I'll be doing a call-in radio interview next Sunday, June 18, at 1:30 pm EST/ 10:30 a.m. PST, on Alan Rothman's "Business of Success" show. You can find a station that carries Alan's nationally syndicated show here, or you can listen to him over the Net.
I believe the webcasts are archived, so you shouldn't have to tie your schedule in knots...
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
MEETINGS SCHEDULED AND IMPROMPTU
We're at the dregs of the festival. It's a bit weird because you're no longer running into people you haven't seen recently. Now you're running into people you've met with and chatted with. Over and over. It's a little embarrassing. You have nothing new to say to them (unless you are having a very, very good festival indeed).
I've done all my meetings, and many people have already taken off. I'm skipping the rest of the panel on The Future of TV in Canada (which seems to be Nobody Knows). The awards they'll announce in half an hour or so. The place is starting to feel like a party when the crowd is leaving, and it hasn't yet settled down to the hardcore people who are going to stay until dawn. Maybe half the people will have cleared out before the barbecue tonight, I'm guessing. My plane is tomorrow, so I'm staying for the Alberta corn-fed beef. Next time I'm going to come for a little longer than the festival and actually enjoy the Rockies. I wanna go on a trail ride!
I've done all my meetings, and many people have already taken off. I'm skipping the rest of the panel on The Future of TV in Canada (which seems to be Nobody Knows). The awards they'll announce in half an hour or so. The place is starting to feel like a party when the crowd is leaving, and it hasn't yet settled down to the hardcore people who are going to stay until dawn. Maybe half the people will have cleared out before the barbecue tonight, I'm guessing. My plane is tomorrow, so I'm staying for the Alberta corn-fed beef. Next time I'm going to come for a little longer than the festival and actually enjoy the Rockies. I wanna go on a trail ride!
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
WHEW
Around 9:20 this morning I went up on stage, stared into a bunch of bright lights, behind which were hiding about 200 people, and started murmuring into the microphone. Now that it's over, I can relax and enjoy the rest of the festival.
I don't mind getting up in front of people, but doing it with a four minute time limit is rough. I actually managed to remember my entire pitch without spacing out once. The hard thing was remembering to breathe.
I hope I answered the jury's questions intelligently. Or, at least, intelligibly. I'm sure I gave an impression of knowing the answer; whether I communicated my answer well, Lord (and possibly wcdixon, I guess) knows.
I think the pitch went off well, though I can't say I've heard from any broadcasters or producers. I don't think any of my fellow pitchers have, really. I have had interest from some very good producers and one top director who's superenthusiastic -- that's based on pitching the same project retail.
We'll see who wins the award tomorrow. But the real award I'm hoping for is someone hiring me to write the damn pilot. That will prove it's a viable concept, I believe; but more importantly, I just want to write it.
More meetings (and even some master classes) soon!
I don't mind getting up in front of people, but doing it with a four minute time limit is rough. I actually managed to remember my entire pitch without spacing out once. The hard thing was remembering to breathe.
I hope I answered the jury's questions intelligently. Or, at least, intelligibly. I'm sure I gave an impression of knowing the answer; whether I communicated my answer well, Lord (and possibly wcdixon, I guess) knows.
I think the pitch went off well, though I can't say I've heard from any broadcasters or producers. I don't think any of my fellow pitchers have, really. I have had interest from some very good producers and one top director who's superenthusiastic -- that's based on pitching the same project retail.
We'll see who wins the award tomorrow. But the real award I'm hoping for is someone hiring me to write the damn pilot. That will prove it's a viable concept, I believe; but more importantly, I just want to write it.
More meetings (and even some master classes) soon!
Monday, June 12, 2006
STICK A FORK IN ME, I'M DONE
After a day of meetings at the Banff International Television Festival, I am beat. Of course at 6 pm the day is not over. There is the Awards Gala to go to, and then later on, the St. James Gate Pub to visit. I am contemplating cutting the day short since I'm pitching tomorrow. I'm not sure if that's sanity or laziness talking, and I'm too tired figure it out.
It's amazing how tiring walking around and chatting with people can be. But then, it's amazing how tiring sitting at a keyboard, or breaking storycan be. I gather our brains use something like 20% of all our energy. I don't know if heavy thinking and emoting truly requires more calories than watching The Simpsons, but it feels like they do. They definitely require more mana.
