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Arctic Air writerly discussion and screening

Arctic Air writerly discussion and screening

Pascale Hutton and Adam BeachHIGHRES

On Tuesday, October 16, I’ll be moderating a discussion with Arctic Air writers — series creator Ian Weir, showrunner Bob Carney and screenwriter Sarah Dodd. The Writers Guild of Canada puts on these Writers Talking TV events in Toronto (podcasts of past events are here) and Praxis is partnering with them for this first (I think) Vancouver event.

From the media release:

ARCTIC AIR premiered to record numbers for a CBC drama in 2012. The broad based adventure series takes the excitement of shows like ICE PILOTS NWT and gives it a drama sheen. We’ll hear about the logistics of piloting a show set in Yellowknife from Vancouver, and how the show developed and changed in its first season.

When: Tuesday, October 16, 7 -10 pm

Where: SFU Harbor Centre, Room 7000, 555 West Hastings St., Vancouver

Admission is free. Seating is first-come, first-served. Please arrive early to ensure a seat. For more information, email praxis@sfu.ca.

Vancouver Writing Seminar with Larry Kaplow (House, Body of Proof)

Vancouver Writing Seminar with Larry Kaplow (House, Body of Proof)

lkaplow

Before TV, eh?, I wrote about television for other sites. American television (gasp) for American sites. That’s how I learned that I wasn’t learning about homegrown shows and a website was born. At the time I was writing an awful lot about House, so really you could credit an American show created by a Canadian for the existence of this website dedicated to Canadian TV. If you want to ignore a lot of other factors.

My first interview with a TV writer was with Larry Kaplow, who had just written House’s second-season episode “Autopsy,” which went on to win the Writers Guild of America Award for episodic drama. And as one of the House producers he would later be nominated for a few Emmy Awards for best drama. I take all the credit.

He’d also go on to be a friend who allows me insight into the creative process of writing for television, a warts-to-wonders view I hadn’t seen clearly from simply researching and reviewing books on the subject. When he was giving a week-long writing seminar in Kiev, Ukraine recently (after talks at USC, NYU, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and the National Association of Broadcasters, among others), I took advantage of our friendship and his jetlag to ask him to conduct a one-day seminar in Vancouver on May 6. Aimed at aspiring and emerging TV writers, it’s for people who, unlike me, can put his hard-won experience into practice.

“I’ll show people how to do it, how to write for television in the real world,” he told me about the seminar, which will cover topics such as breaking in, pitching, story structure, the writing room, dealing with notes, writing for production, and the development process. “There are a ton of great books out there. Best of luck to you. I only understand them now because I’ve spent the past however many years doing it.”

That however many years started with assistant gigs on Clueless and Chicago Hope before writing for Family Law, Hack, House and Body of Proof as well as developing his own projects.

He explained his glamorous path to show business: “I went to undergrad for English, grad school for creative writing, then wrote a shitty novel and a bunch of scripts that got options, then I got lunch for writers on the lowest-rated show in the business, then a kindly upper-level writer named Marjorie David basically begged David Shore (Canadian) and Stephen Nathan (not Canadian) [editor’s note: but who now works with Hart Hanson (Canadian)] to hire me as a researcher. I worked my ass off for Paul Haggis (Canadian) and I got my first script, and miracles of miracles I’m still here writing.”

“Passion and commitment are everything — because if you’re willing to let things go, then you’re not right for this business. And believe me, this is something I still have to learn.” In fact, he cites the most important thing he’s learned over his career as “I’m here to learn.” (He’s also here to teach; he’ll be giving a couple of class talks at local schools while he’s in Vancouver.)

“If it’s what you want to do, don’t give up. That ‘if’ isn’t a small thing. If it’s REALLY what you want to do, you won’t care who you are in the business, because the business is telling stories. And if you can be a part of that in any way, how cool is that? I never thought I was going to write TV. Never. And yet here I am, courtesy of kindly giants — several of them Canadian.”

As for what he wants to get out of his time in Vancouver, that would be “to meet the mad and interesting, of course. Is there anything else?” With these Stanley Cup finals we’ve got mad covered, no question. So come on Vancouver, let’s bring the interesting.

For more information and to register:

www.tv-eh.com/events
diane@tv-eh.com
778-230-1587

Dyscultured podcast – copyright, Hollywood reboots, and Canadian TV

I joined the gang at Dyscultured for their latest podcast, which is now posted and named for an out-of-context quote of mine (actually, I was quoting Kenny Hotz). They talked copyright with Russell McOrmond, a content creator and copyright advocate, did their usual irreverent culture and tech talk, and I joined them to talk about whether Eric McCormack deserves to be on the Canadian Walk of Fame, Hollywood reboots, Canadian television, and to mock co-host Mike Vardy for dissing blind people:

Echo chambers and missed opportunities

Echo chambers and missed opportunities

We tend to surround ourselves with people much like ourselves. Most of my days, I exist in a space where, for example, no one voted for Stephen Harper, everyone has a post-secondary education and white collar job, and chocolate is the undisputed king of foods.

It’s comfortable there in our unchallenged world. Boring, maybe, but comfortable. And when we’re confronted with someone who doesn’t share our ideas and values, someone who belittles our own point of view, we instantly change our minds. Right? Or, wait, maybe I mean the opposite of that.

I didn’t mean to bring this up during the Dyscultured podcast, or ever again, but I did, so I’ll expand on my thoughts a little and try to make them more coherent …

The Canadian cultural community missed a huge opportunity to educate the public last week, and they did so in the most predictable way possible – the way a shit TV show would have scripted it, ensuring the audience would tune out at the 5 minute mark.

When Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett asked “why do I fund so much shit” at the Banff World Television Festival, the angry responses turned it into an us versus them, conservative versus liberal, black hats versus white hats diatribe, instead of an answer to the question that didn’t vilify the question. And it’s a question a lot of people I know — even in my little liberal, Canadian TV community echo chamber — privately wonder.

Sure, the man could have chosen his words more carefully, and he should know the answers to the somewhat rhetorical question he was asking, but he represents a constituency who do not all know the intricacies of Canadian cultural industries. Most people do not know the intricacies of Canadian cultural industries, including those of us who tend to go on about them. Most Canadians, if they’d been trapped in that room at the festival, would have been wondering the same thing.

Why DO we fund so much shit in this country? The only people to challenge the premise misunderstood or distorted the premise – that was the focus of the initial media stories and infuriated reactions. But he didn’t say all our television is shit. Just that there’s so much shit.

And good lord is there a lot of it. I don’t just mean in Canada – look to the US, the Hollywood hit machine, and calculate the percentage of good to shit shows, if you can count that high. So … why? It’s a fair question, ignoring the politics of the speaker. The panel, in fact, took a stab at answering it, both before and after the Minister asked it.

There are general reasons that cross national boundaries: most of everything is shit. It takes a lot of practice, a broad training ground, and hit-and-miss luck to create the gems. Specifically in Canada, we have a smaller industry with less funding and more competition from near-bottomless pockets of the Americans, fewer opportunities to work, and a broadcasting system that has far more incentive to buy American hits than to produce their own.

I don’t give a shit about Lindsay Blackett or his politics. I don’t want to defend him. But outrage was the perfect response to ensure that no one who wondered the same thing would listen to the answer. And there is an answer, an answer that might have listeners if we could only turn it into a conversation instead of a fight.

But the debate today is in the same place it was a week ago, the same place it was five years ago, when I first started going to the festival, and probably in the same place it was decades ago: those who think Canadian TV needs defending were outraged, and those who think Canadian TV needs explaining believe they poked the sore spot.

EDIT: Need an example of what I think a good response is? Check out Rob Sheridan’s “yeah, we make a lot of shit …” guest post at Dead Things on Sticks.

Post-Banff ruminations

Post-Banff ruminations

Oh dear. I have a lot of writing to do. I didn’t have a lot of time for writing during the Banff World Television Festival, and then I was on the slow road back home, with stops in Calgary and Kelowna. And now I’m home with a pile of notes and full recorder, waiting for me to write it all up.

I’m not entirely inspired, since so much of the issues-based and future-excited talk I usually find intriguing was the same old, same old, but there were some good sessions to write up, and a mammoth interview with actor Peter Keleghan on the state of Canadian television. I loved the screening of Call Me Fitz  – the first stirrings of excitement I’ve had in a while after seeing a Canadian show – and star Jason Priestley and writer Sheri Elwood had some interesting things to say.

Despite my bad first day – actually, in a weird way, partly because of it – I had a fun time at the festival, also despite my usual awkwardly shy deer-in-the-headlights feelings. I met some great people I’ve “known” for years, but have never actually met, people like Jaime Weinman of Maclean’s magazine (left), Adam Barken of Rookie Blue and Flashpoint (taking picture), Barb Haynes of The Latest Buzz, Winnepeg producer Polly Washburn, the WGC’s Kelly Lynne Ashton, not to mention some I’d met before (Jill Golick, Alex Epstein – right) and others who “knew” me through TV, eh?

After I wrote that bad day post, I got a lot of “are you having a better day today?” sympathizing and  indignation over the fact that the PR firm of a Canadian-based television festival wasn’t accommodating to the only such site dedicated to Canadian television. The support and gratitude from the Canadian television industry is what makes TV, eh? worthwhile to me, so not surprisingly it’s what made the Banff festival worthwhile.

I started TV, eh? five years ago, and in places like Banff I get asked how it all started. It’s a long, boring story that has no real hook. I wasn’t passionate about Canadian television. In fact, I hadn’t heard of most shows on the air. I went to the festival that first year to cover Paul Haggis, David Shore, and the rest for Blogcritics, and left furious at a panel on Canadian television where executives talked about how to make it better. Their answer? Make it appeal to foreign markets. Meanwhile, they couldn’t get Canadians to sample their shows because we didn’t even know they existed.

I still am not passionate about most Canadian shows. Most are, to borrow a phrase, shit. So are most American shows. And British shows. And New Zealand shows. And … you get the picture. But now I have the opportunity to find the gems while giving other people the same opportunity, and to feel like I’m doing something meaningful because of the Canadian TV community that has welcomed me into their fold.

This was supposed to be a post about the last two days of the festival, so let me wrap up by saying I’ll be writing about sessions by Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras), Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory), Ian Brennan (Glee), E1 Entertainment (Rookie Blue, Shattered, Haven), the Call Me Fitz screening, and the Peter Keleghan interview, touching on the issues raised by the Home Grown Talent panel. I hope to be inspired to write some articles with themes that span multiple sessions. And if not, I still have a lot of writing to do. Gulp.

Audio: Lindsay Blackett comments

By popular request, here’s the audio file of the Home Grown Talent panel, where Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett made his controversial “shit” comment. I don’t have my audio editing software on my laptop so it’s the full session and in WMA format. Listen from 37:50 for the context of Blackett’s question (Peter Keleghan is speaking then). Note the panel answered the question; they didn’t object to the premise.

EDIT: The panel at the Banff World Television Festival was this:

Home Grown Canadian Talent – The Key To Your Success Is On The Marquee

Moderator
Zaib Shaikh, Actor, Producer, Writer, Director

Speakers
Kenny Hotz, Film Maker, Actor, Producer, Director, and Writer
Peter Keleghan, Actor
Eric McCormack, Actor & Producer
Jason Priestley, Actor, Director