A blog provides an outlet for disseminating your opinions and thoughts. Without it, your disseminations are restricted to family and friends. And when they get tired of you, your final option is disseminating in your head, the recipients of your wisdom, an audience of neurons.
Okay, let’s get these out. Maybe you’ll have some opinions of your own to pass along and we can give our defenseless neurons a break.
In no particular order:
---------------
When I think of a “steady hand at the tiller”, I don’t imagine a fighter pilot. I saw Top Gun. Fighter pilots are insane.
---------------
“If Obama loses, Hillary is a prime candidate for 2012.”
You’ve got a car in your showroom window that’s not selling because there’s a “car of the future” on the market that’s kicking its ass. Is it really reasonable to believe that a car that’s considered old fashioned today will be considered less old fashioned in four years?
---------------
“If McCain loses, Sarah Palin will be given serious consideration for 2012.”
This opinion confuses show business with substance. From an entertainment perspective, Sarah Palin displays many winning attributes. But her positions – no abortions even in the case of rape and incest (consistent, but yow!), small town Americans are the real Americans – stand not only outside the national mainstream, they represent the extreme end of the Republican party, an end which has worn out its welcome even with Republicans.
---------------
“Obama Outspends McCain Four to One”
What happens when the candidate who has the most money to spend is an idiot? Is a “money war” the most sensible method we can think of for electing a president?
---------------
McCain in 2000. McCain in 2008. Wha' hoppin'? And why did he allow it to?
---------------
“If the Democrats have a monopoly on the presidency and the Congress, they will be evaluated on their record in 2010.”
That would be valid if, when the Republicans left office, they took their mistakes away with them. Since that’s not how it works, the only way a Democratic administration can honestly be evaluated is on the basis of how competently they clean up of the astonishing mess the Republicans left behind.
---------------
“McCain Maligns the Canadian Health Care System” (a particular pet peeve)
Isn’t the Canadian health care system very similar to the military health care system that took care of McCain when he was released from the Vietnamese prison?
---------------
“Barack Obama will raise taxes on people making over $250,000 a year.”
“Barack Obama will raise taxes on people making over $42,000 a year.”
Are numbers now a matter of opinion? Is there no way of definitively determining which number it is?
---------------
Why does a populist have to be a plumber? Why can’t a populist have a university degree?
----------------
What if it was discovered that voting with the president 90% of the time made McCain the senator who voted with the president the least?
----------------
“Why are only Republicans criticized for dirty tactics? Both sides employ these strategies.”
Equally? If one person drives five miles over the speed limit and another person drives forty miles over the speed limit, unequal punishment – or in the case of politics, unequal criticism – is entirely appropriate. Anything else would be hideously unfair.
-----------------
“If black people can vote for Obama because he’s black, then a white person can vote against Obama because he’s black. It’s the same thing.”
This is a smokescreen for racism. No matter how black people voted – for Obama or against Obama – Barack Obama would still be black. And that would still be the only reason those white people are refusing to vote for him.
---------------
“Vote! It matters.”
As a result of the all-or-nothing Electoral College system, if you live in a state leaning heavily in one candidate’s direction, your vote, either for or against that candidate, means nothing.
Also, as one pundit put it, “I don’t know who I’m voting for – the candidate or the copywriter.” Because of the tightly orchestrated campaigns – where empty catchphrases fill the air and spontaneous incidents are verboten, there’s a reasonable chance we have no idea who we’re voting for.
---------------
I voted. But you can do what you want. It’s all a roll of the dice. The good thing is, in four years (or two, for the House), we can roll the dice again.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
"Arrogance"
Yesterday, I talked about confidence, a writer’s fundamental need to believe in what they’re communicating, and in the method (the words, the tone, the style) they’ve chosen to communicate it. My advice in this area is unwavering. For your greatest chance at success…
Write like yourself.
I wrote like myself for over thirty years (I still do in this blog), and it worked out pretty well. When my agent warned me that the business was changing – comedies were getting dumber and sexier – he urged me to alter my approach. For my agent, and I didn’t disagree, this was a “Red Alert” situation. A new wind was a-blowin’. It was “Change or die.”
I can’t do “dumber and sexier.” My mind doesn’t work that way. I also knew there were natural “dumber and sexier” writers out there, whose minds work exactly that way. Even if I altered my approach, my efforts would be poor and painful imitations of those naturals. (As theirs would be if they ventured to write like me.)
I remember once seeing a comedy pilot, written by a TV writer I greatly admired. He was sliding in the business and saw this as his last chance at staying in the game. I watched the pilot with growing distaste. Here was an intelligent, insightful funny writer trying to be sexy, superficial and dumb. It was difficult to look at. A Bubby (Granny) in a miniskirt.
Write like yourself. It’s the only rule I’ve got.
Now…
This is subtle. Not the concept, my transition. You know the experiment where they drop a frog in a pot of water, and they raise the temperature so gradually that the frog can’t sense that the water’s heating up until, unaware of the danger, it finally boils to death? I’m talking about that kind of subtle.
You develop your style, a synthesization of instinct, training and experience. Your success gives you confidence in your style. You can rely it. It works. And other people agree.
Confidence is essential. Without it, you’d sit mute at the computer. “What do I do and how do I do it?”
You know what to do. You write like yourself. The awareness that “It worked before, it’ll work again” is soothing and reassuring. Your confidence gets you in the game.
It’s sort of like religion. You have a certainty in your beliefs. But sometimes, as with religion, you forget that other people have different beliefs.
If you recall yesterday’s posting, you’ll remember my telling a friend of mine, a writer of successful but superficial comedies:
“I don’t why anyone would write if they don’t have anything to say.”
That crashing sound is me, shattering the only rule I’ve got. I had told this writer, who was sailing along in his career, that there was something deficient in his writing like himself, and what he really needed to do was to
…write like me.*
* It is highly questionable that everything I wrote, especially for television, was a trumpeting expression of something I had to say. On too many occasions, I didn’t even write like me.
This holier than Thou pronouncement is my first memory of messing up in this manner. (I mess up in various manners.) Imperceptibly, though it was probably screamingly perceptible to my writer friend, my confidence had evolved ever so gradually into arrogance.
“Don’t write like yourself. Write like me.”
Sadly, I have repeated this transgression in various venues, most often in “Rewrite Rooms”, where I regularly ignored the only rule I’ve got and I berated other writers for writing like themselves. Their joke pitches may have rocked the room with laughter, but if they seemed to me to be inconsistent with the character delivering them or they muddied an important story point…
I don’t know. Maybe I was just jealous.
Eh. No, not “eh” yet. There’s one more.
John Lahr. (“Just Trying to Help” – April 2, 2008.)
