Toot, Toot

Come shoot your show here.

MONTREAL -- Quebec now offers film producers one of the best tax incentives in North America. All production costs, not just labor expenses, are now eligible for a 25% tax credit.

"I think it's extraordinary. It's really big. The phones have started to ring," says Michel Trudel, who co-owns the equipment rental company Locations Michel Trudel with Mel Hoppenheim of Quebec's La Cité du Cineacute;ma studio. "This is what we needed to get the Americans to come again."

The provincial government said Friday it's increasing the tax credit for foreign filming from 25% of labor expenses to 25% of all spending.

Or, you know, come shoot my show here. Just sayin.

Time Well Wasted

Seven Terrible Early Versions of Great Movies. On the CRACKED.COM website. You are warned.

An Epiphanical Conversation with Mark McKinney

Mark McKinney is one of the luminaries of Canadian television. He started his career as one of the iconic KIDS IN THE HALL, and then graduated to writing and performing on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. He has written (and acted) for Aaron Sorkin on two shows, SPORTS NIGHT and STUDIO 60; he is one of the creators (and actors) of the brilliant series SLINGS AND ARROWS. He is currently showrunning the funny and touching LESS THAN KIND for CityTV/Rogers. Created by Marvin Kaye and Chris Sheasgreen, the show follows a dysfunctional family in Winnipeg that runs a less-than-successful driving school.

Thanks to the Banff Worldwide Television Festival's wonderful Juli Strader, I had the great fortune to get to sit down with Mark McKinney and pummel him with questions. He in turn pummeled me with words. You would not believe how fast this man speaks. I wound up with six pages of half sentences, and I type pretty fast when I'm not trying to spell.

And he used the word "epiphanical." Correctly. More on that in a bit.

CRAFTY SCREENWRITING: LESS THAN KIND is billed as a comic drama. Is that accurate? And would you say there's a qualitative difference between comic drama and comedy? Does it deliver different goods?

MARK MCKINNEY: Good question, man. What we have is a truly [air quotes] "situational comedy." It's not a three camera show. We have a crazy dad, narcissistic brother... everyone does their little comic bit to create a hysterically funny scene. Can it be as funny? I hope so. But the tone is qualitatively different from a sitcom.

Is there a qualitative -- I don't know, are we overthinking it here? There's a consistent lightness to the themes you introduce in a comedy. Ours is more to the WEEDS end of the spectrum, seriocomic. The themes themselves can change from comic to serious.

CS: In Canada we do sketch comedy and faux newscasts, and we do single camera comedy. Why don't we do seem to do full out multicamera sitcoms in Canada?

MM: I think it's a challenge to put together a writer's room and populate it. A sitcom is really labor intensive. You need ten to fourteen bodies. And you need some gag guys and some structure people, and somebody who can step on the floor and showrun. A sitcom is a big beast. And all those people need to be experienced already. We have some people like that, but not a full room.

I hope one day we'll be able to do that. If we can repatriate the great comedy talent that's working in LA. There are some really good writers down there. For example, Gary Campbell, he's back now. He might intuit how to do it. Rob Sheridan is a state of the art -- one of the world class funny guys. If he wants to do three camera, maybe he'll figure out a way to do it. But you need a critical mass. You can't cheap out. You can't say, "We'll get an experienced comedy guy, and the other four from DA VINCI'S INQUEST.

CS: You've worked with Aaron Sorkin on two of his shows. What have you learned working with him?

MM: Certainly that I'll never be able to replicate what he does. He told me a story from deep in his childhood, listening to the neighbors argue. Fascinated by the sound, not the words. Absorbing the rhythms--

CS: --the music --

MM: -- the music, yeah. And that's how his ear is so acutely tuned, because it's musical. That's how he has such interesting varied dialog, going from banter to witty to semi-serious to semi-sweet.

We have a lot in common, and I like his shows. When I'm writing, I'm not aping it. But I think my span is wider. I can go from the darkest KIDS IN THE HALL idea up to two friends hugging in the moonlight, with a guitar, turning on the tear taps.

He uses a writing room in a different way than I do. On STUDIO 60 we pitched story. He was hungry for story, he'd come down to the writing room and we'd pitch him the beats, something he could latch onto, something he could run with. We'd pitch plot lines, present a resolution -- then he'd go away and, I think without any editing at all, write the episode.

And I understand why he had to do that, because for him it's about the music.

When I'm doing a show, I would never dare write the whole thing. We have writers, and they do their thing. Of course, you have to rewrite for tone all the time.

CS: (Realizing) My god, is LESS THAN KIND the first time you've actually run a show?

MM: I've sort of done of it all along. On KIDS I was participating -- there were sort of 15 of us showrunning. And SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was entrepreneurial. If you wrote the sketch, you ran it. You worked with the costume designers, you were on the floor. This is the first time I've taken the title.

CS: So that answers a question I'd planned to answer about what were your personal and creative criteria for taking over LESS THAN KIND rather than focusing on developing your own shows, or working in the States...

