Hanging with the Sisters

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I am off to the Writers Guild this morning to host a panel at a day-long Sisters in Crime seminar for published authors on writing television mysteries and adapting books to film. The authors in attendance are curious about how mysteries are written for TV,  how to get their books optioned, and why books often get changed so much in adaptation. My fellow panelists are writer/producers Paul Levine (JAG etc), Jeff Melvoin (ALIAS etc), Javier Grillo Marxuach (LOST etc), Matt Witten (HOUSE etc) and Jan Nash (WITHOUT A TRACE etc). Paul, Matt and I are also published authors, so we know a little something about what the authors in the audience are feeling. It should be a very interesting day.

UPDATE: I just got back and I had a wonderful time. Our panel followed one that included such luminaries as screenwriters Ron Bass and Bryce Zabel (with whom I just spent a week in Germany). My fellow panelists were witty and wise, providing insights, knowledge, advice and plenty of laughter. I also got a chance to meet folks like Anne Perry, Marcia Talley, Libby Hellman, Carolyn Hart and Sujata Massey and see old friends like Rhys Bowen, Robin Burcell and Rochelle Krich. I don’t know about the attendees, but I certainly had a wonderful time.

Sales Echo Short Film

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The LA Times reports today about novelist/screenwriter Terrill Lee Lankford’s short film based on the first chapter of his buddy Michael Connelly’s new novel ECHO PARK. The film has been posted on YouTube and Connelly credits it with giving him his best first-week sales numbers yet.

"I do believe this was a tool in getting people excited," said
Connelly, a former reporter at The Times. "It was on the Internet, it
was on YouTube, before the book was out. It sharpened excitement. So
when the book came out, they were ready to buy it. "

The short film features my friend novelist Gar Anthony Haywood in his first acting role… he proves to be a natural at it, easily out-shining the professionals in the cast with his quiet, self-assured performance. Note to Gar: get a theatrical agent pronto. 

I’ve got to go now. I’m rushing over to deepdiscountdvd.com to get myself a copy of Lee’s HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS.  I wonder why, in all the years I’ve known him, Lee has never mentioned that film before…

TV Writers Abroad

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I just got back from Germany, and part of my trip there was devoted to teaching the principles of American TV writing & producing to German writer/producers and network executives with my friend Bryce Zabel. Today on his blog, Bryce sums up the experience perfectly:

The work was very fun, working for a company that facilitates
interaction between U.S. writers and international clients. The idea
here was to share some of the tricks of the trade the U.S.
television industry has learned in order to crank out orders of 22
episodes a season at a factory-like pace. More on that in future posts,
I’d imagine. Let me just say that if anything is holding back German
television it’s not the energy, creativity or ideas of their writers
but the structure of their system which doesn’t allow them to work
together often enough to achieve the greatness they’re capable of. That
seems to be changing. Everybody I met was extremely bright, talented
and motivated to make a better product so the chances are they will,
soon.

 

Bloodsucking Lesbians

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Author Bill Crider clued me in to AfterEllen’s list of the ten best lesbian vampire movies…essential knowledge for every American.

Yes,
there is a problematic relationship between sexuality and violence in
these movies, and many lesbian vampire flicks are nothing more than
vehicles for the male desire to see hot women biting each other […]the lesbian
vampire is campy good fun for dykes, complete with plenty of heaving
bosoms framed by low-cut gowns held up by, apparently, the sheer force
of evil.

                  

No Complaints

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You don’t see me whine and complain much here, and author John Connolly knows why:

There are good things and bad things about being a writer. In truth,
the good things far outweigh the bad, and the bad are generally things
about which it is churlish to complain.

He’s right. This was the lead-up to him telling the tale of having to fly from South Africa to L.A. to interview Stephen King in New York in front of hundreds of fans and publishing execs.

True, perhaps I tried too hard with some of my questions, and I am
still kicking myself 24 hours later over the fact that I confused the
words "ambiguous" and "ambivalent" in one of my interrogations (I plead
nerves), an error that King corrected without comment. Yet all through
the interview, and for some time afterwards, a small voice in my head
reminded me that this was probably as good as it was going to get. I
was interviewing a writer whom I had long admired, and whom I had long
wanted to interview, in front of a sympathetic audience. This was a
writer whose work I had begun reading before I even entered my teens,
and my boyhood self could never have imagined that, one day, he would
be sharing a stage with this man.

