These Jackboots Made For Walkin'

THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG.

Keep in mind, Please, as you read the following story that Bill C10, has not, in fact, even been passed yet.

Canada Border Services officials recently held up footage from the film Love and Savagery, a tale of passion and longing set in Ireland and Newfoundland, because they suspected it was pornography, its producers say, and they blame legislation currently under review by the Senate.

The movie's producers shot scenes in Ireland last month, including some in a Catholic church, and had sent footage to Montreal for processing. The film was held for days by border officials at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

"All of a sudden this batch of rushes got held up day after day after day at Canadian customs," a bemused John N. Smith, the film's director, said in an interview from St. John's, where shooting on the Ireland-Canada co-production continues.

"There was a big kerfuffle and they suspected us of being involved in the pornography trade. They were insisting they were going to send it off to the RCMP lab to develop it to see if we were engaged in pornography."

Both Smith, who directed The Englishman's Boy and the award-winning The Boys of St. Vincent, and Kevin Tierney, the producer of Love and Savagery, suspect the menacing arm of Bill C-10 was at play.

The controversial bill, currently being debated in the Senate, would allow the government to withhold tax credits from film and television productions it deems offensive.

"There's now a kind of attitude that permeates the bureaucracy based on the signals they're getting from the elected ministers," Tierney said.

Niiiiiiiiiiicccce.

Kirk Shaw on Rewriting History

FURTHER TO MY earlier post about John Adams and the value of emotional truth versus strict historical truth, the writer of that miniseries, Kirk Shaw, has a very fine piece in the New Republic about what was changed for the miniseries and why.

The "truth" I sought to illuminate in the miniseries was emotional and intellectual rather than literal. With every historical project I've done, the next-day bloggers often make the assumption that filmmakers alter "facts" either out of ignorance or negligence. In fact, a good deal of soul-searching goes into every deviation from the record; nothing is arbitrary. Some changes are made deliberately from the outset, with an eye to the overall structure of the piece; others arise as a result of production exigencies. But all aim to further the broader goal of making "history" accessible in dramatic form.

A script must be fluid as it moves off the page and onto the shooting floor. Two weeks before we were due to wrap shooting in Hungary, where daytime temperatures often exceeded 107 degrees, one of the two soundstages on which we had built the interiors for Adams's house in Peacefield was consumed in a fire. As even a one-hour delay in shooting was out of the question, scenes originally set inside the house were restaged outside. Unexpectedly, without a single change in action or dialogue, the scenes played more autumnal, more elegiac than they would have indoors, greatly adding to the completed episode's mood and tone. (Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the set caught fire on July 2 last year, the same day in 1776 that the Second Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain, and the day Adams always thought should have been celebrated as our true Independence Day. I like to think of it as the ghost of John Adams encouraging us to strive ever harder for "truth, nature, and fact.")

Experience has taught me to listen to actors' and directors' insights and to be flexible as far as changes are concerned, especially when such precise actors as Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are involved. Bad actors often clamor for more dialogue; it is the good ones who understand the need for less. In the course of shooting, some 30 percent of the originally scripted "pillow talk" between John and Abigail fell away; at times--as in the reunion scene that opens Part 4--it vanished altogether. The characters' very inarticulateness said more about the awkwardness of their situation than any words possibly could.

The process of screenwriters, academics, and popular historians, I think, is much the same. We make our choices from the historical record to tell the story that best suits our purposes. The line between "history" and "drama" is a fine one, indeed. It is in the intersection between those two different, but not always mutually exclusive, realms that our John Adams miniseries exists. Hopefully, our viewers will utilize it as another tool to construct their own vision of our founding past.

This is an important subject, and needs to be discussed both by creatives, and historical advisers. There is a prissy tyranny about these days that surfaces any time a "based on a true story" comes out.

It's the kind of pedantic, plodding thinking from nitpickers and historical accuracy Nazis that would deny us the pleasures of Richard III because, say, he weren't no hunchback. (And was actually a pretty good king, too.)

H/T to Jaime Weinman

Nine Inch Nails and the Mad Pulp Bastard

FROM THE DEAD THINGS MAILBAG:

Bill Cunningham writes:

Since this whole Story2Oh Facebook debacle, the whole argument made by the "new media" types was that "people want transparency so they don't feel like they are being used to sell things."

To that, I have to point every last stinking one of them to this:

http://www.42entertainment.com/yearzero/

This is 20 tons of cool that is wrapped in both the digital and real worlds. Interactive, intriguing and oh yeah, calls "bullshit" on the whole transparency argument. I am going to have to study this further. It could take my espionage series to a whole new level of "story."

