Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Writing: The Freelance #3

Part One here.
Part Two here.

"That's ... a lot of pipe."

I was in the room and helped beat out out this week's "H.O.U.S.E. Rules" episode, so it was fun to see how it played out. Besides the HAL and War Games references, there's two more subtle ones -- the idea of a multiple personality house came about specifically because Cosby and I share a love for that goddam spooky voice in Session 9 (see it. late. alone. trust me); we spent most of the week trying to do impressions of it to a dubious staff. And there's a big fat writer's joke in there. (see above). I would also like to applaud the sheer ballsiness of team Eureka in doing the season finale I was convinced they could never pull off -- doing it as if it's the season opener from four years in the future. Nice.

As mentioned, if you look back, you can see that my episode pitch does not much resemble what was actually shot and aired. (podcast, also, here). This is not uncommon at all during development. How it played out might give you a sense of how chaotic the process can be. (NOTE: there may be some errors in recollection here. Any mistakes are all mine, and assume any credit I take/get, I only really deserve 50%, while any faults in the process or episode are 150% mine)

David Greenwalt was a consultant for a few weeks in the middle of production, before moving on to Kidnapped. I came in and did some Buffy fanboy squealing. He was kind enough to pretend it didn't happen. We then got down to shining the rough edges off the pitch as Cos and Paglia worked on the rest of the season.

"On the plus side," Greenwalt said, "I think we should move the episode (slotted as 109) to be earlier. " The memory virus gimmick seemed like a good way to invest us emotionally in the characters, exposing them intimately. "However, we are having a bit of a hard time with the mechanism of the virus."

Not so much with the technobabble of the virus, but how to make it visual on screen. Do we have an MRI of a brain, showing the takeover by hostile memories, like a map in one of those outbreak movies? Also, the execs and writers were going back and forth on the tempo of the show -- does Eureka start with an X-Files-y bang tease, or do they stay on the quirkier, slower pace?

Also -- do we need a villain? Again, these were issues we discussed during the first meetings. Young shows wrestle tonally like this all the time. Odds are you won't freelance on a show that hasn't aired yet, or even a first-year show, but there are always practical considerations that need to dealt with, beyond stylistic. Shooting schedules don't always match. Ever wonder why a character sudddenly seems to get less or more stage time? It's not always a calculated move -- just, after a couple hundred hours of dailies, you realize that Actor A might not be able to pull off certain jokes, or Actor B just has a way wth a scene blow.

The Jo/Taggart romance was not initially planned, but came about -- from what little I remember -- because the writers noticed how Matt Frewer was supposed to be comic relief, but when female actors and writers got around him, they got a bit swoony. Frewer has abs like a 20 year-old and a crapload of presence. For some guys, goofy and sexy work in tandem.

This style of this week's episode will be familiar to any TV veteran -- it's a bottle show.

Greenwalt and I spent a couple days on the pitch. Over those couple days, we ran the gamut. The villain -- maybe he could use the memory virus to steal ideas, like we had in a previous incarnation ... remember what I said. Nothing gets thrown out. Instead of a slow start, how about a domestic abuse call, but it's the memory-switched wife/husband beating the memory-switched husband/wife ( I always rather liked that one. ) We'd then have victims wo would be farther ahead on the arc of the disease -- so we could show them descending into catatonia and madness, rather than just talking about it...

"Listen," Greenwalt said, at around day 4. "I can't in good conscience keep having you come in here to pitch this out, while we're still hacking out the tone of the show." This is of course, untrue, I considered it all good fun -- but it was his way of showing respect for an experienced writer. Although we all like to pretend it's a lifeboat in the writer's room, there's ... the concept of face in there, scars from old injuries by unfeeling execs on other shows. Unspoken barriers between baby writers and experienced ones. It's not as rigorous as boss/employee, but you ignore the undercurrents at your peril. I appreciated the gesture.

