MAKING MASTERMIND (PART TWO): BUMPS

Mastermind was cast. And I was fortunate to have found two ridiculously talented actors who are up for the challenge of getting this production together in just under three weeks.

Keyword: was.

Then, the actress playing Liz had to back out a day later. And for a good reason. I'd have done it if I were her, so good luck to her with the thing in the place.

Fortunately she was able to determine her conflict quickly. I've asked her and my lead actor to see if they can't recommend someone right quick. Given the time frame for this production (date firmly set as April 18, the exact time is less firm right this minute), twitchyness is setting in.

The cool thing was that the actor and actress actually knew each other already. Considering the time crunch involved, that's a big plus for their ability to work with one another independently from organized rehearsals or meetings.

I'm hoping that I can keep that dynamic in place and keep in within their circle of actors. I am, however, still accepting applications for the role of Liz none the less, as I really need to get this role filled yesterday.

I am disappointed because the former Liz really nailed it. Like with a nail gun - nailed it. As did the lead actor.

Once the cast is set, I'll announce them here.

Coming soon: tech specs.

MAKING MASTERMIND (PART ONE): CASTING

Details are still coming together, but it appears an opportunity to stage my one-act play, Mastermind, in Santa Monica at the end of April, has fallen into my hands.

Wasting no time, I need to get a jump on perhaps the most difficult part (for me). That would be casting.

There are two roles...well, there are three, but one of the roles only has like three lines so I'm not going to worry about it right now. The two leads are as follows:

• J.D. -male, must look anywhere between 25-35, average build, a super genius with memory problems

• LIZ - female, also, 25-35, average build, a snarky Lois Lane type.

So clearly, a wide latitude in casting needs.

The plan is one performance on 4/18. Though there is a plan for another performance later i the year and I'm all about using the same people if possible. This is not a paying gig, but it's good as a showcase. There should also be a video of the performance. As I said, details are still coming together, but if you are an actor or know someone who is and can commit to a play with about a half hour running time, then contact me at the email in the upper right corner. Please include any images (headshots) or You Tube links that might be useful. Any questions, throws those in too.

This post will be updated as needed, including when the roles are filled.

UPDATE 3/31: J.D. is cast. Liz is cast.

I HAVEN'T TALKED ABOUT SORKIN IN A WHILE...

Listen not to the man quoted below. He clearly isn't thinking things through. He wants Aaron Sorkin back on TV, but he wants it wrong. He sayeth in the San Francisco Chronicle:

This is 2009, and the United States has just gone through a riveting presidential campaign, a historic election and now seats the first African American president. Not everyone may buy into the rhetoric, but in dire and dour times there's hope again in the White House. And judging from news headlines, we might need all the hope we can get.

Which is precisely why Sorkin, who created "The West Wing," should be writing about politics - for television. Specifically, about the White House and the presidency.

Obama as a cult of personality - his face on T-shirts, the messiah to the cynical and the disenfranchised. It's like you dreamt it, wrote it and nobody could believe it would ever happen.

And now it has. And you're late....get started, Sorkin. Get back to the West Wing.

-Tim Goodman

First of all, whatever he does in this particular realm will ultimately regarded as inferior to The West Wing. How do I know this? Because with each successive season of The West Wing while he was on it, more and more people regarded it as inferior to the season that came before. (I disagree. I found the quality to be largely steady, but there's the whole "people hate change" thing at work and the first season was idealized).

Secondly, I rather think that The West Wing worked because it stood in stark contrast to the actual presidency...both late Clinton and the First Epoch of Bush The Terrible. Billy Bubba was getting all bogged down with overt politicalness and - you know- cooties. And Bush...well, he's not even American. It gave us a President that at that time we never though we'd get. Smart, fair, and nerdy-cool. Yeah, well, now we've got one that has at least two of those.The show Goodman wants is an Obama reality show. Which would be awesome, but ultimately self-defeating as well. We really don't want to see what he and Rahm are talking about late at night. We don't.

If -big if- if I were to think that Sorkin coming back to go to the well again was a good idea, I think he'd somehow have to get his head in a weird place, because the only thing that I'd want to see and the only thing that might pick up enough steam and be as different as West Wing once was and is no longer, as evidenced by Goodman pointing out by noting the pilots Inside The Box (read it, s'okay) House Rules (didn't read) See Cate Run (read part of it, ...ehn) and The Body Politic (didn't read).

What weird place? Republican White House. An idealized Republican White House. Show us that Republican's don't have to be assholes. Go back and get Alan Alda or something.