Lahr is the first class New Yorker theater critic whose writing shimmers with insight and panache. What (unsolicited) advice did I give him? In his always readable reviews, he’d sprinkle in words whose meanings I didn’t understand, like louche and Manichean, and I suggested he use more regular words instead. The message I was sending this universally acclaimed theater critic?
“Don’t write like yourself. Write like me.”
Oh, man.
Confidence is mandatory. Arrogance? The froggie is cooked.
Write like yourself.
I wrote like myself for over thirty years (I still do in this blog), and it worked out pretty well. When my agent warned me that the business was changing – comedies were getting dumber and sexier – he urged me to alter my approach. For my agent, and I didn’t disagree, this was a “Red Alert” situation. A new wind was a-blowin’. It was “Change or die.”
I can’t do “dumber and sexier.” My mind doesn’t work that way. I also knew there were natural “dumber and sexier” writers out there, whose minds work exactly that way. Even if I altered my approach, my efforts would be poor and painful imitations of those naturals. (As theirs would be if they ventured to write like me.)
I remember once seeing a comedy pilot, written by a TV writer I greatly admired. He was sliding in the business and saw this as his last chance at staying in the game. I watched the pilot with growing distaste. Here was an intelligent, insightful funny writer trying to be sexy, superficial and dumb. It was difficult to look at. A Bubby (Granny) in a miniskirt.
Write like yourself. It’s the only rule I’ve got.
Now…
This is subtle. Not the concept, my transition. You know the experiment where they drop a frog in a pot of water, and they raise the temperature so gradually that the frog can’t sense that the water’s heating up until, unaware of the danger, it finally boils to death? I’m talking about that kind of subtle.
You develop your style, a synthesization of instinct, training and experience. Your success gives you confidence in your style. You can rely it. It works. And other people agree.
Confidence is essential. Without it, you’d sit mute at the computer. “What do I do and how do I do it?”
You know what to do. You write like yourself. The awareness that “It worked before, it’ll work again” is soothing and reassuring. Your confidence gets you in the game.
It’s sort of like religion. You have a certainty in your beliefs. But sometimes, as with religion, you forget that other people have different beliefs.
If you recall yesterday’s posting, you’ll remember my telling a friend of mine, a writer of successful but superficial comedies:
“I don’t why anyone would write if they don’t have anything to say.”
That crashing sound is me, shattering the only rule I’ve got. I had told this writer, who was sailing along in his career, that there was something deficient in his writing like himself, and what he really needed to do was to
…write like me.*
* It is highly questionable that everything I wrote, especially for television, was a trumpeting expression of something I had to say. On too many occasions, I didn’t even write like me.
This holier than Thou pronouncement is my first memory of messing up in this manner. (I mess up in various manners.) Imperceptibly, though it was probably screamingly perceptible to my writer friend, my confidence had evolved ever so gradually into arrogance.
“Don’t write like yourself. Write like me.”
Sadly, I have repeated this transgression in various venues, most often in “Rewrite Rooms”, where I regularly ignored the only rule I’ve got and I berated other writers for writing like themselves. Their joke pitches may have rocked the room with laughter, but if they seemed to me to be inconsistent with the character delivering them or they muddied an important story point…
I don’t know. Maybe I was just jealous.
Eh. No, not “eh” yet. There’s one more.
John Lahr. (“Just Trying to Help” – April 2, 2008.)
Lahr is the first class New Yorker theater critic whose writing shimmers with insight and panache. What (unsolicited) advice did I give him? In his always readable reviews, he’d sprinkle in words whose meanings I didn’t understand, like louche and Manichean, and I suggested he use more regular words instead. The message I was sending this universally acclaimed theater critic?
“Don’t write like yourself. Write like me.”
Oh, man.
Confidence is mandatory. Arrogance? The froggie is cooked.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
"Confidence"
Writers need confidence. They need confidence to believe their ideas are worth writing, or they’d never put anything down. They also need confidence to believe that the words they choose to express those ideas are the best words they can think of; otherwise, they’d be drive themselves nuts rewriting the thing over and over again, struggling to get it “just right.”
(The third area of confidence, if their writing is not of the blogatory variety, is the confidence to believe that their ideas, in whatever form they enstructure them, have a reasonable chance of selling.)
Most people don’t write, believing, “What do I have to say that’s so special?” Maybe they’re right, or maybe the world missed out on a wonderful writer with valuable insights. You can’t force people to write. Any more than you can force some writers to stop.
I once mentioned to a successful television writer I know that “I don’t know why anyone would write when they don’t have anything to say.” The writer stared at me blankly and proceeded to enrich himself penning mindless comedies. (It’s quite possible my concept of “the writer’s purpose” is narrower than it needs to be. See posting on “Arrogance”, coming shortly.)
Anyway…
The finest example, for me, of a writer’s “confidence cycle” in its exquisite completeness appears in the cult comedy classic Bye Bye Braverman (1968), written by Herb Sargent, (based on the 1964 novel To An Early Grave by Wallace Markfield.) My friend Paul and I have been unsuccessfully searching for a copy of this movie for years. You guys are good at that stuff. Maybe you can help.
Bye Bye Braverman revolves around four old pals, reuniting to attend a friend’s funeral, and they can’t find it. That’s the entire plot. But inside the movie are various rapturous moments, including a scene near the end, where George Segal, standing in a cemetery, discourses on the myriad changes in the world that the people lying dead in the cemetery have missed.
The “confidence cycle” scene features one of the four buddies, a blocked book reviewer named “Holly Levine”, played by Sorrell Booke (who went on to play “Boss” Hogg on the Dukes of Hazzard TV series.)
The character, “Levine”, sits abjectly in front of his typewriter (it was 1968), agonizing over a review that he hasn’t started writing. There were a few false starts, which sit crumpled in his wastebasket. Close-up on “Levine”, staring, almost paralyzed, at a blank white page.
Blocked.
I may not get the details exactly right – I saw the movie once, forty years ago – but after a torturous struggle, “Levine” overcomes his writer’s block, and in a mad flurry of creative inspiration, types the first paragraph of his review.
“Certainly….” That’s how it started. “Certainly…” It was followed by a paragraph, dashed off with flying fingers, of one piece, without a moment’s hesitation. His writer’s block is over. As the ballplayer’s say, he is “in the zone.”
“Levine” snatches the paper from the typewriter, reading it with satisfaction and delight – “Certainly…” and what follows composed more brilliantly that he could possibly have imagined. The imaginative choice of words. The effortless-feeling flow. The clear, concise, cogent – and indisputably correct – point of view. “Levine” is thrilled with his effort. He is certain to be declared a genius.
