Friday, August 11, 2006
Fisher House Wrap-up
We're getting heavy linkage, so it seems a good time for a final push. Please use the Paypal button to the right to donate to this month's KFM charity, the Fisher House, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers during their treatment, so families can stay together. I match all donations -- so if you like my writing donate; if you HATE me, then donate MORE, and bankrupt me with your hate!
I Should Be Used To It By Now
I wrote the previous post at about 1 am, without having seen any mass-media follow-up coverage. All my info on this stuff tends to come from security-oriented websites I frequent, coupled with some e-mail friends In the Business, as it were.
And yet literally, literally, the first words I hear on CNN as I come out of my shower this morning?
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
*sigh*
EDIT: Juan Cole has a quick summary post, with links for more info on the very impressive, apparently year-long investigation, here.
And yet literally, literally, the first words I hear on CNN as I come out of my shower this morning?
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
*sigh*
EDIT: Juan Cole has a quick summary post, with links for more info on the very impressive, apparently year-long investigation, here.
"Wait, Aren't You Scared?"
Errr, no. And if you are, you frankly should be a little goddam embarrassed.
No false bravado and it's not that I don't take terrorism seriously. I do, which I why I voted for the guy who believed in securing our ports and fighting terrorism with criminal investigation methods -- which is, if we may remind everybody, how this particular plot was busted.
I am just not going to wet my pants every time some guys get arrested in a terror plot. I will do my best to stay informed. I will support the necessary law enforcement agencies. I will take whatever reasonable precautions seem, um, reasonable. But I will not be terrorized. I assume that the terror-ists would like me to be terror-ized, as that is what is says on their nametag, rather than, say, wanting me to surrender to ennui or negative body image, and they're just coming the long way around.
Osama Bin Laden got everything on his Christmas list after 9/11 -- US out of Saudi Arabia; the greatest military in the world over-extended, pinned down and distracted; the greatest proponent of democracy suddenly alienated from its allies; a US culture verily eager to destroy freedoms that little scumfuck could never even dream to touch himself -- I would like to deny him the last little check on the clipboard, i.e. constant terror. I panic, they win. To coin a phrase, Osama Bin Laden can suck my insouciance.
I am absolutely buffaloed by the people who insist I man up and take it in the teeth for the great Clash of Civilizations -- "Come ON, people, this is the EPIC LAST WAR!! You just don't have the stones to face that fact head-on!" -- who at the whiff of an actual terror plot will, with no apparent sense of irony, transform and run around shrieking, eyes rolling and Hello Kitty panties flashing like Japanese schoolgirls who have just realized that the call is coming from inside the house!
I may have shared too much there.
To be honest, it's not like I'm a brave man. I'm not. At all. It just, well, it doesn't take that much strength of will not to be scared. Who the hell am I supposed to be scared of? Joseph Padilla, dirty bomber who didn't actually know how to build a bomb, had no allies or supplies, and against whom the government case is so weak they're now shuffling him from court to court to avoid the public embarassment of a trial? The fuckwits who were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches? Richard Reid, the Zeppo of suicide bombers? The great Canadian plot that had organized over the internet, was penetrated by the Mounties on day one, and we were told had a TRUCK FULL OF EXPLOSIVES ... which they had bought from the Mounties in a sting operation but hey let's skip right over that. Or how about the "compound" of Christian cultists in Florida who were planning on blowing up the Sears Tower with ... kung fu?
And now these guys. As the initial "OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!" hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
-- was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.
This is terrorism's A-game? Sack up, people.
Again, this is not to do anything less than marvel as cool, well-trained, ruthless law-enforcement professionals -- who spent decades honing their craft chasing my IRA cousins -- execute their job magnificently. Should we take this seriously? DAMN STRAIGHT we take this seriously. Left unchecked, these terror-fanboy bastards would have gone down in history. These cretins' intent was monstrous; they should, and will, all go to jail for a very long time. This is the part where we all breathe a sigh of relief that there are some actual professionals working the job in some countries.