Absolutely, spot on, Bill. I remember bumping up against some Year Zero stuff in the last little while, and not knowing exactly what it was, but knowing it was really cool. It works on a level beyond. Kind of like that weird spate of Val Kilmer face graffiti that appeared on walls around Toronto last year.

The convergence of art and new media is going to happen. It's just probably not going to happen anywhere near Toronto, or with many who attend CaseCamp.

The cautionary tale remains, creatives: before you get into bed with some marketing type, be sure to kick the tires. You don't want to wind up having 2003 arguments in 2009/10...

World at Six

I'M GOING TO be in a piece on the World at 6 today on CBC Radio in a story commenting about this.

EDIT: The helpful CBC Radio producer called back. Apparently the health of the Canadian broadcasting industry doesn't rate the 6pm slot. Denied!

The story will air either at 6, 7, or 8am tomorrow on World Report.

If you're up at that hour, let me know if you hear it. I sadly, will not be listening at that hour. CBC News before coffee makes it very difficult to get out of bed. (Not just CBC News..pretty much any news.)

I'm getting notes now. The pen situation is unresolved.

Care And Feeding of the TV Writer

SO, IMAGINE THE SCENE:

A Story Room. A windowless space with bad carpeting, dusty and flaky corkboard walls, and an oval conference table. It's morning, 11 am, say, and we are in full swing. There was a bit of jockeying over the "good chairs," and some settling before optimum coffee placement was achieved, but there's also a deadline to be met -- the First Draft of the new season is being tabled. It must be vetted and punched up so it may go out. The crew is waiting to prep.

So the notes come. Dialogue tweaks here, and there. Discussions of characters' intent and motivations. Various alts proposed, considered, tweaked, dropped. You grind on through page and scene.

It's collegial and professional. Sure, there aren't the flights of fancy -- the digressions and dissections of midget porn, Filthy YouTube Videos, or Ass Babies that might grace other, more ... shall we say ... fithily fecund story departments... none of that obtains, but everything is proceeding at an average, brisk pace.

And then Boy Wonder, the Story Department Coordinator makes a fatal mistake.

"So," says he, with his loping, deer like eyes, "we're putting in a STAPLES order and we wanted to figure out, uh, maybe, the pen thing."

Eyes light up.

There is a silence.

And then, a ten minute, animated, digression explosion of joy and engagement.

"The stabilo Gel writer! In black!"

"We need RED, too, don't forget Red."

"What's that one there? Right there?"

"That's the Unibal Signo."

"How much are a box of those?"

"Fifteen"

"We need them. In Black."

"What about Blue?"

"Blue, really?"

"I like Blue. I like the way it contrasts on the page."

"Freak."

"We need the Red, too, don't forget about the Red."

At about this time, Boy Wonder, all sideburns and furrowed, massive brow, starts to back away. But there's nowhere for him to go. The standard, Red Paper Mate Ballpoint Pen is picked up, menacingly, and waved about -- the standard of an advancing army; the harbinger of a fate worse than... well, making coffee.

For these Red ballpoint abominations dot the table. Fistfulls of them. They are the ill-fated, rotten fruit of an earlier order. Unused, unloved. They are the retarded, redheaded stepchildren of the International Brotherhood of Writers. The offending pen is fired at Boy Wonder with a vicious toss.

"Not these. Not this limp, unsatisfying, cromulent piece of shit!"

"That pen is like ASHES IN MY MOUTH."

"Stylo! Stylo!"

"Okay, so is it decided? The Uniball Signo in Black, and the Stabilo Gel in Red."

"Wait, wait! The black there is .5"

"What?"

"It's the .5. Most people prefer the .7!"

"Now that you mention it, I prefer the .7."

"Me too."

"Yup."

"Okay then."

There is sweat.

There are flushed faces. Breathing is steady and deep, eyes focused and ready.

Arms are coiled for further action. The table pulses with bursting, crackling creative energy. We have never been so goddamn alive.

See, the sad truth is that there are topics that will energize any writing room. That will pick it up, tip it on its axis and spring it forward with a burst of supernova like intensity.

These subjects generally tend to be ranked in this order:

1. What's for Lunch.
2. Pens.
3. Sex.
   
   (Yes, yes. Sex is #3. Don't judge.)
   
