Aladdin and the Original Act Out

On the plane, I was listening to Neil Gaiman read his Sheherezade story from Fragile Things. To go by his blog and his take on the famous storytelling wife, Neil depends on inspiration to visit him. Which she does a lot, to judge by his output. Me, I'm one of those blessed with few inspirations and a lot of analytical tools.

But the story of the 1001 Nights struck me because it's a metaphor for TV and its relationship with the audience. Every night, Sheherezade told a fantastic story ... and stopped at the moment where her king and husband would most want to know the outcome.

That way, he wouldn't cut off her head in the morning. Because if he did, he wouldn't find out how it turned out.

That's an act out.

Would your act outs prevent a homicidal king from chopping off your head in the morning? Is there a way you could twist or amp up your act out so that you get to keep your head?

Because the king could also tune to American Idol. And that Jordan Sparks sure does sing good.

To Market, To Market

Alex and Denis share a drink or two at the Spoke before the WGC Awards. Because why wait to start celebrating the winners?



And here are my agents, Tina and Amy, as talented and hardworking as they are hot.


Robin, the producer on my pay cable series. I'm lucky to be working with him. He's hugging Tina, my agent's partner.

Where is Alex?

Today I've been walking all around lower Manhattan having meetings with New York production companies. I have a few scripts that really need to be done in the States, either because the budget is beyond Canadian means, or because the material is really about the US and not about Canada. (The one I'm meeting on is a story about military families, and how you can be wounded by a war your father went to. Canada mostly tries to stay out of wars.)

These meetings are frustrating because they're meet'n'greets. They've read my script, unless they haven't. They don't want to buy it, but they like the writing, so they want to meet me. They're smart people whose company I enjoy. But there's a vagueness to many of these meetings that suggests the relationship may not go much further. I feel semi-obliged to meet because you never know. One of the meetings was actually semi-promising, in a long term kinda way.

But they're so different from the meetings I've just been having in Toronto, where I've have to think hard about which projects I want to do and when I have time to do them. It's the difference between "nice script, we'd love to read your next thing" and "nice script, how busy is your summer?" (A: Busy.)

Has anyone cracked the meet'n'greet? Any idea how you turn one into a job? Has anyone ever got a job off a meet'n'greet? 'Cause I sure haven't.

I'll be happy to get back home. I know a week of traveling isn't actually all that much. But I'm tuckered out, and I've got a big nasty blister on my foot, and I want to sleep in my own bed.

Everyone's Lying

I've been reading Ian Gurvitz's book Hello, Lied the Agent.

I was suspicious of this book, partly because Gurvitz stole the joke in the title from Linda Obst's Hello, He Lied -- And Other Tales From the Hollywood Trenches, partly because it sounds bitter. And it is a bitter book. Gurvitz is another one of these comedy guys who are lucky enough to be making huge wads of cash writing sitcoms -- he worked on Becker -- while whining about how painful the process is. (Is Ken Levine the only happy comedy writer in the world?)

The book won't tell you how to write comedy. But it does give you really good sense of what it's like to be a big-time comedy writer through the course of the year. If you're not sure you know, you might give this book a look.

Synchronicity

Q. I wrote a spec, but the show just did a similar episode!

If you have a movie with a similar hook to something that just came out, you're pretty much sunk.

With a TV spec you're in better shape. You are trying to show you can write the series, and your spec still accomplishes that. Many of the people reading your spec will not necessarily know every episode of the series, so they may not know that you're covering the same ground.

So you can still send your spec around. However you probably want to think about coming up with a new spec script soon.

Breaking Into the Box

This looks interesting:

Emmy Winners and Nominees Highlight Panelists for Foundation Television Seminar

Emmy Award winning and nominated writers Peter Casey (Cheers, Frasier), Alexa Junge (Friends, The West Wing), Damon Lindeloff (Lost), Jay Kogen (The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle), Shawn Ryan (The Shield) and Jonathan Stark (Ellen, According to Jim) are just some of the writers who will serve as guest instructors for the Writers Guild Foundation’s first Breaking into the Box seminar to be held all day Saturday, May 19 at the Writers Guild headquarters in Hollywood.

The event is a new multi-program workshop designed to present various paths to a television career, and to demystify the world of TV production for both beginners, and professionals looking to switch art forms. A number of Hollywood agents (CAA, UTA, Gersh and others TBA) and network executives will participate in several workshop sessions.

Seating is limited to only 120 seats as the event will take place in the Writers Guild’s Multi-purpose Room.

Workshop sessions run 9am to 6pm, and include a light breakfast and box lunch, with a complimentary wine and cheese reception afterward, all covered in the registration fee. The Writers Guild headquarters is at 7000 W. Third Street, at Fairfax Ave. in Los Angeles.

Registrations are priced at $150, general public; $125, WGA members; and $110, full-time students with I.D. Credit card purchases can be made at www.WGFoundation.org (including full program and speaker lineups), or by calling 323.782.4692.

Poker Face

Today, I had a negotation and a poker game. Both went well. I won $17.50 at poker! I won't tell you what I got in the negotiation, but everyone went away happy, I think.

Kids, anyone working in show business ought to learn poker. Nothing will better prepare you for the bluffs and stakes-raisings of negotiation than a few thousand hands of poker. Seriously. Consider it part of your education.

And, poker with drunken writers is hi-larious. Just ask Adam Barken, or as he is now known, "Man-Boobs."

What to Send with Your Pilot?

Q. An agent wants to read our work. We are sending a spec script as well as an original pilot. What we should submit with our pilot? A treatment? A summary?

If you're confident of the pilot, just send that. I would never send a summary of a script. Summaries just never read very well.

If you're trying to set up a TV series -- as opposed to showing people a writing sample -- then you could conceivablly send along a pitch document for the whole series. This should be short -- five pages-ish -- with lots of story springboards to show that the pilot isn't a fluke. But where I have a pilot to show, I would show just the pilot, and then see if they ask for a pitch doc.