But God gave me a brain, and a modicum of spine. Taking something seriously, and panicking over it are two different things. I do not assign all dangers and risks equal value. Tight little freelance squads with leak-proof operational discipline, like the 7/7 guys, -- those I worry about. A nuke coming in through one of ridiculously open ports -- I am concerned. Not bio-terror so much, because it's a shitty delivery mechanism. That the Muslim population of England seems to be becoming radicalized enough to sprout up these plots, that's not a good thing to consider. al-Queda involvement -- good if true because this means their recruiting is shitty: bad if true because this means they're back in business: bad if false because it means al-Queda has indeed become a "brand": but good if false because it reinforces the idea that they're operationally crippled (and if Zwahari is involved, I personally would like a word with whatever idiot nation took their eyes of the ball and let him escape ...)
... You get the point. There are a million factors in this New World of Terror. You weigh 'em, you process, and then you move on.
You move on, building a better international society so that luddite fundamentalist criminal gangs/cults of personality are further and further marginalized.
Or, if you don't understand 4th Generation Warfare at all, you move on, bombing the shit out of nation-states and handing your opponents massive PR victories. Either way, you move the fuck on.
Maybe it's just, I cast my eyes back on the last century ...
FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!
... and I'm just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc.
This is it, folks. This is the world, from now on. Even assuming the War on Terror is a not just a bad metaphor and there is an actual measurable winning point*, the short 4GW struggles last fifty years or so. We're going to be stopping one or two of these bastard mass-murder plots a year, minimum, for the rest of our lives. Hell, the way terror tactics and tech evolve, five years from now we're going to be pining for the dudes with the flammable juice boxes.
It's now part of our life. Let's try not to hop like the trained monkeys every time it happens.
I'm just pleased that for once, nobody --
"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances."
-- ahhhh. Never mind
(NOTE: This is getting heavy linkage, so I'll poke the new readers and linkers to donate to this month's charity, the Fisher House, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers during their treatment, so families can stay together. I match all donations -- so if you like my writing donate; if you HATE me, then donate MORE, and bankrupt me with your hate!)
(NOTE: the Second. With all the traffic coming in, threw up a new INDEX PAGE up top. You like the new stuff, you may like the old. Take a look)
*(bottle of 18-year old Scotch to whoever can meaningfully define THAT strategic goal, by the way)
No false bravado and it's not that I don't take terrorism seriously. I do, which I why I voted for the guy who believed in securing our ports and fighting terrorism with criminal investigation methods -- which is, if we may remind everybody, how this particular plot was busted.
I am just not going to wet my pants every time some guys get arrested in a terror plot. I will do my best to stay informed. I will support the necessary law enforcement agencies. I will take whatever reasonable precautions seem, um, reasonable. But I will not be terrorized. I assume that the terror-ists would like me to be terror-ized, as that is what is says on their nametag, rather than, say, wanting me to surrender to ennui or negative body image, and they're just coming the long way around.
Osama Bin Laden got everything on his Christmas list after 9/11 -- US out of Saudi Arabia; the greatest military in the world over-extended, pinned down and distracted; the greatest proponent of democracy suddenly alienated from its allies; a US culture verily eager to destroy freedoms that little scumfuck could never even dream to touch himself -- I would like to deny him the last little check on the clipboard, i.e. constant terror. I panic, they win. To coin a phrase, Osama Bin Laden can suck my insouciance.
I am absolutely buffaloed by the people who insist I man up and take it in the teeth for the great Clash of Civilizations -- "Come ON, people, this is the EPIC LAST WAR!! You just don't have the stones to face that fact head-on!" -- who at the whiff of an actual terror plot will, with no apparent sense of irony, transform and run around shrieking, eyes rolling and Hello Kitty panties flashing like Japanese schoolgirls who have just realized that the call is coming from inside the house!
I may have shared too much there.
To be honest, it's not like I'm a brave man. I'm not. At all. It just, well, it doesn't take that much strength of will not to be scared. Who the hell am I supposed to be scared of? Joseph Padilla, dirty bomber who didn't actually know how to build a bomb, had no allies or supplies, and against whom the government case is so weak they're now shuffling him from court to court to avoid the public embarassment of a trial? The fuckwits who were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches? Richard Reid, the Zeppo of suicide bombers? The great Canadian plot that had organized over the internet, was penetrated by the Mounties on day one, and we were told had a TRUCK FULL OF EXPLOSIVES ... which they had bought from the Mounties in a sting operation but hey let's skip right over that. Or how about the "compound" of Christian cultists in Florida who were planning on blowing up the Sears Tower with ... kung fu?
