Sources

When writing a con/heist show, you're always having your guys impersonate officials. And you always argue about how far you can push things without breaking suspension of disbelief.

Drug Arrests Were Real; the Badge Was Fake

Arrests began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last.

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood — mainly from television — to be the law.

They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.

But after a reporter for the local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s antidrug campaign abruptly fell apart after less than five months. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding minister and a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.

Mr. Jakob, 36, is now the subject of a criminal investigation by federal authorities, and he is likely to face charges related to impersonating a law enforcement officer, his lawyer said.

The strange adventures of Sergeant Bill have led to the firing of three of the town’s five police officers, left the outcome of a string of drug arrests in doubt, prompted multimillion-dollar federal civil rights lawsuits by at least 17 plaintiffs and stirred up a political battle, including a petition seeking the impeachment of Mr. Schulte, over who is to blame for the mess.

And the questions keep coming. How did Mr. Jakob wander into town and apparently leave the mayor, the aldermen and pretty much everyone else he met thinking that he was a federal agent delivered from Washington to help barrel into peoples’ homes and clean up Gerald’s drug problem? And why would anyone — receiving no pay and with no known connection to little Gerald, 70 miles from St. Louis and not even a county seat — want to carry off such a time-consuming ruse in the first place?

Never a.) underestimate the instinct to respect authority in this culture, and b.) forget that most people in America are good and honest, and assume the person they're talking to is also good and honest.

Last Dance, Last Chance for Loooove

Better people than I are covering, in more detail, the following:

a) General Wesley Clark talked about how much he honored and appreciated Senator McCain's wartime service, but mentioned that getting shot down and taken POW were not automatic qualifications for being, say, President.

b.) The press, all aswoon over McCain's manliness -- many of whom obsess over this because they're still working out their Boomer man-issues -- claimed that General Clark was somehow "attacking" Senator McCain or even more hallucinegenically "swift-boating" him.

c.) Then, even more trippily, McCain's camp actually hauled out one of the Swift Boat guys to run interference, claiming Clark was somehow distorting or attacking Senator McCain's war record. Which he didn't do, either explicitly or implicitly.

Let's make this perfectly clear. The Swift Boaters claimed Senator John Kerry lied about his war record. General Clark pointed out that serving in the military did not mean you were automatically a genius at international relations or national security. A five year old with a head injury could tell the difference between those two statements. Yet the press scurries about, buzzing like binge-puking sophomore girls over how Wesley totally dissed John at lunch hour and how this is totally THE BIGGEST THING EVUH.

This is what you get when you combine massive insecurity, a desperate need for the approval of authority figures (hellllo pretty much everyone working in entertainment/news), and a culture of people generally unfamiliar with those who serve in the military. My grandfather, who I loved dearly, got his ass shot up in the Batle of the Bulge. If you said that somehow made him more eligible to be President than, well anyone, we both would have laughed ourselves silly. But for many Americans, servicemen and women are fetish dolls upon which we project our insecurities and craving for heroism rather than being, say, very nice brave people who need some goddam medical care and maybe a better GI Bill.

If anything highlights that there's a whole segment of modern men in American society seriously fucked up about their identity, it's this knee-jerk reaction to currying favor with the cool jock who's got the testes-cred they feel they lack.

Please, please, in my adult lifetime, could I have a presidential election where Vietnam isn't an issue? Just one where people's service in a war that ended over thirty damn years ago isn't one of the over-riding psychological factors of the election?

Christ, I can't wait until we have the first Boomer Candidate-free election. Not because I don't like Boomers, but I desperately want to at least argue over some different goddam issues.

LEVERAGE Weeks 8 & 9

Right then, a few double week posts to catch up. This is where things get grindy and repetitive anyway, so I don't think you're missing much.