I want Sorkin back on TV. You know I do, but not retreading the same damn thing. Yeah, he is a wonk and he does political well, but it should be something different. I'd like to see Sorkin take on a show set in the upper echelons of the CIA. A Sorkin spy/political show. I'm so there.

If only he were.

AN OBSERVATION ABOUT DOLLHOUSE OBSERVATIONS - UPDATED

Everyone complains about the premise of having Echo being someone different every episode and that when she's between engagements, her tabula rasa self is, well, stupid.

OK, I'm I the only one watching or am I just reading in something, but it seems bloody obvious to me that it's not going to stay that way. I see it coming to pass that her original personality (or maybe a newly formed one) will be present within each imprint and will be her default position (though she'll have to hide it). It seems to be (part of) Alpha's plan for whatever he has planned.

It almost seems as though some critics (professional and otherwise) are being willfully ignorant just so they can rag on the show.

C'mon. Whedon knows as well as you or I that you can't sustain a main character who has no character. My only concern is that by the time it comes to pass, the cancellation notice will have been handed down.

UPDATE: After watching "True Believer" I think it's become even more obvious that Echo will have a continuous character of her own. Once the fire was set, it seemed apparent to me that Echo's own personality and survival instincts (and "potty mouth") were overriding the Esther Carpenter imprint.

Next episode is supposedly the beginning of Whedon's doing what he wanted and not what the network wanted.

BUMP ON THIS

I know these guys. I favor their undertaking.

ONE OF THE THINGS I'VE BEEN WORKING ON OF LATE

• INT. INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES BULLPEN - NIGHT
  
• Luther rolls back in his chair, stopped by the desk behind him, which belongs to a buried-in-paperwork Swerve.
  
• LUTHER
  
• First day, no calls.
  
• Swerve looks up. Time to go. Drops everything where it is and gets his coat on.
  
• LUTHER
  
• Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about a day's work, but no crime is a good thing.
  
• Swerve doesn’t even acknowledge his existence.
  
• LUTHER
  
• Right?
  
• SWERVE
  
• Yeah. I find that solving crimes gets in the way of police work.
  
• Lifts up a sheaf of reports and drops them back on his desk.
  
• LUTHER
  
• (polite chuckle)
  
• Right.
  
• Takes his jacket off the back of his chair.
  
• SWERVE
  
• Where you going?
  
• LUTHER
  
• Home?
  
• SWERVE
  
• Nope. You got dangle duty.
  
• LUTHER
  
• Is that something I need to see a doctor about?
  
• SWERVE
  
• You see anybody else here?
  
• Luther realizes that the next shift has not arrived.
  
• LUTHER
  
• I--
  
• SWERVE
  
• You’re the new guy, so the next shift’s taking their time rolling in. Any calls come in before they get here, and they’re yours.
  
• PHONE RINGS. Swerve laughs.
  
• SWERVE
  
• That’s you, new guy. Good news, you’re picking up some O.T. Bad news, you’re not seeing your bed tonight.
  
• Swerve marches to the door.
  
• SWERVE
  
• Have fun, junior.
  
• Luther reluctantly answers the phone.

WHO READS THE WATCHMEN?

In which I ramble like a geek who overthinks shit sometimes...

Yes, I am excited to see Watchmen. Yes, I think it could suck hard, though it seems to pretty damn faithful for being a movie adaptation. I also understand that that faithfulness might not make it work as a movie. I've always held that the Watchmen is not a movie and probably never should be. Maybe it could be an HBO mini-series, but even at that, there is a problem.

The problem goes back to never ending discussion me and my cohorts back at Dreamland Comics used to have as we hanging around the store flinging foam stress balls and sending neighborhood kids on DQ runs for us. It's a common discussion in four-color circles. What do you give non-comics readers to hook them. A lot of people just instinctively answer Watchmen. Watchmen or Kingdom Come (which suffers some of the same problems that I'll get to in a mo').

While anecdotal evidence has suggest that this plan actually works, I think it's ultimately a wrong move. It can't be the only start option, so go somewhere else because Watchmen wasn't written to be that. I see it as the opposite of that -- the other end of the spectrum. Is Watchmen beginner's comics or is it advanced comics?

It's interesting to note that DC has a promo campaign called After Watchmen, which reprints some notable comics with the trade dress that tells new comics readers where to go after you've read Watchmen. One of the destination books is Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday, which aside from being an amazing book that is readily enjoyable by anyone who digs cool sci-fi adventures and edgy writing, also riffs on comics in their past and current states as well as on some other mediums and genres. It is best enjoyed after the brain has had some comics seasoning. The seventh issue, for instance, takes aim at the Vertigo comics of the 80s and 90s. It's still a fun story, but you're missing a lot of you're not aware of John Constantine, Transmetropolitan, the connective tissue between the two and maybe a little of (not Vertigo but certainly influential in the imprint) Marvelman.