“Levine” moves to return the page to his typewriter. Suddenly, there’s a flicker of hesitation. Something appears to be amiss.
Harboring last-minute second thoughts, he re-reads the paragraph. His confidence recedes with every word. It’s an alarming transformation. What was perceived moments earlier to be perfect now seems considerably less so. It may be worse than that. The paragraph may actually stink.
The symbol of his displeasure is reflected in the single word he recites from his previously “flawless” review.
“’Certainly?’”
“Levine” crumples the paper and tosses it in the wastebasket.
Who can say what turned things around? An inner critical voice, the writer’s own or some powerful “other.” On the other hand, maybe it’s not the “Voice of Doubt” that’s speaking. Maybe it’s the “Voice of Truth.”
Maybe what “Levine” wrote, and was temporarily enamored of, was actually not very good. Maybe “Levine” is an inadequate evaluator of his own writing. Or maybe, going to the heart of the matter, “Levine” is simply unsuited for his chosen line of work, totally lacking in talent, and having no business whatsoever considering himself a writer.
Boy.
With thoughts like those flying around, it’s amazing anyone ever writes anything at all.
(The third area of confidence, if their writing is not of the blogatory variety, is the confidence to believe that their ideas, in whatever form they enstructure them, have a reasonable chance of selling.)
Most people don’t write, believing, “What do I have to say that’s so special?” Maybe they’re right, or maybe the world missed out on a wonderful writer with valuable insights. You can’t force people to write. Any more than you can force some writers to stop.
I once mentioned to a successful television writer I know that “I don’t know why anyone would write when they don’t have anything to say.” The writer stared at me blankly and proceeded to enrich himself penning mindless comedies. (It’s quite possible my concept of “the writer’s purpose” is narrower than it needs to be. See posting on “Arrogance”, coming shortly.)
Anyway…
The finest example, for me, of a writer’s “confidence cycle” in its exquisite completeness appears in the cult comedy classic Bye Bye Braverman (1968), written by Herb Sargent, (based on the 1964 novel To An Early Grave by Wallace Markfield.) My friend Paul and I have been unsuccessfully searching for a copy of this movie for years. You guys are good at that stuff. Maybe you can help.
Bye Bye Braverman revolves around four old pals, reuniting to attend a friend’s funeral, and they can’t find it. That’s the entire plot. But inside the movie are various rapturous moments, including a scene near the end, where George Segal, standing in a cemetery, discourses on the myriad changes in the world that the people lying dead in the cemetery have missed.
The “confidence cycle” scene features one of the four buddies, a blocked book reviewer named “Holly Levine”, played by Sorrell Booke (who went on to play “Boss” Hogg on the Dukes of Hazzard TV series.)
The character, “Levine”, sits abjectly in front of his typewriter (it was 1968), agonizing over a review that he hasn’t started writing. There were a few false starts, which sit crumpled in his wastebasket. Close-up on “Levine”, staring, almost paralyzed, at a blank white page.
Blocked.
I may not get the details exactly right – I saw the movie once, forty years ago – but after a torturous struggle, “Levine” overcomes his writer’s block, and in a mad flurry of creative inspiration, types the first paragraph of his review.
“Certainly….” That’s how it started. “Certainly…” It was followed by a paragraph, dashed off with flying fingers, of one piece, without a moment’s hesitation. His writer’s block is over. As the ballplayer’s say, he is “in the zone.”
“Levine” snatches the paper from the typewriter, reading it with satisfaction and delight – “Certainly…” and what follows composed more brilliantly that he could possibly have imagined. The imaginative choice of words. The effortless-feeling flow. The clear, concise, cogent – and indisputably correct – point of view. “Levine” is thrilled with his effort. He is certain to be declared a genius.
“Levine” moves to return the page to his typewriter. Suddenly, there’s a flicker of hesitation. Something appears to be amiss.
Harboring last-minute second thoughts, he re-reads the paragraph. His confidence recedes with every word. It’s an alarming transformation. What was perceived moments earlier to be perfect now seems considerably less so. It may be worse than that. The paragraph may actually stink.
The symbol of his displeasure is reflected in the single word he recites from his previously “flawless” review.
“’Certainly?’”
“Levine” crumples the paper and tosses it in the wastebasket.
Who can say what turned things around? An inner critical voice, the writer’s own or some powerful “other.” On the other hand, maybe it’s not the “Voice of Doubt” that’s speaking. Maybe it’s the “Voice of Truth.”
Maybe what “Levine” wrote, and was temporarily enamored of, was actually not very good. Maybe “Levine” is an inadequate evaluator of his own writing. Or maybe, going to the heart of the matter, “Levine” is simply unsuited for his chosen line of work, totally lacking in talent, and having no business whatsoever considering himself a writer.
Boy.
With thoughts like those flying around, it’s amazing anyone ever writes anything at all.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
"Worth Knowing"
I heard a comedian tell this joke early in the Cold War. At the time, America was concerned because Russians was ahead of us in military technology. The joke went like this:
“People are worried about the Russians stealing our secrets. I say, let them. Then they’ll be two years behind.”
This joke comes to mind when I think about people trying to learn about sitcom writing from veteran writers like myself, except, instead of two years, I’m afraid they’d be twenty years behind.
That’s why I don’t teach sitcom writing. I want to give the current aspirants a fighting chance. Situation comedies, especially the multi-camera variety, seem to me like some art form practiced in an ancient civilization. Teaching sitcom writing is akin to leading students through the anachronistic intricacies Egyptian wall painting.
“The legs and head go sideways, but the eyes face straight out.”
Why would you want to learn that? And hope it will make you a living?
There was a time when aspiring writers, watching classic situation comedies, were thinking, “That’s what I want to do!” One of them was me. But that was in 1974. And back then, those shows were popular.
There are some excellent sitcom writing teachers today. I imagine, among other advice, they warn their students against formula joke rhythms, stock characters and predictable storylines. That’s undeniably good advice (though, it’s worth remembering that many writers who avoided none of those elements wound up with extremely large houses).
The problem is, in my view, that the obstacles inhibiting a sitcom revival lie, not in the execution, but in the DNA of the situation comedy form itself. The liabilities come with the territory. I remember the first time I ate ice cream as a five year-old, and I immediately got an excruciating headache. To this day, I can hear myself screaming, “I like ice cream. But take away the cold!”
You can’t have ice cream without the cold. And you can’t have sitcoms without those inherent sitcomical elements that have clearly worn out their welcomes.
The generic living room sets with the couches facing forward. (It’s the only way the four cameras can adequately cover the action.) People eating around one half (the back half) of a table. (Same reason.) The unnatural intrusion of the live studio audience, laughing longer and harder than the people watching at home could possibly see any reason for. (People laugh harder when they’re actually present, but the laughs sound artificial at home, which is why they’re perceived to be “canned” even when they’re not.)