And now these guys. As the initial "OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!" hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
-- was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.
This is terrorism's A-game? Sack up, people.
Again, this is not to do anything less than marvel as cool, well-trained, ruthless law-enforcement professionals -- who spent decades honing their craft chasing my IRA cousins -- execute their job magnificently. Should we take this seriously? DAMN STRAIGHT we take this seriously. Left unchecked, these terror-fanboy bastards would have gone down in history. These cretins' intent was monstrous; they should, and will, all go to jail for a very long time. This is the part where we all breathe a sigh of relief that there are some actual professionals working the job in some countries.
But God gave me a brain, and a modicum of spine. Taking something seriously, and panicking over it are two different things. I do not assign all dangers and risks equal value. Tight little freelance squads with leak-proof operational discipline, like the 7/7 guys, -- those I worry about. A nuke coming in through one of ridiculously open ports -- I am concerned. Not bio-terror so much, because it's a shitty delivery mechanism. That the Muslim population of England seems to be becoming radicalized enough to sprout up these plots, that's not a good thing to consider. al-Queda involvement -- good if true because this means their recruiting is shitty: bad if true because this means they're back in business: bad if false because it means al-Queda has indeed become a "brand": but good if false because it reinforces the idea that they're operationally crippled (and if Zwahari is involved, I personally would like a word with whatever idiot nation took their eyes of the ball and let him escape ...)
... You get the point. There are a million factors in this New World of Terror. You weigh 'em, you process, and then you move on.
You move on, building a better international society so that luddite fundamentalist criminal gangs/cults of personality are further and further marginalized.
Or, if you don't understand 4th Generation Warfare at all, you move on, bombing the shit out of nation-states and handing your opponents massive PR victories. Either way, you move the fuck on.
Maybe it's just, I cast my eyes back on the last century ...
FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!
... and I'm just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc.
This is it, folks. This is the world, from now on. Even assuming the War on Terror is a not just a bad metaphor and there is an actual measurable winning point*, the short 4GW struggles last fifty years or so. We're going to be stopping one or two of these bastard mass-murder plots a year, minimum, for the rest of our lives. Hell, the way terror tactics and tech evolve, five years from now we're going to be pining for the dudes with the flammable juice boxes.
It's now part of our life. Let's try not to hop like the trained monkeys every time it happens.
I'm just pleased that for once, nobody --
"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances."
-- ahhhh. Never mind
(NOTE: This is getting heavy linkage, so I'll poke the new readers and linkers to donate to this month's charity, the Fisher House, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers during their treatment, so families can stay together. I match all donations -- so if you like my writing donate; if you HATE me, then donate MORE, and bankrupt me with your hate!)
(NOTE: the Second. With all the traffic coming in, threw up a new INDEX PAGE up top. You like the new stuff, you may like the old. Take a look)
*(bottle of 18-year old Scotch to whoever can meaningfully define THAT strategic goal, by the way)
Monday, August 07, 2006
Two-Movie Weekend
So rare. The weekend where you catch two movies, and they're both pretty damn good -- hell one ties Thank You for Smoking for my favorite of the year.
The Descent: I am mildly claustrophobic. There were times in this lean, nasty little horror film that I genuinely felt like puking from anxiety. And that was before the ... bad things happen. Women kicking ass, not being victims. Very recommended.
Little Miss Sunshine: If you'd told me five years ago that I would revel in the sheer joy of seeing Greg Kinnear and Steve Carrell act together, I'd have taken away your bong. This may be one of those movies that there's less to than I initially think because of the warm feelings it generates, cut with a helluva lot of sheer shot-craft and acting, but damn. A wonderful example of what you can do at this price range. And their DP and Location Manager should get a big wet kiss on the mouth. Highly recommended.
