PARROTS, THE UNIVERSE & EVERYTHING

I still miss Douglas Adams. Had he not kicked in 2001 he might have had another novel out by now. Just.

THE MAKING OF TREME

ARE YOU UP TO SPEC?

It seems to be in the TV writer zeitgeist at the moment (at least the out-of-work version) that everybody wants to know what to spec. And in the last week or so, people have been popping up with their thoughts, research and/or theories on what the prospects are for a brand spanking new spec. Alex at TV Calling has done some digging amongst those most likely to be reading the specs in question and has come up with a pretty solid list, broken down into categories.

Ms. Froley, former of Privileged, brings her practical experience to bear with this list of suggested spec shows. And intriguing array of shows as in one virtual breath she mentions both the very new and the mostly played out, while . I make no judgements on that, as I frequently roll the dice and try to spec stuff before they get popular (and hopefully they do become popular). It's fraught with hazards, but there are certainly rewards. She also mentions one my favorite methods of narrowing the field, by linking to this early list of Emmy frontrunners.

My thoughts on the subject go something like this: Why the hell are you wondering what to spec now!? Staffing season gets underway in -like- a month. What are you gonna do, dash off 52 pages of The Mentalist and hope it doesn't suck? This is a spec. It's supposed to get you a job and it's supposed to be fucking awesome. You should have written it months ago, had it read, reread and critiqued, then obsessed over every little detail...while working on your pilot. Cuz you need one.

LIKE PLAYING PROJECT RUNWAY WITH A UNIVERSE

There's that old cliche about writers being intimidated by the blank page before them. Too many possibilities. It's all wide open. Where to begin. Etc. That's why constraints are awesome. And not just the plush and leather kind available at that place down the street you claim you've never been to.



Ridley Scott's putting out this anthology, Parallel Lines, in which all the filmmakers had to use the same dialogue. The results being wildly different, but what a challenge, eh.

Recently I wrote about some good bottle shows and that, perhaps is why they're good The constraints of staying on the standing sets.

Last year's foray into play writing was also an exercise in constraints. While an experienced theatre-type sees worlds in just a bare stage, I'm not that experienced theatre-type. I'm used to cutting every couple of pages to a new scene and location, so the challenge - the constraints was not doing that. Using only the space and technical limitations of a stage and real time.

I've never written one of those 48-hour flicks. You know the kind. You turn up at minute one and they give you a genre, maybe an object, or a character, or a line that must appear in the film and then you make it. In 48 hours.

The most obvious constraint is, of course, knowing the beginning and the end. Write what you like, but you got to start with the beginning and get to the end. If you don't have those, stop staring at the blank page.

TWO AWESOME MINUTES OF STAR TREK

In fact, I daresay that these two minutes rank somewhere in the top ten minutes total.


Disagree? Then you are wrong, sir. Wrong.

SUBMERGE

Since the beginning of this final season, I've been reviewing a lot of Lost and added Lostpedia to my Firefox search thingy. I've also been paying more attention to some of the more prominent online television critics with their weekly, near immediate episode reviews, and along with those a lot of general fan opinion.

With that comes a lot of complaint. Mostly about the flash sideways. Many complaints that they are irrelevant and many complaints that answers are not coming fast and furious. All I can think is...what the fuck show have you been watching for the last five years?

With Cuse and Lindelof repeatedly making remarks about managing expectations for answers through this final season and also repeated remarks about the narrative that matters and not every little mystery being solved, it's time to really look at the nature of the show. It's a show that is not going to hand you all the answers, but if you look deep enough, you'll probably find them. The thing you won't get is confirmation that you're right. You're just going to have to believe that you got it right.

And belief is the name of my game. I believe in the storytellers. I believe that they'll give me what is most important and I believe that I'll have to dig for the stuff that's not important. Why can't women get pregnant on the island? Not exactly the point of the series, but I think if you look, you can find the answer has already been revealed. It just hasn't been handed to you.

