BB in Newsarama

Paco, Jaime and Brenda (with some temp colors) finding the Scarab in the more detailed version of what went down in IC#3. This and more at Newsarama. Sweet new style from Cully.

Writing: The Freelance Episode 1

(<-- Show-creators and exec-producers Andy Cosby (bottom) and Jamie Paglia glare at me as I dick around insead of pitching.)

Well, Spec-monkeys, time to crack open the door a little. I've got to talk to Cosby today about how many details we can spill while discussing the ep -- and Lord knows if we'll actually shoot the bastard -- but I figure a quick look at writing a freelance Eureka might be useful. Rather than do a summary after it's all done, I figure a pseudo-real-time approach might be interesting. So I'm going to get you caught up to where we are now, and then do regular updates so you can get a sense of time-scale on TV production.

I've got a bit of a cheat as an in. Cosby's one of my oldest and best friends in LA. We met when he and Ross Richie were producing the Mage movie. (... must ... move past ... pain) I'd read every draft of Eureka on the way to shoot, not to mention some bull sessions with Cosby, so I knew the tone and style he was going for, not to mention the overall mystery arc. A couple loose moments in the pilot are actually my caffeine-fueled pitches. Cos asked if I'd like to take a run at one of the episodes. We set a date for me to come in and pitch out an idea to the staff.

Despite my cushy Brokeback-SanDiegoCon in on the staff, I attacked the episode the same way I would any other. When you're pitching a freelance, no matter who you are, it better sing.
Every good television episode is revelatory of the characters. The sci-fi McGuffin should serve to illuminate character relationships. If, when you get to talk to your first executive producer, you focus on how your ideas will focus on reflecting some aspect fo the characters, you can't go wrong. The room will come up with the plot bullshit -- you need to bring the heart. If in particular you're able to showcase some characters who are not always used to their maximum effect, aces. You are there to solve the exec-producer's problems. Sometimes problems he didn't know he had.

It's crucial, too, to know the theme of the show. Not the genre, the theme. Eureka is scifi, but as the logline in the promo said: "Small Town. Big Secrets." The small-town focus of the show carries with it a lot of emotional and stylistic freight.

And so a few weeks later we have --

Meeting One: I sit at the end of a long table, with the six writers of Eureka waiting. After small talk, I jump in. The story really focuses around two sentences:

a.) In the stereotypical image of a small town, everybody knows everything, about everybody. Nobody has any secrets.
b.) Bullshit. Nobody knows anybody. All relationships are based on what our perceptions of other people are. Mutually agreed-upon lies, that sort of thing.

For the character engine, we start with Zoe, the new girl in town, who's finding it impossible to fit in. Both she and her father, Carter, the new Sheriff, are the new people in town. (and, conveniently, Carter is the series' defalut viewpoint character) Zoe's a hip big-city teen, and all the people of Eureka have been living in each others' hip pockets for their entire lives. Everybody knows everybody else, it's a big family. As nice as they are, no room for the new girl.

Through the sci-fi MacGuffin (which we'll discuss a bit later), that illusion is blown. ALL the characters learn fragments of each others' secrets, and all of them give up some of their own. Some of the secrets completely change the way we think of a character, or at least bend it. By the end of the episode --

-- Character backgrounds and relationships have been explored, and some advanced
-- We've advanced some meta-plot business, as some people's secrets that are revealed relate to the overall mystery of the show
-- and Zoe is in a new place in her relationships with her fellow townspeople.

All this gets puked up in a straight-run pitch. Theme, teaser summary, act, act, act, act and out. I tend to focus on the Act-outs as they show you what the stakes are, how they elevate -- regardless of how you wind up executing the story, the act-outs work as the framework for me in terms of pacing and story-structure.

This may reveal my old pulp roots, but for a sci-fi/genre show, my rough stucture is:

1.) Wow, have we got a problem. It is Very Bad.
2.) Whoops, no, we have an entirely different problem, and it's far worse.
3.) That problem? Yeah, that's going to kill us.
4.) Solve the problem. Marvel at the emotional wreckage. Prep for next week.

Really, you've got 48 minutes. 6 two-minute scenes an act. TV isn't haiku, but it's damn close.

This is not to say the pitch is vague. You know what happens, you know how it affects the characters, and for me, the important thing is we stop and mention how the characters interact with each other as the story progresses. This first pitch is the answer you'd give if somebody asked you to describe an episode of TV from last night in as much detail as you could, but in three minutes. (This'll become clearer once I check and see how much I can toss up on the site, indicating the level of documnetation at each stage)

So I run straight through the episode. Hurdle one: the writers dig it. Everybody gets what the emotional story is, and how this'll help set up further episodes. Now the questions: How does the scifi work? How do we make it clear? What are each of the main characters doing so none are sitting around with their thumbs up their ass for half the episode? At this point somebody points to the Big Board -- the Board every writers' room has, of all the different ideas they have about the show, be they character, plot, gimmick -- and indicates how a few of the things they've been talking about showcasing can be slid into this episode.