Why didn’t these, and other artificialities – the Huxtables’ living room was large enough to land an airplane in – disturb the viewers of that period? Because owing to the volume of comedies on the air at the time, “sitcom reality” was unconsciously accepted as normal.
As the number of sitcoms drops below a critical mass, the inherent weirdnesses of those that remain seem jarringly disconcerting. Which is a significant reason for the switch to single-camera and animated comedies. These more flexible formats significantly alleviate the traditional sitcom oddities.
The only difference between the classic sitcoms and the inferior versions was that the writing was better. The stories were more identifiable, the characters more believable and less inconsistent in their behavior, and the actors, given honest dialogue, played their parts more truthfully. But beneath the quality, the structural underpinning to both the good shows and the less good ones was exactly the same.
That underpinning is no longer selling tickets.
There’s this multi-camera series currently on the air called The Big Bang Theory. On the surface, it feels unique, the four male lead characters representing young physics geniuses, or something. The dialogue sounds persuasively not phony-baloney. There’s a ring of to authenticity to, I don’t know, blah – the science stuff.
Under the surface, however, it’s the story of a socially inept outsider with a powerful crush on the girl across the hall. I think that one goes back to Buster Keaton. I believe I mentioned yesterday that a hit show is something that’s fundamentally traditional, but a little bit different. The Big Bang Theory is precisely that. Fresh-sounding characters. Stories with moss on them.
I watch The Big Bang Theory, and I root for it to succeed. But unless the stories evolve to the intelligence level of the characters…eh.
Is there anything you can teach to resuscitate the ailing sitcom genre and give it its best possible shot at a comeback?
Yes. You can teach storytelling technique. I believe that, as there are natural laws in the universe, there are natural laws of telling a story. The right way feels better. You can tell when you’re telling a story correctly. You’re holding your audience’s attention, from moment to story-escalating moment.
Successful story structure, though invisible, lifts the material like a supporting wind lifts a bird in flight. It elevates the impact of any story you care to mention, from The Three Bears to… anything more impressive than The Three Bears.
My agent disagrees. He says the audience’s shortened attention span has rendered traditional story techniques irrelevant. My response to that is this. I do not believe any TV series or movie was ever less successful because the story they were telling made sense.
Storytelling technique matters. And that can definitely be taught.
And then there’s this. Offered as a concluding ray of sunshine.
I recently read about a guy who lived a while back, who drove himself crazy with the thought that, since there are only seven notes in the musical scale, the time was imminent when no new songs could possibly be written.
They’re still writing songs.
And a lot of them of are pretty good.
“People are worried about the Russians stealing our secrets. I say, let them. Then they’ll be two years behind.”
This joke comes to mind when I think about people trying to learn about sitcom writing from veteran writers like myself, except, instead of two years, I’m afraid they’d be twenty years behind.
That’s why I don’t teach sitcom writing. I want to give the current aspirants a fighting chance. Situation comedies, especially the multi-camera variety, seem to me like some art form practiced in an ancient civilization. Teaching sitcom writing is akin to leading students through the anachronistic intricacies Egyptian wall painting.
“The legs and head go sideways, but the eyes face straight out.”
Why would you want to learn that? And hope it will make you a living?
There was a time when aspiring writers, watching classic situation comedies, were thinking, “That’s what I want to do!” One of them was me. But that was in 1974. And back then, those shows were popular.
There are some excellent sitcom writing teachers today. I imagine, among other advice, they warn their students against formula joke rhythms, stock characters and predictable storylines. That’s undeniably good advice (though, it’s worth remembering that many writers who avoided none of those elements wound up with extremely large houses).
The problem is, in my view, that the obstacles inhibiting a sitcom revival lie, not in the execution, but in the DNA of the situation comedy form itself. The liabilities come with the territory. I remember the first time I ate ice cream as a five year-old, and I immediately got an excruciating headache. To this day, I can hear myself screaming, “I like ice cream. But take away the cold!”
You can’t have ice cream without the cold. And you can’t have sitcoms without those inherent sitcomical elements that have clearly worn out their welcomes.
The generic living room sets with the couches facing forward. (It’s the only way the four cameras can adequately cover the action.) People eating around one half (the back half) of a table. (Same reason.) The unnatural intrusion of the live studio audience, laughing longer and harder than the people watching at home could possibly see any reason for. (People laugh harder when they’re actually present, but the laughs sound artificial at home, which is why they’re perceived to be “canned” even when they’re not.)
Why didn’t these, and other artificialities – the Huxtables’ living room was large enough to land an airplane in – disturb the viewers of that period? Because owing to the volume of comedies on the air at the time, “sitcom reality” was unconsciously accepted as normal.
As the number of sitcoms drops below a critical mass, the inherent weirdnesses of those that remain seem jarringly disconcerting. Which is a significant reason for the switch to single-camera and animated comedies. These more flexible formats significantly alleviate the traditional sitcom oddities.
The only difference between the classic sitcoms and the inferior versions was that the writing was better. The stories were more identifiable, the characters more believable and less inconsistent in their behavior, and the actors, given honest dialogue, played their parts more truthfully. But beneath the quality, the structural underpinning to both the good shows and the less good ones was exactly the same.
That underpinning is no longer selling tickets.
There’s this multi-camera series currently on the air called The Big Bang Theory. On the surface, it feels unique, the four male lead characters representing young physics geniuses, or something. The dialogue sounds persuasively not phony-baloney. There’s a ring of to authenticity to, I don’t know, blah – the science stuff.
Under the surface, however, it’s the story of a socially inept outsider with a powerful crush on the girl across the hall. I think that one goes back to Buster Keaton. I believe I mentioned yesterday that a hit show is something that’s fundamentally traditional, but a little bit different. The Big Bang Theory is precisely that. Fresh-sounding characters. Stories with moss on them.
I watch The Big Bang Theory, and I root for it to succeed. But unless the stories evolve to the intelligence level of the characters…eh.
Is there anything you can teach to resuscitate the ailing sitcom genre and give it its best possible shot at a comeback?
Yes. You can teach storytelling technique. I believe that, as there are natural laws in the universe, there are natural laws of telling a story. The right way feels better. You can tell when you’re telling a story correctly. You’re holding your audience’s attention, from moment to story-escalating moment.
Successful story structure, though invisible, lifts the material like a supporting wind lifts a bird in flight. It elevates the impact of any story you care to mention, from The Three Bears to… anything more impressive than The Three Bears.
