What do you think, guys? Would you buy this book?
Please let me know what you think about this cover. Seriously. You like, you don't like... you are my core readership, so let me know your honest reactions.
(And please let me know now, as if there's anything you don't like about it, I have to convince my editor, and she'll have to convince the graphic design people at Holt!)
Friday, September 30, 2005
SHINING
Someone's cut a new trailer for The Shining. It's such a heartwarming movie. I'm taking my 10 year old.
IF YOU LIVE IN LA OR NY
... the cultural tentpoles of America, please go see Mirrormask, Neil Gaiman's deeply weird fairy tale. That way, it'll go wide soon. K? It's at the Landmark Nuart in LA, Landmark Sunshine in New York. (It's also playing in about ten other cities; check out the site.)
The rest of you, Serenity is opening today.
The rest of you, Serenity is opening today.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
DEEPER
This year, broadcast execs are telling us writers: go deeper! Be realer! Go scarier!
It's not something we're used to hearing. It's thrilling. We'd pinch ourselves, but then we might wake up.
Last year the show that kept coming up in meetings was Sopranos. This year it seems to be Rescue Me. I guess because it's much like another workplace soap, except it doesn't rule much territory off limits. Everything's up for grabs. The hook is ostensibly that Tommy Gavin sees dead people. But the real reason to keep tuning in is that it really shows you the weirdness of the male perspective in all its glory.
Looks like that's the direction they'd like us to go on one of our shows, and it's exciting. Except we're going into the deep, fragile, scary, volatile weirdness that inhabits the minds of 16 year old girls...
It's not something we're used to hearing. It's thrilling. We'd pinch ourselves, but then we might wake up.
Last year the show that kept coming up in meetings was Sopranos. This year it seems to be Rescue Me. I guess because it's much like another workplace soap, except it doesn't rule much territory off limits. Everything's up for grabs. The hook is ostensibly that Tommy Gavin sees dead people. But the real reason to keep tuning in is that it really shows you the weirdness of the male perspective in all its glory.
Looks like that's the direction they'd like us to go on one of our shows, and it's exciting. Except we're going into the deep, fragile, scary, volatile weirdness that inhabits the minds of 16 year old girls...
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
BEING POOR
Responding to the folks who asked why the people in New Orleans didn't just leave, Joe Scalzi has this post about what being poor means.
E.g., Being poor means hoping your kids don't have a growth spurt.
E.g., Being poor means crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.
E.g., Being poor means hoping the toothache goes away...
It's compelling reading.
I have never known anything but the most voluntary sort of frugality, thanks to my parents, and thanks to my grandparents, who started out poor enough. I hope I'm grateful enough.
It occurs to me that when the President talks about how he's in favor of the "ownership society," he means that society is there for those that own things, and if you don't, it's not.
Courtesy of Will Shetterly.
E.g., Being poor means hoping your kids don't have a growth spurt.
E.g., Being poor means crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.
E.g., Being poor means hoping the toothache goes away...
It's compelling reading.
I have never known anything but the most voluntary sort of frugality, thanks to my parents, and thanks to my grandparents, who started out poor enough. I hope I'm grateful enough.
It occurs to me that when the President talks about how he's in favor of the "ownership society," he means that society is there for those that own things, and if you don't, it's not.
Courtesy of Will Shetterly.
STEPHEN GALLAGHER, PART FOUR
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: Who gets screen credit when a staff writer writes a show? I'm told the head writer often grabs the credit.
SG: That one's outside my experience. I did work on a show once where a freelance saw his script so rewritten by producer and script editor that he wanted his name off it, and the show went out with no writing credit at all.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: Do you write drama or comedy? Is there a big dividing line in the UK, or does one shade into the other? Here in Canada we have these wacky half hour dramas that don't exist anywhere else.
SG: I'm not stopping and thinking too deeply about this but I'd say the dividing line is very much there. Off the top of my head I can only think of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais who started out writing sitcoms and now write a successful blend of drama-with-humour. Mostly our drama's rigidly naturalistic while the most successful comedies of recent years have been quite dark and absurdist.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: How important do you feel genre is to television? Are there clearly defined genres? Does the audience like hybrid shows that cross genre lines, or are they problematic?
SG: Well, I grew up on genre shows and I think they're enormously audience-friendly and entertaining, but it seems I'm at odds with our commissioning culture in that one. Right now you'd have to look long and hard to find any British-made fantasy or sf outside of childrens' TV. Whenever I get one of my shows onto the screen, it always feels as if I'm reinventing the wheel. Even when one of them's well-received it seems to gain me no ground for the next one.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: Do you have a writer's union? Is it strong or weak? I notice the producers were proposing having multiple people writing episodes at once with no guarantee. Were you all to be paid, or only the lucky successful one?