MM: I read it, and I got invested in the material. I met with Marvin and Chris, had a long coffee with them, liked what they saw in their show. It was the family that was interesting. It just smelled right. And they wanted to do the same kind of show -- no-joke comedy [which I unpack to mean: comedy based not on a funny line or gag, but on the situation as the whole], actor-based casting--

CS: -- is that --

MM: -- maybe that was more me. A lot of writers and directors don't understand what actors can do. When you have Maury Chaikin, you change the way you write the role. You write to the actor.

CS: You experimented with an interesting narrative technique of having a voice over describing everything that was happening on the screen. Is this a new narrative technique so the show can simulcast on radio?

[A bit of background here. LESS THAN KIND aired amidst a comedy of errors any one of which, in the States, would have got people fired, and any three of which would have provoked an LA jury to bring in a verdict of justifiable homicide. Shows aired late, cut off early, aired in the wrong aspect ratio. One episode was heavily promoted and then pre-empted. The show aired repeatedly with the "second audio programme" turned on -- a voice-over provided on an encrypted second channel so blind people can follow the action.]

MM: That's an Ira Levy phone call. We had too much stuff to worry about.

[Ira Levy is the Toronto producer of the show. I asked him about it, but he grinned and kind of brushed off the question.]

I try to look at it as -- if we had tried to survive a regime change at an American studio -- usually every show greenlit by the previous regime is killed off unless it's a runaway hit. They renewed us for a second season, not even based on ratings, but based on the strength of their own feelings for the show. So I'm grateful to them for that.

[Mark McKinney is a very nice guy.]

CS: We hear a lot about the strengths of the American system and the weaknesses of the Canadian system. What are the strengths of the Canadian system?

MM: We benefit from being under the radar. This is one of the quirkier shows, and whether it would have survived on American TV -- we get to do interesting, different kinds of work. On the other hands the cable shows in the States have caught up. But it's kind of miraculous the shows I've been involved in.

CS: Certainly SLINGS AND ARROWS is as good as anything down South.

MM: We're seeing a maturity to the infrastructure. Our industry is coming up. In Winnipeg there are probably two good crews now, which was not the case ten years ago.

[In other words, you can now have two productions working at the same time, with a full complement of experienced, skilled people on set.]

When I first came up, there was NIGHT HEAT, and you heard stories about how they had to fly in a grip from LA. That will never happen again. Our directors are as good as anybody.

[Ron Moore said the same thing during his talk, that his Vancouver crew was as good as any he's worked with in LA.]

I think we have an opportunity if we can get this government to work with us, to solidify this industry. I've been stepping back and forth between the two countries because I've never felt safe in Canada, never felt like I was guaranteed a living here. They like to take a bash at funding those effete liberals, but it's a billion dollar industry that provides jobs.

CS: So what would make us lose you to the US.

MM: You have to stay an artiste. Working on STUDIO 60 was just a stellar creative opportunity. You mean, what would make me mope like Eeyore back across the border with my busted balloon? In a way, I may be starting to get impervious. I'm very lucky that I've gotten to a threshold where I can piece together enough employment. But it would be disheartening to think that another generation might not be able to trust this country, and then we'll miss this window of opportunity where they are buying our shows.

CS: You wake up and you're the Minister of Heritage for the new national unity government. What do you do to fix Canadian TV?

MM: I don't really-- I've only recently started seriously thinking about these things, so I can't -- there has to be a permanent funding situation. I went to [Konrad von Finckenstein's CRTC breakfast], and he's talking about the YouTubes flying out of control, and my kids show me things with 66 million hits that I've never heard of. The world is changing. We have to have a business plan, to make institutional the support that government has for Canadian drama. And as I say I've just really started thinking about this. So I don't want to misspeak. Is it defending CanCon? Is it limiting exposure to American television -- if you could even do such a thing? How do you take our farflung creative assets and make them work for us, knowing that there is an opportunity to get our share of the American entertainment pie. It will take some tweaking, but also some constancy.

But let's start talking about our ratings. You see people in Ottawa talking as if we're making movies about some obscure event in the war of 1812. People have to understand that Canadian shows are successful, it's a real business, that's it's a really valuable asset. And no one talks about that. Obviously I exclude French Canada; their language barrier serves them well, and everybody knows they have a vibrant industry. But we have one, too. And if we can count on that, then we can silently and stealthily steal back our fair share of the North American TV landscape.

CS: What do you think are the most interesting shows on television for you, as a writer, to watch? Do you watch shows you enjoy, shows you want to learn from, or do you have some other criterion?

MM: Well it all changed with SOPRANOS. That was an epiphanical moment for me.--

CS: (Vaguely chiding) "Epiphanical"?

MM: Yes. (Going with it.) It gave me a case of epiphanicosis. It put me in an epiphanicoma.

It's taken me a while but I've started to be able to watch SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE again, which I couldn't for a long time after I was on the show. And it's amazing. Lorne has got better about maximizing the comic density of the cast. I think this is the best cast ever. I watch it like a fan now. I can watch KIDS IN THE HALL, too.

I watch THE DAILY SHOW and COLBERT. Not really cartoon comedy -- THE SIMPSONS or FAMILY GUY. My favorite shows are complex dramadies. BEING ERICA. MAD MEN.

I'm not really into serialized shows, cop dramas, hospital shows.