I know exactly how he feels. I feel that way every day, especially when I am in the company of people like David Morrell, Steve Cannell, Stuart Kaminsky, Ken Levine, Janet Evanovich, Michael Gleason, Robert Parker, Donald Westlake, Sue Grafton, Michael Connelly, William Link…the list goes on and on and on. Half the time I am with these writers I’ve admired for so long, many of whom I now count as friends, I am struck by how unbelievably fortunate and privileged I am.

Scrap Tales

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For some time now, Alan Barer has been sharing memories on his blog about our family and his life selling scrap metal with my grandfather Dave in Walla Walla, Washington. Although he’s talking about my family and not yours, I think you’ll enjoy the rememberances as much as I do…and agree that he’s a natural-born storyteller.

One thing Frank did do for me was to advise me never to eat
food at the home of one of our clients who lived at and operated the
city dump in a small eastern Oregon town.

I arrived there late
in the afternoon. The table was set with stew, milk, etc. My host
invited me to join for dinner. Hungry as I was I declined. The next
morning when I arrived to load, the same food was sitting on the table
at room temperature. I also declined the invitation to breakfast.

The A Team

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Sarah Weinman reports that my friends Stephen J. Cannell and Janet Evanovich have signed a "major deal" to co-write a new, hardcover adventure series for Warner Books.  I’m having lunch with Steve tomorrow and will try to coerce him into giving me all the details.

Serial Killers

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The big media story lately is the death of all the new serialized dramas the networks have launched over the past two years in an attempt to captue the success of LOST, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and 24.  Basically, nobody seems to have the time, energy, or trust to commit to a deep, lasting and meantingful relationship with more than one or two of these series. After the death of shows like SURFACE, KIDNAPPED, REUNION, THIEF, INVASION, SMITH, and the anemic ratings of VANISHED, THREE DEGREES and THE NINE, The New York Times reports that the networks are finally getting the hint:

In every television season
some new lesson about the American audience is imparted. This season’s
lesson was clear within the first weeks of the fall: you can ask people
to commit only so many hours to intense, dark, intricately constructed
serialized dramas, to sign huge chunks of their lives away to follow
every minuscule plot development and character tic both on the air and
on Internet sites crowded with similarly addicted fanatics.

“The message we received was that people have strains on their
lives,” said Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment. “People
are saying, ‘I’ve got my handful of shows like this, and I don’t want
more.’ ”

[…]Dana Walden, president of the 20th Century Fox Television studio,
said: “What the audience seems to be saying is: ‘Enough. We can’t get
involved with more of these.’ ”

Logically this result should have been expected. But logic often
runs aground in the offices of television executives who endlessly try
to anticipate the future by repeating the past. Or, as Preston Beckman,
executive vice president for entertainment for the Fox network, put it,
“In this business we always overcompensate.”

 

Even LOST is feeling the heat. The Los Angeles Times notes that CRIMINAL MINDS, which is in the same time slot, is drawing almost as may viewers these days.

…conventional wisdom would dictate that "Criminal Minds," now in its
second season, should be moldering on TV’s rubbish heap.  So why
is the series growing into a bona-fide hit that last week delivered its
most-watched episode ever, with 16.8 million total viewers, just a
shade behind the still-formidable "Lost" (17.1 million), according to
Nielsen Media Research?

"This was the year of serialized dramas trying to recapture lightning in a bottle the way
that ‘Desperate Housewives,’ ‘Lost,’ ’24’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ did,"
said John Rash, director of broadcast negotiations for
Minneapolis-based ad firm Campbell-Mithun. "But almost all of them were
rejected by the audience."

The growth of "Criminal Minds" is
maybe the most convincing proof that not everyone wants to be chained
to a dense, character-packed drama that unspools like a Dickensian
novel. And even those who do have their limits. There is a reason why
formula sells, why genres become generic in the first place.