"So Karl --" the co-exec "-- has an idea how to do a bad guy story, and focus on Henry, which is what you wanted. He's going to break that, while we spin out the other stuff." This was a good fall-back, and we moved on.

We cycled through a batch of more ideas. Carter and Taggart (because we hadn't done a Frewer-centric ep yet) team up to fight a bio-hazard like the one in "Purple Haze". We screwed around with the idea that the town itself had a complex "immune system." We blocked out one plot where Zoe decides to lead a rebellion of the "normal" people who live in Eureka, constantly dealing with the wreckage and snobbery of the geniuses. By then, Karl came back with the rough outline of "Before I Forget."

"Well," I said, after reading it. "This is spiffy as hell. See if the execs bite."

This is a crucial part of the TV business. Most TV shows have to run at least a logline of the eps they're developing past their execs, to see if it's worth sending off a writer to even take the time to flesh out a beat sheet. That's coupled with a later meeting, which we'll get to.

The execs dug the outline, so I went off to shine up the beat sheet to be a little more my style, hit the points I thought would be cool. But no doubt, Karl Schaefer cracked it.

Now, was this the story I came in to pitch and write? No. It had my pitch as its roots -- and I wound up using a few bigger themes, like the unreliable narrator -- but it was a different vibe and plot So why do it, and do it cheerfully?

Well, first, Karl came up with something that piqued my interest. I thought it would be genuinely fun to explore. But second -- I was the freelancer. The freelancer's job is to solve the showrunner's problems. Every day I saved by banging out this script instead of trying to break another story was a day of breathing space for the show, and not incidentally, some friends of mine. On the best of shows, the production schedule gets tighter and tighter as the season moves on -- it's usually described as "laying tracks just ahead of the train." I could either show up with a hammer, some spikes and a quarter-mile of ready-made line, or with surveying tools and some suggestions scrawled on maps.

I don't mean to hammer this too hard, but I am constantly amazed at the e-mails I get from film-school grads and the like, where they (often) do not teach you one simple thing: you are spending other people's money to make television, and you have damn little time in which to do it. There's a fine line between pragmatism and hack-dom. Learn the line. Love it. Know when you cross it. Know how not to.

Anyway, I go off and hone the outline into a beat sheet. We then present it at one of the story meetings. This is when the execs haul themselves from their solid-gold offices, sit in the writer's room, and hear the detailed beats of the next three or so episodes. That way they get to give notes, they won't (shouldn't) get any unpleasant surprises when the scripts arrive, generally do executive-y stuff.

The two Sci Fi execs present were magnificent specimens of manhood. Tony Opticon has an easy, almost James Kirk-like sense of command, and some of early Shatner's radiant male sensuality. Mark Stern is more like a pensive Greek God -- brooding, powerful, but when he smiles, it's as if you've been blessed by the sun lancing through hurrican clouds.

"Hey John, nice to meet you," Tony said. "You know, we read your blog every day."

Why no. No I did not. Huh.

... ahem. We run the beat sheet by them they approve, I go off and write. I don't change much from the outline, just generally make some of the references more specific, maybe hit the emotions a little harder than I planned. But, as Greenwalt says, you can never go wrong with too much emo. Everybody really tunes in for the emo.

I turn it in, they make a few incidental changes during production - primarily stripping out some of my geekier science riffs, or or two of the darker jokes, and change the tone of the jail scene to be more plot-oriented than the loose riff on fatherhood I'd done. On the freelancer-rewritten scale, that's nothing.

I wasn't available to go up for the shoot, although they were kind enough to offer me a hotel room and craft services privileges. The episode turned out well enough to get bumped from 109 to 106, and then even earlier, to wind up on the review DVD for the press minions.

It was generally well-received, but that's cake. It had been a while since I wrote on somebody else's show; the primary satisfaction came from feeling old muscles swing back into play. There's another pleasure: from being the guy with "the solve." You may not know the joy of that feeling yet. When you do, you'll understand. Coming up with the great original script is one type of joy. Coming up with the solve is another, equally satisfying. The teamwork is another buzz -- seeing fragments of your pitch pop up in the rest of the season, you feel like you helped, in some tiny way, helped somebody build something cool. Part of something bigger, creatively. I've written features and staffed TV, and that is the one thing TV has all over features.