I don't really analyze shows, but I can't help watching shows in a slightly different way. It's great, being a showrunner, watching MAD MEN unspool. You see how certain characters flower, and others he lets drop. You can see the grand design.

CS: Thank you so much!

According to the website, LESS THAN KIND airs Mondays at 9 PM on City TV. Or possibly at 9:30 PM. The site says both:

My Notes from the Ron Moore Master Class at Banff

While I was at the Banff Worldwide Television Festival, I got to attend a "Master Class" given by Ronald D. Moore, developer and showrunner of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. I'll be running my interview with him on Wednesday, but you also might like my notes from the master class. Sean Davidson, editor of PLAYBACK magazine, asked a whole lot of clever and fascinating questions, and then he turned it over to the audience for more questions.

SEAN DAVIDSON: You announced around Season Three that you were going to wrap up BATTLESTAR at the end of Season Four. And you were at the height of your popularity. What was the thinking?

RON MOORE: Simply, the story was coming to an end. The series had a built in premise. Eventually they would find home or not. Right from the outset there would come a point where the audience would stop believing in the idea that they were going to find a planet to live on, whether it was Earth or not, and they would stop believing that the cylons might kill them every week. After a point it becomes, yeah well they’re never gonna get there. It's GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. I didn't want to get to that point.

In the third season already I started feeling that we’re approaching the third act. By the end of the third season we'd identified four of the five secret Cylons. We're in the third act, time to wrap it up, but do it on our own terms.

And it was nice to go out on our own terms, at the height of our poplarit. To walk away and feel we did a really good show.

SD: The Sci Fi Channel must have wondered if you couldn't do more seasons.

RM: They were hesitant. They wanted to be sure it was those reasons and not other reasons that we were ending the show. They hemmed and hawed. But they had become fans of the show too. They wanted to see what the end was going to be too.

SD: Would this show have worked differently if you had taken it through the syndication market as was done with the Star Trek franchise? Could this have worked in syndication or on a conventional network?

RM: Well, syndicators hate serialization. That would have been a major bugaboo. Networks don’t much like it either. And on a cable channel, we could go much further in content, in terms of how graphic, how dark, how challenging in terms of character and story and ambiguities. Sci Fi was creatively the best place for it. We would have had more money on a network, but we were happy to trade money for the freedom we had.

SD: It seems SF sometimes seems to be a harder sell, or is treated more roughly on a conventional network. E.g. DOLLHOUSE -- everybody's wondering, why would Joss even go back to Fox.

RM: They don’t like it. Networks and studios don't like SF. It's odd, they're all familiar with it. The top films of all times have been SF films. Few were the meetings where you didn’t have the common language, the touchstones to references. But they’re afraid the core demographic is too small, that the show doesn’t break out. There hasn’t been a sf show that’s been a hit, unless you define LOST as SF. And that’s a debate. It’s a mystery, a thriller. But there hasn't been a prime time space opera like BATTLESTAR. Even the original STAR TREK was a ratings failure in its day. So they do have a reason to argue the way they argue. But it also becomes groupthink where they don’t want to try it. They develop it, "Oh, let's commission a pilot," all the way up to the point where they have to greenlight it, and then they don't.

SD: So you had a freer reign at Sci Fi?
RM: I didn’t have the alternative experience to compare with, and it depends who your network executives are. If your show is a success, you can do what you want.

The crucial fights with BATTLESTAR happened before we were on the air. It was all thrashed out in year one. Then the show was lauded and praised, and we didn’t have the same knock-down drag-out fights.

SD: What were some of those--

RM: How graphic the show was, how dark, how depressing the show was going to be.

Oddly I didn’t have any fights about politics or religion in the show. There were no arguments about suicide bombers, or the abortion show. There were no creative arguments about thematic or substantive themes. It was all, this show is so dark and depressing no one is ever going to watch it. This character is so evil we won't watch him. Those were the fights we had. And with those fights, you can whittle and compromise. What if I cut two frames,
what if I add a subplot to appease you and then cut it in the editing room? Whereas we couldn’t cut the politics and religion without being in a completely different arena... but we never had those arguments.

SD: Did you pretty much keep to the direction you originally planned?

RM. We played it pretty loose. I always knew where I wanted to end or w what the midpoint clifffhanger was. I could think ten episodes ahead. For instance I knew and I set up in the show bible that at the end of Season One, I wanted Adama to put Laura Roslin in jail, and we did. But the path I had mapped out wasn't the one we took. We realized, oh, this is a better way to get there, but we’re going to the same place.

As far as the day to day with the actors, I told them, I want to make this work with you. I want you to improvise lines, do what comes to you,
but we have to have one take as scripted. I gotta have the protection. Bbut that said I encouraged them and the directors to play with the material. Because there’s a difference between writing a line and saying a line. There are certain things that are more organic and real and you can’t script that, but there are also certain lines that have to be said a certain way, and it’s my job as showrunner to know the difference.