The Banff Springs Hotel is a spectacular grand hotel built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 20's for very wealthy tourists. The location, in the middle of the Rockies, is gorgeous -- by a bend in the Bow River, with steep crags rising up on all sides, sometimes shrouded in mist, in the winter covered in snow. Either it's tragic that the only time I go to places as grand as this is when it's work, or it's wonderful that I can write it off.
I was able to get to one actual Banff event, a talk by Paul Haggis. The writer of Crash talked about how he started writing with no particular plan, just took two characters off on a toot until they ran into some other characters, and so on. I hope all the young writers who were in the audience don't think that's the way to write. Paul wrote Crash after writing sitcoms and TV drama for 20 years. At a certain point you internalize story structure and you can try the highwire without a net. It can waste a lot of time if story structure isn't in your brain already. I'm working with a charming young woman who has a character she wants to write a movie about, but the movie doesn't seem to come, because she's not sure what the story is, or she lets herself get so caught up in the scenes that she loses the movie they're there to support.
Of course it's your own trip, so be my guest, but please be aware that there's a warning on that one.
And to all you crazy CFC kids here at the fest: keep workin' it, baby! Show the love, and it will come back to you.
It's amazing how tiring walking around and chatting with people can be. But then, it's amazing how tiring sitting at a keyboard, or breaking storycan be. I gather our brains use something like 20% of all our energy. I don't know if heavy thinking and emoting truly requires more calories than watching The Simpsons, but it feels like they do. They definitely require more mana.
The Banff Springs Hotel is a spectacular grand hotel built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 20's for very wealthy tourists. The location, in the middle of the Rockies, is gorgeous -- by a bend in the Bow River, with steep crags rising up on all sides, sometimes shrouded in mist, in the winter covered in snow. Either it's tragic that the only time I go to places as grand as this is when it's work, or it's wonderful that I can write it off.
I was able to get to one actual Banff event, a talk by Paul Haggis. The writer of Crash talked about how he started writing with no particular plan, just took two characters off on a toot until they ran into some other characters, and so on. I hope all the young writers who were in the audience don't think that's the way to write. Paul wrote Crash after writing sitcoms and TV drama for 20 years. At a certain point you internalize story structure and you can try the highwire without a net. It can waste a lot of time if story structure isn't in your brain already. I'm working with a charming young woman who has a character she wants to write a movie about, but the movie doesn't seem to come, because she's not sure what the story is, or she lets herself get so caught up in the scenes that she loses the movie they're there to support.
Of course it's your own trip, so be my guest, but please be aware that there's a warning on that one.
And to all you crazy CFC kids here at the fest: keep workin' it, baby! Show the love, and it will come back to you.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
TERRITORY
Q. I just read a TV pilot (it's a possible mid-season replacement, but no epi orders yet) that is set in the same world as the original spec I've been laboring over like an idiot for a year and a half. Should I move on (maybe recycle the idea as a feature/backdoor pilot) or just finish the damn thing and call think of it as an uber-sample? I haven't sold anything yet, so it was mostly a sample anyway....For the most part, your spec pilot is a sample, anyway. So long as it doesn't feel like your show is a rip-off of the other show, you can still use it.
Also, there may be room for competing series in the same world. Not at the same network. But each network has a very specific flavor it's looking for. The Sopranos may be on HBO, but that doesn't mean there's no room for a gangster cartoon comedy on Fox.
Anyway, you've spent a year and a half on this thing. Finish it, send it out, and next time don't spend a year and a half on a spec!
THINGS I DIDN'T EXPECT TO SEE WHEN I GREW UP
The Walking With Dinosaurs people have made an even cleverer series, Chased by Dinosaurs, which sends a TV naturalist, Nigel Marven, back in time to pursue "elusive" critters like armored Devonian fish, Therizinosaurus (the "great claw" of the Jurassic), and mososaurs. The shows are a dead ringer for real naturalist shows. They've got a great moment in their boat, where they've sent their cameraman underwater for a "pre-scout," and they're all watching the tape he came back with, and there's the Dunkleosteus on the telly in the boat... just as if they'd really scouted the area for the giant killer armored fish. If you didn't know that time travel is fictional, you'd be convinced. The environments are convincing (real? who knows?) and Nigel's (painful!) interaction with sea scorpions and other critters is utterly convincing.