As I said, I've been reviewing a lot of Lost. Why? I've been looking for mysteries I've forgotten about and seeing if they've been resolved and I didn't even realize it. And in some cases, the answer is yes. My favorite mystery, however, has not been yet. I share it with the President. (the mystery of the corpses in the caves (that's Season One).

So, these flash sideways? Right now, they seem like irrelevant alternate histories ( though even if that's the case and I don't believe it is, it provided quite the dramatic counterpoint in "Dr. Linus" and revealed certain truths about his character versus the circumstances of his character). However, this has been a show where you're in for the long haul and I see no reason why that should change now. Once we get to the end of the road, these sideways will mean something more than they do now. And it might not be obvious.

It's about submerging yourself into the mystery in such a way that few television shows can let you. The Prisoner. Twin Peaks. Carnivale, maybe.

There is, however, the chance that they are just alternate realities that don't really have a bearing on the island's narrative. If that's the case, look back on the last 18 hours of Season Six that you watched and ask yourself "Did I enjoy it?" If the answer is no, they why on Earth did you watch 18 hours of a show you hate? You got bigger problems than what's up with the Hurley bird.

MENTIONED ON THE OSCARS

I make no apologies for diggin' the hell out of this flick.

COVER ME

Or...maybe not.

Taking criticism and processing it is an absolutely vital skill in being a writer. So is when knowing when to ignore it.

I recently got a couple of coverage on a project of mine. They are not the first coverages (coveragi?), just the latest. The first several were all varying degrees of favorable, some with a notes to address, some not. I trust them because they are people I do not know, coverage is a job they are paid to do and they were not paid by me. The same is true of these latest two.

(I also have a group of people who have demonstrated their ability to not hold back anything. They are invaluable.)

Now, one phrase I hate to hear or utter with regards to criticism is "they just don't get it." It feels like a rationalization, but in these cases, it might be spot on. Both readers made it clear that they thought they were reading a slapstick comedy. They were so totally not. While there is some funny in the script, it's more dramedy than comedy and it's not even in the same zip code as slapstick. Nothing I do ever will be. But they managed to get that impression and never let go of it.

The first reader really just didn't seem to care for it too much. That's cool. I tried to glean anything I could from the coverage, but ultimately taste is taste. If you're not down with it, so be it. The second coverage however...this guy hated it with a rage generally reserved for Uwe Boll. And clearly, about halfway though, he stopped paying attention to what he was reading because he was having too much fun ripping it to shreds, since he got story facts plainly wrong. He was also clearly angered by the script refusal to sit squarely in a preexisting category. That may not make it an easy sell, but it is what it is. The most amazing thing though, and the thing that utterly destroyed this guy's credibility is that he gave it a "weak consider."

Really? A consider? After three pages of hate and hyperbole, wasn't a pass pretty much in order?

So yeah, that one...ignore.

WE'RE NOT GOING TO GUAM ARE WE?

This, despite my rewatching of seasons two through five of Lost has nothing to do with Lost. It does, however have to do with pilots and not going where you thought you were.

I've got this meeting coming up and it got me thinking about what material might be a good fit for it and found myself coming up with new stuff that, maybe, would be a good fit. Thus, with eight pages (or so) left on my current pilot project, I found myself outlining two completely different pilot. Not one, but two. Hell, I even wrote six pages of a first draft on one of them just to start getting deeper into the voices and the feel of the piece.

What's more, that piece is something I'd never seriously considered before. A half-hour, single-camera. I hesitate to call it a sitcom. It's more a premium cable channel dramedy kinda thing along the lines of the Showtime stuff or HBO. I'm keeping the title to myself.

The other one, the one-hour one. It's called Mine. And somewhere in there, I'm gonna write my Good Wife spec, but not until the season is over. Sometimes you take the page, sometimes the page takes you. Definitely no down-time between projects this year.