My agent disagrees. He says the audience’s shortened attention span has rendered traditional story techniques irrelevant. My response to that is this. I do not believe any TV series or movie was ever less successful because the story they were telling made sense.
Storytelling technique matters. And that can definitely be taught.
And then there’s this. Offered as a concluding ray of sunshine.
I recently read about a guy who lived a while back, who drove himself crazy with the thought that, since there are only seven notes in the musical scale, the time was imminent when no new songs could possibly be written.
They’re still writing songs.
And a lot of them of are pretty good.
Monday, October 27, 2008
"Story of a Writer - Part Nineteen C"
Thanks for the feedback on my series ideas. I really appreciate it, especially the fact that three different proposals were singled out. Although I am a little hurt about the other three.
A mother brings home two sweaters for her son, a red one and a blue one, instructing him to try them on. The son comes out wearing the red sweater. The mother complains,
“What’s the matter, you don’t like the blue one?”
Accompanying a synopsis of the series ideas, I threw in one-sentence explanations of where I believed these ideas came from, so you could get some sense of connection between the writer and the idea. None of these ideas are products of personal experience – I was never a baseball star, the king of a small European principality, or a woman – but they all in some way, emanated from a certain aspect of my being.
A man I knew once quoted another person who said,
“Everything is like something else. What is this like?”
That’s a useful question when you’re trying to create. You’re a Canadian, but nobody cares about Canadians. A dead end? Not necessarily. You can take that “being a Canadian” feeling, that essence of Canadianness, that distinctive Eu de Canuck, and transform it into a character people might care about, like, say, a fellow from another planet, a planet that’s decent and polite and provides everyone on the planet with affordable health care, and you’re on your way.
“The Visitor From The Planet Nice.”
A simple adjustment. The character’s still essentially you – so you can write it from the inside – but with a, hopefully, popularity-enhancing makeover. Here’s a point I’m continually relearning. You don’t have to worry that you’re writing isn’t personal. It’s always personal. Why? Because you’re the one who’s writing it.
After posting “Story of a Writer – Parts Eighteen A and B, it seemed like I had more to say about creating ideas for television series. I can only draw from my experience, which is limited because, well…I’m limited, but, hopefully, that experience can still be of assistance.
“I’m limited.” What does that mean, that I’m willing to talk about in public? For one thing, it means I have not been blessed with limitless confidence, limitless vision or limitless flexibility. The consequences? A shadowing sense of self-doubt, little aptitude for anticipating trends (there’s a woman named Faith Popcorn who does that for a living), and an inability to create shows and write them in the style that happens to be currently “the way it’s done.”
Most of us are not groundbreakers, trendsetters, or even trend spotters. Our contribution is our version of what’s already there. Sometimes, it’s pure imitation, but at its best, it’s an imitation, professionally executed, with a little bit of “Earl”, or whoever you are, thrown in. Put it all together, it spells…paycheck.
That’s the first step. Understanding what they’re doing, and trying to fit in. The rest of the process… Clueless. I am totally stumped on where ideas come from. I know they come from somewhere. Somewhere in me. I didn’t steal them. No elves sneaked in at night and typed them on my computer. It’s a little like magic. You don’t have an idea. And then you do.
An Insight that Helped Me Get Started
My experience led me to the conclusion that television comedies could be situated just about anywhere. The setting for the show may seem to matter a lot but, ultimately, it’s not life and death.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was set at a television station in Minneapolis. I’ve read the Mary pilot script several times, looking specifically for the answer to this question: “Did Mary Richards have an ambition to work in television news?”
She didn’t. There was an ad in the paper and she answered the ad. That was it. The newsroom arena, though clearly important, did not feature prominently in the pilot storyline. The episode’s highlights are a hilarious job interview scene between Lou and Mary – which could have taken place in any pretty much any job setting – and there was a farcical final scene, where a drunken Lou Grant barges in as Mary’s breaking up with her boyfriend, which, again, has nothing to do with the news.
The setting is secondary. You select a setting that you and, hopefully, the audience, will find interesting and enjoy returning to. A small hotel in Washington, D.C. A microbrewery. A struggling movie studio in the 1930’s.
Revisiting these series ideas, I discover a common thread, which is that they’re all examples of small, struggling enterprises on the brink of extinction. I never noticed that before.
What does that mean to me? It means what I already said. Even when you’re not writing about yourself, you’re still writing about yourself. I always feel small, struggling and on the brink of extinction. There you have it. I’m not creating in a vacuum.
Those enterprises are me!
If the setting isn’t key, what is?
Character and relationship.
That’s what really matters. That’s why people come back. Yes, comedies need to be funny, but comedies that are only funny don’t last. For a show to succeed, the audience needs to care about the people. (Even unlikable people like Larry David.)
Now that I think about it, every series involves a struggle, whether it’s The Office, where they’re struggling against the mundanity of the workplace, or Everybody Loves Raymond, where they’re struggling to survive their family, or on M*A*S*H, where they’re struggling to, literally, not die. It would appear that everyone feels small, struggling and on the brink of extinction. Who knew?
The struggle is the core of the series. You then populate it with a cast of identifiable characters, characters drawn from life rather than the traditional sitcom bag of tricks, you allow those characters represent themselves in a truthful and entertaining manner, and you hand in the script and you see what they think.
I guess that’s what I did.
In High School, I had a classmate named Tom Jefferson who always got a hundred in math. I said to him, “Tom, how do you get a hundred in math?” Tom thought about it for a moment, and then replied, “Well, I sort of look at the questions and I kind of figure out the answers.”
I hope I’ve been a little more helpful than that.
A mother brings home two sweaters for her son, a red one and a blue one, instructing him to try them on. The son comes out wearing the red sweater. The mother complains,
“What’s the matter, you don’t like the blue one?”
Accompanying a synopsis of the series ideas, I threw in one-sentence explanations of where I believed these ideas came from, so you could get some sense of connection between the writer and the idea. None of these ideas are products of personal experience – I was never a baseball star, the king of a small European principality, or a woman – but they all in some way, emanated from a certain aspect of my being.
A man I knew once quoted another person who said,
“Everything is like something else. What is this like?”
That’s a useful question when you’re trying to create. You’re a Canadian, but nobody cares about Canadians. A dead end? Not necessarily. You can take that “being a Canadian” feeling, that essence of Canadianness, that distinctive Eu de Canuck, and transform it into a character people might care about, like, say, a fellow from another planet, a planet that’s decent and polite and provides everyone on the planet with affordable health care, and you’re on your way.
“The Visitor From The Planet Nice.”
A simple adjustment. The character’s still essentially you – so you can write it from the inside – but with a, hopefully, popularity-enhancing makeover. Here’s a point I’m continually relearning. You don’t have to worry that you’re writing isn’t personal. It’s always personal. Why? Because you’re the one who’s writing it.