   
4. Printers/Computers/Writing Software
5. Moleskin Notebooks
6. The Complete OED (Online version or 2 volume Complete version with magnifying glass)
   

There are other slots, too, but I leave those open to you to fill on your own, as they are subject to regional variation.

Boy Wonder has flown very close to the sun this day, and in the glow, and the heat of the Pen Discussion, he senses his wax wings starting to melt. Perhaps it is this which causes him to swallow, and say the following ugly, nearly suicidally self-destructive thing:

"Uh, I'll see what we can do. But...No guarantees."

Oh. Oh. Boy Wonder.

You have opened Pandora's Box this day.

Woe betide you if you don't deliver the goddamn pens.

Nerds Are People Too!

YOU KNOW HOW I know this? (Well, besides the fact that I probably am one?)

They make the same dumbass mistakes as the rest of us.

When last we spake of Jpod, CBC's ill-fated adaptation of the Douglas Coupland book, it was canceled, the producer blamed CBC for not (yawn) promoting it properly, and the show's tiny fan base vowed to fight on for a second season.

It called to mind that moment I had a few years ago at an event celebrating new CBC Comedy Pilots, when the creator stood up and said, "we wanted to make a show for people who don't watch TeeVee!" And I thought, "Um, shouldn't you master the people who are watching first?"

Jpod was a troubling exercise for the CBC from the beginning, suffused with plenty of good and bad.

The Good: it did have an appeal to a younger audience
The Bad: they don't watch CBC

The Good: the fan base was passionate
The Bad: they were tiny

The Good: they pointed out that Jpod was one of the most heavily bit-torrented shows on the Interwebs
The Bad: Why the fuck would CBC or any network consider the fact that a huge audience chose to illegally pirate the show and not watch it on air a good thing?

CBC did try tinkering -- they moved JPod to Fridays and swapped it with MVP. Interestingly enough, though the fans complain that move killed the show, the numbers which were dropping like a rock actually ticked up a bit on Fridays. Evidently not all nerds are cool and stylin out on a Friday night. (After all, isn't that Friday death slot where X-Files became a hit. Oh yes, it surely is.)

Anyway, it was all too little too late.

(And some of the too little too late was also creative: the strongest shows that Jpod did were the last few -- the ones that few people saw. Also, you could strongly make the argument, I think, that Jpod was never, ever, ever a show that should have been an hour.)

So now we're left with the inevitable fan campaign to Save Jpod. Officially, I'm thrilled by this campaign. Because, damnit, it's a fan campaign to save a Canadian show!

That's awesome.

But there is the part of me that feels oogy, because, hey, what do you know...the nerds of Jpod are out there committing every fan campaign mistake in the book.

Evidently, they've chosen May 19th to send all sorts of Lego figures to CBC people who could (but won't) bring the show back for a Season 2.

Sigh.

There's all the other stuff in there, too. All the stuff that I wrote about in my Emily Post's Guide To Save-Our-Show Campaigns.

• They vastly overestimate the size of their audience (the selection error problem)

• They vilify and talk about how stupid the CBC is and how they'll never watch it again.

• They focus their efforts strictly on their internet and Facebook audience -- failing to grow their efforts beyond that to an audience that will actually increase their impact and make it wide-ranging.

• They overestimate signs of "success." (Ie: the fact that you're being streamed on "the new WB.com!" doesn't mean you are loved. It means you were dirt cheap to buy.)

And on, and on, and on. Yup. Nerds is smart. But they're not so smart that they can't make the mistakes of every other TV fan.

There's something comforting in that, I guess.

*Oh, and if you're at the CBC and you get a whole mess of Lego, may I humbly suggest figuring out a way to send it here?

C10 Goes To The Show

SEE? WHEN I'M heads-down in a script I miss an awful lot.

Jaime Weinman at Macleans Magazine tipped this morning that the contretemps over Bill C10 in Canada made The New York Times over the weekend, complete with a nice fetching picture of Sarah Polley:

Josée Verner, the heritage minister in the Conservative government, said during an appearance before the Senate committee that the measure was not an attempt at censorship but simply a way to block subsidies for films that are “potentially illegal under the criminal code, such as indecent material, hate propaganda and child pornography.” Ms. Verner did not explain why current guidelines that ban makers of pornographic films, among other things, from even applying for grants were inadequate.

A key point. And remember: the big amendment that Liberals and Creatives are pushing for the contentious clause is something that the Conservatives, if they really are genuine in saying they're not trying to pull a fast one, should have no problem with:

Simply amend the clause to specify that the review, and the potential pulling of a tax credit, will only apply to those films or TV shows that contravene the criminal code.

