Y TV?

BooM got all memey. She says write about why we write for TV not anything else. We know the BooM. We like the BooM. We will comply with the BooM.

Why TV? Because early on, I realized that working in jobs you even marginally dislike is no fucking way to live. I wanted to do something I loved. And at the time (this being, like, 12). I loved pop culture. And hey, newsflash, apparently I'm still 12. I loved comics and TV and movies and books. I also liked drawing quite a bit but quickly realized I lacked any talent or skill in that regard, and realized that the fun part was no in the execution, but in the creation of whatever little world was gonna be confined to that 8 1/2" x 11" sheet.

I remember getting a class assignment in school to write our own King Arthur legend/myth/story. It had to be at least three pages. Mine was 15 (little rushed in the third act...my hand was tired).

So I decided I wanted to write. I wasn't sure what at first. I tried comics...I still do from time to time. I tried mysteries...short stories...I think I even sent one or two off to Ellery Queen before I realized that that just wasn't working. I'd like to try that again sometime though, now that I actually know how to write things...some.

Hey, how about movies...big money there, right?

Maybe, but you know what...just not interested. Still, really, not all that interested. I don't have single stories to tell. I have multitudes. My characters want more than 2 hours, they want 13 with an option for a back nine...to start.

Once I started my first spec script*, I felt like I made the right choice. I felt very much at home. All those years being glued to the TV actually did count for something. The form was burned into my psyche. I thought in act breaks. Hooray for the short attention spanning of America!

I realized I love TV more than thought. If you've been reading this site for a while, you've seen my occasional rants about television being not just a medium but an art form. Serling was Shakespeare...and were Willy alive today he'd either be a showrunner or hacking out a Grey's spec in a Starbucks. TV is every bit as good as a film or a play or novel in ways that those things can't touch...when done well, it incorporates all those things. (Though, I'm not saying TV is superior, each of those things has strengths which TV lacks).

It's in my blood and my brain. My huge wall of over 200 TV on DVD sets should tell you that. Or how about the fact that there is always...always an open file on my laptop and that file is always a TV spec or pilot in progress? I do not stop. I don't want to. And if I never get anyfuckingwhere, I will die a miserable old man, working in a job he doesn't really like, with an unfinished TV script on his holographic neural interface thingy.

Maybe I should just use this post for my personal essays in next year's applications.

*And that first spec script actually got me somewhere, ask me and I'll tell you. Just not here.

Oh, and the matter of tagging five people...as I said...I will comply...gimme John Rogers, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Jane, Our Man in Los Angeles and Amanda.

YEAH, WHAT I SAID ABOUT HBO...

...this makes me reconsider.

This from Mark Steven Johnson, who has long been developing a TV series with HBO based on Garth Ennis's ridiculously awesome, creeptastic, and profane comic series Preacher.

“We were budgeting and everything and it was getting really close to going, but the new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial."

Because, yes, the way to get some of the old cache back is to completely NOT do anything that pushes the envelope and to NOT take advantage of pay cable's unique position to not have to adhere to conventional standards and practices in anyway.

This concludes today's armchair-network-presidenting.

NEWS FROM SORCON!!!

I missed this announcement because I was at the CosPlay event in the Spencer Room. I went as Lord John Marbury.

I can never get enough Sorkin. I have all the Sports Nights, all the West Wings, I've got the script books, I've got the flicks (including Malice), Studio 60...I saw the Farnsworth Invention...I've got the play Making Movies, I eagerly await his Chicago 7 flick and now...now...oooh. Happy levels reaching critical!

SAN DIEGO—On day two of the 2008 San Diego SorCon, the biggest Aaron Sorkin convention in the world, screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin revealed plans for his next project, an animated continuation of his most popular franchise, The West Wing.

"I'm excited to bring my Emmy Award–winning writing to the field of animation," Sorkin said in a speech before approximately 30,000 screaming fans, many of whom were dressed up in the business-suit costumes of their favorite Sorkin characters. "The costs of live-action production restricted me to a set only slightly larger than the actual White House and an ensemble cast of under 15 actors. But animation technology will enable us to provide fans with extended 40-minute walk-and-talks, digitally compressed dialogue for faster delivery, and a cast of over 70 main characters. My vision will finally be presented in its truest, most uncompromised form." (more)

Thanks be to Jane.