Very often the characters went through changes. We were sitting in the room and saying, how many times can Baltar talk to Head Six. You continually find ways to subvert the audience’s expectations. The audience is very familiar with TV, they know the conventions, the styles of story. You can tune into the first ten minutes of a show and know what the last ten minutes are going to be. I try to destroy that. You've seen this story, and you know our character is going to turn right, but no, he turns left. Any time you can pull that off you've surprised the audience. And storytelling is about finding surprises.

SD: In the podcasts you really pulled back the curtain, but on "Scar," you actually let us listen to an entire story breaking session. Was it anything particular about that episode?

RM: It could have been any episode. I like behind the scenes kind a stuff. I was a big fan of the original STAR TREK series. I was always fascinated by that. How do they do that, what changed in the story. I wanted to give that back to the audience.

On of the best parts of the job is sitting in the room with writers, arguing and laughing. The writer's room is the lifeblood of the series, where the fundamental work of creating the story is done.

SD: "And they have a plan..." Did you feel you painted yourself into a corner with that line in the precap?

RM; David Eick painted me into a corner. When we were coming up with the precap to define the large mythos of the show, we were coming up with succinct pieces of information the audience needed to know, and David said, "and it ends with, 'and they have a plan.'" "What does that mean?" "I don't know, but it's great!" And so I got talked into leaving it in. And it became one of the hallmarks of the show, the Cylons have a plan. And I kept getting pestered with it for the rest of the show. "What's the plan?"

It will all be revealed in the DVD movie. And if you don’t like it it’s cause you’re not paying enough attention. (Laughter.)

SD: Your fan outreach has always been a big part of your work. Why is that important to you?

RM: I just like doing it. I was a fan so I can identify with what it was wanting to get information, to pick their brains.

There’s times I don’t want to do the podcast that week. I'm wondering, why did I agree to do this. But the podcasts were always the best and last piece of the production process for me. They'd be the last time I'd watch the episode. I never go back and rewatch a whole episode after that. So they're my final thoughts, and become part of my process.

SD: Could you tell us a little about CAPRICA, the prequel to BATTLESTAR?

RM: We're working on the scripts right now. And we're already wildly over budget. We're not even shooting and we’re over pattern. We start shooting in mid July.

David and I had talked a couple of times in very casual conversations, that if we did a spinoff, we didn’t want to do another war piece. We didn’t want to do the first Cylon war. So let's do it as a period piece. Let's do the creation of the Cylons. It's in the past, they’re not doomed for quite a while, but it's a society that is flying apart of the seams. They've got this breakthrough in AI ... how did that lead to the events we saw in Galactica?

The endpoint doesn’t bother me. Just because you know the Nazis lost World War II doesn't mean you can't watch a movie about it. You have to become invested in the stories of the characters.

SD: When the show was set on New Caprica, you seemed to be able to draw material from Iraq, which clearly wasn't envisioned at the beginning of the show.

RM. The intention from the get-go was to make the series about us, what we’re going through as a culture. Science fiction at its best is a prism through which to view society. And we kept finding that their situation had interesting paralles into our situation. We weren’t going to rip from the headlines, but the situation came up -- here's a military-civilian disconnect, a society at war, where democratic principles are tested and broken in that crucible.

But it wasn't about making a point about how society. It was undamentally about finding out how our chars would react in that situation. We weren't trying to give an answer about what we as a society should or sholdn't do. We were asking, what would Starbuck do? What would Baltar do?

Sci Fi was remarkable. They didn’t give us any heartache. When I wrote the suicide bombers, the writing staff said, "You're going to have quite an argument," and I was girding myself for one, but they didn’t even question it. We had endless conversations about Tigh's eye. Can he have his eye back eventually? Do we really want to see him with an eyepatch for the rest of the show? How long are they going to be on their new caprica thing, can they get back to space. We never even discussed the suicide bombers.

Social commentary is something that has got lost along the way. A lot of filmed sci fi has been escapist for tits own sake. And I love the original STAR WARS, but it can't all be that. We have to connect with these people.

SD: What were some of your other sci fi touchstones?

RM: I grew up in the late seventies, so BLADE RUNNER. Also older sci fi, FORBIDDEN PLANET. I was a STAR TREK fan. I lived and breathed it as a child.

The new movie is a great ride. And the franchise needed a reboot. I've been saying that for years. It has had so many series. The continuity has become this vast complicated dense web that's an impediment to new viewers. You’d sit in the rooms on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, and you'd pitch a story, and then you'd have to stop and wonder, “does this fit in with the continuty, or does it conflict with something about the Romulans? It was sucking all the freshness out of, whether this fits in this complicated structure. I was saying for a long time, we need to call in an air strike.

SD: How were the webisodes brought into the story. Were the stories organically broken or broken separately?

RM: The idea to do them came from the network and the studio. No one had really been doing webisodes. THE OFFICE was starting to do little pieces of characters talking to camera, and the network and studio came to us with the idea to do webisodes. And we said, uh, okay. Nobody knew how to do this stuff. There were complicated technical questions. How do you budget it? How do you fit it into the shooting schedule. How do you coordinate it with the main unit? Which cast will participate. And this was before the WGA strike, so how much do you pay the writers.