After posting “Story of a Writer – Parts Eighteen A and B, it seemed like I had more to say about creating ideas for television series. I can only draw from my experience, which is limited because, well…I’m limited, but, hopefully, that experience can still be of assistance.
“I’m limited.” What does that mean, that I’m willing to talk about in public? For one thing, it means I have not been blessed with limitless confidence, limitless vision or limitless flexibility. The consequences? A shadowing sense of self-doubt, little aptitude for anticipating trends (there’s a woman named Faith Popcorn who does that for a living), and an inability to create shows and write them in the style that happens to be currently “the way it’s done.”
Most of us are not groundbreakers, trendsetters, or even trend spotters. Our contribution is our version of what’s already there. Sometimes, it’s pure imitation, but at its best, it’s an imitation, professionally executed, with a little bit of “Earl”, or whoever you are, thrown in. Put it all together, it spells…paycheck.
That’s the first step. Understanding what they’re doing, and trying to fit in. The rest of the process… Clueless. I am totally stumped on where ideas come from. I know they come from somewhere. Somewhere in me. I didn’t steal them. No elves sneaked in at night and typed them on my computer. It’s a little like magic. You don’t have an idea. And then you do.
An Insight that Helped Me Get Started
My experience led me to the conclusion that television comedies could be situated just about anywhere. The setting for the show may seem to matter a lot but, ultimately, it’s not life and death.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was set at a television station in Minneapolis. I’ve read the Mary pilot script several times, looking specifically for the answer to this question: “Did Mary Richards have an ambition to work in television news?”
She didn’t. There was an ad in the paper and she answered the ad. That was it. The newsroom arena, though clearly important, did not feature prominently in the pilot storyline. The episode’s highlights are a hilarious job interview scene between Lou and Mary – which could have taken place in any pretty much any job setting – and there was a farcical final scene, where a drunken Lou Grant barges in as Mary’s breaking up with her boyfriend, which, again, has nothing to do with the news.
The setting is secondary. You select a setting that you and, hopefully, the audience, will find interesting and enjoy returning to. A small hotel in Washington, D.C. A microbrewery. A struggling movie studio in the 1930’s.
Revisiting these series ideas, I discover a common thread, which is that they’re all examples of small, struggling enterprises on the brink of extinction. I never noticed that before.
What does that mean to me? It means what I already said. Even when you’re not writing about yourself, you’re still writing about yourself. I always feel small, struggling and on the brink of extinction. There you have it. I’m not creating in a vacuum.
Those enterprises are me!
If the setting isn’t key, what is?
Character and relationship.
That’s what really matters. That’s why people come back. Yes, comedies need to be funny, but comedies that are only funny don’t last. For a show to succeed, the audience needs to care about the people. (Even unlikable people like Larry David.)
Now that I think about it, every series involves a struggle, whether it’s The Office, where they’re struggling against the mundanity of the workplace, or Everybody Loves Raymond, where they’re struggling to survive their family, or on M*A*S*H, where they’re struggling to, literally, not die. It would appear that everyone feels small, struggling and on the brink of extinction. Who knew?
The struggle is the core of the series. You then populate it with a cast of identifiable characters, characters drawn from life rather than the traditional sitcom bag of tricks, you allow those characters represent themselves in a truthful and entertaining manner, and you hand in the script and you see what they think.
I guess that’s what I did.
In High School, I had a classmate named Tom Jefferson who always got a hundred in math. I said to him, “Tom, how do you get a hundred in math?” Tom thought about it for a moment, and then replied, “Well, I sort of look at the questions and I kind of figure out the answers.”
I hope I’ve been a little more helpful than that.
Friday, October 24, 2008
"Gratuitous Morality"
We have a cable package, which includes maybe, sixty movie channels. You know the complaint. There’s nothing to watch. I mean, there’s Snake Eater 4, but having missed the previous three Snake Eaters, I’m reluctant to jump in, for fear that I’d be confused. Since confusion tends to diminish one’s enjoyment of the movie, I give Snake Eater 4 a pass.
I’m looking for something to watch. I’m paying for the “movie package”, and I want to get my money’s worth. Or at least something. If I’m lucky, every so often, I’ll find an “almost went” movie, a movie that was of some interest to me when it was playing in the theaters, and I “almost went.” The picture offered some intriguing element, but it didn’t rise to the “went” level. Close, but…I think I’ll stay home.
Flipping through the channels, I discover Rendition (2007). A movie ripped from the headlines: Suspected terrorist shipped off to another country for torture but it’s a mix-up; the guy’s innocent.
This situation happened in Canada. When it eventually came out, the Mounties went “Oops.” Not “We’re sorry, eh?”, but better than nothing. Here, you wouldn’t get close to “Oops.” It would never reach the public.
Except in a movie.
Okay. So. Should I watch Rendition or not?
Let’s see: An intriguing storyline that’s believably possible. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal – an interesting actress and an actor I always enjoy. It’s free, because I already paid for the “movie package.” And it’s either Rendition or Snake Eater 4.
I decide watch it. But not Dr. M. She, as usual, is ahead of me. No “torture movies” for her.
Big mistake. Not her. Me. Why? Because of that thing they do in movies. Call it “Gratuitous Morality.” (As I did, above.) I’m talking about “issue” movies. The moviemakers are passionately committed to making a point. In Rendition it’s “Torturing is bad.” And to demonstrate that point, the moviemakers feel obligated to show an alarming amount of torturing.
I can’t tell you how much torturing they depicted – every time they went near the guy, I grabbed the remote and switched to something else – but I know there was a lot of it. I could hear screaming from the other channel.
They didn’t need to do that. If they’d taken the prisoner into a room that had a sign above the door reading, “Torture Area” and left it at that, I would just as easily have gotten the message.
What message? “Torturing damages the victims, it destroys the perpetrators, and it confronts us with the question, “Who are we, if we allow these atrocities to be perpetrated in our names?’”
All legitimate issues. Definitely worthy of a movie.
But do they really need to show all that torturing? Where’s the subtlety? Where’s the art? Okay, forget “Torture Area.” That’s too 1942. Try this. You’re in the room, the torturer reaches for the electrodes, and you cut away, leaving the rest to our imaginations. Or you show some of the torturing, but indirectly, through shadows on the Torture Room wall.
No, huh?
Well I don’t agree.
There are classier and more powerful ways to make the point. Consider the 1982 Jack Lemmon movie, Missing. Costa Gavras directing. The storyline there was: A father goes to a South American country to find out what happened to his son, who’s disappeared. It turns out the son has been tortured and killed. The difference is in Missing, everything is hinted at. Nothing is on the screen.