THERE IS NO LIFE ON MARS

Not, however referring to Life On Mars (U.S.), which is looking up, looking at these.

No, I refer to this Veronica Mars related thingy...

"Kristen and I ran into each other, and we did discuss a Veronica movie," - Rob Thomas

Wow. Wouldn't that just be the awesome sauce?

I think not. Let's take a closer look, eh?

It sounds cool, but I think it can't live up to anybody's expectations. I mean, c'mon...everything after the first season didn't even live up to everybody's expectations.

But with less snark, I say let dead things stay dead. A VM movie could only serve to be really disappointing or really aggravating...and I mean aggravating in the same way that season-four-that-could-have-been feature on the DVD's was aggravating.

First of all, we'll be coming at a Veronica who's been away from us for years. We'll have built her up in our heads to be this something awesome, like the youngest and most successful FBI agent ever, but she's getting older and so are we. And what if Rob decided she wasn't going to be an FBI agent after all? Well, we all had our hopes up. Rob might be in a different headspace now. We might be too. Nothing will ever be the same again. You can't get that first season back.

And let's not forget that a feature is a whole different format than our young lady was devised to exist in. We won't get the slow peeling of a mystery onion over the course of a season, or an extended arc. The whole tension dynamic will be different...and if it isn't different and is more like the series, then all we got was one more extended episode. Which seems like a let down doesn't.

But let's say it all falls together and blows us away. It's just going to piss us off that that's all we get. Maybe there would be another movie, but now we're waiting a year or two between episodes.

But we're not getting a sequel. We're not getting a movie. Not for a show that generally fell in the bottom 10% of network shows for the years that it was on. Those are lists that generally ran past one-hundred-fifty shows. And some of the ones ahead of Vera there were really bad and really cancelled. What studio is going to put money behind that property.

Maybe the DVD sets sold well, I don't have the figures on that nor do I intend to do the google-fu to get it, but my experience says that a lot of those people who bought the sets, did so because they weren't watching the show. There's a bit of a Firefly effect there. Those who watched converted those who didn't. The people who couldn't find the time to watch one of the best two or three shows on at that time. They're probably not going to find the time to go buy the movie ticket. They'll be waiting for the DVD. There's a chunk of projected earnings not being projected. And the studio that might consider putting money there knows that and will budget accordingly.

And sorry, but Vera doesn't have the same pull as Mal.

...and there's still tons who can't see past the perceived teen chick genre.

Fact is, this movie's not happening. You know that VM comic that DC was talking to RT about? See it anywhere? Me neither. Rob's busy.

Maybe he'll go back to Veronica Mars in ten or fifteen years and start over. You know, like with Cupid?

He could cast the girl that plays Astor on Dexter. She'd be old enough by then.

And who'd play the new Keith? Hmm?

Let dead things stay dead.

Sometimes.

THIS IS ME. TODAY, ANYWAY.

Fellow Chicagoan-in-self-imposed-exile, Adam, asks what kind of writer he want to be and tries to answer it.

It's a question I ask myself fairly frequently and sometimes the problem is that I, in fact, have an answer. And except for "successful" I am most of that answer.

It's a question I ask myself whenever I start anything other than a spec. With a spec, for that moment, the kind of writer I want to be is an amalgamation of the writers writing whatever that show is. My voice comes through, but tempered. Not a problem.

No, the problem is when I'm brainstorming up a new project, like a pilot, or the many one-acts I've been throwing things at. I come up with an idea. It feels like a good idea. It's something I would most certainly watch, but it doesn't always feel like something I would write. The most recent such thing was a hard crime pilot. It felt like someone else's show. If I were writing that pilot, it would feel like I was writing a spec for that show that I saw in my head. My voice is in there, but it wants to scream, not whisper. Is that the writer I want to be? Is that the writer I am?

The kind of writer I think I am is snarky and smart-alecky. One who tries to zig instead of zag. One who tries very hard to do the thing you've never seen. I have my themes I come back to a lot. Power and its abuse, identity, and the thin line between good and evil.

If it's not snarky, is it still me? Zigging isn't bad either, in that something might feel familiar. I hate doing that, but then cop shows, lawyer shows, doctor shows, are all familiar (no matter how much of a twist there might be) and are successful.

