Fanfic Hypocrisy

by

You gotta love the hypocrisy and idiocy of fanficcers. It seems the "fanfic community" is in an uproar because some fanficcer stole from another fanficcers work. Author John Scalzi sums up the laughably inane situation nicely:

Let’s remember one fundamental thing about fanfic: Almost all of it
is entirely illegal to begin with. It’s the wild and wanton
misappropriation of copyrighted material (I’m sure there is fanfic that
features public domain characters, just not nearly as much as there is
of, say, Harry Potter fanfic). Copyright holders may choose not to see
it, or may even tacitly encourage it from time to time, but the fact of
the matter is that if you’re writing fanfic, you’re already doing
something legally out of bounds. And, really, if you’re already wantonly violating copyright, what’s a little plagiarism to go along with it? Honestly. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I recognize this attitude probably won’t sit well with fanficcers,
but this is really an "honor among thieves" sort of issue, isn’t it? If
you’ve already morally justified intellectual theft so you can play
with Harry and Hermione and Draco and whomever else you want to play
with, I’m not entirely sure how one couldn’t also quite easily justify taking juicy chunks of other people’s text to play with as well.

[…]Out in the real world, I take plagiarism rather very seriously, but
then, out in the real world, I take appropriation of copyright
seriously as well. If fanficcers want me to oblige their outrage about
fanfic plagiarism, I suppose I would have to ask how it is essentially
more serious than the appropriation of copyrighted characters and
settings, and how if I must criticize one why I am not also therefore
obliged to criticize the other.

(Thanks to Jim Winter for the heads-up on this).

That Girl and Charlie’s Angels

by

The Globe  (the sleazy tabloid, not the Boston paper) reports that Marlo Thomas is returning as THAT GIRL in a sitcom pilot for ABC. In the revival, she plays a grandmother whose 20-year-old grand-daughter is a struggling actress in New York. This reminds me of the disasterous MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW movie  (MARY & RHODA) that ABC did a few years back, which focused on the original sitcom stars’ daughters and their laughless struggles.  The tabloid also reports that all the actresses, from Farrah Fawcett to Tanya Roberts, whot starred in CHARLIES ANGELS are reuniting for an ABC TV movie.

Television Chronicles is Back

by

Doves2247x330
Television Chronicles was a magazine made for TV geeks like me. It was chock full of interviews and episode guides on classic and not-so-class TV series. Sadly, the magazine disappeared from news stands a few years back. But I am very pleased to report that Television Chronicles has returned as an online magazine. The current issue has an indepth look at the making and demise of the Bill Bixby series THE MAGICIAN.

Brain Dead

by

It seems like everybody is apologizing lately for not keeping up their blogs.  Author Duane Swierczynski, for instance, blames the book he’s working on and Tess Gerritsen blames the beautiful Maine weather. Me, I’m just brain dead. I finished my 8th DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel last week and it feels lke my brain has been wrung out and left dry of any ideas, even for a blog post. So, in lieu of coming up with anything clever for my blog today, I’ll steal some cleverness from others.

My brother Tod found a novel way of dealing with some hate mail, Ken Levine has some good advice for industry outsiders with pilot ideas, and it’s nice to see one of my favorite authors, Daniel Woodrell, is finally getting some attention (my friend Denise Hamilton also gave his latest book a rave in Sunday’s LA Times Book Review).

I’m a Writer

by

Wrtcv0906
Michael Bracken was kind enough to alert me that there’s a full-page interview with me in the September issue of The Writer magazine. I did the interview so long ago that it completed slipped my mind. I haven’t read it yet, so please let me know if I come off like a brilliantly clever fellow or a complete moron.

My Space on MySpace

by

I have no idea what MySpace is or how to use it or why I should be part of it… but I have bowed to peer pressure and I am there with a cross-posting of this blog. Please be my friend, whatever the heck that means in MySpaceSpeak…

The End of Book Warehouses?

by

Newsweek reports that publishing legend Jason Epstein is one of the backers behind the Espresso Book Machine, a new device that can print-out a bound book in minutes for "a penny a page." A 300 page book can be produced in just three minutes.

Imagine if there were a magic machine that could print entire books in
mere minutes. You could go to a bookstore or coffee shop, choose a book
online from millions of digital titles and then—poof!—out would come a
fully bound book. You could get rare and out-of-print titles, in any
language, and for less because the inventory isn’t stored on site.

The machine is now being tested at the World Bank Bookstore in Washington D.C.

Film-making Boot Camp

by

The Kansas City Star and the AP reported today about an innovative new film-making program at Stephens College in Missouri that my writing partner Bill Rabkin is actively involved in as an instructor. The students learned by doing — they worked as the crew on an hour-long pilot directed by Bill and written by Ken LaZebnik, who is also dean of the School of Performing Arts at the Stephens College.

Director Bill Rabkin, whose credits include a stint as director and
executive producer of "Diagnosis Murder," called the student crew
members eager to learn and overwhelmingly positive – even in the face
of lunches on 16-hour days that often consisted of bologna and cheese
sandwiches on white bread.

For LaZebnik, who co-wrote the "Prairie Home Companion Movie" with
Garrison Keillor, the film camp is more than just a teaching exercise.
He hopes to shop "Triangle" – his story of a family struggling to cope
with the death of a 6-year-old child while adopting a new daughter from
China – to studios as well as regional film festivals.

"This is an educational experience. But it’s also for real," he said.

Purgatory for Pilots

by

Variety reports that the web is becoming a haven for busted TV pilots:

In recent weeks, at least four failed pilots
from the 2005-06 development season have ended up online on services
such as YouTube and Break.com. Inspired by the saga of "Nobody’s
Watching" — the year-old WB pilot that found new life after popping up
on YouTube (Daily Variety, July 21) — interested parties seem intent on getting their work out to viewers, one way or another.

That
has sent studios scrambling, forcing them to quickly decide whether to
let the shows live online, where they might build a cult following, or
ask the services to yank them. For the most part, studios seem to be
choosing the latter option.

While the studios pretend that these pilots "mysteriously" show up on the net, and that their lawyers are furious about it, they almost always give up the act (or at least delay taking action) after the pilots begin getting  some buzz and wracking up hits.

Studio insiders warn that producers or talent who leak pilots could face penalties.
But
it seems unlikely studios will risk alienating creators, especially
since most pilots simply die after they’re rejected by networks. If
anything, having consumers respond positively to a show rejected by a
network only serves to validate the studio’s decision to take a risk on
a project.

And while "Nobody’s Watching" has generated much hype
for its YouTube resurrection, it’s hardly the first pilot to find a
life on the service.

Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel’s cult
classic "Lookwell" has been seen more than 50,000 times, while
"Awesometown" — the Fox sketch comedy pilot starring "Saturday Night
Live’s" Andy Samberg — has been streamed over 225,000 times.

Crafty Advice

by

Alex Epstein’s CRAFTY TV WRITING is a terrific new book full of great advice about the craft of episodic writing and insights into the business of television (and I’m not just saying that because he quotes liberally from me and this blog).  If I didn’t have a book of my own, SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING, to recommend, this is the one I’d tell every aspiring TV writer to buy. I’d also strongly recommend WRITING THE TV DRAMA SERIES by Pamela Douglas. Tell you what, buy all three. You’ll thank me later.