SG: We have the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. I've been a member since my first professional sale and I served for three years as a regional chair. But I'd be kidding myself if I said we had the clout of, say, the WGA. [Ed. note: Neither does the WGC. The WGA can be pretty heavy when it needs to be.] Only a fraction of working writers are members. A significant fraction, and enough to have a credible presence when it comes to negotiating basic rates and conditions. But there are few direct advantages to joining, so many don't. As for the unacceptable 'writing race' that I was invited to be part of, I didn't stick around long enough to establish the terms.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: How do you know when a draft is done?
SG: When I've ticked off all the notes on my big yellow pad. I know the script's fully done when I've seen the rough cut and written or rewritten all the loop lines.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: How do you think the advent of DVD sets will change storytelling? E.g. will there be more room for serial storytelling?
SG: Getting an entire season of a TV show is like picking up a Russian novel. Suddenly serial elements are desirable instead of irritating. I mean, you miss the first episode of something on broadcast TV, and even if everyone's talking about it you feel that the bus has gone without you. Or you miss a show in mid-season and never regain your grip. Or you just run out of commitment... I remember getting all the way to the last episode in the second season of Murder One and just not having the will to watch the end, even though it was the one where you found out the verdict. We taped it, kept putting it off for months, finally taped over it. Still don't know the outcome. But with a set you've got no ads, better picture quality, and you set your own timetable. We've been watching Lost week-by-week (season one just started over here), but only until the DVDs arrived yesterday. Now we're three weeks ahead.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: What shows do you watch? Why?
SG: At the moment my must-sees are Deadwood, Carnivale, Alias (although season 3 tested my devotion and I'm not sure I'll be on board for season 4), Battlestar Galactica, Family Guy. I like CSI but only Las Vegas; I can watch New York but not Miami. I'm awed by the stripped-down procedural drive of Law & Order. I was never a Buffy fan but I think Firefly's wonderful. I've heard good things about House and Veronica Mars so they're both on the list. I think shows like these are the next logical step up from the kind of incident-led, movie-look entertainment TV I grew up with. The Saint, The Avengers, The Prisoner, Callan. The new stuff has the same kind of joy but with a richer adult sensibility.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: There seems to be more room in British TV for unlikable yet compelling leads. Only now are HBO and Showtime catching up with that. Why do you think the British audience has a greater stomach for watching shows about bastards and/or losers? Or is that not an accurate perception?
SG: I've heard theories that it's all a consequence of losing an Empire. All I can say is that I feel no personal responsibility for any of that.
Warren Zevon once said, "I couldn't imagine writing about a winner if he wasn't a loser who'd prevailed." I liked it so much I made it the opening quote in a book.
Thanks, Steve!
SG: That one's outside my experience. I did work on a show once where a freelance saw his script so rewritten by producer and script editor that he wanted his name off it, and the show went out with no writing credit at all.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: Do you write drama or comedy? Is there a big dividing line in the UK, or does one shade into the other? Here in Canada we have these wacky half hour dramas that don't exist anywhere else.
SG: I'm not stopping and thinking too deeply about this but I'd say the dividing line is very much there. Off the top of my head I can only think of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais who started out writing sitcoms and now write a successful blend of drama-with-humour. Mostly our drama's rigidly naturalistic while the most successful comedies of recent years have been quite dark and absurdist.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: How important do you feel genre is to television? Are there clearly defined genres? Does the audience like hybrid shows that cross genre lines, or are they problematic?
SG: Well, I grew up on genre shows and I think they're enormously audience-friendly and entertaining, but it seems I'm at odds with our commissioning culture in that one. Right now you'd have to look long and hard to find any British-made fantasy or sf outside of childrens' TV. Whenever I get one of my shows onto the screen, it always feels as if I'm reinventing the wheel. Even when one of them's well-received it seems to gain me no ground for the next one.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: Do you have a writer's union? Is it strong or weak? I notice the producers were proposing having multiple people writing episodes at once with no guarantee. Were you all to be paid, or only the lucky successful one?
SG: We have the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. I've been a member since my first professional sale and I served for three years as a regional chair. But I'd be kidding myself if I said we had the clout of, say, the WGA. [Ed. note: Neither does the WGC. The WGA can be pretty heavy when it needs to be.] Only a fraction of working writers are members. A significant fraction, and enough to have a credible presence when it comes to negotiating basic rates and conditions. But there are few direct advantages to joining, so many don't. As for the unacceptable 'writing race' that I was invited to be part of, I didn't stick around long enough to establish the terms.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: How do you know when a draft is done?
SG: When I've ticked off all the notes on my big yellow pad. I know the script's fully done when I've seen the rough cut and written or rewritten all the loop lines.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: How do you think the advent of DVD sets will change storytelling? E.g. will there be more room for serial storytelling?
