Five Reasons Bloggers End Up Being So F***ing Snarky

#1. I have a director friend. A working director.  He sends “new writings” every month to his inner circle.  These are his “pages”, his personal space for reflection and insight and intimacy – with a self-conscious style that I dig because I have known him my whole life, but I’m not totally sure a stranger would care. Anyway, this month his writings included some spot on insights about working as a free lance director in a city that’s far from home that I wanted to share with you guys without revealing his identity, the identity of the show, etc. Yeah – it was that good, but he said NO. I presume someday he’ll publish his writings as memoirs in the hopes that future scholars will compare him to Proust. So I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until then to read it.

#2. I’m teaching a tv writing course at ucla extension this spring. It’s a ten week course, 30 classroom hours. I worked out a fairly detailed syallabus and sent it in for approval. I heard back from them this week. They gave me a lot of notes. It was like being back at the networks – except for a lot less pay.  Here’s a snippet.

Also, in week 3, you mention screening Northern Exposure: The Aurora Borealis. Did you plan to screen the entire episode, or just the relevant parts to that week’s character discussion? We’ve heard complaints from students about viewing entire episodes in class.  Clips are great learning tools and instructors often screen clips to illustrate a point.

I have been invited to teach four times at UCLA extension, the first three by Roseanne Welch, who is now a professor at Cal State Fullerton, who screened the entire episode of the Aurora Borealis as a teaching device. I believe she chose my episode as the basis of her class because it is generally thought to be one of the best episodes and certainly one of the most unique episodes of primetime television ever produced. I chose it as a teaching instrument, however, because of the unique and varied characterizations — and sadly the students who come to class that night will have to sit through it because the character payoffs don’t happen until the end of the episode…because just maybe that’s how good stories are told. 

#3. “Into The Motherhood” premieres this week on ABC. It’s a new sitcom starring Cheryl Hines and Megan Mullaly about, uh, motherhood.  Should be funny – though probably not Larry David/Will and Grace funny.  So why bring it up? Because “Into The Motherhood” was originally produced in 2007 for the Web and is now being billed as the first show to make the transition from internet/digi to mainstream/network, dumping out sexy/edgy Lori McCarthy and Chelsea Handler in the process.  But that’s not even why we bring it up. Apparently, what made the internet show so vital..and viral…was that the sketches/episodes were from real people submitting real stories…and the WGA nixed that because ABC is a union shop and these personal stories would be the same as a submissions,  so to protect the network from potential lawsuits from delusional non-writers, no more inter-active “Motherhood”.  Just another example of why mainstream media will continue to matter less and less.

#4.  In December, OMMA– the online marketing organization – sent me an email invitation to something they called Global Hollywood. This was the pitch:

On the Ides of March this Spring, our OMMA Global-Hollywood Conference and EXPO will remind you: “The Digital Economy: It’s Still Growing!” History teaches that advertising rises and falls with the economy, but most forecasters think online advertising will continue to grow in 2009. Thus, the doom and gloom in the media need not penetrate here. At OMMA Global-Hollywood, the biggest names in the Web advertising business will discuss online’s onward march, advise practitioners and provide them with new tools and insights for navigating this still-vibrant sector.

They were offering the “discount” rate of $795 for the two day conference, hundreds of dollars off the regular price. Right – took one look at the price and deleted.  Then more emails came. They kept extending the deadline…and the discount…
In late January, OMMA sent another e-mail, this time inviting me to register for a free pass into the Expo Hall. Showbizzle was beginning to show signs of life again – so I signed up.
Two weeks ago I hear from OMMA yet again. It seems that because I registered for the EXPO, I am now being called a VIP and being invited to attend the panels free of charge. I like this VIP shit.

Anyway, I go to Global Hollywood this week – and it’s half empty and half the people there were phony VIP’s like me. I talked to a guy from the staff who said they thought about pulling the plug, but they were too far down the road to bail. I hear NAPTE was even worse.

#5 One of the speakers on the All Things Digital panel was named Kafka.

Does it get any better than that?

Uh, ‘cuse me, what was that you were saying about snarky?

 

Ten Things I Will Share About My Schitzo Non-Relationship with Josh Schwartz.

#1.  I interviewed twice for the showrunning job on the “O.C.” - before and after the pilot was shot, each time with a different set of producers.  Both times I didn’t get the gig. Both times Josh Schwartz, the phenom from USC, wasn’t in the meeting. That really endeared me to him.