We did the actual breaking of the story before third season premiere. Let’s just do a story between the two seasons -- backstories of some of these characters we're going to see, the suicide bomber, etc. We did the second group of webisodes a couple of years later. Let’s set up Gaeta for the mutiny arc.

It’s a strange format. I don’t like the runtime on it. I don't think it's a format that’s going to last. People are doing short webisodes right now because of technical limitations. I could be wrong. I just don't think ten years from now people will still be doing short webisodes.

(Somewhere around here, Sean Davidson opened the conversation up to questions from the floor.)

Q. How much did the original series inform the story? What was the value of taking a pre-existing series in your creative process?

RM: They came to me and said, we have this show in our library, we're looking for a new take. And Istarted thinking what I could do with it. I hadn’t seen it in 20 years. I found the premise very interesting and dark and challenging. An apocalyptic attack. Survivors who escape and are pursued --that’s a dark and intriguing concept.

But they were doing that on ABC in 1978. So the first thing they do
is they go to the casino planet. So they were trying to square a certain circle. They wanted to be escapist and fun and wacky and dark. I had the luxury to dispense with the wacky. I could discard everything I didn’t think work and make it more real, more truthful.

Q. How heavily are you involved in the merchandising?

RM: Not at all. I see the comic books and novels ahead of time, and I have people read them. But usually the time I find out about merchandise is when someone asks me to sign something.

Q. How did you decide who the four Cylons would be?

RM: We were breaking the Season Three finale, and the trial of Baltar didn't seem to be enough for a finale. I said I wish we had something, I don't know, like four characters start heading off and they all end up in a room and they go oh my god we’re Cylons. And we talked about that for a bit, and then we went through the list. It got winnowed down pretty fast. I didn't want it to be Adam and Laura because it was important they were human. Tigh worked because he was the most virulent Cylon-hater -- that's kind of delicious. Tyrol because he's the everyman, he's blue collar. Anders we didn't know much about, but he'd been in two resistance movements, and he's linked with Kara who has a destiny. And we came to Tory because she was a blank slate, and that would give us more freedom later.

And then I'd always wanted to do an episode of something with "All Along the Watchtower." And while we were talking about this episode someone said, maybe they hear music, and I said, "yes, and it's All Along the Watchtower, let's get the rights to that," and everyone laughed, and I said, "No really, let's get the rights to that." "But that's so random!” they said, and I said, yes, the lyrics are so cryptic we can read whatever we want into it.

Q. When you're putting together a writing room, what are you looking for. Is it a range of background? Do you want a wild card, or like minded people?

RM: The only thing I've been successful doing is having a mix of experienced hands and new hands. Everything else is theoretical. Ideally you'd have the character person, the dialogue person. But in reality it's a scramble for talent. You've been talking with someone about working together, and then you call, and they just signed to do a pilot. It’s really a crap shoot. There's no ideal balance. There's just who's terrible, and who's good.

[Note: if you listen to the podcasts, you'll be surprised how many of the BATTLESTAR writing room has served in the military, particularly the Navy and Air Force.]


Hope you enjoyed this transcription of the Master Class. My own interview with Ron Moore is coming up in this blog soon.

Scripts and Bibles

Lee Thomson has a great set of links to scripts and bibles on his blog.

Generica

I came to the Banff festival with a chip on my shoulder about Generica. Generica is a mysterious yet blandly familiar country somewhere in North America. Its mailboxes are blue, but it's not anywhere in the United States, at least nowhere identifiable. In fact it has no landmarks whatsoever. On the other hand, it is not anywhere in Canada, that's for damn sure -- no one has the telltale dipthong, or says "sore-ree" instead of "sah-ree," and you'll never see a bilingual sign or a maple leaf that's not on a tree. It is anywhere and nowhere.

Generica is Everycity, North America. It is the place that some US execs insist you set your movie or tv series, instead of setting it in Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal, because supposedly American audiences would never watch a show if they knew it took place in Canada.

(To be clear, Generica is not where you shoot RUDY: THE RUDY GIULIANI STORY. That was set in New York City. It was shot in my neighborhood in Montreal, sure, but I'm sure the movie had a real New York feel to it.)

I have issues with Generica. It is a boring place to shoot. Expensive and time-consuming, too. The effort you would usually spend trying to make each shot distinctive and special -- can we get the Jacques Cartier Bridge at dusk into the background of this shot? -- goes into making sure no shot has a red mailbox, or an "ARRET" sign, or the CN Tower.

Also, as a native New Yorker who spent a decade in LA, I don't believe American audiences care where their TV series are shot. I think some people would think it was neat that they were watching a show set in sexy Montreal. Most people simply wouldn't notice where the show was set. How many people could tell you that HOMICIDE was set in Baltimore?

Does any hockey fan in New York turn off the game because it's the Habs beating the Rangers yet again? Any American well-traveled enough, or cosmopolitan enough, to recognize the CN Tower, won't mind, or would even dig, that the show was set in Toronto. The only guys you have to worry about, the real Red State America-first-and-only people, if they have any geographical opinion at all, probably think it's the Seattle Space Needle. I doubt 50% of the American audience could tell you what country Vancouver is in.