As recommendations without context are useless, a quick look at my top picks for 2006 so far. In no particular order:
-- Thank You for Smoking
-- An Inconvenient Truth
-- Brick
-- Little Miss Sunshine
-- The Descent
-- Slither (fuck you. I say SLITHER!)
-- Kid's Category: Monster House
I hold reserve on Superman Returns until the end of the year for personal reasons, and a few others I didn't catch on the big screen. Jesus, no wonder I'm in this weird "I want to do smaller movies" phase of my career. Either my tastes have shifted, or the movies have shifted my tastes for me ...
The Descent: I am mildly claustrophobic. There were times in this lean, nasty little horror film that I genuinely felt like puking from anxiety. And that was before the ... bad things happen. Women kicking ass, not being victims. Very recommended.
Little Miss Sunshine: If you'd told me five years ago that I would revel in the sheer joy of seeing Greg Kinnear and Steve Carrell act together, I'd have taken away your bong. This may be one of those movies that there's less to than I initially think because of the warm feelings it generates, cut with a helluva lot of sheer shot-craft and acting, but damn. A wonderful example of what you can do at this price range. And their DP and Location Manager should get a big wet kiss on the mouth. Highly recommended.
As recommendations without context are useless, a quick look at my top picks for 2006 so far. In no particular order:
-- Thank You for Smoking
-- An Inconvenient Truth
-- Brick
-- Little Miss Sunshine
-- The Descent
-- Slither (fuck you. I say SLITHER!)
-- Kid's Category: Monster House
I hold reserve on Superman Returns until the end of the year for personal reasons, and a few others I didn't catch on the big screen. Jesus, no wonder I'm in this weird "I want to do smaller movies" phase of my career. Either my tastes have shifted, or the movies have shifted my tastes for me ...
Friday, August 04, 2006
Whoops. Freelance writing, look below
I forgot Blogger does that annoying thing with edited drafts of posts. More on freelancing here, two posts down.
William Gibson's Blog
William Gibson has a blog?! Of COURSE he does! I'm going to go over and take a look ...
... my brain is ... very. small.
... my brain is ... very. small.
Smart Ass Vader
I really, really have to get in the habit of keeping up blog traffic even while writing longer posts. Not a problem I had when I was just banging these things out, but now I'm trying a little harder.
So in the spirit of keeping the lights on: Smart Ass Vader
(via BoingBoing, via Alice who's now in LA with the significant other. Hey, drop us a line!)
So in the spirit of keeping the lights on: Smart Ass Vader
(via BoingBoing, via Alice who's now in LA with the significant other. Hey, drop us a line!)
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Writing: The Freelance #2 (actually)
All right. So I've gone in and pitched out what I think I'll be writing, in rough terms, to the staff. The sci-fi MacGuffin, how it tells different character stories, and the Act Breaks. Although I'm in a slightly different scenario than most freelancers going in, this is still roughly the same process as the Spec Monkey getting his/her break.
Now, with the writers in the room, we Break the Story. The usual caveat regarding the law and sausages applies here.
As we've stated before, TV is a bear. It's haiku, really, roughly six scenes an act of roughly two minutes each, unless you do something flashy. Eureka hews to the heretical structure of five acts. I don't know if that will continue or if the Space Marines will soon show up and purge the Universal Lot of the Chaos taint, but it's not a huge difference. Just winds up splitting the standard fourth act much more discretely into the conclusion and wrap-up.
Now that some of you have watched the show, (and listened to the podcast) we can get into the nitty-gritty. For those not watching the show, the town of Eureka is essentially the great American think-tank. Einstein and Truman started moving geniuses to a tiny, isolated Northwestern town in the 50's (and there will soon be implications of ... older issues) to make sure the US kept its tech edge. As a result, Eureka is a bizarre hybrid hothouse of small-town living and next-gen tech and problems. Into this comes Sherriff Jack Carter, a former federal marshal who's not the tech-savviest guy in the world, but knows crime, people, and how to fix things. Northern Exposure meets X-Files.
