s got a new novel coming out, prompting Canada’s Globe And Mail to devote some serious column inches to his wit and wisdom. Here are some of his choice quotes…

His preferred pastime is, famously, fly fishing. He has travelled the world to indulge it, and keeps on a nearby bookshelf Ernest Schwiebert’s two-volume work entitled Trout. The heavy tomes are, exclusively, about every variety and possible permutation of trout fishing. “I have always thought,” Quarrington says with studied neutrality, gazing on them, “that there is room for a novel about the struggle between dry and wet fly fishing. That would be a thoughtful novel.”

“For a long time I thought of myself more as a musician than a writer,” he says. With the Queen Street Toronto band called the Continental Drift, he toured across Canada. “It’s a great life for a writer. You’re on tour in cities where you stay in 25-cent hotel rooms where the main item of furniture is an ashtray. And you’ve got nothing to do. So what you do is write.”

You can hear Paul read from his new book GALVESTON here.

Another Reason to Go in the Furniture Business

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A fellow writer-producer, with years of experience in series television, shared this incredible conversation with me…

Lee,

Absolutely, positively 100% true dialogue from yesterday’s meeting with
a Hollywood agent:

Agent: “I can’t sell this courtroom stuff. You got anything supernatural?”

Me: “I’ve done a treatment for a time travel Civil War story.”

Agent: “Time travel’s good, but don’t make it a period piece.”

Me: “So how do we travel in time?”

Agent: “Don’t go back so far.”

Me: “Ahhhh.”

Agent: “You want to do courtroom stuff, how about a murder trial in
outer space? ‘Alien’ meets ‘Presumed Innocent.'”

Me: “Ahhhh.”

Agent: “Okay, okay…how about this? A lawyer discovers the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court is really Satan.”

Me: “I don’t do non-fiction.”

No TV Tie-In for Airport

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Looks like “John Wayne Airport” won’t become “The O.C. Airport” after all…

An Orange County supervisor’s idea to rename John Wayne Airport after a prime-time soap opera called “The O.C.” lasted about as long as one of the show’s short-lived romances.

Two days after suggesting a name change to capitalize on the show’s popularity and help give the county a hip, marketable image, Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby said maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“Let’s just say it was a trial balloon. It crashed and burned,” Norby said. “With all the priorities we have, it is not going to be one of ours.”

Norby’s staff was besieged with e-mail and telephone complaints in the two days since he floated the idea at a board meeting and in interviews with reporters. He never proposed the idea formally and said he certainly wouldn’t now after seeing the reception it received.

“I think people are happy with John Wayne Airport,” Norby said. “I’m happy with it too.”

I guess this rules out Kennedy Airport capitalizing on the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks movie by dubbing a terminal “The Terminal Terminal.”

As Primitive As Can Be

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Bob Sassone alerted me that Telepictures is now casting for real people to become the fictional characters on Gilligan’s Island… a milionaire and his wife, a movie star, etc… for a new reality series.

Here’s the casting call…

CALLING ALL CASTAWAYS!

Get ready to take a three-hour tour and end up on an uncharted desert island.

That’s right — Gilligan’s Island is coming back on TBS — and this time, you can be a part of it!

The producers of “Gilligan’s Island” are teaming with the producers of the “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” to bring you The Real Gilligan’s Island.

This all-new version of the classic sitcom will feature real life versions of the original show’s characters: a real-life skipper, first mate, millionaire couple, movie star, professor and Kansas farm girl. And one of them could be you!

Just like the original show, the castaways will work together to get off the island, and episodes will include situations drawn from the original series.

So if you’re the perfect Gilligan, Skipper, Thurston or Lovey Howell, Ginger Grant, Mary Ann, or The Professor (just what was his name, anyway?), fill out the application and mail it in, along with a video of yourself telling us why you’d make a great castaway.

Who knows, it could be you who takes the fateful trip to that tropic island nest.

Got questions? Call our Casting Hotline: 888-634-4550

Please submit tapes by 6/30/04

REAL GILLIGAN’S ISLAND OPEN CASTING CALLS

Saturday, June 12th
Towne East Square
7700 East Kellogg
Wichita, Kansas
10am-4pm

Saturday, June 19th
Boston, MA
location and times TBA

Thursday, June 24th
Tampa, FL
location and times TBA

We’ll be adding location details — check back often.

DON’T FORGET TO COME DRESSED AS YOUR FAVORITE CASTAWAY! (Here are some examples of what we’d like to see: Gilligan-red shirt
and sailor hat, Ginger-evening gown, Mary Ann-daisy dukes and pig tails, Skipper-captain hat and blue shirt, Professor-something scholarly, The Millionaire and his wife-come dressed up to the nines. Be creative!)

I can’t wait until they do the reality version of “Hogan’s Heroes.”