FLASHPOINT is not set in Generica. It is set in Toronto. Stephanie Morgenstern and Mark Ellis, co-creators of the show, talked a bit at their panel about how they have red mailboxes and say the names of streets and parks, and make Tim Hortons references. Stephanie told an amusing story about an actress who was saying "sah-ree" on set; Stephanie whispered in the director's ear, "Tell her it's okay for her to say "sore-ree."

Go Stephanie and Mark!


I chatted with Christina Davis, FLASHPOINT's CBS exec. She said it was fine with her network that FLASHPOINT takes place in Toronto, "so long as you don't make a meal of it."

(It's okay to make a Timbit of it, I guess.)

She said that so long as you have a reason why your show needs to take place in your city, you should be able to convince your exec to let you set it there.

But here's the thing. CBS also bought THE BRIDGE, now shooting in Toronto. On THE BRIDGE, they are swapping out mailboxes and license plates, and ruthlessly eliminating any Toronto references. You can't even say "Yonge Street," I'm told by people on the show.

THE BRIDGE is based on the experiences of the guy who ran the Toronto Police union. So there are good reasons why you'd need to set it in Toronto.

Generica.


Now here's my question. If I have a choice, I'd rather set my Montreal-based show in Montreal, because I know it and love it, and I want to wring every bit of local color out of the city. I want the Jacques Cartier Bridge at dusk. I want the illuminated cross up on the Mountain. I want the Old Port. I want Ciné L'Amour.

If I can't do that, I'd rather set the thing in New York. We'll shoot the Old Port for The Village, and send a truck down to New York for some authentic garbage to strew, and maybe digitally add the Washington Square arch in a park shot somewhere.

I can't do the latter because you can't get CTF funding if your show is set outside of Canada, as I understand it.

Yet, irritatingly, the CTF does not require your show to actually be set in Canada. Just not outside of it.

Generica.

I think the US network prejudice against Canadian shows is nothing more than a prejudice that LA network executives have. I don't believe it's a prejudice that Americans actually share. Personally I think if anything Americans are tired of all the shows set in LA and New York, as if those are the only two cities in North America that matter. I think we'd all rather see a cop show set in New Orleans, or Toronto, or (setting aside the language thing) Montreal, than another SOUTHLAND.

I think all that's needed is for the CTF, and/or the Canadian networks, to simply refuse to fund any shows set in Generica.

Canada is providing the lion's share of the money for all these shows. On shows like THE BRIDGE and FLASHPOINT and COPPER, I don't believe the US partner's contribution cracks 20% of the financing. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard numbers going down to 10%.)

American network execs are prejudiced, and they don't give a damn about Canadian cultural sensitivities. But why should they, if we don't stand up for ourselves?


They do, however, understand money. On my show, NAKED JOSH, we had French signage, and landmarks all over the place, and more French signage, and Eric lived above Ciné L'Amour, and Josh's sex-crazed landlady had a strong French Canadian accent because, you know, sexy French landlady. We told Oxygen that we just couldn't afford to swap out all the ARRET signs on the money we had. They understood that completely.

We simply didn't use the "M" word. NAKED JOSH doesn't necessarily take place in Montreal. It could take place in any French-English-bilingual North American city.

All that's needed is for the CTF to declare that shows have to be identifiably Canadian. I'm not saying make a meal of it. Just don't shy away from where you are. Then when you're selling your show to CBS, you can say, "sore-ree, our mailboxes are red."


It won't stop bizarre choices like shooting just-outside-Vancouver for Toronto (I'm looking at you, BLOOD TIES). But it will put a stop to Generica.

I hate Generica, partly out of patriotism (yes, I get to be patriotic about both my countries), but mostly out of creative rage. Generica turns your locations into tofu. You can spice them up all you like, but you'll never get them to crunch.

Look North

I've been a bit quiet here lately, because I was prepping for my trip to the Banff Worldwide Television Festival. Not just setting up meetings with a billion producers from Out West, but trying to think of questions to ask Ron Moore that he hasn't answered in his fifty-odd hours of BATTLESTAR podcasts or on the many fan forums he has graced with his presence. I think I came up with a few, and I'll be posting my interview with Mr. Moore in the next week or two.

My big takeaway from this year's Banff was that US networks and cable outlets have finally decided to take Canadian shows seriously. When the Writers Guild strike came two years ago, I thought that US buyers would be forced to look at Canadian shows, and once they were forced, they'd realize that Canadian shows don't all suck. And once Canadian shows pass the don't-suck test, they become a fantastic bargain. Thanks to CTF funding and tax credits and the Canadian domestic license fee, you can pick up a Canadian drama for anywhere from 20% to 10% of what it would cost you to film it yourself in the States. (I've heard of US license fees going down to $200K for a show that would cost at least $2 mil to shoot in the States.) That's cheaper than reality TV. It's cheaper than putting on a talk show.

The fallout from this epiphany is FLASHPOINT and COPPER and THE BRIDGE. (And, I guess, the pilot I'm writing for The N, but they were always Canadian-friendly.) And more are in the works.

I won't say every US network exec was up in the Rockies to buy. Some of them seemed to there to hang out with other Americans. But I heard again and again that, yes, please bring us your shows. AMC is particularly open, for example. And of course, CBS, which already has THE BRIDGE and FLASHPOINT.