#2.  A few months later, with the “O.C.” generating lots of buzz, Schwartz dissed “Beverly Hills, 90210″  during a press conference for critics, insisting that he never once visited our zip code and did not look to our show for inspiration even though there were some glaring similarities.  I remember thinking “young dude, get back to me when you do 100 episodes”  knowing full well that 90210 put 298 hours in the can, the first 144 of them with the Rosin Seal of Approval.

#3.  The “O.C.” gets cancelled after only 54 episodes, but it was mostly dead after the first season - a classic, white-hot, premature flame out. Schwartz burned through glib story lines with the hyper speed of a “know it all” who realized much too late that there was nothing new to say about rich high school kids from California.   Nonetheless, he got nominated for a WGA Award for his pilot script and a TCA Critics Award for his first season - and I was prepared to keep him on my shit list until the end of time just for the principle of it all.

#5.  Then, right after my daughter Lindsey graduated from Penn with a spec screenplay,  a degree in creative writing, and a script assignment on “South of Nowhere”,  a family friend at Cosmo Girl wanted Lindsey to interview Schwartz and do a photo shoot with him for their college/mentor issue.  Afterwards, Lindsey told me he was very nice, very encouraging - so I decided to take Schwartz off my private shit list (which must have been a BIG relief to him) and instead put him in a “wait and see” category.

#6.  Okay. I “waited” for the premiere of “Gossip Girl” too see if I was even capable of giving Schwartz the benefit of all my doubts.  Maybe it is because Gossip Girl was a series of bestselling “young person’s” fiction before it became a TV show, but I was hooked after the first “You know you love me…xoxo”.  It’s one thing to hire a hot young cast, quite another to put together a teen show with smart scripts full of breezy dialogue, complex characterizations,  innovative premises, and amazingly produced set pieces. Who else would have the brains and the balls to incorporate Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” into their serialized soap structure?

#7. This week Schwartz’s new internet series “Rockville CA” premieres on the WB.com. Set at one of those indy LA hole in the wall clubs where bands try to get a following and get some commerce going, each episode features a performance/music by a different group/artist played against the cool angst and romantic twists of those crazy dreamers trying to reinvent the music biz for the digital age.

#8. Working with music maven Alex Patsavas, whose Chop Suey Records supplies the tracks for all his shows, Schwartz seems to have found a cost effective formula with which to sell music and create a business model.  And the studio has given him total creative freedom for Rockville’s initial 17 episode run - again proving that it is the artists and not the suits who will be of value in the brave new world of lower budget production and multi-platform display.

#9.  Okay. Okay. I’m a fan. A huge fan. Schwartz is clearly the real deal and I am rooting for him to blaze a trail with “Rockville CA” for all of us determined to create professional content (and a business life) on the internet.

#10.  Hey, Josh, between you and me, you must have seen the one where Brenda and Dylan…

“Memo To Nikki Finke: Lady, take a breath”

I read today that Glenn Bickel is out of a job.

Who’s Glenn Bickel?

A veteran TV agent at CAA.

Do you know him?

Knew him.

Glenn was part of the “team” of agents/foot soldiers that covered/serviced/endured the inimitable Aaron Spelling. They would have weekly meetings in The Mister’s office where strategy would be hatched and much second-hand smoke coming from Spelling’s pipe would be breathed.  Glen was one of those tight-lipped insider guys who laughed and smiled and listened to a lot of bitching and moaning and nastiness- and who knew (and probably still knows) where the bodies are/were buried.  We’d have lunch once or twice a year. Once or twice he tried to woo me away from my agent. I remember him pitching me about getting into the TV syndication business right as the syndication business was going kaput.  See, I liked Glen, but he was never a star agent, or someone destined to be a successful producer.

Ok. Give up. Why are we talking about this guy?

Because Glen Bickel was the personification of a company man - a man born and raised in the excess and venality of the Ovitz era and the CAA culture — who learned very early on that his prime function was to keep people company; promote the company; go to charitable and industry functions representing the company - the corporate face of the company…in a company town…that might not need so many companies.

Oh? I get it. You’re saying that Glen Bickel being ‘let go’ is just another example of how the business is contracting.

Welllllllll, yes.  It’s true. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the major Hollywood talent agencies called it quits, or merged with another shop/industry…

But..?

But, look I don’t mean to be harsh, but Glenn was a journeymen agent (who was kind of lucky to be at the right place at the right time in the first place) being let go from a company in decline, scrambling to maintain its partner’s inflated salaries.  So when Hollywood’s favorite/most vilified blogger Nikki Finke when she posts CAA BLOODBATH: NOW IN TV DEPARTMENT”? I have to pause…to tell this woman to take a breath…as I listen to the late George Harrison’s “All Thing Must Pass” (1970) on the ipod. Good luck, Glenn.