TECHNICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT COVERS

Q. So the 'cover' of the script is just a blank white sheet of 80 lb. cardstock? There is nothing on it to indicate who's or what it is?

Q. What do you even call those fold-over card covers? I've tried Googling but come up with zilch. Never even seen 'em for sale in the UK.

Your front and back cover of a script are both blank cardstock. They don't have to be white. Any color that's not too precious is fine. Of course, if you have representation, your agency should have their own covers, which will have their logo. CAA has snazzy red-and-white foldover covers.

I had fold-over covers made for me at my local copy shop once (LA Print & Copy, 1716 S. Sepulveda at Santa Monica Blvd. (310) 479-6700). They just took 17" x 11" cardstock, cut it to about 9 1/2" x 11 (instead of 8 1/2"), punched holes, and had their folding machine fold'em.

Often people just use the fold-over covers for the back of the script (where the brads get pointy) and plain covers for the front.

As people get more wired, I've been noticing more scripts floating around without cardstock covers... can anyone confirm if that's a trend?

NO SMOKING REACHES MONTREAL

As of May 31, it's no longer legal to smoke in a bar in Montreal. I know, we're a little behind California. The French influence extends to cheap day care and too much smoking. (Though, weirdly, there is very little contact between France and Quebec, except among highbrow intellectual circles. Montreal looks to New York more than anywhere else.)

On the other hand, I've noticed a resurgence of smoking in pictures ever since Pulp Fiction. For a while there, the only smokers on screen were villains and nutcases. Lately I've seen a few too many Cool Smokers.

Now kids, say what you will about film having to follow reality. If you're writing a tv series about fashion models, you have to have them all smoking like chimneys. 'Cause models do.

I call bullshit, to quote John Rogers. There's lots of things we don't put on screen that people do. I'm not just talking about going to the bathroom. I'm talking about taking forever to say something meaningful. TV and film are constructed realities. All you owe the audience is the emotional truth.

'Cause the only reason kids pick up smoking is to be cool. (Very few people are dumb enough to pick up the habit past 18. Which is why they invented Joe Camel.) If you make smoking look cool, you're convincing kids to smoke.

Personally, I think making a character cool by having them smoke is a crutch. Actors love to smoke on screen because then they don't have to put so much into the acting. Same thing in the action description. Give a character a cigarette and you can tell us all about how he's puffing, and that's so much easier than finding the right words to convey what we're seeing on his face, or the right words for him to say that seem like nothing but convey so much.

Some will argue that it is not our responsibility as writers to make society better. I disagree. It's everybody's responsibility to make society better, and we have more leverage than most. That doesn't mean you can't do The Sopranos; a convincing portrait of bad people can ask questions and open up conversations just as well as, or better than, a puff piece about Dr. Lucile. And I loooooved Thank You For Smoking.

There's "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem." And, "In order for evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing."

At a minimum, don't make things worse.

So: butts out onscreen. Villains and neurotics. It may seem like a cliché, but it's a cliché that there's something cool about cigarettes, too. There isn't.

TOM FONTANA, PART SEVEN

Part seven in my interview with Tom Fontana, creator or co-creator of OZ, THE JURY, TATTINGER'S, THE BEAT, and THE BEDFORD DIARIES...

CRAFTY TV: When you're creating a show, are you analytical about the core cast you need? Do you decide how big a core cast you want and then fill in the positions? Do you try to have a love interest, a nemesis, a mentor? Or do you start with springboards?

TF: There's no hard and fast rule. Sometimes I think, "Here's a great arena to work in. Who'd be the people in this world?" Or, I think of a character, and I try to fill in around him or her. Certainly with a show like OZ, you think, here's the environment. Then I went back and looked at the individual characters and tried to think about them as people first. Then I thought, okay, that's who he was on the outside, now put him in this environment and how does that change him? Or doesn't it change him?

CRAFTY TV: How far ahead do you arc out your episodes? Do you really know what your 100th episode is?