In explaining the controversy to an American audience, the explanation of why Canadian film and television is partially supported by government is divorced from the ideological pissing that goes on every time the subject comes up in this country. Instead, Polley's matter-of-fact summation is allowed to stand:

“I have heard it suggested many times in response to our attacks on this bill that we are free to make whatever film we want but with private money,” Ms. Polley told the committee. “It is a suggestion that, unfortunately, has absolutely no basis in reality. Every Canadian television program and film that I and any of us have ever been involved in has involved some public financing. When you tell artists to use private money, it is essentially telling us to leave the country.”

So the fear of many creatives is here. The more this story circulates -- especially once it gets beyond the USA -- the only country where the state, in fact, doesn't have a huge investment in protecting homegrown cultural product -- the more we risk ping-ponging back to the days of The Tin Drum, where Canada was viewed as a prissy little backwater. We also risk throwing our lot in with the very cultural forces in the United States whose influence (finally) seems to be on the wane. Gotta hand it to Canada, we do find new and creative ways to be slightly behind the times.

The idea that the Conservatives will bring this to a confidence motion is almost too ridiculous to contemplate. The votes they will gain on this issue are miniscule -- it's red meat to their base, sure, but it's not like there are more votes to be had in the West for the Tories. And the one place where they actually DO care about culture in this country, Quebec, is the other place where they hope to pick up votes.

Again, though, what's important to remember here is that this is a tax policy bill. The way the bill is projected to work, is not the way that it will work in reality. The Conservatives are being disingenuous and they know it.

In theory, the bill will allow the Minister of Culture to review films after they're made, and if they're deemed not suitable, withdraw the tax credit.

In reality, no bank will gap finance any film or TV show where the tax credit might eventually be questioned. So anything with edge will not be able to get gap financing. (Unless it's not Canadian, in which case, they can shoot here and get the credit, another element the Times pointed out, in their usual understated way, as "curious.")

The Conservatives know that coming out in favour of anything approaching censorship would be politically disastrous in Canada, a country where a majority of the people are socially left of their party's stated positions.

That's why these provisions, this is idea of an extra level of review, are not being proposed, say, at the Telefilm or CTF level, before projects get made.

This is the Tories' Hail-Mary attempt to get the same effect, without having to take the political hit for being in favour of censorship.

That might be an arcane thing to explain on the campaign trail. But try us. I Young People Fucking Dare you.

What every person who makes their money on cultural stuff in this country needs to understand is that this is that moment. Your government is telling you that you either play their way, or you leave. If you don't want to spend your days working under the table in the Southland, or if you're not ready to give up making money in an industry that supports tens of thousands in this country, then maybe it's time to suit the fuck up.

Wayne and Shuster: 50 Years Since the Rilly Big Shoo

ONE MORE THING I missed when I was pounding out pages yesterday: a genuine TeeVee milestone. Yesterday marked 50 years since Wayne & Shuster first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Their popularity was massive, and from a time when the subject of Canadian Television was yet to get wrapped up in every other ridiculous regional conflict that roils Canada.

It's way before my time, and most of the W&S I've seen were in archived bits when I was at Ryerson, or in the CBC Archives, or at the Paley Center. Their comedy material, being kind of vaudevillian, does not hold up well. But nevertheless if you want a proper appreciation, truck on over to Bill Brioux's site.

Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster were quite simply the biggest Canadian TV stars of their day. Wayne was brash and outgoing, all eyes and ready grin; Shuster looked like a banker or a lawyer. He may have been more dialed down but this team did not really have a straight man, more like two comedians playing at different speeds.

Their long-running comedy/variety show was top-rated at CBC. But it was as Sullivan's "good friends from Canada" that they really made their mark. If Sullivan liked you, you got put into a six week rotation along with other comedy acts like Allen & Rossi and Stiller & Meara. And you became very, very famous overnight; just ask Paul McCartney and Ringo Star what Sullivan could do for your career.

I was a year old when the duo had their Sullivan debut. I remember many of their subsequent appearances; my parents would always remind me that they were from Canada. People took plenty of pride in their success.

Wayne & Shuster became our comedy ambassadors, representing Canada to a vast American audience. But it wasn't just that they were Canadian that set them apart. More important, probably, was the fact that they were college grads, two fellows from the University of Toronto. Most of the big TV comics back in the '50s, like Red Skelton, Milton Berle or Jackie Gleason, were from the school of hard knocks.