My problem with the one-acts is, besides being a form I don't have hard-wired into my brain the way I do TV (where four pages in one room is a long damn time), I'm overthinking what this one-act will say about me as a writer and what messages I want to send and what I have to say.

I think that I know myself too well. And yeah, you can read that in more ways than one.

So maybe, after I clear this pilot and get a one-act that I want done and finishing ripping the Pushing Daisies and then, if I don't launch into a Sarah Connor Chronicles spec (because by then season two will be underway and I've had this idea int he back of my head for some while now), I may have to write that hard crime drama and see what other kind of writer I might be.

Or maybe that sitcom pilot idea. The one that will never be produced, but might...might get a little pass it around buzz.

But I'm not a sitcom guy.

Am I?

THE BLACK HOUSE - PAGE 21

Cuz sometimes I write about writing. And sometimes I write. Here's a tiny piece of the latter.


• INT. BLACK HOUSE - OPS ROOM - DAY
  
• Mission control. Big screens and monitors. A couple of rows of computer stations and CONTROL OFFICERS. All overseen by JENNIFER VAN RIJN (mid-thirties, hair tied up in a loose pony tail that says she’s been on duty too damn long, dressed in gear similar to Mister Jordan’s).
  
• JENNIFER
  
• Get the remote viewer and see if she can lock onto his aura.
  
• (dumps her head into her palm)
  
• Ohmigod, did I just say “aura?”
  
• Ben enters, flanked by Mister Jordan and a curious Danni.
  
• BEN
  
• What have we got, Jennifer?
  
• JENNIFER
  
• What you have is a trained, former CIA officer talking like some kind of new age conspiracy nut and rediscovering her sense of self-loathing. Thanks for that, by the way.
  
• (gestures to the monitors)
  
• What I have is Sayf al-Haque. One of our cats spotted him at a truck stop near Minneapolis-St.Paul about ten minutes ago.
  
• Danni steps toward Mister Jordan, who keeps his eye on the situation monitors.
  
• DANNI
  
• (whispers to Jordan)
  
• She said cats. That’s not, like, an acronym is it?
  
• Mister Jordan shakes his head, though with a disdainful sneer.

I MAY WANT TO HAVE HBO'S BABIES

Yeah, it's old news that HBO has lost it's cache, but with Albrecht out and Sue Naegle in (and who was really interesting talking about the job she had for, like, days at the Writer's Guild in May), and True Blood and Generation Kill notwithstanding, the tide may be turning...if slowly. At least for me, personally. Screw all you fuckers.

First off, there's some nudgement in that Nine Inch Nails/Year Zero TV series I wrote about here a while back.

Said Reznor,

"This is my grand ambition. Will it happen? I don't know. It was fun sitting and telling [the HBO] guys and watching them shake their head and having writers on board and producers that are in to it. It's been a fun thing."

Pitched as a two-season maxi-series, it would also reach into another ARG and culminate in another concept album. I imagine, though, that the series itself would stand on its own quite well, for those perhaps unwilling to reach too far.

Then, I came across a recent interview with Aaron Sorkin on the GQ site in which he says...

"I just sat down and had a great meeting with Sue Naegle, who’s the head of HBO. So if you have an idea for a series, let me know."

So, take that as you will. This comes off of frequent Sorkinite Kevin Falls having said...

"I liked Studio 60 a lot, but maybe [series mastermind Aaron Sorkin] should have done his unique take on a cop show or something different. By the way, he’s not done with TV, yet, and we’ll be the better for it."

And lets not forget that David Simon also has his New Orleans pilot, Treme, yet to shoot.

Might one day have to actually get HBO...

"HAMLET ON TELEVISION" SAID THE MEDDLING MONK

Television viewers are enablers.

I've railed before and before against mediumism. The idea that a work is less-than simply because of the medium it inhabits. For instance, the idea that a television show cannot rise to the level of a classic novel simply because it's on the "idiot box." Every medium has it's total crap. I point you to a large swath of the romance and science fiction sections of your local bookstore (not all, but plenty I'm afraid to say).

My musing at this moment is about the crap that passes for [fill in a medium]. If any medium can rise above, then why do we get force fed shit. Bad movies, crappy TV, books that are an unfit justification for arborcide. We blame the executives. I blame you.

