FETT YOU
Michael Patrick Sullivan is a writer, editor, and secret agent* and can be contacted at m@redrighthand.net
- Type O Negative: Bloody Kisses
- Tenspotting
- The Auslander Files
- Zero Sight: Bad Call
- Mastermind
- Pop Therapy
- McSweeney's & Mountain Man Dance Moves
- Wireless Programme @ Strawdog Theatre
- CBR
- Mission 22
- R3D CH4NN3L
*He is not a secret agent. Not at all.
©2026 Michael Patrick Sullivan
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NETWORK MASH UP
UPN + THE WB = CW
So after reading that, my first thought was this.
"Less opportunities."
From the point of view of trying to pry my way in, this is just X number of opportunities per year that aren't gonna be there anymore. It's a whole network going away. Broadcast network development is (theoretically) going down by 20%. yeah, there's still cable outlets and what-not, and who knows what CW's (The CW ?) attitiude is going to be toward development, but even then...there's only two hours a night these guys have to program...unless they kick it up to match the big three, which I wish they would. Fox too. Screw the news. That's what news channels are for!
The lovely, witty and uber-fantastical Jane Espenson (yeah, wonder what my opinion of her might be...) looks at it from the point of view of someone completely opposite of where I am.
This whole deal came at just the right time. I've been way too sleepy to think of anything to post lately and had been considering putting up another One Page. I'll save that for another time.
So after reading that, my first thought was this.
"Less opportunities."
From the point of view of trying to pry my way in, this is just X number of opportunities per year that aren't gonna be there anymore. It's a whole network going away. Broadcast network development is (theoretically) going down by 20%. yeah, there's still cable outlets and what-not, and who knows what CW's (The CW ?) attitiude is going to be toward development, but even then...there's only two hours a night these guys have to program...unless they kick it up to match the big three, which I wish they would. Fox too. Screw the news. That's what news channels are for!The lovely, witty and uber-fantastical Jane Espenson (yeah, wonder what my opinion of her might be...) looks at it from the point of view of someone completely opposite of where I am.This whole deal came at just the right time. I've been way too sleepy to think of anything to post lately and had been considering putting up another One Page. I'll save that for another time.
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LINE UP
Scott The Reader wanted a favorite line from self-written works. I'm finally getting around to it. It's not easy. I'm going with this one...at the moment. And as asked, this is provided with no context whatsoever.
"Yes. You are. If you have to sign your name with an X that looks like it was drawn by a kindergartener with a motor disorder, you absolutely are."
"Yes. You are. If you have to sign your name with an X that looks like it was drawn by a kindergartener with a motor disorder, you absolutely are."
-Jack, King Vs. Queen
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"IT'S THE FREAKIEST SHOW..."*
I like to keep track of British TV.
Besides having brought us the obvious (Monty Python, Blackaddder, The Office), many of my favorite programmes have come from the Isles. Greg Rucka turned me on to The Sandbaggers and it kicks some mighty cold war ass. House of Cards, Spooks (known here as MI-5) and State of Play are all digable.
And one of the better shows I saw in 2005 was the latest series of Doctor Who.
It is in that spirit that I tried out Life on Mars. It comes from Tony Jordan, the creator of Hu$tle (which just started airing on AMC) and Matthew Graham (the aforementioned Spooks and Who).
Life on Mars features John Simm as Sam Tyler, a Detective Chief Inspector handling a homicide case in 2006. He runs into some snags and a car runs into him. When he comes to, it's 1973. Sounds like a comedy, but it's mostly straight up drama. For the most part, not bad drama. It didn't stand out a whole to me. The crime part felt somewhat pedestrian, except on the odd occasion that Sam brings some 2006 style criminology to 1973...and one excellent scene where we find that his 1973 colleagues have a much better way of getting info out of little old ladies. I did, however dig the means by which we are led to question the level of reality that Tyler is experiencing 33 years in the past. Aside from just encountering clues to his 2006 crime, voices from the present, in the hospital, break through into his reality. Frequently in the form of Nick, the boyfriend of the women's division constable he befriends.
That Annie (Liz White) is an interesting character. Maybe just a little too cute, though. It's through her that we are reminded that in 1973, a female cop was a peculiar thing and was generally deskbound. We also see how sexual harassment just wasn't a concern then. What I like most is that, while she is the character who must necessarily believe him in order to facilitate the plot, she's constantly doing it with a grain of salt and may just be humoring him.
The whole time I was watching this, I couldn't help but imagine an Americanized version, with a little more of the funny. The thing is, in Life on Mars, modern politically correct policing is contrasted with a rougher, less by-the-rules style in 1973. Some of our better modern cop shows are good because they aren't so clean. The Shield comes to mind. Still, imagine Vic Mackey, with all his 2006 knowledge thrown back to the seventies and teamed up with a disco dude, driving around in a Gran Turino and beating the snot out of Huggy Bear.