• Brioux's full appreciation is here.
  

R.I.P. Old Tv Habits

YESTERDAY'S NY TIMES had an interesting appreciation by Ginia Bellafante for the NBC show MEDIUM. In a piece called "Terrifying, Not Unlike Your Real Life," she makes a number of observations.

Created by Glen Gordon Caron (and existing at a significant tonal distance from “Moonlighting,” his other great contribution to television), “Medium” can be genuinely hard to endure, especially at home, alone, late at night (it is shown at 10 p.m. on Mondays), without wondering whether you should check behind the bedposts for sadists and other wack jobs.

Something terrible has always just happened, or is about to, and the viewer bears the apprehensive weight of Allison’s foreknowledge, having witnessed the violently detailed dreams that disrupt her sleep almost every other nocturnal hour. (No one has ever needed a regular prescription of Ambien more.) Sometimes Allison’s forecasts can keep a rape or a killing from occurring. Mostly, though, Allison receives random images in the night — a woman, for example, fighting with her husband in a hotel room in France — only to learn, usually the next day, that someone who looks like the person she dreamt about has disappeared, which propels her toward the evidence that allows the authorities to solve the case. The woman in France, Allison intuited, had been abducted by her embittered ex-husband and then psychologically tortured in a re-creation of the honeymoon suite in Paris that the couple had stayed in years before.

“Medium” borrows from the conventions of classic horror the idea that real nightmares result from arbitrary or misplaced trust. The camera lingers on the faces of victims in waiting as they put their faith in attackers whose malevolence they cannot yet see. An episode early this year revolved around the killing of a little boy, supplying the single most chilling moment on television in quite a long while: a smiling child watched as a man, shot from the waist down, slowly kicked off his shoes and danced to “Rapper’s Delight” in front of him. The little boy had followed his kidnapper out of a toy store, lured by a marionette slung over the man’s back and lost to his father’s distracting business call on his cellphone.

Medium is one of those shows I remember watching three or four episodes of a few years ago and then never troubling myself about again. Patricia Arquette, to me, seemed a soft heroine, and I could never quite get the image of Alabama from True Romance out of my head, which kind of made me want to go back and watch that film instead of Medium.

But one night a few months ago I found myself at my parents house and saw a few minutes of the show. I was interested to see that apparently, a character who had been a prosecutor was now a defence attorney. That kind of flip always interests me. Now with the Times article, there's also the notion that they're actually one of the few shows on American Television playing out the true economic anxieties of most Americans:

Work, on “Medium,” has been implicated as a distinctly dangerous pastime more than once. At the end of last season Allison’s husband, Joe (Jake Weber), an aerospace engineer, and his colleagues were held hostage at gunpoint by a fired employee who, dying of cancer, demanded millions of dollars in compensation for the loss of his health insurance and other benefits. “Medium” is so committed to the grim realities of middle-class life that it is a paranormal show that very often doesn’t feel like one. This season Joe has no job at all: it’s a tough economy, and he has found it impossible to find another. Allison’s credit cards are declined at a grocery store; her eldest daughter hasn’t gotten her allowance in weeks. Indian call centers operating on behalf of lenders phone the Dubois household constantly, and the bills keep falling, one on top of the other.

So, okay. Bottom line (and this is why articles like this set the NYTimes Arts coverage above most other papers) is that I guess I'm gonna go give Medium another chance.

Which brings up the issue of viewership patterns generally. Since the settlement of the WGA strike, and with the possibility of an Actors strike a real going concern, I know that some data has indicated that viewers have returned. But I haven't. Not really.

These days it seems that my only true "must-sees" are House, 30 Rock, The Office and Battlestar Galactica. I'd like to be watching LOST, but I fell behind and now find it difficult to catch up.

Instead, when I turn to my TV I find myself drawn in by different fare ranging far afield.

In Treament, which caused a brief stir when it premiered, among my peer group seems to be the first series that has arrived in the On-Demand era. I devoured that show in great swaths of five episodes...and judging by the level of conversation I'm hearing about it now, as opposed to weeks ago when it was on -- I think a lot of people are doing the same thing.

I've also kind of fallen in love with the British show Skins, which I'm finally getting a chance to see.

I'm not burning to see a new Knight Rider. And as I slowly start to get my hands on some of the pilot scripts of the upcoming season (if there's no Actor's strike, that is) I can't say I'm actually all that impressed.

So then, to you -- do you have a Medium in your bunch -- a show previously dismissed that you've given a second chance to? Discuss.