In his office, show-creator Andy Cosby has written atop his whiteboard "Small town problems made worse by high-tech science." Keeping that sort of touchstone around the office is not just decorative, it's functional. A lot of shows can go awry -- whether in the long term or even just in the heat of the pitch -- when they wander off their core idea.
So in the writer's rom, we recap my pitch:
"Zoe (the Sheriff's daughter) is having a hard time fitting in at Tesla High School. not all the kids there are geniuses, but they have all been living in each others' pockets for all their lives. Everybody knows Everybody, it's not easy penetrating that closed society.
This ties into another 'small town' theme -- that we all know our neighbors. But in reality every one of them is a roiling froth of perversion, tragedy, and secrecy that just never gets laid out on the table. Polite small town society is a lie; a shared one, but a lie.
Into this comes a 'memory virus' -- let's leave the source off the table for a moment. People are 'infected with each others' memories. They experience the memories subjectively, 'starring' in them so to speak. Secrets become unravelled -- hell, some people need to stop this before murders are revealed. Even worse, people's memories are being overwritten -- once infected with a certain person's memories, their personality slowly becomes dominant. So ALL our narrators become unreliable, develop the short-term version of multiple-personalities. "
Okay, why this pitch? Well, for me as a writer and occassional show-runner, it's got a lot of juice. We get to do character backstories early in the show, often reversing the viewrs' expectations, without horrible, chatty pipe. We get to advance character relationshs in a visually interesting way. Zoe and Carter have a shitty father/daughter realtionship -- interesting for Zoe to experience first-hand one of the horrible things that Carter did, which ties him to his career.
It's actor-crunchy: the actors get to do each others' voices -- indeed, first version of this pitch winds up with Zoe, the non-genius girl, solving the problem with Henry 's genius memories. Seeing an actor like Joe Morton do the slow slide into teen-girl speak would be a joy unto itself. Because of the personality pairings, all the second-stringers get to work out their acting chops this week on equal footing.
The pitched resolve -- an vaccine developed from the immune Carter, based on his memory of Zoe's birth -- ties up the Zoe-isolation story nicely, has big "emo" as Greenwalt says ... it floats a lot of boats.
It's also insanely complicated, and like many of my ideas (and blog posts) suffers from a bifurcated focus. There are really two episodes in there. Trying to do them both in 45 minutes may be impossible.
Fine, we know what we're aiming for. Now let's do the nuts and bolts. First off -- the body-switching (yes, this is a new way to do the body-switching ep). What are the most interesting pairs? All the names of the characters go up on the big board -- I'm wielding the dry erase marker, tradition that the writer of the episode does so; although if a writer evinces stellar handwriting early in the season, it will become their burden for the remainder of the year.
So, the characters, and their personality pairings for the ep:
Zoe (new girl in Eureka) / Henry (the very soul of Eureka)
Jo (tightly wound deputy) / Beverly (sexually expressive, scheming therapist)
Fargo (toadying underling)/ Stark (imperious boss)
Jack, Alison , Taggart ... hmm, this is interesting ... okay, Taggart and his white whale, the town dog, Lojack. Cool big comedy for Matt Frewer.
Allison, the DoD rep and Carter's burgeoning love interest, flipping with Carter doesn't quite seem right. However, Allison has a locked-in autistic son, Kevin. It slides her story slightly off-plot, but the idea of her finally seeing what Kevin's view of the world is ... there's some nice stuff in there. One of the writers comes up with a killer scene to cap off that storyline -- Carter finding a now-Allisoned Kevin watching over Allison as she does the furious equation-scribbling through which Kevin usually expresses himself... wow, sad AND creepy. Like the best after-prom feeling in the world.
What, just me?
Back to the show. Looking at the list, we have to ask: who gets Carter?
"Carter's immune," one of the writers says. Now, this is what's cool about the writing room. I'd come in with the idea that Carter's most powerful memory -- his daughter Zoe's birth -- would somehow be the key to solving the whole episode. I just wasn't sure HOW. By making Carter be immune, that gives us an in. This is one of the times eight brains is better than one.