And the money doesn't suck, either.

If you have any questions about the process, post them in the Comments. I'll do a follow-up post, answer what I can. Hope this was a useful little window into the world of a shooting show.

50 comments:

wcdixon said...

Thanks John - told like it is plus extras and commentary...

Anonymous said...

Was that a stealthy Boom! Studios plug during H.O.U.S.E. Rules?

Unknown said...

you call that stealthy? whores! WHORES!!

Anonymous said...

there are actual people with a name like tony opticon? that's a secret identity if i ever heard one.

oh, and for all you high powered execs who read john's blog on a daily basis, there's a nifty writing sample at my homepage. thanks.

Cunningham said...

Thanks for this John, and thanks for stopping by yesterday.

Anonymous said...

Okay, we wanna know, and maybe you can tell us.

We're residents of Los Alamos (one native, one transplant), and we frigging LOVE this show, because they get so much of what life is like here RIGHT. (Once you strip out the blatant sci-fi and the inconvenient bits like the massive bureaucracy, of course.)

Are any of the regular writers/creators/consultants natives or just former residents of Los Alamos or similar towns like Oak Ridge, or is this all in our heads?

Anonymous said...

What kind of burnt offering would persuade you to post some actual examples of beat sheets, outlines or any other scraps of paper you hand in to the suited humans with the filthy monies?

Anonymous said...

Heronymus said...

On another strain, I've noticed that the five-act structure is popping up all over the 'dial'; even Aaron Sorkin's new show is now in five acts. Is this the wave of the future, as far as commercial television is concerned?


Pardon me for butting in, but while Studio 60's second episode, The Cold Open, might be considered five acts because the Teaser ran somewhat long (and the pilot was a bit of an odd duck, structurally, due to the limited commercial interruptions), that's not what is commonly referred to as a Five Act structure. Note that Eureka actually has a Teaser plus five acts.

Speaking of Eureka, and Before I Forget specifically, I was wondering if the decision to have Tamlyn Tomita's character not kill her husband was made because it might not fit with the tone of the series, or the fact that the actress did well enough that the producers wanted to bring her back, or both, or neither?

Thanks - Mark

Unknown said...

it was about half and half -- we wound up really liking her, AND I thought that you had to set out a clear moral difference between the two of them, or at least between jason and the rest of the world. Nothing wrong with writing people rising above their worst instincts. We get enough of the other choice on other shows.

Anonymous said...

Was the third subtle reference just in my head?

Carter, Allison, Henry, Stark, Beverly, Fargo! You stay here! Guy in red shirt, go through that door!

It's been a very trek-y week for me for some reason. I probably just read too much into that.

Anonymous said...

Out here in LA (which I guess where you are, too -- duh!), we have a radio program called "Martini Shot" on which a hack named Rob Long (imdb him or Dan Staley -- it won't take long) talks about how Thing Are Done In Television. Seriously, the title of the show is the best part!

You could teach soooooooo much!

Anonymous said...

Sure Rob Long's is a short-ish CV, but he did write several episodes of "Cheers" and had an exec. producer credit. I'm not sure I'd call him a hack, leastwise 'cause he doesn't submit his scripts as "anonymous".

Unknown said...

Didn't Rob write "Conversations with my Agent"? Loved that book.

Anonymous said...

Setiap orang pasti sudah biasa mendengar penyakit kutil. Kutil umumnya berupa benjolan kecil yang kerap tumbuh pada kulit akibat kurangnya menjaga kebersihan tubuh. Ada yang tumbuh di tangan, kaki, muka bahkan di alat kelamin. Kutil yang tumbuh pada alat kelamin disebut dengan kutil kelamin (condilloma/genital warts).
Jual Obat Kutil Kelamin Wanita
Obat Kutil Kelamin
Obat Kutil Kelamin Ampuh
Obat Kutil Kelamin Tanpa Operasi
Gejala Penyakit Kelamin
Obat Kutil Kelamin
Obat Kutil Kelamin Ampuh
Obat Kutil Kelamin Tanpa Operasi

Unknown said...