“That’s a copout! If you don’t show the torturing, you’re leaving out the most gut-wrenching element of the story.”
Wrong, Italics Man. You’re just leaving out the torturing. Missing is emotionally devastating. You’re completely engrossed, watching a desperate father battling a stonewalling bureaucracy. The man wants to know what happened to his son. Not what they did to him. Is he alive?
I’ll bet Missing made more money than Rendition. It also won a number of awards, including an Oscar for best screenplay adapted from another medium. The torturing in Rendition can’t be justified on either artistic or “commercial” grounds. Which leaves us the question:
“What is it in there for?”
The Moviemakers’ Response
“We, the moviemakers, deplore torture, and we want it to stop. In our opinion, the best way to gain public support for our position is to depict this immorality as graphically as possible, so the audience, appalled by what they’ve witnessed, will be motivated to oppose it.
Rebuttal
Yeah, yeah.
Slightly More Intelligent Rebuttal
Moviegoers have been there before.
Meaning?
Cecil B. DeMille.
Big-time movie director in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Specialized in “bible pictures.” King of Kings. The Ten Commandments. Samson and Delilah.
Leaning heavily in a conservative direction, DeMille was fundamentally opposed to sin. Especially licentiousness, which my dictionary defines as acting “sexually unrestrained.”
DeMille’s message: “Licentiousness damages the victims, destroys the souls of the participants, and brings strongly into question who we are as a people. To make sure you understand what I mean by ‘licentiousness’, so if licentiousness crosses your path, you will refrain from joining in, I will show exactly what it looks like.”
He makes his “bible pictures.” Licentiousness everywhere. Dancing girls in diaphanous attire. Provocative glares and leering responses. Kissing. Fondling. Whatever the movie Code of Decency will allow, and before the Code, more.
Is it gratuitous? Not at all.
It’s educational.
So.
Any difference, do you think, between “educational licentiousness” and “educational torturing”? For me, only one. With the licentiousness, you don’t find me reaching quite as urgently for the remote.
I must not be entirely certain of what it is.
I’m looking for something to watch. I’m paying for the “movie package”, and I want to get my money’s worth. Or at least something. If I’m lucky, every so often, I’ll find an “almost went” movie, a movie that was of some interest to me when it was playing in the theaters, and I “almost went.” The picture offered some intriguing element, but it didn’t rise to the “went” level. Close, but…I think I’ll stay home.
Flipping through the channels, I discover Rendition (2007). A movie ripped from the headlines: Suspected terrorist shipped off to another country for torture but it’s a mix-up; the guy’s innocent.
This situation happened in Canada. When it eventually came out, the Mounties went “Oops.” Not “We’re sorry, eh?”, but better than nothing. Here, you wouldn’t get close to “Oops.” It would never reach the public.
Except in a movie.
Okay. So. Should I watch Rendition or not?
Let’s see: An intriguing storyline that’s believably possible. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal – an interesting actress and an actor I always enjoy. It’s free, because I already paid for the “movie package.” And it’s either Rendition or Snake Eater 4.
I decide watch it. But not Dr. M. She, as usual, is ahead of me. No “torture movies” for her.
Big mistake. Not her. Me. Why? Because of that thing they do in movies. Call it “Gratuitous Morality.” (As I did, above.) I’m talking about “issue” movies. The moviemakers are passionately committed to making a point. In Rendition it’s “Torturing is bad.” And to demonstrate that point, the moviemakers feel obligated to show an alarming amount of torturing.
I can’t tell you how much torturing they depicted – every time they went near the guy, I grabbed the remote and switched to something else – but I know there was a lot of it. I could hear screaming from the other channel.
They didn’t need to do that. If they’d taken the prisoner into a room that had a sign above the door reading, “Torture Area” and left it at that, I would just as easily have gotten the message.
What message? “Torturing damages the victims, it destroys the perpetrators, and it confronts us with the question, “Who are we, if we allow these atrocities to be perpetrated in our names?’”
All legitimate issues. Definitely worthy of a movie.
But do they really need to show all that torturing? Where’s the subtlety? Where’s the art? Okay, forget “Torture Area.” That’s too 1942. Try this. You’re in the room, the torturer reaches for the electrodes, and you cut away, leaving the rest to our imaginations. Or you show some of the torturing, but indirectly, through shadows on the Torture Room wall.
No, huh?
Well I don’t agree.
There are classier and more powerful ways to make the point. Consider the 1982 Jack Lemmon movie, Missing. Costa Gavras directing. The storyline there was: A father goes to a South American country to find out what happened to his son, who’s disappeared. It turns out the son has been tortured and killed. The difference is in Missing, everything is hinted at. Nothing is on the screen.
“That’s a copout! If you don’t show the torturing, you’re leaving out the most gut-wrenching element of the story.”
Wrong, Italics Man. You’re just leaving out the torturing. Missing is emotionally devastating. You’re completely engrossed, watching a desperate father battling a stonewalling bureaucracy. The man wants to know what happened to his son. Not what they did to him. Is he alive?
I’ll bet Missing made more money than Rendition. It also won a number of awards, including an Oscar for best screenplay adapted from another medium. The torturing in Rendition can’t be justified on either artistic or “commercial” grounds. Which leaves us the question:
“What is it in there for?”
The Moviemakers’ Response
“We, the moviemakers, deplore torture, and we want it to stop. In our opinion, the best way to gain public support for our position is to depict this immorality as graphically as possible, so the audience, appalled by what they’ve witnessed, will be motivated to oppose it.
Rebuttal
Yeah, yeah.
Slightly More Intelligent Rebuttal
Moviegoers have been there before.
Meaning?
Cecil B. DeMille.
Big-time movie director in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Specialized in “bible pictures.” King of Kings. The Ten Commandments. Samson and Delilah.
Leaning heavily in a conservative direction, DeMille was fundamentally opposed to sin. Especially licentiousness, which my dictionary defines as acting “sexually unrestrained.”
DeMille’s message: “Licentiousness damages the victims, destroys the souls of the participants, and brings strongly into question who we are as a people. To make sure you understand what I mean by ‘licentiousness’, so if licentiousness crosses your path, you will refrain from joining in, I will show exactly what it looks like.”
He makes his “bible pictures.” Licentiousness everywhere. Dancing girls in diaphanous attire. Provocative glares and leering responses. Kissing. Fondling. Whatever the movie Code of Decency will allow, and before the Code, more.
Is it gratuitous? Not at all.
It’s educational.
So.
Any difference, do you think, between “educational licentiousness” and “educational torturing”? For me, only one. With the licentiousness, you don’t find me reaching quite as urgently for the remote.