Next to that, goes the list of memories. Now, I won't blow those, as we were going to unravel a couple backstory bits, and tease some arc moments through them. But why Carter's so paranoid about Zoe and her partying, how Henry came to Eureka, why Stark's really back in Eureka and what he did to Allison ... all that will now unravel out at it's own pace. And although the final episode didn't use this device, this is a good example of how no work in a writer's room is ever wasted, when you're trying to generate that 13-20 hours of TV. A good chunk of those ideas eventually worked their way into the show in some other context.
Do we have a villain? Is the situation villain enough? The idea seems complex enough that just tracking a story through which our protagonists solve a deadly virus using each others personalities and talents will be chewy enough. "VILLAIN?" goes up on the board, though, and stays there for some time.
Scenes start to fill in, coming from the conflicts we've set up, the story beats we need to advance the plot and new inspirations in the room. In the cold open, we find out how everyone was infected -- the flu vaccine for the year.
"Okay, how does that infect people?" Well, they based the aggressive flu vaccine on the research from the memory transfer system. "Why would you WANT a cellular memory transfer system?"
"I was thinking for instantly teaching skills, for the military."
"If you give memories, could you then use this to steal them? Infect somebody and then 'catch' their secrets?" That's Karl, the co-exec.
"Sure." The moment passes, but that note goes up on the board, and will become important later.
Comedy beats pop up. A near-riot, Dawn of the Dead scene in the first act, as Carter drives through a town unravelling with shared secrets.
"There's that scary moment in every zombie movie, where somebody smacks up agasint the window --"
"Like Kevin McCarthy, in a panic."
"'I know where other people's underwear is!'"
That gets a laugh, we move on. The Fargo/Stark dichotomy becomes the most interesting -- Stark's genius and control betrayed as he becomes more neurotic and needy, Fargo suddenly tasting confidence. The old story about Einstein and his chauffeur comes out; a variant lands in Act 3. A couple heavy beats with Henry's tragic past, and then more big laughs as we spin off into a five-minute bit about Henry's growing obsession with emo boy bands.
Sund completely like throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks? It's not, it's a bit more like controlled chaos. We all know how the story beats out, how it ends, what we want to accomplish. Breaking a story is like heading down a river -- we know where it goes, we know where the banks are, we're sounding out the rapids as we go, cutting back and forth within the boundaries of the current.. Usually there's a room-runner on each staff, the helmsman who feels how the rhythm of the pitches are going, when to push to move on ... it's an art, really.
This, of course, is for a episode that begins with a good idea of the plot. Sometimes you start off with just an idea, a single sentence, and the lifting is a little heavier. But all in all, I've rarely seen that dramtically different a process on a staffed show.
After two days of this (which, at average writing room speed, works out to precisely four hours of actual work) ... presto. A beginning, middle and end, plenty of character beats all around, a big emotional ending -- looks like TV, smells like TV. Off I go to write, as soon as this is approved by the network. End of story.
Except, of course, for the fact that the episode that aired does not resemble this outline at all. How did that happen? We'll cover that in part #3 : "Enter ... the Green Walt!"
(Actually, David had little to do with changing the epsiode. But I just like the Stan Lee-ish tag.)
Now, with the writers in the room, we Break the Story. The usual caveat regarding the law and sausages applies here.
As we've stated before, TV is a bear. It's haiku, really, roughly six scenes an act of roughly two minutes each, unless you do something flashy. Eureka hews to the heretical structure of five acts. I don't know if that will continue or if the Space Marines will soon show up and purge the Universal Lot of the Chaos taint, but it's not a huge difference. Just winds up splitting the standard fourth act much more discretely into the conclusion and wrap-up.
Now that some of you have watched the show, (and listened to the podcast) we can get into the nitty-gritty. For those not watching the show, the town of Eureka is essentially the great American think-tank. Einstein and Truman started moving geniuses to a tiny, isolated Northwestern town in the 50's (and there will soon be implications of ... older issues) to make sure the US kept its tech edge. As a result, Eureka is a bizarre hybrid hothouse of small-town living and next-gen tech and problems. Into this comes Sherriff Jack Carter, a former federal marshal who's not the tech-savviest guy in the world, but knows crime, people, and how to fix things. Northern Exposure meets X-Files.