Watchmen was written as a reaction to the state of super-hero comics. Specifically, the state of super-hero comics as they were in 1985. So aside from the beginner/advanced question, is it also not a product of it's time and does it need to be framed that way. There's the who cold war thing as well. There actually was one in 1985. Do the five-minutes-to-midnight elements resonate as effectively now. The buy-in to the alternate history has gotten bigger in the last 20 plus years.

Now, in 2009, it's not only so far removed from the state of the medium it was riffing on, it's now also not even in that medium. Additionally, the medium of comics has spent a lot of time moving in the direction of Watchmen. It has embraced the criticisms and become them. Rorschach and Comedian were images of what was to become. Such characters debuting now barely rate a raised eyebrow. If Watchmen came out now, it'd be a cool story, but it would never be what it became.

The movie carries none of this history with it. You have to walk in and enjoy it for what it is. I do like the way Snyder tried to use the movie to the same thing Moore did with comics but with other Super-hero movies. Just look at Ozymandias's costume and then look at the Schumacher Batman flicks.

Now yeah, there's a core story in there about people and that's where things really happen, but it's also so wrapped in this cocoon of what it was and what it was meant to be, that that story is just a piece of the experience and that, perhaps, without coming into it with the right background reading, you're not getting the full experience. And the movie might just suffer from that.

A lot of reviews I've seen are split between really good and godawful and many of those reviews seem to fall along the lines of good=people who read it and bad=people who didn't. (There's also a notable category of people who've read it recently (what? as opposed to reading it in the 80s. Well, yeah)). Maybe it'll fall out that way, I don't know and won't until...well, soon.

I'll know better what I think Saturday night at the Arclight.

IF YOU WANT TO GROW SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, YOU NEED TO CALL IN A "GARDNER"

Julie Gardner is coming to save us!!! She, of Doctor Who, Life on Mars, and The Girl in the Cafe, will bring us quality television!!!

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Gardner, a highly regarded executive who headed up the revival of sci-fi series "Doctor Who" and a string of other drama hits, will be responsible for scripted projects and seek to work with top-level U.S. writers as well as U.K. creative talent including Russell T. Davies, Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharaoh. She is expected to join the L.A. studio full time in June.

..until Hollywood crushes the "quality" part out of her.

ANGEL OF DEATH

From Crackle: Angel of Death Ep 1 "Edge" starring Zoe Bell

Not bad. If you like Grindhouse. And I mean the post-Tarantino version of the genre.

I found this generally disappointing largely because I've been reading (Angel of Death writer) Ed Brubaker for years in the funnybooks and I know what he's capable of it and this...this ain't it. His stuff is unflinchingly intelligent. Looking at his crime comics like Criminal, I was expecting something more than oblique coolisms and ridiculous amounts of violence. This just really came off as him an aping of Tarantino. Paul Etheredge's direction also, though he was doing some interesting things of his own. I think he, us, everything would have been better served if maybe he adapted something out Criminal, that is if he wanted to a straight up girls, guns and money story.

Yesterday's LA times had an article about comic writers and their ready-made-for-the screen products (let's not even get into how right that is (very) and how wrong it is (because it so frequently gets the thing that made it ready studio-noted out of it)). And it highlighted Brubaker and Angel of Death. And it made me think, why didn't he bring his comic book sensibility to the screen rather than riffing on the post-Reservoir Dogs version of crime flicks. The end of the first episode made me laugh...and not in the way that might have been intended.

Even his more comic booky stuff, like the recent Incognito, a pulpy crime book about a super-villain,would have been much more interesting (to me) anyway.

At least his Sleeper (a fantastic crime/conspiracy/super-powered story) is getting made into a movie by Cruise et al. Hopefully they don't eject everything that made it interesting to them in the first place. Though there does seem to be a new wave of actually taking comics and making them into movies instead of making movies that are similar to but not them (Hellblazer, such a lost opportunity).

WILL WE FIND OUT THE DEAL WITH THE ROVER?

From today's Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK -- "Life on Mars" stars Harvey Keitel, Jason O'Mara and Michael Imperioli joined labor leaders on a Kaufman Astoria Studios stage Monday to push legislators to continue the funding of New York State production tax credits.

Then they got canned.