I'll definitely give it another spin and see where it takes me.
*"Life on Mars" is the David Bowie tune on Sam's iPod just before he's hit and in his 8-track when he wakes up in '73.
Besides having brought us the obvious (Monty Python, Blackaddder, The Office), many of my favorite programmes have come from the Isles. Greg Rucka turned me on to The Sandbaggers and it kicks some mighty cold war ass. House of Cards, Spooks (known here as MI-5) and State of Play are all digable.
And one of the better shows I saw in 2005 was the latest series of Doctor Who.
It is in that spirit that I tried out Life on Mars. It comes from Tony Jordan, the creator of Hu$tle (which just started airing on AMC) and Matthew Graham (the aforementioned Spooks and Who).
Life on Mars features John Simm as Sam Tyler, a Detective Chief Inspector handling a homicide case in 2006. He runs into some snags and a car runs into him. When he comes to, it's 1973. Sounds like a comedy, but it's mostly straight up drama. For the most part, not bad drama. It didn't stand out a whole to me. The crime part felt somewhat pedestrian, except on the odd occasion that Sam brings some 2006 style criminology to 1973...and one excellent scene where we find that his 1973 colleagues have a much better way of getting info out of little old ladies. I did, however dig the means by which we are led to question the level of reality that Tyler is experiencing 33 years in the past. Aside from just encountering clues to his 2006 crime, voices from the present, in the hospital, break through into his reality. Frequently in the form of Nick, the boyfriend of the women's division constable he befriends.
That Annie (Liz White) is an interesting character. Maybe just a little too cute, though. It's through her that we are reminded that in 1973, a female cop was a peculiar thing and was generally deskbound. We also see how sexual harassment just wasn't a concern then. What I like most is that, while she is the character who must necessarily believe him in order to facilitate the plot, she's constantly doing it with a grain of salt and may just be humoring him.The whole time I was watching this, I couldn't help but imagine an Americanized version, with a little more of the funny. The thing is, in Life on Mars, modern politically correct policing is contrasted with a rougher, less by-the-rules style in 1973. Some of our better modern cop shows are good because they aren't so clean. The Shield comes to mind. Still, imagine Vic Mackey, with all his 2006 knowledge thrown back to the seventies and teamed up with a disco dude, driving around in a Gran Turino and beating the snot out of Huggy Bear.I'll definitely give it another spin and see where it takes me.
*"Life on Mars" is the David Bowie tune on Sam's iPod just before he's hit and in his 8-track when he wakes up in '73.
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TAG IS MORE THAN JUST A NORWEGIAN TALK SHOW HOST
Tagged by Ras for the scribspheresque meme thing. Or at least, she's the first one I saw to tag me.
ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
Really kinda of a too-vague question, so I’m just gonna go with the first movie I can recall seeing in the theatre. That would be Superman starring Christopher Reeve. The theater sold glow-in-the-dark kryptonite rocks and I got one.
TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:
"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
"If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes"
THREE (3) jobs you'd do if you could not work in the "biz":
As if I worked in the "biz."
For which I am currently completely unqualified...
Helicopter Pilot
Detective
Astrofuckingnaut
FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
Retail from K-Mart (ugh) to comics store (hells yeah)
Forklift driver (not a bad job at all)
Electronics manufacturing (tedious)
Roadie (for like five minutes)
THREE (3) book authors I like:
Douglas Adams
Chuck Palahniuk
Greg Rucka
TWO (2) movies you'd like to remake or properties you'd like to adapt:
I have a problem with remakes. It goes one of two ways. Either you are trying to recreate something because it was so good, in which case the recreation is so completely unnecessary or you trying to remake something that didn’t work so well the first time. I can buy the latter. It gave us Ocean’s Eleven which I very much enjoyed. In those cases, however, it generally strays so far afield that its essentially a remake in name only.
That said, I’d remake David Lynch’s version of Dune, but animated and starring the Simpsons. Bart as Paul Atreides. Homer as Duke Leto. Maggie as Alia. Barney as a Guild Navigator. Burns as the Emperor. And so on...
Yeah, so I don't really want to remake anything.
And for adaptation, I have worked out (in my head mostly) an adaptation of Green Lantern as a feature film,paying very close attention to keeping it as close to what made Green Lantern successful in the first place as possible. Keeping it true to the comics. That’s the worst thing that happens to comics-to-film adaptations. Akiva Goldsman is a fine screenwriter sometimes (A Beautiful Mind for one) who has no goddamn understanding of any character in the Batman mythos and every time I see his name in conjunction with a comic-book flick, I cringe. Constantine turned out as okay-at-best, but how much would it have kicked ass if they hadn't jettisoned so much of what made the character attractive in the first place and what made Hellblazer the longest running Vertigo comic. Let's not even get into the travesties committed upon League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
I also want to do an Adam Strange TV series, but it would be ridiculously expensive, with half the episodes on Earth and half decidedly not. Even started on a pilot just for fun.
ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:
TV is a screen...Tim Minear. Angel. Firefly (check out "Out of Gas" especially). Wonderfalls. The Inside.
THREE (3) people I'm tagging to answer this meme next:
Aiming very very very high. John Rogers, John August and Javier Grillo-Marxuach.
ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
Really kinda of a too-vague question, so I’m just gonna go with the first movie I can recall seeing in the theatre. That would be Superman starring Christopher Reeve. The theater sold glow-in-the-dark kryptonite rocks and I got one.
TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:
"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
"If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes"
THREE (3) jobs you'd do if you could not work in the "biz":
As if I worked in the "biz."
For which I am currently completely unqualified...
Helicopter Pilot
Detective
Astrofuckingnaut
FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
Retail from K-Mart (ugh) to comics store (hells yeah)
Forklift driver (not a bad job at all)
Electronics manufacturing (tedious)
Roadie (for like five minutes)
THREE (3) book authors I like:
Douglas Adams
Chuck Palahniuk
Greg Rucka
TWO (2) movies you'd like to remake or properties you'd like to adapt:
I have a problem with remakes. It goes one of two ways. Either you are trying to recreate something because it was so good, in which case the recreation is so completely unnecessary or you trying to remake something that didn’t work so well the first time. I can buy the latter. It gave us Ocean’s Eleven which I very much enjoyed. In those cases, however, it generally strays so far afield that its essentially a remake in name only.
That said, I’d remake David Lynch’s version of Dune, but animated and starring the Simpsons. Bart as Paul Atreides. Homer as Duke Leto. Maggie as Alia. Barney as a Guild Navigator. Burns as the Emperor. And so on...
Yeah, so I don't really want to remake anything.
And for adaptation, I have worked out (in my head mostly) an adaptation of Green Lantern as a feature film,paying very close attention to keeping it as close to what made Green Lantern successful in the first place as possible. Keeping it true to the comics. That’s the worst thing that happens to comics-to-film adaptations. Akiva Goldsman is a fine screenwriter sometimes (A Beautiful Mind for one) who has no goddamn understanding of any character in the Batman mythos and every time I see his name in conjunction with a comic-book flick, I cringe. Constantine turned out as okay-at-best, but how much would it have kicked ass if they hadn't jettisoned so much of what made the character attractive in the first place and what made Hellblazer the longest running Vertigo comic. Let's not even get into the travesties committed upon League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
I also want to do an Adam Strange TV series, but it would be ridiculously expensive, with half the episodes on Earth and half decidedly not. Even started on a pilot just for fun.
ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:
TV is a screen...Tim Minear. Angel. Firefly (check out "Out of Gas" especially). Wonderfalls. The Inside.
THREE (3) people I'm tagging to answer this meme next:
Aiming very very very high. John Rogers, John August and Javier Grillo-Marxuach.
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SLAMMED - UPDATED 1/7
I just got slammed.
I have made the semi-finals cut for the Slamdance Teleplay Competition, sponsored by Fox21 (which is something like Fox Searchlight for television and not a local Fox affiliate somewhere).
It seems I'm one of twenty semi-finalists from a field of something like five hundred. That will be pared down to three finalists and then finally a winner.
UPDATE:
Alas, not so lucky this time. Congratulations to the three finalists.
I had a great conversation with the head of Fox21, Jane Francis, who had a clear memory of my script and gave me some advice on what I might want to do with it as far as a rewrite and has graciously offered to read KvQ 2.0 when it's done.
I spoke with several other Fox21 executives there, all of whom have indicated that their doors are open to me (as they have done with the seimfinalists from last years competition, a couple of whom were also in attendance). So overall, a very good experience and I thank Slamdance and Fox21 for the opportunity.
I have made the semi-finals cut for the Slamdance Teleplay Competition, sponsored by Fox21 (which is something like Fox Searchlight for television and not a local Fox affiliate somewhere).
It seems I'm one of twenty semi-finalists from a field of something like five hundred. That will be pared down to three finalists and then finally a winner.
UPDATE:
Alas, not so lucky this time. Congratulations to the three finalists.
I had a great conversation with the head of Fox21, Jane Francis, who had a clear memory of my script and gave me some advice on what I might want to do with it as far as a rewrite and has graciously offered to read KvQ 2.0 when it's done.
I spoke with several other Fox21 executives there, all of whom have indicated that their doors are open to me (as they have done with the seimfinalists from last years competition, a couple of whom were also in attendance). So overall, a very good experience and I thank Slamdance and Fox21 for the opportunity.
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