Endorse and Endorse, of Course, of Course
For the first time in its eighty-year history, The New Yorker has endorsed a presidential candidate, and they've chosen John Kerry. Add 'em to the list of Kerry endorsers, which currently includes The Washington Post, Newsday, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Republican (nice!), The Flint Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Miami Herald, The San Francisco Chronicle, and my own favorite paper of record, The New York Times.
Sadly, my hometown paper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, has decided to take a permanent seat on what must be becoming an awfully uncomfortable fence and chosen to endorse no one, which is, in my opinion, as lame a cop-out as the one offered by the annoying hipsterette interviewed in the "Public Eye" section of this week's Time Out New York who said she preferred "not to get involved in politics at all, because my personal opinion is that it's all bullshit." Because, you know, nothing changes a bad situation like burying your head in the sand.
This Means Something
I got the following in a spam email advertising "live webcam dating," and while I've no interest in dating live webcams, I found the text used to try to defeat spam filters (didn't work, so sorry!) fascinating. It reads like particularly bizarre song lyrics, and I'd try to set it to a catchy pop beat if I had any musically talent whatsoever. I would love to know how they come up with this stuff...
Whose bluish wine snores as soon as her daughters white sony is thinking as soon as her daughters round boat is thinking.
Our small cat sleeps as soon as any smart green exam book walks.
Their slopy round-shaped round bluish bra makes sound and perhaps any well-crafted boots stinks and still a given slopy magazine is angry.
Their golden car smells.
Mine golden t-shirt snores or maybe his brothers white picture show its value.
Any given odd shaped binocyles fidgeting at the place that whose green well-crafted odd shaped baby makes sound.
Any given noisy eraser snores and any given white odd shaped glove show its value.
Their silver exam book fidgeting.
His brothers round-shaped bed calms-down.
Any given small binocyles show its value.
The golden forg stares.
Her daughters stupid golden small gun snores.
Our children small camera run.
His brothers white wine show its value.
His brothers round-shaped mp3 player is on fire.
Mine small glasses show its value and perhaps his brothers smart slopy boat smiles while their smart cat snores.
Our little t-shirt prepare for fight.
The green soft stupid sofa is on fire the time that mine soft eraser stares.
A given expensive door arrives and still his brothers green golden sport shoes stares.
His brothers tall white silver forg spit.
A expensive sofa looks around.
Whose purple door smells.
Our children stupid dog lies or maybe his brothers little white stupid computer stinks.
A given odd shaped bluish bluish bed stares.
Their silver table is angry.
Whose bluish silver bottle show its value as soon as the noisy soft underwares run while any beautiful mobile phone fidgeting.
Her daughters expensive silver boat falls.
The soft bottle calculates.
Her bluish pensil walks.
His white sony stares.
Whose beautiful white round-shaped laptop fidgeting.
A given small baby got an idea as soon as his brothers silver mouse stands-still.
Rolling
It wasn't too hard getting in to film production: offer to work for free, and you can land a spot as an intern or even a production assistant on an indie film shoot pretty quick. But as easy as it was for me to get into, it was even easier to get out of. I didn't like the long hours, or the precariousness of working from job to job without a guaranteed paycheck or benefits, and I certainly didn't feel like putting in the years and years needed to work my way up through the production hierarchy to the more interesting (and better paying) technical positions. I walked away from production with little hesitation, and didn't look back.
That said, I love being on set. Being on a film set is like being on a beehive held together by cable and electrical tape; everyone is doing something, and they're all doing it at once. The energy of a major production in full swing is overwhelming, right up until they point when the cameras start rolling, and that's the part I like the most: when the call echoes around the set, and beehive falls still in seconds, and the full attention of a dozen or fifty or a hundred people is suddenly sucked through a lens a couple inches in diameter for a brief moment in time. It's a great moment, one I love to be a part of, even as a bystander, and so I never turn down an invitation to a film set.
Thursday was a drive down to Culver City, to Sony Studios, where I got to walk through soundstages holding a house painstakingly constructed to appear as though struck by a meteor shower, then even more painstakingly duplicated, surrounded by a lit starfield backdrop several stories high. Artfully detailed craters were gouged into polished wood, and plaster moonrocks sat half-buried in living room floors. Out of the side door of the house, a stuntman in astronaut gear was strapped into a twenty foot crane to dangle him outside the windows while a pyrotechnician set off a towering burst of flame in the living room and a child actor told knock-knock jokes to a crew of grips and the Steadicam operator rehearsed his steps.
And then the call went up, and the hammering stopped, the jokes and chatter and arcane technical discussions stopped, and then we were rolling, and nobody moved except for the man with seventy pounds of camera strapped to his chest backpedalling down the hallway, just ahead of two racing boys who rounded the corner in the foyer, sprinted into the living room, and dove into the fireplace as a burst of lightning appeared outside the windows.