Week 8: Albert is out writing 104, and Chris Downey heads out to write 103. By "out" I mean he's working out of the tiny supply closet upstairs, as he likes to be able to bomb in and check on the room's progress on a regular basis. Chris spent six years on staff on King of Queens, before a year off working alone, doing features and pilots (he sold quite a few pitches, actually). While I enjoy the quiet time of solo writing, he doesn't dig it. Zipping into the room for a few minutes every hour is like a drug for him.

Berg, Boylan, Rieder and Mrs. Glenn and I plow along getting the plot breakdown for 107 into shape, even as Rieder and Mrs. Glenn shine their episode story into shape for the pitch. 107 is one I was going to write, but have now handed it off to Boylan She struggled heroically with the broken outline for two weeks, so she's currently without a developed storyline. Her writing style is a good match for this episode, and the outline comes together very quickly. We slot her in for an end-of the week pitch to Dean, while Rider and Mrs. Glen have a mid-week slot.

The big day arrives. Dean comes down to the Writers' Room. Rieder and Mrs. Glenn divvy up the story outline into alternating scenes, with Mrs. Glenn tending to handle the plotty stuff while Rieder pitches the heart. (And by "heart" I mean "Chris Kane's sex scene." Make of that what you will.) The move through nice and steady, very similar to Chris' pitching style. When they're done Dean gives them maybe three notes, conrgratulates them, and heads back to his office upstairs.

During the post-pitch buzz, Berg looks at me. "Now are you going to tell them?"

"Tell us what?"

"What you just did? Baby writers pitching to the studio head? That's considered insane. Pitching's one of the hardest things to do in the job. You could screw up, get fired, wreck your rep with the studio -- but you guys did a fantastic job, and now you've got your first pitch behind you."

The writing team looks a little shaken, but takes it all in stride. "Thank God you didn't tell us what was at stake before we pitched! We would have been terrified!"

"You mean, a baby writer pitching the studio is crazy and can go horribly wrong," Boylan pipes up.

"Yes," I answer as I fiddle with the top of a Snapple Diet Iced Tea. Damn plastic-wrap.

"As in, the thing I'm doing two days from now is crazy and can go horribly wrong," she says carefully, staring at me.

" ... shit."

The remainder of the week is spent hacking 107 into pitching shape, alternatively getting Boylan to breathe into a brown paper bag. We break the show all the way down to scene/sluglines (the white cards) along with some jokes, speeches, etc. Friday morning comes, and although I'd like to drop you with another cliffhanger, the resultant action is hardly deserving. We all went upstairs into Dean's office for the pitch (all the writers present for support), Boylan pitched out the story, and she did just fine. All the writers are now on draft or off writing submission outlines (those 15-20 pagers) for studio review.

That afternoon, Dean and Chris and our line producer Phil Goldfarb head out to check the soundstages. We're in a small facility in the Valley, recently converted over from factory/warehouse space. Empty spaces, where our permanent sets will be built, our swing sets -- out home away from home for about 14 hours a day, July 14th through November. It all begins to get a bit boggling. It gets all too real. Money will now be spent. Ungodly amounts of money, based on whatever little bullshit tales we spin out in 50 page increments. 12 hours of television in four months. That's six movies in four months. I engage in the longstanding tradition of all first-time showrunners and quietly throw up in my mouth.

Phil shows us offices attached to the main building. "You can finally give the writers offices." I sigh in relief. Finally, a little breathing room, after two months of eight people crammed in one conference room for 10 hours a day. We've been promising the kids this expansion since Day One. Just hold on a bit, and soon you'll have offices. And phones. Maybe even staplers.

But yet ... we've been ferociously productive in those two months. A writing staff's a delicate thing, chemistry's so crucial ... and, most importantly, we know all the good restaraunts around the Doghouse on Highland. There's nothing more important to a writers' room than lunch.

Chris and I make an executive decision. Come Monday, we return to the room and announce that we won't be leaving the Highland office. For the remainder of their contracts, they'll continue to work in one room, a room that conveniently heats to 90 degrees at 1 pm every day and stays that way until approximately 11:45 am the next day.