SG: Getting an entire season of a TV show is like picking up a Russian novel. Suddenly serial elements are desirable instead of irritating. I mean, you miss the first episode of something on broadcast TV, and even if everyone's talking about it you feel that the bus has gone without you. Or you miss a show in mid-season and never regain your grip. Or you just run out of commitment... I remember getting all the way to the last episode in the second season of Murder One and just not having the will to watch the end, even though it was the one where you found out the verdict. We taped it, kept putting it off for months, finally taped over it. Still don't know the outcome. But with a set you've got no ads, better picture quality, and you set your own timetable. We've been watching Lost week-by-week (season one just started over here), but only until the DVDs arrived yesterday. Now we're three weeks ahead.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: What shows do you watch? Why?
SG: At the moment my must-sees are Deadwood, Carnivale, Alias (although season 3 tested my devotion and I'm not sure I'll be on board for season 4), Battlestar Galactica, Family Guy. I like CSI but only Las Vegas; I can watch New York but not Miami. I'm awed by the stripped-down procedural drive of Law & Order. I was never a Buffy fan but I think Firefly's wonderful. I've heard good things about House and Veronica Mars so they're both on the list. I think shows like these are the next logical step up from the kind of incident-led, movie-look entertainment TV I grew up with. The Saint, The Avengers, The Prisoner, Callan. The new stuff has the same kind of joy but with a richer adult sensibility.
COMPLICATIONS ENSUE: There seems to be more room in British TV for unlikable yet compelling leads. Only now are HBO and Showtime catching up with that. Why do you think the British audience has a greater stomach for watching shows about bastards and/or losers? Or is that not an accurate perception?
SG: I've heard theories that it's all a consequence of losing an Empire. All I can say is that I feel no personal responsibility for any of that.
Warren Zevon once said, "I couldn't imagine writing about a winner if he wasn't a loser who'd prevailed." I liked it so much I made it the opening quote in a book.
Thanks, Steve!
AT LAST, ALMOST
I liked how Sunday's episode of Grey's Anatomy touched on the gaping flaw in US medicine: a big chunk of the population can't afford it. The doctors on ER can work miracles, but we don't see anyone turned away at the door because they don't have good enough coverage. Of course, they wimped out in the end. The writers pulled a rabbit out of their, well, some part of their anatomy, and our beloved patient didn't have to lose his bar after all. But it was nice to see that at least one show is aware that not everyone is getting a crack team of doctors working on their life-and-death emergency. A lot of people are just dying.
In the Canadian version, of course, the teaser would be: the character collapses in the bar, and the doctors say, "You need an operation, or you'll die! What's your schedule look like next Spring?"
In the Canadian version, of course, the teaser would be: the character collapses in the bar, and the doctors say, "You need an operation, or you'll die! What's your schedule look like next Spring?"
OOO-EE, BABY
So FEMA hired Carnival Cruise Lines, at double their normal rate for a fun cruise, to house victims of Katrina. It's also buying huge quantities of mobile homes to give to the suddenly homeless.
Wouldn't this have been a golden opportunity to show that small business can do well what government can't? That is, give the victims money and let small and big business compete to provide housing in the most sensible manner, where the people decide they most need it? Rather than creating big projects. Almost no one is using the boats, of course, because how do you find a new job when you're living on a boat?
Not to mention, private enterprise could have taken people's rent money and used it to build housing, hiring the people who need the housing? Hell, people with Winnebagoes in their driveways could have driven them down and rented them out -- if there were money to be had.
Why award no-bid contracts? Why not let the market decide?
What I hate so much about this administration is that it won't even adhere to Republican principles. It spends like a drunken sailor, and the result is big government. But because they don't believe in big government, they make sure it's big, corrupt, ineffective government. If the US can't have big effective government like every other Western nation, with decent education and health care, at least could the US have effective lean government?
Wouldn't this have been a golden opportunity to show that small business can do well what government can't? That is, give the victims money and let small and big business compete to provide housing in the most sensible manner, where the people decide they most need it? Rather than creating big projects. Almost no one is using the boats, of course, because how do you find a new job when you're living on a boat?
Not to mention, private enterprise could have taken people's rent money and used it to build housing, hiring the people who need the housing? Hell, people with Winnebagoes in their driveways could have driven them down and rented them out -- if there were money to be had.
Why award no-bid contracts? Why not let the market decide?
What I hate so much about this administration is that it won't even adhere to Republican principles. It spends like a drunken sailor, and the result is big government. But because they don't believe in big government, they make sure it's big, corrupt, ineffective government. If the US can't have big effective government like every other Western nation, with decent education and health care, at least could the US have effective lean government?
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