Jika berbicara mengenai pengertianya maka penyakit jengger ayam ini diketahui adalah penyakit menular seksual yang penyebabnya berkaitan dengan Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). Penyakit ini juga dapat menampilkan diri dalam berbagai bentuk, namun secara umum kutil yang bertumbuh pada bagian genital penderita berbentuk benjolan daging yang berwarna, dan terjadi pada sekitar alat vital. Siapa saja bisa menderita penyakit ini baik yang pria maupun wanita

Anonymous said...

Penyakit ini umumnya muncul karena penderita mengejan terlalu keras pada saat buang air besar. Dengan mengejan terlalu keras, maka pembuluh darah di sekitar anus dapat melebar dan pecah menimbulkan infeksi dan pembengkakan yang berakhir pada masalah wasir atau ambeien tersebut.

Unknown said...

Penderita Penyakit kondiloma atau Kutil Kelamin yang telah terinveksi disarankan untuk segera melakukan pengobatan secepat mungkin sebelum Virus HPV penyebab kutil kelamin makin banyak berkembang biak di dalam sel darah makin lama dibiarkan akan memperparah kondisi organ vital karena kutil kelamin akan terus membesar sehingga terlihat seperti jengger ayam untuk penderita yang baru tertular kurang dari satu bulan biasanya akan lebih cepat ditanggulangi obat kutil kelamin Paling ampuh dari De Nature dan terbaik ada hanya di http://obatkutildikemaluan.blogdetik.com/ untuk mendapatkan informasi yang lebih jelas mengenai pengobatan kutil pada kelamin silahkan kontak langsung di nomer 0852 808 77 999 atau 0859 7373 5656 Bagaimana mengobati Ambeien itu sendiri. pengobatan yang terbaik untuk Ambeien adalah dari luar dan dalam sehingga Ambeien benar benar tuntas dan tidak akan kambuh lagi. obat Ambeien terbaik "Ambeclear dari De Nature" AlamiAdalah obat Ambeien herbal yang memang terbaik untuk mengobati Ambeien, dan sudah terdaftar di badan obat dan makanan (BPOM) dengan nomer registrasi POM TR: 133 374 041. terbuat dari bahan alami antara lain terdiri Daung Ungu, Mahkota Dewa dan Kunyit Putih.

Pengobatan Ambeien Wasir said...

Nuwun sewu kula bade nderek promosiuntukandayangterkenapenyakitkulitsepertikadasataukudiskinitelahhadirobat herbaldaride natureyangsudahterbuktikhasiatnyamantab!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

cara yang alami menyembuhkan penyakit wasir ambeien secara alami dengan menggunakan daun ungu serta mahkotadewa aman untuk ibu hamil tanpa operasi cukup dengan menggunakan obat wasir herbal ambeclear terbuat

Anonymous said...

wasir ambeien bisa sembuh tanpa harus di operasi maupun injeksi cukup dengan obat wasir ambeien herbal ambeclear herbal de nature dari daun ungu serta mahkotadewa aman untuk ibu hamil

Unknown said...

Penyakit kencing nanah bisa disebabkan oleh beberapa faktor seperti seks bebas, penularan, virus hpv, lingkungan, gaya hidup dan lainnya, Maka dari itu kita harus waspada dengan penyakit kencing nanah ini, karena penyakit kencing nanah sangatlah berbahaya, Namun untuk anda yang menderita penyakit kencing nanah, maka anda tidak perlu khawatir,

Pengobatan Ambeien Wasir said...

HeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHe

Unknown said...

