MAYBE A LITTLE PANIC WOULD HAVE DONE SOME GOOD

The Hitchhiker's Guide is a good example of why you can't star a cast of unknowns in your big-screen movie. If they're utter unknowns, it's probably for a reason. For example, lack of charisma. The cast simply did not have the charisma to carry the movie. You can't rely on the smasho special effects to do it for you. Bad, amateurish acting and weak charisma sunk this movie for me. I needed to care more about the hero, and I needed to care more about whether he'd get the girl, and the girl was fine but not very fine, and he was nothing much.

Surely there have to be bigger stars even in the British firmament? When you have $80,000,000 to throw around, can't you throw some of it above the line?

UPDATE: Okay, fair enough. One reader claims that the stars of HGG are known in England. Another points out that many successful movies star unknowns, and I'd probably have to add Star Wars to that list. But my point was that it was a huge budget picture with very small stars. The movies listed in the comments were small budget pictures.

My bad for being cranky late last night and talking like a studio executive. But I still think the stars of HGG felt singularly 16mm in what was produced to be a big blockbuster special effects feature.

SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT

After about 2 months using Zip.ca, Canada's Netflix, I've rented about 35 discs (movies and TV). Cost $50 plus tax.

The big savings,though, is time. I usually go to a video store and stare at the possibilities for a half an hour. With Zip, the disc just arrives in the mail. I've selected a list of 20-30 titles that I want to see, and Zip decides which one it can send me now. So the only choice is whether to screen it or not. If the answer is "not," then I didn't really want to see it after all.

The other improvement from the video store is that there are very few titles that Zip doesn't have.

Very successful experiment.

UPDATE: But in the end, Zip.ca turned out to have hostile, ugly customer service and an unpleasant returns policy. Alas...

SCRIPT COORDINATOR VS. WRITER'S ASSISTANT

What is the real difference between the two (writer's assistants and script coordinators), and all other things being equal, do the script coordinators have the same access to writers and the same opportunity to pitch a story idea? Or is the script coordinator's position the same as a "writer's P.A.", someone who spends most of his time in the car delivering scripts?

My understanding of it is that, if they are not the same person, the script coordinators' chief responsibility is to make sure that everybody on the production has the correct, up-to-date draft of the script, with all the changes in each draft clearly marked. A writer's assistant's chief responsibility is to work for the writers, taking notes during story meetings, doing odd bits of research, and making sure that the right sandwiches get ordered.

The writers' assistant works in the writers' office. The script coordinator works in the production office. [UPDATE: At least sometimes. See comments below.] Therefore the script coordinator doesn't have the quite the same access to writers.

Extrapolating, the head writer would probably hire the writer's assistant; the line producer would probably hire the script coordinator. Personally, I have never worked on a show that could afford both! But that's Canada for ya.

IT'S OFFICIAL. TOM CRUISE READS SEVENTEEN

The romance could be a dream for Holmes, who cooed to Seventeen magazine last year: "I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise."

And now she's dating him. I know I shouldn't care, but what a dawg, dawg!

UPDATE: Okay, here's what bugs me. It seems so clear to me that Tom is dating Katie to prove he's not a middle aged man. Which in fact, he is. Katie is dating Tom because he's a big movie star and she's still no more than a starlet. This gets her in with major directors who want to butter up Tom. And it seems clear to me that Tom could not stay married to Nicole Kidman because she is so obviously a much better actor than he is, was taking on more interesting roles, and has become a star in her own right. Who needs the comparison?

This whole thing feels like it was cooked up at the CAA Monday morning meeting. "Penelope's had it, and she's getting kinda long in the tooth. Lessee, who could Tom date...."

BEST WAY IN UP NORTH

I understand that in L.A the best way to get a start is to be a writers assistant. But there just doesn't
seem to be a lot of work in Canada for that sort of thing. I thought you might be able to advise me on what steps I should take to get my start as a writer in the Canadian system.

I don't think the best way into TV in LA is to be a writer's assistant. I think that being a writer's assistant is a good back door in. The best way is via the front door. Write two kickass spec scripts. That will get you an agent and jobs faster than anything else.

(To paraphrase Ezra Pound's translation of Confucius: "The way in is via the door. HOW IS IT THAT NO ONE WILL USE THIS METHOD???")

In Canada, fewer people write specs, apparently. More people write original stuff. But great specs will still get you in faster than original stuff.

Personally I don't like reading original stuff. Half the time the writer hasn't really created a show with his spec pilot. So in addition to the burden of convincing me he can write, the writer has added the burden of creating a show in my mind that wasn't there before, giving voices to the characters, creating a fresh and yet familiar template, blah biddy blah blah. And when he has created a show in my mind, it's so quirky that it doesn't tell me whether he can write my show. My reaction is along the lines of: great! Go make that show so I can watch it! Instead of: great! Now I know who I'm gonna hire!

On the other hand, I got most of my writing jobs in Canada through the late and much lamented Robin Spry, with whom I got into business by optioning a series pitch to him. The show never got made, but he hired me for Galidor, and then to create a show called Isaac Asimov's Robot City (still unproduced), and then for Charlie Jade. So your mileage may vary.

It never hurts to work in the business. Really any job you can get above the line will help you understand better what producers are looking for, and will get you closer to people who can hire you to write a script. If you have the time and the ambition, volunteer to be someone's intern. Internships lead to paying jobs if you're good. Writing assistant jobs are rare but every show does have a script coordinator, and those cats often get a script to write if their samples are good.

But their samples have to be good. I didn't just have the series pitch, I also had a West Wing spec and a Buffy. No one's throwing a writer's assistant a script without they already have some respectable samples.

Which gets you back to specs.

Why not cut to the chase and write the damn specs?

I'M REALLY MAKING Y'ALL SING FOR YOUR SUPPER

Another question: does anyone know anyone who's sold a pitch through a pitching festival?

If so, how far did it get? Did the network commission a pilot script? A pilot? Thirteen episodes with an option for the back nine?

AN EXTERNALLY DRIVEN SOAP?

An odd thing about The OC is how externally driven its plots are. It seems that most of the conflicts come from recurring characters interacting with the core cast rather than the core cast interacting with each other. For example, Trey is the latest in a long parade of recurring characters coming out of someone or another's past: Ryan's ex-girlfriend/mother of his child, Rebecca, etc. Yet they've never done an episode where Sandy pays more attention to Ryan than he pays to Seth, and yet that's an obvious one: from the beginning Sandy made clear he used to be like Ryan. You'd expect that at some point he'd gravitate to the kid he understands better, and that Seth might feel threatened.

Various people have remarked how fast The OC burns through plot territory, lacking triangles, as it does. Is it that they don't trust that their core cast are interesting enough? But there's no way to make them interesting enough if you don't give them their own plots!

To paraphrase John Rogers, they're really sucking on the recurring character crack pipe...

BRINGING THE FUNNY

I'd like to interview a few more comedy writers for my upcoming book, Crafty TV Writing. Any of y'all who are, or know, professional TV comedy writers who'd be willing to give a forty-five minute or so phone interview about the craft of writing for TV comedy, please let me know! My eddress is "crafty" at "b2b2c.ca".

Thanks in advance, guys.