What's tricky in this situation is that no episodes have been shot. Even the staff is figuring out -- how does Character X feel about Character Y? If I were in pitching a House, for example, I could write Chase/Cameron dialogue in my sleep. Here, you need the staff to fill you in on what will work and won't. Some of my pitch needs to be tweaked with the addition of a new character coming in on Episode Two.

With these notes, I'm sent off to prep for the next time I'm in the room -- the Story Breakdown. Right now, we know the beginning, middle, and end of the episode, both story and character, but we haven't quite nailed down how it's going to get from Teaser to blow. Next time, we'll map out how we travel that road beat by beat.

Dr. Cole ...

... is worried.

No. You don't understand. Dr. Cole is always concerned. Him being actively worried is a Very Bad Thing.

Good News on UAE Port Deal

I'm kind of with Kevin Drum here, as I argued back in 2004 that low-tech port security was a much bigger goddam problem than Iran's five-year-away nukes that if they use will get the entire country evaporated (and if you're on of those idiots who say "Yeah, but Iran will then give the nukes to terrorists" -- how do you think the terrorists are going to get the nuke into the States? Take your time, I'll wait for you to do the math ...) and this UAE deal is just kind of a sideshow to much bigger problems.

Basically, if the Administration's stupid enough to be outsourcing your port security because they have a nigh religious belief in privitization that over-rides any common sense, nay, their sacred responsibility to the people who actually goddam voted for them, then the UAE company is barely any worse than any other company. It's like deciding to let your child drink bleach instead of lye.

However, it's memetically powerful, and if you're the type of person who's looking for that sort of thing, useful.

I was particularly comforted by the news lede on my MSN page this morning. You see, I'd originally been very pissed off at yet another example of rampant cronyism within the Half-Assed President's Administration (via Atrios):

Washington - The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

However, MSN this morning informed me with the slugline "Bush was in the dark on port deal":

WASHINGTON - President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

Ah, thank God. The President's not corrupt, he's incompetent.

Phew.

(EDIT: Digby here makes a point I flail at in the comments to this post, and makes it quite elegantly.)

EDIT the 2nd: And then I have to turn right around and disagree with Kevin Drum. Bastich. Anyway, he indicates that jumping on this story isn't the sort of engage-the-average-Muslim attitude we enlightened liberals should be encouraging. He kind of misses the point that the UAE is a monarchy -- a particularly nasty one -- and that the massive amounts of monies from this deal will go directly into their coffers. The coffers of people who literally have lunch with Osama Bin Laden. Cut up his steak, refill his glass of chianti, that sort of pally-pal.

This deal isn't going to help the economy of a bunch of swing-voter type middle class UAE citizens who will use the money to send their kids to Western colleges. This will help enrich the already insanely rich royal family in Dubai who hang with Bad Guys. I mean, if we can't set as a standard "You know what, if you hang out with Osama, you don't get to do multi-billion dollar deals in our country", where the hell is the bar for repercussions? "Okay, you can enrich yourselves at our expense even if you hang with and support Bin Laden, but if you blow him, this deal is OFF!"

I'm not saying this deal is a bad deal because there's an Arab company involved. This is a screw-up because:

a.) The 45 day legally required investigation for such deals was completely blown through, yet another case of the Administration not really giving a shit about little things like the law of the land.
b.) This particular monarchy is a hinky bunch of bastards.
c.) Again, Digby's point.

Ashes and Snow

Just got back from this exhibition on on the Santa Monica Pier, and I can't recommend it enough for anyone within reasonable driving distance.

The Nomadic Museum, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, is constructed of the 152 steel cargo containers used to actually transport the exhibit. The space alone is fantastic. You then get to enjoy the culmination of Gregory Colbert's 14 year journey to photograph animals and humans in such a way as to break down the barriers between species, to highhlight shared artistic elements. It sounds ... well, you know how it sounds. And then it kicks you in the forehead and owns you, artsy-boy.

Beside the speia-toned photos printed quite uniquely on massive sheets of handmade Japanese paper, there are three elegant films playing within each wing. Heads up that the center wing movie is the primary film, and while the others are nine minutes long, that one's a full sixty -- something you should know before you decide to stand and watch rather than sit. Also, get there early if you go on the weekends. We had just a five minute wait when we blew in around noon, but by 3 the line stretched all the way around the museum.