What do you know -- the crazy newbies don't mind.

Week 9: Right, at the beginning of Week 9 (Tuesday, because of Memorial Day), this is where the writing staff stands.

Downey: writing 103
Berg: launched on 106. She's called 105 and 106, and as 106 could possible be a bottle-show, we're going with that script first, possibly to even shoot first. Also, she's been working on the draft on her own time for a while now, but this is her official "launch" date."
Boylan: outlining 107
Rieder and Mrs. Glenn: outlining 108
Albert: just turned in a rough draft of 104 for notes.
Rogers: ... uhhhh ... stuff. Showrunner ... stuff.

In between giving Albert notes on his script and looking over drafts of outlines, most of this week is spent hiring people. Pre-production starts in just a couple weeks, so we need to nail down our UPM, location manager, our set designer, etc. Luckily for us our set designer from the pilot, Lauren, is available, so we can jump straight to the concept meeting. A concept meeting is where the executive producers explain to a department head how much ridiculous value they want for the show, and the department head tries not to laugh as they look at the avilable budget.

We leave the week with Albert off to do his second revisions, and Chris' script due in Monday. We are six weeks away from Production. Although I cannot yet hear the train on the tracks, somehwere an engine is being stoked.

All right, let's see if we have any spiffy questions from Week 7.

Coren: Why shouldn't the Indefensible writer talk about how his show came into being? Is it because of how out of the norm getting a show that way is, or will it piss people off, or what?

You usually spend ten years or so of your writing career gettign a show on the air, if you ever do. David Feige's happenstance could crush souls.

Coren: And totally unrelated, but something in the post just sparked a thought in my head: What's the next project you've got in the pipe for DC? And now that I think of it, are you ever resuming Blue Beetle, or is it a permanent departure for you?

With all the ... suspense at DC, implied or real, I have no idea what's going on. My projects weren't going to start until after Final Crisis concluded anyway, soooo ... let's just say I'm in flux. I will return to Blue Beetle someday, and in the meantime will do a little wrap-up post about my time on the series and what the fine folks at DC have told me is coming next from the very talented mister Matt Sturgess.

Jason: You make this whole business sound like an awful lot of fun.

Writing a television show on a good day, is the best goddam job in the world. On the other hand, there is no shortage of hell stories, which may prompt a post later. If anybody has any hellacious staffing stories they want to add to my collection, drop a line at kfmoneky@gmail.com, and I'll ad them to the upcoming post after appropriate anonymization.

Berg: You see, boss? This is exactly why I don't have a blog... so Wesley Crusher can't give me shit.

And yet, you blushed like a child-bride when Frakes came into the room to say hello. So off the high-horse.

Mark: No B plot?

Multi-character shows usually have A, B and sometimes C plots. The A-plot is the main story of the episode. The B plot is usually another storyline in the same style of the usual show conflicts -- for example, in a lawyer show, the Case of the Week is the A plot, while the other, quirky case is the B-plot. The C plot is usually some character quirk runner. There are several show styles vis a vis the plot/character interrelationships of the A/B/C stories.

Now, these plots serve another purpose besides storytelling -- they split up your goddam cast into manageable chunks of two or so people per scene. All our characters are involved with every heist/con, so we need to keep them all "alive", or active in the main story, over every scene. That is, to be short, a bitch. We can't say "Okay, this story doesn't really lend itself to Parker's skill set. We'll send her off on another case or runner this week." Nope. Our format means you find a way to use all the cast, all the time, on the main story. That's a bit easier for investigatvie shows -- just split your detectives up interviewing different witnesses -- but ours is a bear.

Mike Cane: Now that I know who (Beth Riesgraf) is, Rogers, I'm like all homina-homina-homina-OMFG!!!!!

She does seem to be getting a lot of geek love already off the leaked pilot. Hope she's ready. Which, of course, finally leads me to that Warren Ellis fanfic story --

-- whoops, it's midnight. Next time.