A word to the wise: the other thing I heard over and over again was: we want shows with a strong creative vision, it's all in the script, we were excited to work with Stephanie and Mark (the creators of FLASHPOINT). The guy from AMC said he bought a pitch from a writer because her agent described her as "the Canadian JJ Abrams." (Could that be Tassie Cameron? Or, as a spy tells me, Esta Spalding?) They are looking for strongly scripted shows where the creator/showrunner, or the creator and the showrunner, has the authority to deliver their vision. I did not hear anything along the lines of "we were interested because the producer has a strong track record hiring writers to execute her vision."

If you want to sell shows to the Americans, they seem to be much more comfortable when the person writing the show is the person responsible for the show. The producer is important, no doubt. They want high production values, shows delivered on time, great crews. (Ron Moore went on at length about how fantastic his Vancouver crew was, by the way.) But they believe that the producer is there to support the creative vision of the writing team, not to dictate it.

There's still economic gloom. Everyone was saying this Banff was sparsely attended. To me it was a whirl of meetings and interviews, and on Monday I came home so tired I couldn't even take a bath. But I'm coming away feeling much more confident about selling my ideas and getting them made than I've felt since January when my fallen angel series did a face plant.

If you're a writer in the States, this is probably bad news for you. More outsourcing. Yeesh. Canadian service productions stole a lot of business from LA, and now Canadian creative productions are stealing more. But you can take heart that we're a tiny country -- 22.5 million anglophones compared to your 300 million plus. And our government is anxious to gut all the tax credits and subsidies that make Canadian shows so attractive.

I'll blog more about what I learned at Banff, and you'll soon (or soon-ish) see interviews here with Stephanie Morgenstern and Mark Ellis, Mark McKinney, Dmitry Lipkin, and Ron Moore.

I've gotta catch a plane.

CFC: The New Crop

Every year the CFC Prime Time Program takes under a dozen students (nine this year) and trains them to be TV writers by actually having them write a show. They also get to meet a ton of professionals in the biz. That's why a ridiculously high number of TV professionals -- writers, producers, network execs -- in Canada went to the CFC at one point or another. After the program's over, the new kids are flown to the Banff Worldwide Television Festival where they get to experience the market up close.

I thought you might like to hear from them about what they learned.

Adam Higgs's career began in comic books with the publication of a Spider-Man story for Marvel Comics. Since then he has written several plays and short films, including the 2006 Whistler Film Festival Best Short Script, OPPENHEIMER PARK. In 2008 he completed his MFA in Screenwriting from the University of British Columbia's Creative Writing Program.

Q. What are you pitching at Banff?

Charisma Demona World's Worst Super Villain - a kid’s animation program about the world’s worst super villain: a ten year old evil genius who constantly schemes to take over her town but always ends up doing good by mistake.

Group - a low budget dramedy that follows the weekly group therapy sessions of six diverse individuals each living with a terminal illness.

The Rag - a one hour drama about young reporters as they struggle to stay competitive in a rapidly changing newsroom – with dwindling readership, blogs, and podcasts – while their personal lives become entangled in office affairs, friendships, and betrayal.

Q. What's the most important element of screenwriting craft you learned at the CFC?

What makes a show or closer: what doesn't make a show. That a good idea is not a show and that you have to think of longevity, feasibility, audience and a host of other factors.

Q. What's the most important bit of career advice you got at the CFC?

Patience. That things will happen if you work hard and give them the time to do so. It sounds relatively obvious but it's a good thing to remind yourself during the slow periods and the fast ones.

Before attending the CFC, Elise Morgan got an MA in Popular Culture from Brock University. She studied audience interaction with Television, and the Web 2.0 experience. During that time she constructed and wrote a grassroots ARG (alternate reality game) solo.

Q. What's the most important element of screenwriting craft you learned at the CFC?

How to accept criticism. Period. The end. Hold the cheese. It's hard to hear your work - otherwise known as "deathless prose" - slandered without taking offence, or responding in a crazy-cat-lady-from-the-Simpsons-esque way, but critiques are there to make the work better. It's also such a mainstay in television, where everything is collaborative, the CFC really prepares one to accept the critiques, criticisms, etc. with an ear to make things better. And there's always more to be had, so the notes were incredibly helpful.

Q. What's the most important bit of career advice you got at the CFC?

Keep writing. And while you're writing make sure not to hide out and not get out there and talk to people. It's a people industry, but if you hide in your office no one will know who you are.

A Winnipegger who is impervious to cold, Kim Coghill has worked in production on shows like QUEER AS FOLK, DARCY'S WILD LIFE and CROWN HEIGHTS. Before that, she spent more than a decade as a journalist, bringing real-life stories to CBC Radio and publications across North America.

Q. What are you pitching at Banff?
I'm pitching a couple of half-hour comedies focusing on women and their incomprehensible, confounding, and downright nutty relationships.