Not you specifically. Just people in general. The consumers. The ones who would rather spend their money on total shite than anything else. The ones who are apparently so taxed by day-to-day life that the use of any brain power beyond autonomic response is just too much.

It's not new. Having seen every possible episode of Doctor Who from the Jon Pertwee era to the present, I've decided it was high time delve into some of the old, black and white, early serials. I decided to begin with "The Time Meddler," as it features another Time Lord and a juxtaposition of science fiction and historical adventure. In it, the Meddling Monk of the title is messing around with 1066 A.D. by infecting it with wristwatches and electric toasters. He intends to mess around with the Norman Invasion as well.

It also had the Doctor refer to a piece of viking headgear as a "space helmet for cows."

I watched it with the infotext subtitles on and at one point it covered some viewer testing the BBC had done that was ultimately influential in turning Doctor Who away from historical adventures for years to focus solely on the future and guys in rubber monster suits. In the course of the story, our characters come across anachronistic items, not yet knowing of the Monk and his mad plans (which included accelerating human development to acheiving flight by the fifteenth century and to where Shakespeare would Hamlet performed on television). It's called building the story. Apparently it's also called "too confusing."

That was the gist of many of the comments the Beeb got from their surveys...because people are stupid. And we all have to suffer for it.

I realize it's the mid-sixties there, but I still hear the same damn thing from people in the here and now. People who got thrown off by the polar bear in the first episode of Lost. People who can't grasp the juxtaposition of western and space opera (yeah, you know). People who just can't follow The Wire because it's not all laid out for them.

However, the continued existence of Lost and five full seasons of The Wire say that there have been gains, I say...not enough! I rouse rabbles.

Don't get me wrong, I likes me some total fluff now and again. I even like Austin Powers 3. Yeah, three. Same jokes, third time around. But I like good stuff too. And I want a lot of it. I want more of it. So if this is our collective faults, we must collectively fix it.

Your mission, go find a friend with questionable taste (more likely perhaps a coworker that you're friendly with, but no so much friends with...you know, the one that considers American Idol quality television) and help him or her out and do it in an fiscally impactful way. Find them something good to like, something you think they stand an excellent chance of really enjoying, then do like the crack dealers do...get them started, then make them buy the rest. Loan them the first disk of Firefly or Friday Night Lights or whatever (Doctor Who, mayhaps), then get them to hit the Best Buy for the rest (how exactly is your problem).

If we're the enablers, then let's do some enabling.

SIX FINGERS OF FILM

Know these words, and live by them. When it doubt, do what Emily does. She swiped this from Lazy Eye and I'm swiping it from her.

This stems from the New Beverly's series of film festivals programmed by famous folks, like Edgar Wright, Diablo Cody and, I believe they have Seth Green coming up. The exercise here is, what is my personal six night film fest going to be like. Following the model of double features, each set being linked somehow, I've culled together this array.

Call this Red Right Hand's Six Fingers of Film.

Fight Club
V For Vendetta
Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street. Fight Club, it's no secret, is my favorite film. It captured, and of course Chuck's book, captured a certain mindset, a certain subset and several other sets all of which I fit into. It spoke to me in a language that I understand. It stood up and it hit things. V for Vendetta does so as well. To me. The original graphic novel was very influential to me and the film version, while not the same, I think manages to hit several of the same notes, especially the idea of a need for change and that if that change does not come, violence will ensue...one way or another.

A Few Good Men
The Caine Mutiny
Some people like courtroom dramas, I go a step more specific. I'm into court martial dramas. Military courts, even drumheads. I first saw The Caine Mutiny when I was, I dunno, 12 or 13...and and taped it. I wore that tape out. It and the sole Sorkin in the film festival make it very clear, you can do the right thing and you can still get crushed for it. The rules are not your friend.

Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
My heroes have always been cowboys insane. And really, Batman is insane. Batshit, one might say. It's the freedom from the rules of society that allow him to become what he is. We want someone to save us, but we won't let anyone do it. We restrict, block, legislate, etc. We even sue good Samaritans...not me or you personally, but it happens. And in The Dark Knight, we get a new take on what it really means to be the guy who steps up.

The Great Escape
Escape From New York
Another of my favorite subgenres. Prison breaks. I found The Great Escape around the same time I found The Caine Mutiny. My mom, I think brought it home from the rental joint. I watched it a lot. C'mon...Steve McQueen. The intricacy of planning...the unexpected obstacles...freedom within reach. And, both have Donald Pleasence.