TF: Five episodes. What I think happens if you get too much further than that is by the time you get to the 7th episode, so much has changed in the first five that it's almost useless to have a writer do a draft that far in advance. Also you'll write a part and cast a part and the actor doesn't deliver and it's not going anywhere, and you have to reduce the role; or the actor is so interesting, and you think, let's add a scene. Or boy, he really plays off her great, let's put them together more.

CRAFTY TV: Obviously that lends itself better to a certain kind of drama than to, say, 24 or LOST where there's a big climax or secret you're building up to.

TF: Yes, my shows are all more evolving interpersonal drama, not what's in the hatch. We try to figure it out as we go, alongside the actors. It's a creative process, it's jumping into the void.

CRAFTY TV: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me!
TF: You're welcome.

MONTREAL BOOK LAUNCH PARTY

The Montreal Film Group
and H. B. Fenn & Company

cordially invite you to

A Book Launch Party

to celebrate the publication of

Crafty TV Writing

Wednesday, June 21

5-7+ pm

at the Café of the Cinéma Québecoise

335 de Maisonneuve Est

Montreal H2X 1K1

Cash bar; signed books will be available for sale

There will be events in other cities, as I get to them...!

THAT LOOKS FAMILIAR

Q. I have written a screenplay inspired by the universe originally created by [writer] in which [critters] have taken over the world. Although my own hook, story, characters and dialogue differ from any of his currently made films, there is one similarity in the opening sequence of mine to the opening sequence in one of his.

This is a question of fact, not of law, and facts are determined by juries. And you want to stay away from juries.

Does one similarity constitute illegal violation of copyright? Probably not.

Can they sue you? Probably. Anyone with a thousand bucks can file a suit.

Will they sue you? Probably not. Who needs the headache?

Will it get thrown out of court? Maybe. But probably not -- cases are usually dismissed only if the judge believes the plaintiff would lose even if the facts are as he alleges.

So you gotta ask yourself a question: are you feeling lucky?

One the other hand, movies rip each other off all the time. If your [critter] film has a similarity to another [critter] film, many will consider an homage, a parody or a shout-out. George Lucas doesn't get to copyright the idea of an opening crawl that recedes into the background, though he could probably sue you on trademark grounds, unless you're doing a parody, in which case you're probably okay.

But copyright is not your main problem. The script will get rewritten before it gets to the screen anyway. But anyone reading your script who likes [critter] films will remember [writer]'s opening sequence and think, Jeez, this guy didn't even bother to come up with a fresh opening! And chuck your script into the recycle bin.

Your first idea is rarely your best. Why not use the similarity as a wake-up call. Come up with something fresher -- and more personal to your own creative perspective!

REVIEWS

Dear faithful blog readers:

If you have read my new book, Crafty TV Writing, and you liked it, please feel free to post a review at Amazon.com!

Thank you.

Alex

TOM FONTANA, PART SIX

Part six in my interview with Tom Fontana, creator or co-creator of OZ, THE JURY, TATTINGER'S, THE BEAT, and THE BEDFORD DIARIES...

CRAFTY TV: I notice your credits are all on TV. Do you ever get great feature film ideas? And if so what do you do with'em?

I don't really. I was a playwright before TV and not particularly good nor successful playwright. TV makes sense, I don't know why, for the talent that I have. I don't think to myself, what I really want to do is write features. I love working in TV. I love the scope of TV, and the ability to tell the kinds of stories we tell. A lot of the movies are made for 12 year olds. I don't know what I could contribute there.

Having said that I'm writing a novel for Harper Collins; and that is as intimidating a way to spend one's time as any writer can conceive of. I'm doing a BATMAN graphic novel, I find working on that fascinating. So it's not like I don't want to do other kinds of writing. But if I were going to write a movie, I'd write it for HBO.

CRAFTY TV: But would you do a movie for Martin Scorsese, if not for twelve year olds?

