WRITING THIS, WRITING THAT, WRITING...THE OTHER THING

Okay, so a couple of weeks ago I stumbled over the website for the Rod Serling Conference at Ithaca College. This caught my eye as I believe that the bulk of the Shakespeare kids are forced to read in school should be replaced with Rod Serling screenplays and teleplays. Romeo & Juliet and Requiem for a Heavyweight should both be required reading at the 10th grade level. The cathode ray tube is The Globe of the 20th century.

In looking it over, I noticed that they sponsor an inexpensive screenwriting contest and that the deadline loomed very close. They wanted a short feature of a sort that would have been appropriate for the Twilight Zone or Night Gallery. I thought about it for a day or two, then pretty much wrote the whole thing in one night, then tweaked for a week and sent it in just under the deadline. Win or lose, it was a great exercise and maybe the script that resulted will be useful one day.

Observers may have noticed that after four aired episodes, I have elected to add The Unit to my "currently digging" roster. I've noticed that it has managed to maintain signficant ratings beyond it's explosive premiere. It's holding it's own in the top ten while going up against House which, while a strong show in and of itself, has the Boring Adult Contemporary Music Program as a monsterous lead-in.

Having just finished a Medium (to fill the supernatural/fantasy spot in the spec rotation) and looking to retire my Shield, I'm going to roll the dice and jump on a spec for this fine series. To that end, I grabbed the new Creative Screenwriting which has a feature on the show (not to mention a great thing on breaking an episode by Tim Minear) and I'm reading exec prod Eric Haney's book Inside Delta Force (at a leisurely pace, just so I don't start physically writing too soon and find out that one of the regulars was a redshirt-in-waiting (i.e. Doyle or Boone)).

In the meantime, I'm going to get working on my novelty script (Sainte Jane of the Espenson speaks on such here). Something I can start and stop whenever I want to and work on between other things. For that reason, if I've only got act one done after a month, I won't care. I've selected Hogan's Heroes...and I'm going the reconstruction route rather than taking the way of the lost episode.

And by the way, how cool is it when a recognizable prodco you've never communicated with just drops a line out of nowhere and asks to read your pilot by name? Not holding my breath (instead pinning the mouth and nose of an innocent mall goth), but...it's a little cool.

IN THE ROOM

The ultimate in behind-the-scenes writer stuff. Ron Moore, because he loves us so, has recorded an entire writers staff meeting from summer 2005 in planning for the second half of Battlestar Galactica's second season. You just don't get this. Ever. Until now.

Here's where the goodness lives.
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/

VENI, VIDI, VENTURE

Want to write TV? Read THIS and THIS. This guy's been everywhere from SeaQuest DSV to Charmed to Boomtown to something called Lost.

Don't want to write TV? Then go see V for Vendetta. Oh, yes. Let's take back terrorism!
I don't care what Alan Moore says. I really, really, really liked it.

And dig this, James Urbaniak and maybe Doc Hammer of Venture Bros. fame will be on the March 25 edition of SciFi Zone. (UPDATE 3/23: ...or not. Bumped for a stupid arena football game.)

I FOUND BURIED TREASURE.

Allow me to advocate piracy for a moment.

Yarr.

I feel no guilt at all in using the mighty BitTorrent to download something when it is something that has been denied me. The Global Frequency pilot for one. Now, this intarweb thingy has given me another gift.

You may recall (though probably not) a little TV series that ran for a few weeks last summer called The Inside. Developed by Tim Minear (he of the many great series what were yanked out from under him). It featured Peter Coyote as the most delightfully devious FBI boss ever in a show about serial killer-hunters that was more about Coyote's character trying to-- I dunno --control the soul of a pre-Alias Rachel Nichols.



It was maybe a hard sell to a crowd that knows only Law and Order and CSI. It was mismanaged by Fox (and they admit it) and it was predictably yanked after seven episodes.

Now, Britain's ITV is running the thirteen completed episodes and they've hit the ones that were, as I say, denied me. And what better (and somewhat sick) way to get started anew with this series that with a "psycho dead-baby thief" story co-written by Jane Espenson. Thank you, ITV. Thank you, TV pirates. Thank you, Tim and Jane (and everyone else involved in making the show).

MAYBE YOU JUMPED THE SHARK. EVER THINK ABOUT THAT?

That last Battlestar Galactica was amazing. This show is fearless. Absolutely fearless and for that I will follow this show to the ends of-- well, to Earth. If this show doesn't get some significant Emmy nominations, then ATAS needs to be put down like a sick dog...with a tire iron...because it was possessed by the spirit of Hitler and eats other dogs. Seeing eye dogs. Okay, maybe it's not that serious, they're just little gold hood ornaments, but you know...it would be nice to see it get some recognition.

If you haven't watched it or heard about it, go to iTunes and get it. Right the fuck now. I'll wait.

See, you couldn't have seen that coming. "One Year Later" and no take-backs (because Ron wouldn't do that. See how I'm on a first name basis with him. Ron. Fine. Mister Moore).

This is a big, big bet and the thing is, I know some people aren't going to like it. I've seen the whining on the net. If you listen to the podcast commentaries Ron-- Mister Moore has graciously given us (and if you want to write for TV, you probably should) then you know that even some of the staff had to come to terms with it. Even Mrs. Moore had to digest it for a while. This changes the whole paradigm...for a while anyway...ultimately the show is called Battlestar Galactica. The program opens up with a goddamn mission statement, but this is certainly a significant detour and nothing's go back to normal. No reset button. It's a pseudo reboot.

