LUST AND THE SISTERS

Interesting plaint in Salon by a black woman wondering why Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers seduce all ethnicities but black. Why are black women sexually invisible to all but black men? Is it because they're perceived as ass-kickers and men don't really want that?

Good food for thought. Back when I lived in LA I it seemed to me that there were lots of couples where the guy was Caucasian and the girl was Asian, but the reverse was passing rare. I supposed that, stereotypically, Asian women are brought up to be deferential, which some guys like, while Caucasian women might not be much interested in being bossed around, which traditionally raised Japanese guys, for example, might assume as their role. I wonder if anyone's dared gather statistics on this sort of thing.

Blackness does seem to have moved beyond a racial issue into a cultural issue, where it seems likely to stay for a while. No legit scientist would claim that there's such a thing as a black "race" -- most American Blacks have a lot of European DNA, and to a lesser extent vice versa -- but it would be hard to disagree that there's an African-American culture. And cultures have ways of reinforcing their borders.

Like every good liberal, I look for ethnic roles in stuff I write. Not particularly for Black and Latino roles because up here the ethnicities in play are the French Canadians and the First Peoples. If a series or a script I've written feels too lily-white because of bad mental habits, I'll do a diversity pass. There's no reason the movies can't front a better ethnic world than the one we live in. That's how people get used to it. I'm reminded of the story that Nichelle Nichols was going to quit Star Trek after the first season, and Martin Luther King asked her not to -- and that Whoopi Goldberg tells how she saw Trek for the first time and ran around shouting, "everybody, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!" The world of TV and the movies is so much worse in many ways -- there are almost no functional families, and there are probably more fictional serial killers than there are in the real world in total -- there's no reason it can't be better. And if that means every single judge on screen has to be black, that's okay too.

THE PIKAPIE HAS LANDED!

Lisa and Jesse Anne drove over the border today, turned right round, and drove back into Canada today so they could immigrate. They are now landed! Jesse Anne has health care effective immediately, and Lisa can get a job.

We were watching the miniseries on Pierre Elliot Trudeau, listening to his speech on the Just Society, and realizing why he's still so lionized: he's largely responsible for the Canada we were so grateful to immigrate into, a socially progressive country where the government unapologetically supports culture and society in many ways that would be considered socialism in the US. In spite of the centrifugal forces and in particular the separatists, Canada fundamentally works in ways that the US does not work.

I had an interesting conversation today with a friend who will not be able to read a screenplay of mine if she gets a certain job with the government, because of conflicts of interest. This combination of government and honesty is, I think, particularly Canadian. You certainly would be hard pressed to find it anywhere else, except possibly Scandinavia...

ADDRESSING V. THE CAN OF WORMS

I'm dealing with some holes in plot logic that can't really be fixed without serious changes in the story, and they're not worth it. Boring stuff like what cops have jurisdiction where. So I'm going to just fudge it. It's a comedy. If I address these issues it will just raise more issues and open a can of worms. If the audience cares about jurisdictional issues, then we've lost them anyway.

HAPPY LITTLE ENVELOPE

Came home to find that I got the Screenwriting Assistance Program again this year, for my occult thriller. Whee-ha! Now I know what I'm doing after I finish this rewrite...

...and after I finish Medieval...

...if Exposure doesn't go.

CJ ON A-CHANNEL

Charlie Jade will be premiering on our A-Channel group of stations as of Saturday, September 3 at 10pm. ...

This from Diane K. Boehme of CHUM, who ought to know.

A-channel is, I think, broadcast (NewVR in TO, NewVI in Victoria, A-Channel in Ottawa, Windsor and London), so if you don't get Space, now you will be able to watch CJ in those fine cities without having to rip it.

In other news, checking out the Space Channel forums, it was kinda neat that viewers picked up on why ep. 16 is called "The Shortening of the Way." Unfortunately some Bad Things happened to the ep after it left the writer's room, about which I shall say no more unless you get me drunk first.

SLOW DAY TODAY

Only 10 pages. It's been 20 a day for the past 3 days. But for some reason these scenes were harder. Oddly, it's not the completely new pages that take up the most time. If my outline is good I can bat those scenes out. And of course it's not the scenes that just need a dialog tweak. It's where there's something not completely working in the old draft that can however be salvaged with loving tenderness. That's what takes the most time.

ARRR, PIRATES

Terry Rossio is blogging from the set of Pirates of the Caribbean 2/3, which I assume is both 2 and 3, not "Pirates of the Carribbean Two-Thirds."

Thanks for the link to Fourth Time.

PLATE O'SHRIMP, CAN O'WORMS

If you lost track of Charlie Jade, tonight at 9 pm on Space there's a recap episode that will explain it all for ya... and if you miss that one, it's airing again at 7 pm on Space on Saturday. If you did lose track, check it out, because ep. 17, which is airing at 8 pm on Saturday, is pretty freakin' cool, and so are the last 3 of the season.

For the record, my favorite eps are: 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, and 20. We parachuted in for ep. 9 (that's where you start to see our names on the eps), but we didn't really get our feet on the ground till 12, which incidentally is where the utterly smashing Rolanda Marais comes into the series as Blues Paddock. 17 is where we finally grokked the coolness of Bob's vision, aka drank the Kool-Aid...