Worth a look. Especially if you're pals with a smart kid.
Worth a look. Especially if you're pals with a smart kid.
Friday, June 09, 2006
$100 A MEETING
I have 26 meetings scheduled at the Banff Worldwide Television Festival. That's not counting whoever I bump into at cocktail parties, or my pitch session in front of a crowd.
Banff is an expensive festival. Unlike Cannes, say, where it's the flight and the hotels that nick you -- you can pretty much meet everybody if you keep walking up and down the Croisette -- Banff is all in a hotel, and they won't let you in the hotel without registering. For a couple thousand bucks.
So I figure I'm paying about $100 a meeting. Would you pay $100 for a meeting?
No?
The answer, of course, ought to be: yes, if it's a real meeting with someone who can get you hired or get your material bought. Let's say you spend $25,000 a year to live. There are, say, 250 work days in a year. That means it costs you $100 a day to live. If the result of a meeting is one fewer day goes by before you're hired, that meeting is worth $100.
If you look at it from a salary point of view, if the result of a meeting is one fewer day goes by before you're making $1000 a day (par for a tv staff writer), that meeting is worth $1000.
So when you're wondering whether you really wanna go to that showbiz party -- it doesn't sound like fun, you won't know anyone, you'll just stand by the snacks ogling actresses -- pay yourself $100 to go to the party and work it like it was a job. Better, pay yourself $1000.
If you convince yourself you're getting paid $1000 to go to that party and work it -- you'll do a much better job working it, won't you? You won't get bored talking to boring people -- you'll really work to find out (a) why they're actually fascinating and (b) whom they know who can help you.
Meetings are only half the equation. You must be able to deliver the goods as a writer. But no one gets a job in TV without meeting people; and almost no feature writers do either.
Banff is an expensive festival. Unlike Cannes, say, where it's the flight and the hotels that nick you -- you can pretty much meet everybody if you keep walking up and down the Croisette -- Banff is all in a hotel, and they won't let you in the hotel without registering. For a couple thousand bucks.
So I figure I'm paying about $100 a meeting. Would you pay $100 for a meeting?
No?
The answer, of course, ought to be: yes, if it's a real meeting with someone who can get you hired or get your material bought. Let's say you spend $25,000 a year to live. There are, say, 250 work days in a year. That means it costs you $100 a day to live. If the result of a meeting is one fewer day goes by before you're hired, that meeting is worth $100.
If you look at it from a salary point of view, if the result of a meeting is one fewer day goes by before you're making $1000 a day (par for a tv staff writer), that meeting is worth $1000.
So when you're wondering whether you really wanna go to that showbiz party -- it doesn't sound like fun, you won't know anyone, you'll just stand by the snacks ogling actresses -- pay yourself $100 to go to the party and work it like it was a job. Better, pay yourself $1000.
If you convince yourself you're getting paid $1000 to go to that party and work it -- you'll do a much better job working it, won't you? You won't get bored talking to boring people -- you'll really work to find out (a) why they're actually fascinating and (b) whom they know who can help you.
Meetings are only half the equation. You must be able to deliver the goods as a writer. But no one gets a job in TV without meeting people; and almost no feature writers do either.
MUSEUM PEEVE
Jane Espenson is learning Egyptian hieroglyphics so she can read the walls at the Luxor, among other things. And that's cool. (Is there anything about Jane that isn't?)
One thing that bugs me about anquities in museums is when they don't translate the inscriptions. The Met in New York has yards and yards of Assyrian bas-relief covered with cuneiform. It would be too much to get a grad student to translate the sucker, and put up a small plaque nearby? So we can know whether it's saying "Here's all the cities I crushed lately" or "No smoking in the washroom, smoke detectors will go off"?
The Assyrians made those things to communicate. They wrote all over their monuments! How can you appreciate the sculpture if you don't know what it, literally, says?
One thing that bugs me about anquities in museums is when they don't translate the inscriptions. The Met in New York has yards and yards of Assyrian bas-relief covered with cuneiform. It would be too much to get a grad student to translate the sucker, and put up a small plaque nearby? So we can know whether it's saying "Here's all the cities I crushed lately" or "No smoking in the washroom, smoke detectors will go off"?
The Assyrians made those things to communicate. They wrote all over their monuments! How can you appreciate the sculpture if you don't know what it, literally, says?
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