Q. What's the most important element of screenwriting craft you learned at the CFC?
Learning to speak loudly enough to be heard over nine other people? ;) No, honestly, the collaborative aspect of the story room was a phenomenal experience. Seeing the dynamic of the room, and which ideas are picked up or shot down - and why (sometimes it's not about having the good idea; it's also about pitching the good idea when the room is ready to hear it) - was such a great experience. My time at the CFC was one of the best times of my life, and the story room was a big part of that.

Q. What's the most important bit of career advice you got at the CFC?
The five-year business plan is invaluable. It really forces you to envision what you most want to be doing, and lay out concrete steps to get there. It's about strategy, setting goals, and identifying & solving obstacles that might otherwise slow you down. It's a chance to make realistic plans and carve out a path in life you are genuinely passionate about following. (And on those days when you wake up wondering what you're doing with your life, it's a hell of a way to kick your own arse.)

A double-major in screenwriting and production at York University, Rebecca Sernasie is an award-winning writer/director who has been writing for over ten years. She has written about teenage boys, strippers, army wives, dysfunctional mothers and daughters and is now trekking into the world of nuns. She was a staff writer on CBC’s 11 CAMERAS and wrote and directed the OMDC Calling Card short by Charlie Walker which screened at festivals across North America winning a Golden Sheaf Jury Prize at Yorkton and a Bronze Remi Award at World Houstfest. Rebecca is also working on a young adult novel titled, “Year In The Basement” and recently received Harold Greenberg and Corus funding for the feature film romantic comedy KUSH KUSH IN THE BUSH for Buffalo Gal Pictures.

Q. What's the most important element of screenwriting craft you learned at the CFC?
1. Writing is rewriting and you need to be flexible and fluid.
2. Stay true to first instincts; trust yourself.

Q. What's the most important bit of career advice you got at the CFC?
To have spec scripts in the genre you want to write in ready to go. I know this sounds really basic, but I didn't know how important they were until this year. I spent most of my time working on original concepts.

Jeff Detsky is a writer, producer and director. He attended Ryerson University’s Radio and Television Arts program, where he received the Ivan Fecan Award for Excellence in Dramatic Writing, and won the CityTV Pitch Competition. Jeff’s development experience includes a stint in Showcase’s content department. After getting a taste of Hollywood as a writer’s assistant for Len Blume on the first draft of the Dreamworks feature OVER THE HEDGE, Jeff spent a few years writing, directing and producing short films and sketch comedy. Most recently, Jeff wrote for the YTV/France 2 series FAMILY BIZ.

Q. What's the most important element of screenwriting craft you learned at the CFC?

A. The first half of the program was spent in a writer's room. It was my first time in a story department. I've written freelance scripts before, but it's only now that I understand why I had to write so many damned drafts of those beat sheets and outlines - scripts aren't written by writers, they're written by rooms full of story editors, each with their own perspectives and ideas that shape every script.

I certainly wasn't the loudest guy in the room, so I figured out pretty quickly that to get my ideas to stick on the board, I needed to pick my spots. If an idea got shot down more than twice, it probably wasn't a good one. Also, a well-timed, nuanced dick joke transcends all genres.

Q. What's the most important bit of career advice you got at the CFC?

A. We got a lot of advice from a number of disparate view points. Writers, producers, broadcasters, agents - it all seemed to conflict. But the advice that resonated most with me was from Jana Sinyor. I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially this is how she got her first series (DARK ORACLE) on the air, and eventually got BEING ERICA up and running after only a few years out of the CFC.

The first step is to pitch High Concept. Unless your name is Aaron Sorkin or David E. Kelley, the only edge you have over other creators who are far more experienced than you is a wild, unusual, and wholly original concept the broadcaster has never heard before. Shows about kids that live in a parallel comic book universe, or a woman who can travel back in time are far more intriguing concepts than misfit middle schoolers or a chick that goes to therapy.

The next step is to hitch your wagon to the right star. DARK ORACLE wouldn't have been picked up if Jana hadn't hustled Heather Conkie to champion and then run that show. The same goes for BEING ERICA and Aaron Martin. If a broadcaster bites on your idea, you'll be paired with a senior writer anyways. So it's better to find that person yourself and know that you work well together. Two seasons into co-running what looks like CBC's flagship show, I don't think Jana will run into this hurdle again. But for someone who was in Jana's shoes 5 years ago, this was great advice.

Peter Rowley graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Political Science and Classical Studies. While at UBC, Peter started writing for the theater, co-founded a theater company and staged several successful plays. He transitioned to the film and television world in 2005, writing and producing three short films. He has interned with Keatley Entertainment and spent two years working with the development team at Screen Siren Pictures.

1) Best piece of screenwriting craft I picked up at the CFC?

I think the most important thing I learned during the Prime Time Program, was to really embrace the collaborative process. I can't emphasize enough how much my writing improved by talking things through and sharing early drafts with my fellow residents. It really was an incredible experience working with these awesome people.

2) Best bit of career advice?

That there really isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to break in. Everyone did it differently, the best thing you can do is to just keep writing. When your break comes you want to have some polished writing samples to show.


Not going to Banff are Alex Levine (already workin on THE BORDER), Andrew De Angelis (working on 18 TO LIFE) and Bob Mackowycz (working on a feature).

Hire them now! Maybe they'll throw you a script in a decade or so.