Berapa Harga untuk Obat Wasir Ambeien alami daun ungu AmbeclearAmbeien adalah gangguan atau penyakit yang terjadi pada saluran pencernaan manusia

Cara Mengobati Wasir Ambeien said...

berhitung yuk......... 123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930

Unknown said...

Bukan hanya pengobatan medis saja tapi ada juga pengobatan rumah alami yang dapat digunakan untuk menyingkirkan penyakit kutil kelamin ini. Intinya, karena kutil ini muncul di daerah yang sensitif, maka anda harus mencari pengobatan yang terbaik pada kulit Anda dan jika diperlukan juga dibantu dengan tenaga medis yang professional. Sebab dokter akan menjadi sumber informasi yang baik untuk mengobati penyakit ini.

Unknown said...

Kenali penyebab penyakit kencing bernanah sehingga cara mengobati
penyakit kencing nanah dan infeksi saluran kencing nanah dapat dilakukan
dengan benar.

Pengobatan Ambeien Wasir said...

wkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwk

Unknown said...

Bukan hanya pengobatan medis saja tapi ada juga pengobatan rumah alami yang dapat digunakan untuk menyingkirkan penyakit kencing bernanah ini. Maka anda harus mencari pengobatan yang terbaik pada penyakit Anda dan jika diperlukan juga dibantu dengan tenaga medis yang professional.

Unknown said...

Kadang disertai
dengan sakit saat kencing, perih, organ intim terasa panas menyiksa,
gatal,..

kLINIK oBAT mANJUR said...

Bismillahhirrohmaanirrokhim.... *********************************

Unknown said...

Sekitar Vagina Tumbuh Daging, Berbahayakah? Kutil Pada Kepala Penis mirip bunga kol atau jengger ayam, Merupakan Penyakit Yang diakibatkan Oleh Virus.Kutil kelamin, atau disebut juga condyloma acuminata, adalah kutil atau daging berwarna kulit atau keabuan yang tumbuh di sekitar alat kelamin dan

obar herbal manjur alami said...

Bismillahirrohmannirrokhim ..................

obar herbal manjur alami said...

Bismillahirrohmannirrokhim ........................

Unknown said...

penyakit yang ditularkan melalui hubungan seks : vaginal, oral dan anal. Juga dapat menular melalui persentuhan kulit dengan daerah yang terinfeksi.

Unknown said...

Obat Ambeien Resep Dokter Ambeclear dari De Nature Ampuh Tuntaskan Ambeien Sampai Tuntas

obar herbal manjur alami said...

MANTAB *************************************

Cara Mengobati Wasir Ambeien said...

Bismillahirrohmannirrokhim ........................

Unknown said...

Ambeien bisa mengeluarkan darah(seperti invander salim yang terkena ambeien dan mengeluarkan darah)

Unknown said...

Sebelum kita membahas tentang pengobatan ambeien, dalam kesempatan ini
saya ingin menjelaskan sekilas tentang ambeien, agar kita semua bisa
memahami benar apa itu penyakit ambeien

Unknown said...

obat wasir, Adalah  Obat alami berkhasiat dalam bentuk kapsul yang berasal dari tanaman herbal seperti daun ungu, mahkota dewa dan kunyit putih, diberikan pada penderita jika penyakit masih dalam tingkatan stadium ringan

kLINIK oBAT mANJUR said...

Bismillahhirrohmaanirrokhim.... ********************

kLINIK oBAT mANJUR said...

Bismillahhirrohmaanirrokhim.... ***************************

obar herbal manjur alami said...

1111111111111111111111111

kLINIK oBAT mANJUR said...

111111111111111111111

Obat Keputihan Herbal Alami said...

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111

obar herbal manjur alami said...

111111111111111

kLINIK oBAT mANJUR said...

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Unknown said...

manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur manjur

obar herbal manjur alami said...

alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami

kLINIK oBAT mANJUR said...

obat ambeien wasir paling manjur mengobati penyakit wasir ambeien tanpa efek samping terbuat dari bahan alami herbal seperti daun ungu mahkota dewa kunyit putih