In his office, show-creator Andy Cosby has written atop his whiteboard "Small town problems made worse by high-tech science." Keeping that sort of touchstone around the office is not just decorative, it's functional. A lot of shows can go awry -- whether in the long term or even just in the heat of the pitch -- when they wander off their core idea.
So in the writer's rom, we recap my pitch:
"Zoe (the Sheriff's daughter) is having a hard time fitting in at Tesla High School. not all the kids there are geniuses, but they have all been living in each others' pockets for all their lives. Everybody knows Everybody, it's not easy penetrating that closed society.
This ties into another 'small town' theme -- that we all know our neighbors. But in reality every one of them is a roiling froth of perversion, tragedy, and secrecy that just never gets laid out on the table. Polite small town society is a lie; a shared one, but a lie.
Into this comes a 'memory virus' -- let's leave the source off the table for a moment. People are 'infected with each others' memories. They experience the memories subjectively, 'starring' in them so to speak. Secrets become unravelled -- hell, some people need to stop this before murders are revealed. Even worse, people's memories are being overwritten -- once infected with a certain person's memories, their personality slowly becomes dominant. So ALL our narrators become unreliable, develop the short-term version of multiple-personalities. "
Okay, why this pitch? Well, for me as a writer and occassional show-runner, it's got a lot of juice. We get to do character backstories early in the show, often reversing the viewrs' expectations, without horrible, chatty pipe. We get to advance character relationshs in a visually interesting way. Zoe and Carter have a shitty father/daughter realtionship -- interesting for Zoe to experience first-hand one of the horrible things that Carter did, which ties him to his career.
It's actor-crunchy: the actors get to do each others' voices -- indeed, first version of this pitch winds up with Zoe, the non-genius girl, solving the problem with Henry 's genius memories. Seeing an actor like Joe Morton do the slow slide into teen-girl speak would be a joy unto itself. Because of the personality pairings, all the second-stringers get to work out their acting chops this week on equal footing.
The pitched resolve -- an vaccine developed from the immune Carter, based on his memory of Zoe's birth -- ties up the Zoe-isolation story nicely, has big "emo" as Greenwalt says ... it floats a lot of boats.
It's also insanely complicated, and like many of my ideas (and blog posts) suffers from a bifurcated focus. There are really two episodes in there. Trying to do them both in 45 minutes may be impossible.
Fine, we know what we're aiming for. Now let's do the nuts and bolts. First off -- the body-switching (yes, this is a new way to do the body-switching ep). What are the most interesting pairs? All the names of the characters go up on the big board -- I'm wielding the dry erase marker, tradition that the writer of the episode does so; although if a writer evinces stellar handwriting early in the season, it will become their burden for the remainder of the year.
So, the characters, and their personality pairings for the ep:
Zoe (new girl in Eureka) / Henry (the very soul of Eureka)
Jo (tightly wound deputy) / Beverly (sexually expressive, scheming therapist)
Fargo (toadying underling)/ Stark (imperious boss)
Jack, Alison , Taggart ... hmm, this is interesting ... okay, Taggart and his white whale, the town dog, Lojack. Cool big comedy for Matt Frewer.
Allison, the DoD rep and Carter's burgeoning love interest, flipping with Carter doesn't quite seem right. However, Allison has a locked-in autistic son, Kevin. It slides her story slightly off-plot, but the idea of her finally seeing what Kevin's view of the world is ... there's some nice stuff in there. One of the writers comes up with a killer scene to cap off that storyline -- Carter finding a now-Allisoned Kevin watching over Allison as she does the furious equation-scribbling through which Kevin usually expresses himself... wow, sad AND creepy. Like the best after-prom feeling in the world.
What, just me?
Back to the show. Looking at the list, we have to ask: who gets Carter?
"Carter's immune," one of the writers says. Now, this is what's cool about the writing room. I'd come in with the idea that Carter's most powerful memory -- his daughter Zoe's birth -- would somehow be the key to solving the whole episode. I just wasn't sure HOW. By making Carter be immune, that gives us an in. This is one of the times eight brains is better than one.