Now, the people that don't like it. Good. Don't like it. Just watch it. It's not your story to tell and you are not in control. In fact, in this particular case, there's a certain advantage to not liking it, because now you're in the same shoes as the characters, because they sure as hell don't like it much. Now, you're in the struggle with them. Same thing with the dank sixth season of Buffy. She was miserable, all manner of bad shit was going down. Money problems. Commitment issues. Abandonment. Murder. Dark Willow. Lots of Buffy watchers hated it, but they kept coming back. They were down in it with her. Now, her victories were theirs as well more than ever.

I love it, though. This is going to be French Resistance with robots and shit. Tell me that you wouldn't watch that show. Imagine there was no Battlestar...it was just all these same actors and producers and directors and writers and they were doing a show about the resistance on an occupied alien world. Same quality of writing and acting. I'd watch it.

The debate among Battlestar fans about this bold move and my suggestion that it doesn't matter if you like it or not brings to mind an editorial I stumbled over while perusing WHEDONesque. Right here, Scott Nance talks about who really owns the characters (creators or fans), largely with respect to Joss Whedon's works.

Whedon has a philosophy that he's there to service the story, not the audience. "I give them what they need, not what they want," Whedon says. I agree one hundred percent. If they get what they want, then nothing really happens. It gets boring. It might as well be fan fiction. Besides, everybody wanted Dave and Maddie to get together and they did, suddenly Moonlighting wasn't about anything anymore. Boring. The gone.

To a certain degree, I'm even of the mind that from time to time you absolutely must shove something they don't want right in their face. It's a gamble every time. Sometimes it works (current season of 24 for example, deaths and stuff and, in my opinion, the fifth season of Angel was astonishingly good) and sometimes not so much (the birth of _______'s baby on _________).

Maybe the problem is the audience getting too comfortable. Battlestar has zigged and zagged all along, but in the first season or so, it was all brand new, you didn't know what to expect. There were no preconceptions. Same with Buffy and Angel. And West Wing. I recall lots of whining about the forth season, but I found it to be as good as the first three seasons, but I think people were feeling to comfortable and the sense of entitlement began to set in, so they get upset when Donna gets a new boyfriend or when (gods forbid) someone leaves and someone new arrives because that never happens in the real White House.

Like I said before, it doesn't matter that you like it. It matters that you're coming back to it. I have a friend who, like me, enjoys the wittiest show on TV, Gilmore Girls. He hates Rory dating Logan ( I dig it). He's a little twitchy about Lorelei and Luke's relationship go through some slight instability. Doesn't like it, but he keeps coming back. He has to see what happens next. That is successful writing.

When I sit down to write a pilot script, one of the things I do is consider where the series will go. Does this concept have legs? I'll think about where I would want things in a third or fourth season. It's usually right around there that I'll come up with a radical shift, but still in line with the basic concept of the show I've devised. I also see how it might be a "jump the shark" moment. If I get there, then I know I've done okay and I'll get down to writing.

It's my story, not yours. You may not like everything that happens. That's fine. As long as you're not bored.

TITLE

Not just a generic post, I just don't have anything really great I want to write about at the moment, so I'm going to go on a bit about titles.

I dig titles. I really like a good, clever title. I like that in TV you can pretty much title an episode anything you want because it's not a marketing factor.

Some favorite titles? A few that come to mind are...

"Dopplegangland"
"7A WF 83429"
"Jose Chung's From Outer Space"
"Bop Gun"
"The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco"
"Co-Pilot"
"33"
"Nag Hammadi Is Where They Found The Gnostic Gospels"

I like them for different reasons, some for the way they relate to the story, some not. I like unusual titles, such as numbers, lengthy titles, double-meaning titles. I dig the Nag Hammadi one because it actually serves a function within the story in a peculiar way. And still others just sound good. I like to say "Bop Gun."

That's something I like about Gilmore Girls titles. There's no rules there at all. I also remember back in the days of the X-Files ' popularity, lost of discussion about the obscure references in some of that shows titles. "Dod Kalm"

Other shows, seem to have some hard and fast rules about titles. Every Smallville is one word. La Femme Nikita had as many words as the season they were in. Too bad they got cancelled, if for any reason that they'd be up to their tenth season about now. Others may not have rules, but there's a definite feel to the titles. Nip/Tuck...the names. Friends was always "The One With..." And, of course, Remington Steele always had Steele in the title, whether it really worked or not.

I spend a lot of time on titles. I don't generally even like to start until I have a title. I know some writers are just the opposite for fear of constraints. To me, a title is more like a guide rail. A flimsy guide rail. It'll keep me on track, but if the story is going somewhere I didn't really plan on, I've no problem kicking it to the curb. Occasionally, I've got nothing but a title . A Nip/Tuck spec I recently benched started with just the title "Jane Doe" and I went from there.

I also like to come up with titles that have meaning within the A, B and if needed C plots. For that reason, I have changed the title of the Medium spec I recently finished something like nine times in the last few days and might change more in the future. And Medium titles have been all over the place, from deadly serious to ridiculously silly. Lately, they've been just a couple of words, usually playing off a saying in some way. Kinda dull, but I think matching the title style just further shows that you did your homework.

There are certain titles I hate. I hate titles that end in "-tion." I hate titles that could be applied to ANY story (which the Medium had most of the time I was writing it). I don't mind one word titles, but a lot of one word titles feel too...ehn, you know. One word works and another, not so much.

I came up with some titles for the Medium that I think spelled out the plot so clearly that a reader put it to the bottom of the pile because it seemed so obvious. I even had a couple that I thought spelled out the plot of a different story.