Bring It On
Mean Girls
Welcome to genre-swerve night. I don't discriminate against movies based on genre or even intended audience...much. So, yeah...here's the chick-flicks clearly aimed at females 13-25 that I dig. Both come from writers of note, Bring It On being by Jessica Bendinger, formerly of Sex and the City and writer of one of my favorite episodes of that "My Motherboard, My Self." (yes, I have a favorite SATC, suck it) And there's Dushku in it. I like it because it takes it's own course and doesn't adhere to what you think it should be or how it should go. Even it's acts are unique in comparison to typical act characterisations. Mean Girls...The Fey. That simple.

The Enemy Below
Hunt for Red October
The last of my favorite sub genres. Pun most absofuckinglutely intended. To me there is no other type of film that can so clearly capture respect among adversaries in just a two hour movie. It's a theme I've tried to capture in some of my TV writing, but I have a hard time with it. Some of the best examples comes from long continuities, TV series, comics...but in sub movies, you can get it in a two hour bite and, frequently, without the adversaries ever coming face to face. Brinkmanship, my boy.

CCI - LOST PANEL (AS PRESENTED BY THE DHARMA INITIATIVE)

Allow me to lead you to coverage of the Lost panel at Comic-Con, wherein Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof answered a great many questions, didn't answer a few and where Hans Van Eeghen of the Dharma Initiative expressed his continued disappointment

Or, if you're so inclined, here's an MP3 of most of the panel. Some bits were excised by a group of women clad in khaki uniforms with octagonal logos.

Van Eeghen then took a few moments to explain that the Dharma Initiative was looking to locate four or five new recruits from applicants at the convention. In fact, an application process had been underway at a Dharma Initiative booth on the convention floor for the past two days. At the booth, applicants were subjected to a recorded barrage of questions, many of which were quite unexpected and some were simply strange. The representative then went on to say that he was here to discuss the result of those tests. “They were abysmal,” he said. “In our wildest imagination we could not have predicted this result. I mean truly pathetic.”

Read the full coverage at COMICBOOKRESOURCES.COM.

SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA GET IT WRONG FIRST

As a popular show (that, in fact, had been done badly first and then superbly much later on) put it "all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again." (and I'm sorry if you liked the original, but it was largely possessed of teh suck).

Some of my best spec scripts, at least in my subjective opinion, are the direct result of some total crap. My House spec, which has served me well so far, is essentially a rewrite of a House that I basically forced myself though about a year prior. I got to the last page of it, read though it and decided it was total crap. After having written a thing or two...or five...else, I decided I still wanted a House spec in the rotation, and I did a lot of research for that first one, so I started with that crap script and rebroke it from top to bottom. A page-one rewrite. The logline is the same, but little else. The time away let me come back fresh.

My current Dexter spec only found focus after completing a considerably less focused draft and letting my writer's group have at it.

Now, I think it's time to pull some Daisies. I got though a Pushing Daisies draft a few months ago. Even before I was done, I wasn't wild about it. I felt that I was nailing the voices, but the plot felt strained and contrived. The B-plot sucked harder than Cygus X-1. At one point I even gave it to a friend to read and then asked her not to read it. I hope she didn't.

Since then, I've gone though a pilot, aborted on a one-act, but started another and wrote a short radio play. And actually, that Dexter was pulled together after the vomit draft of the Pushing Daisies. And that's really what it was, a vomit draft. Point is, last night I decided that enought time had passed, and started thinking about that Pushing Daisies. My first problem was that the story didn't get going quickly enough. I couldn't quite crack it before, but it totally came to me in minutes this time. I've flushed the B-plot and have some new contenders with a stronger focus on the theme...and I'm reconsidering who dunnit in the whodunnit portion of things.

I feel there will be a strong spec after I tear this down and put it back together again.

So, I say to you...if you feel your script isn't quite working, or you're not happy with your outline but can't seem to crack it...write it anyway. You might find your way while you're in the middle of executing that script, but if you don't you need to vomit that shite out of your system.

Then, and pardon the imagery, file that bile away. Come back to it later. A couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. It'll look different than you remembered it, and you'll spot the problems easier. And you might find the solutions with a less tainted eye.