Next to that, goes the list of memories. Now, I won't blow those, as we were going to unravel a couple backstory bits, and tease some arc moments through them. But why Carter's so paranoid about Zoe and her partying, how Henry came to Eureka, why Stark's really back in Eureka and what he did to Allison ... all that will now unravel out at it's own pace. And although the final episode didn't use this device, this is a good example of how no work in a writer's room is ever wasted, when you're trying to generate that 13-20 hours of TV. A good chunk of those ideas eventually worked their way into the show in some other context.
Do we have a villain? Is the situation villain enough? The idea seems complex enough that just tracking a story through which our protagonists solve a deadly virus using each others personalities and talents will be chewy enough. "VILLAIN?" goes up on the board, though, and stays there for some time.
Scenes start to fill in, coming from the conflicts we've set up, the story beats we need to advance the plot and new inspirations in the room. In the cold open, we find out how everyone was infected -- the flu vaccine for the year.
"Okay, how does that infect people?" Well, they based the aggressive flu vaccine on the research from the memory transfer system. "Why would you WANT a cellular memory transfer system?"
"I was thinking for instantly teaching skills, for the military."
"If you give memories, could you then use this to steal them? Infect somebody and then 'catch' their secrets?" That's Karl, the co-exec.
"Sure." The moment passes, but that note goes up on the board, and will become important later.
Comedy beats pop up. A near-riot, Dawn of the Dead scene in the first act, as Carter drives through a town unravelling with shared secrets.
"There's that scary moment in every zombie movie, where somebody smacks up agasint the window --"
"Like Kevin McCarthy, in a panic."
"'I know where other people's underwear is!'"
That gets a laugh, we move on. The Fargo/Stark dichotomy becomes the most interesting -- Stark's genius and control betrayed as he becomes more neurotic and needy, Fargo suddenly tasting confidence. The old story about Einstein and his chauffeur comes out; a variant lands in Act 3. A couple heavy beats with Henry's tragic past, and then more big laughs as we spin off into a five-minute bit about Henry's growing obsession with emo boy bands.
Sund completely like throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks? It's not, it's a bit more like controlled chaos. We all know how the story beats out, how it ends, what we want to accomplish. Breaking a story is like heading down a river -- we know where it goes, we know where the banks are, we're sounding out the rapids as we go, cutting back and forth within the boundaries of the current.. Usually there's a room-runner on each staff, the helmsman who feels how the rhythm of the pitches are going, when to push to move on ... it's an art, really.
This, of course, is for a episode that begins with a good idea of the plot. Sometimes you start off with just an idea, a single sentence, and the lifting is a little heavier. But all in all, I've rarely seen that dramtically different a process on a staffed show.
After two days of this (which, at average writing room speed, works out to precisely four hours of actual work) ... presto. A beginning, middle and end, plenty of character beats all around, a big emotional ending -- looks like TV, smells like TV. Off I go to write, as soon as this is approved by the network. End of story.
Except, of course, for the fact that the episode that aired does not resemble this outline at all. How did that happen? We'll cover that in part #3 : "Enter ... the Green Walt!"
(Actually, David had little to do with changing the epsiode. But I just like the Stan Lee-ish tag.)
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Writing: The Freelance #2
Frikkin' FEBRUARY for part one? Well, I did want to wait and see until they shot the thing, and then I thought I had some time before broadcast -- the episode was originally #9 in the run, but got bumped up to #3, as in tonight.
On a related note, I will be doing the podcast today, with Colin. Download and watch the episode the second time with my dulcet tones in your ear.
Tell you what, I will post about Breaking the Story in the Room tomorrow, so we can discuss things spoiler-iffic that are relevant to the writing process. Because it will be very interesting for some of you to see how much the story changed from breakdown to shoot.
Oh, and Batman 655 is a thing of beauty. Just an aside.
On a related note, I will be doing the podcast today, with Colin. Download and watch the episode the second time with my dulcet tones in your ear.
Tell you what, I will post about Breaking the Story in the Room tomorrow, so we can discuss things spoiler-iffic that are relevant to the writing process. Because it will be very interesting for some of you to see how much the story changed from breakdown to shoot.
Oh, and Batman 655 is a thing of beauty. Just an aside.
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