Then we cut. Hammering resumed, discussions resumed. Another knock-knock joke. The spaceman adjusted the straps around his chest, scratching an itch. The still photographer grabbed an off-the cuff shot of a grip walking down the hallway with one of the kids wrapped around one of his legs. The beehive awakened.
And then the director called, "Again."
I also got to meet Guillermo Navarro, which was nice. And if you haven't seen THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, you should.
On Television
Just to begin: these are my own thoughts, as an avid watcher and inspiring writer of television, and I'm dictating them here in large part to help myself as a writer, and for your own enjoyment and thoughts.
So here are, without further adieu, the key elements for a successful dramatic television show:
Tell Your Audience Where They Are
That is, let them know the premise of the show. Right away. As in, before the first commercial break. Let your viewer know exactly what kind of a show they're getting into, and let them decide if they want to be there.
Don't Tell Them Where They're Going
Once you've told them where they are, under no circumstances let them think they know where they'll be in six months, or a month, or a week. It's a vitally important distinction, and it's incredibly easy to screw up. You want your viewer to feel like they've got a handle on the show right away, yes...but you don't want them to know it so well that they can predict what's coming down the pipe. Because if they know what's coming, they won't bother to see it happen.
Make it Look Good
Sounds obvious, right? Of course you're going to make it look good. What's surprising is that so many shows don't. In fact, a lot look downright godawful...either because of the budget, or because more effort was spent on the story than the look, or because of a bit of both. A skilled director of photography is crucial; the use of color and light and proper sets are crucial. Production design is CRUCIAL. People watch television to escape, more than anything else, and if it looks cheap, if it looks fake, they ain't going nowhere. CSI has succeeded, in large part, because it looks friggin' great, like nothing else on television. 24 got people hooked, in large part, because it looked like a movie. These shows looked like someone spent some serious time and effort to make it look good, and the fact such time and effort was spent indicated to the viewer that this was SOMETHING WORTH WATCHING.
I Repeat: People Watch Television to ESCAPE
The majority of people watching WEST WING or ER aren't politicians or doctors...they're ordinary shmoes who wish and hope that's what politicians and doctors are like. They're optimists, who want to be, however briefly, somewhere that supports their optimism. Who wouldn't want a President like Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlett? Who wouldn't want a doctor like Noah Wiley's John Carter? We want our cops tough but kind, our justice relentless but fair. Television is escapism. Television is wish fulfillment. That's why shows based too closely on current events fail, and why a show like WEST WING, supposedly about current world events, paid only a passing glance to the most world-shaking even in the last fifty years, and why LAX will drop out of sight in less than a couple months unless it becomes a soap opera. You don't want to watch a show about how screwed up the world is. You know that already.
But Make it Look Real
A good fantasy, a good escape, is one where you forget it's a fantasy, and for the viewer to forget it's not real, it's got to look real. It's got to FEEL real. One of the best (and certainly the most neglected) television shows of the last ten years, FIREFLY, was a western set in space, tying in two of the most unrealistic themes out there. But it felt real, and it felt that because of the characters you were watching, because of their reactions to the world around them, and because the world around them made sense, and seemed right. In the pilot, the main character finishes going to the toilet, and because his quarters are on a small, crowded spaceship, he retracts that toilet in to the wall, pulls out the mirror and the sink directly above it, and washes his hands in a serious of gestures that look like they've been done a thousand times. It looked natural, and so it looked real.
Be Consistent
When you get your audience, keep 'em. Build on what you've started, on the themes you've established since day one. Changing things out of left field because you think that's what'll bring you a bigger audience won't, and you'll lose the viewers you've already gained. Bringing on The Hot Chick just for the sake of having The Hot Chick reeks of desperation, and sounds a death knell for the people watching. Never, ever forget that the people watching your show are smarter than you think they are, and when you start grubbing for a bigger market share, they'll see it coming from a mile away, and they'll hate you for it.
Surprise
Being consistent to the themes of your show doesn't mean you can't throw in a zinger. Having a theme doesn't mean always having a logical conclusion, and don't think you're hidebound by everything you did in the pilot. Just have your zingers make sense. And if you're creating a show, give yourself a big enough playground from the start, and you won't have to worry about going out of bounds.
To Sum it Up...
Sum it up. You should be able to summarize not only each episode of your show, but your ENTIRE SHOW, on one side of an index card. Call it the TV Guide listing. If you can't do that, distill the concept down until you can. Don't ever think that by being able to summarize it that you're cheapening it, and don't EVER think that your idea is too precious, too great, too MAJESTIC, to be summed up in a sentence. Get over yourself. And remember, Moby Dick was about a guy and a whale.
That's all for now. I'll write some thoughts about the current crop of television later, when I've got the time.