TF: I guess also being a writer/Executive Producer, I'm used to conceiving and casting and being on the set and doing the final edit. It would be hard for me to go from that to being the least important person on the set. Feature screenwriters don't get the respect they deserve.

CRAFTY TV: Do you spend a lot of time on the set? And when you're not there, do you send a writer to supervise the shooting?

TF: I spend as much time as possible on the set. I get up at 5:30 to write, and they usually start shooting at 7 or 7:30. So I tend to miss the early morning work. But I'm available, at least, by phone. If I'm not there, there's a writer/producer or staff writer on the set to make sure everyone's on the right track and to help solve any problems that may come up.

TOM FONTANA, PART FIVE

Part five in my interview with Tom Fontana, creator or co-creator of OZ, THE JURY, TATTINGER'S, THE BEAT, and THE BEDFORD DIARIES...

CRAFTY TV: Do you believe in show bibles?

TF: I believe in show bibles after the episodes have aired. I like to keep a bible of everything that's come before, so that the people who are going to write the next season can see what has been done, or what's the background. I don't believe in bibles before a show starts because it's too restrictive. You can make up a lot of stuff in your head and invariably you discover in the second season that a plot point doesn't work. Maybe he doesn't have a brother, he has a sister, because a story where a sister comes in would be more interesting. Or, someone says, we can get you Julianna Margulies if you change it to a woman. That's better than doing the story with Murray Schwartz.

CRAFTY TV: Really have it in for Murray Schwartz, don't you?

TF: Yeah, poor Murray. So you could get too stuck in your bible. Having said that, once I've established something about the character, once the audience knows a fact about the character, that's sacrosanct, it has to remain true to that character. Once it's aired, you can't go back and rewrite history.

CRAFTY TV: I've heard that networks sometimes look only at the pilot before they greenlight. Is that your experience, and do you know of anyone who's painted themselves into a corner with a great pilot that doesn't make an easy show to write?

TF: I would say the David Lynch show TWIN PEAKS, which was brilliant, but also had nowhere to go. Not that they discovered that after the pilot ... they finally realized that at the end of the first season. And there was a show I worked on with Bruce Paltrow, TATTINGER'S, immediately after ST. ELSEWHERE. We had an idea for the pilot, we shot the pilot, and then we spent the next 13 episodes trying to figure out what the series was. One week it was a serious drama, next week it was a screwball comedy. From the writing point of view it was a lot of fun, but it totally confused the audience. You can experiment with the form, but you have to earn that right. On ST. ELSEWHERE and HOMICIDE, we experimented, we went off in crazy ways. But that was only after we'd established the template for the show. Or the masterful example is M*A*S*H. That show was consistently excellent, and then years into it it, they started to screw around with the format. You'd have episodes with completely different points of view, tone... it was thrilling to watch and not know what to expect. But first they established what the basic show was.

CRAFTY TV: Some shows have been described as hybrid genre, e.g. DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES has been explained as a drama, a comedy, a mystery and a farce, and LOST has been described as science fiction or mystery or straight drama. Do you worry about whether a show you're creating is in a recognizable genre? Do you think the audience cares? Did, for example, FIREFLY fail for genre reasons, or for other reasons?

TF: I think that part of the weight that hour dramas carry with them now is that, with all these reality shows, what was acceptable drama ten years ago seems wimpy and quiet. There's an expectation now that all drama shows have to be amped up to a certain extent. Which is probably why a show like THE WEST WING declined in popularity. It certainly didn't decline in quality. They didn't get wacky, they stayed the course. And that kind of drama is almost too tame. You can watch a reality show and see things get hopped up. It makes sense that LOST and GREY'S ANATOMY and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES are popular now. Because they're beyond reality television. They go a step beyond reality. Look at CSI, a show that has nothing to do with reality - that's not a criticism, it's an observation, there is nothing in those shows that is anything like the way a real crime is handled. I don't know if you could do a drama series in a real way these days.