I must not be entirely certain of what it is.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
"Story of a Writer - Part Nineteen B"
Preparing for this posting, I ventured into the storage room at the back of our garage. There’s dust back there, and possibly critters. But I went there anyway. For you. I went there, because in one of the storage boxes shelved there, there’s a file containing, among other memorabilia, a file containing the series ideas I came up with while I was working at Universal.
I distinctly remember once, in an explosion of creative exuberance, composing a list of ten ideas for situation comedies. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Seeing a list of ten series ideas I came up with on a single day?
I couldn’t find the list.
I did, however, unearth scripts and proposals for six of those ideas. I was surprised at how many there were. At the time, I believed they all had merit. They may not have been projects I was unilaterally passionate about – how can you be unilateral about six ideas – but they were areas I was interested in exploring. With the passage of time…I don’t know, you decide.
I had a deal. And these are the ideas I came up with:
The Home Team
An aging baseball superstar – think a forty year-old Mark Harmon – is rehabbing from a serious injury, though he’s confident he’ll be back in the game. In the meantime, since his wife’s career is starting to pop, he agrees to man the homefront, taking care of their two kids, one of them, an infant son. The guy never played baseball again, remaining, instead, a full-time, stay-at-home jock.
(This is a little like how I felt when I stayed at home after leaving The Cosby Show.)
At The Blackstone
(This one was partially based on a couple I met at a spa in Mexico that I’ve talked about.)
Using her inheritance money, a smart but insecure woman (think Julie Haggerty) and her domineering boyfriend buy a small (fourteen room) hotel in Washington D.C., which also houses a gourmet French restaurant. The boyfriend promises his girlfriend a fifty-fifty share in the responsibility. Then he does everything himself. He lets her pick the drapes. A confrontation ensues, the woman demanding that he live up to his promise of equal sharing. To teach her a lesson, the boyfriend abruptly walks out, leaving the woman, low in experience and self-esteem, to run the hotel alone.
(The woman's emotional journey mirror the feelings I experienced running a television show.)
The Beer Brothers
Inheriting a failing microbrewery, two brothers – one a straight arrow, the other a lovable goof-off – struggle to co-exist while trying to keep the family business afloat.
(I have a temperamentally different older brother. In this series, I’m exploring the practicalities of working together.)
The Studio
The sidesplitting saga of the floundering “Desperate Studios”, set in the low-rent district of 1930’s Hollywood.
(This is me, surrounded by the magnificent standing sets at Universal, inspired by a wonderful British television series called Flickers.)
The King
A quirky and career-challenged young fellow (think Steven Wright) is the offspring of a single Mom former Peace Corps volunteer, who, during her overseas service, had an affair with the monarch of a small European principality (who, unbeknownst to him, is the young fellow’s father.) When the king dies lacking a male heir, the young fellow is kidnapped, abducted to the small European principality and handed the responsibility of running the country.
(This is me, in Duck Soup, The Mouse That Roared mode, doing insightful and hilarious social commentary. Mixed with the feelings I experienced running a television show.)
Old Guys
Mismatched old guys are forced by financial necessity into sharing an apartment.
(Years ago, my brother and I improvised a routine concerning “Benny and Bernie”, who had reached a stage in their lives where neither of them could remember which one of them was Benny and which one of them was Bernie. The Old Guys old guys were nowhere near that impaired, but the quarreling relationship was the same.)
Those were six series ideas I came up with at Universal. What do you think? (I know it’s how you write them, but still.) Did I earn my money? I can still give it back. Let me know before I spend it all.
I distinctly remember once, in an explosion of creative exuberance, composing a list of ten ideas for situation comedies. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Seeing a list of ten series ideas I came up with on a single day?
I couldn’t find the list.
I did, however, unearth scripts and proposals for six of those ideas. I was surprised at how many there were. At the time, I believed they all had merit. They may not have been projects I was unilaterally passionate about – how can you be unilateral about six ideas – but they were areas I was interested in exploring. With the passage of time…I don’t know, you decide.
I had a deal. And these are the ideas I came up with:
The Home Team
An aging baseball superstar – think a forty year-old Mark Harmon – is rehabbing from a serious injury, though he’s confident he’ll be back in the game. In the meantime, since his wife’s career is starting to pop, he agrees to man the homefront, taking care of their two kids, one of them, an infant son. The guy never played baseball again, remaining, instead, a full-time, stay-at-home jock.
(This is a little like how I felt when I stayed at home after leaving The Cosby Show.)
At The Blackstone
(This one was partially based on a couple I met at a spa in Mexico that I’ve talked about.)
Using her inheritance money, a smart but insecure woman (think Julie Haggerty) and her domineering boyfriend buy a small (fourteen room) hotel in Washington D.C., which also houses a gourmet French restaurant. The boyfriend promises his girlfriend a fifty-fifty share in the responsibility. Then he does everything himself. He lets her pick the drapes. A confrontation ensues, the woman demanding that he live up to his promise of equal sharing. To teach her a lesson, the boyfriend abruptly walks out, leaving the woman, low in experience and self-esteem, to run the hotel alone.
(The woman's emotional journey mirror the feelings I experienced running a television show.)
The Beer Brothers
Inheriting a failing microbrewery, two brothers – one a straight arrow, the other a lovable goof-off – struggle to co-exist while trying to keep the family business afloat.
(I have a temperamentally different older brother. In this series, I’m exploring the practicalities of working together.)
The Studio
The sidesplitting saga of the floundering “Desperate Studios”, set in the low-rent district of 1930’s Hollywood.
(This is me, surrounded by the magnificent standing sets at Universal, inspired by a wonderful British television series called Flickers.)
The King
A quirky and career-challenged young fellow (think Steven Wright) is the offspring of a single Mom former Peace Corps volunteer, who, during her overseas service, had an affair with the monarch of a small European principality (who, unbeknownst to him, is the young fellow’s father.) When the king dies lacking a male heir, the young fellow is kidnapped, abducted to the small European principality and handed the responsibility of running the country.
(This is me, in Duck Soup, The Mouse That Roared mode, doing insightful and hilarious social commentary. Mixed with the feelings I experienced running a television show.)
Old Guys
Mismatched old guys are forced by financial necessity into sharing an apartment.
(Years ago, my brother and I improvised a routine concerning “Benny and Bernie”, who had reached a stage in their lives where neither of them could remember which one of them was Benny and which one of them was Bernie. The Old Guys old guys were nowhere near that impaired, but the quarreling relationship was the same.)
Those were six series ideas I came up with at Universal. What do you think? (I know it’s how you write them, but still.) Did I earn my money? I can still give it back. Let me know before I spend it all.
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