Countdown to Showbizzle: The View from the Bunker

Starting next Monday, selected bloggers, media critics, potential sponsors, assorted friends and active members from what remains of our original social network will be invited to evaluate our new and improved website at showbizzle.com ahead of the pack.A week later, showbizzle goes live and open it up to the pack, who we define as anyone with a computer looking for a little fun. For the next 23 weeks, the pack can watch 30 different actors, performing 141 original monologues, either as a serialized weekly show that averages 15 minutes a pop, or as a series of “single” two minute videos that can be found on our characters’ landing page, about what they are doing to try to jumpstart their careers in Hollywood.

During those first 23 weeks anyone from the pack has the option to become a member of our community — which will give them the chance to actually get $$ to perform original material on our Digital Showcase.

During those 23 weeks chances are I will be where I am right now - in my bunker. Ha. No, seriously, my home office where much of showbizzle was originally hatched has become my bunker. Not that I’m complaining. It’s very nice bunker with a bathroom, and a treadmill, and a comfy couch, and an old TV. And since I often refer to myself as a “refugee from mainstream media” whenever I meet someone new at a digi conference, I think wartime imagery is apt.

See, back in the good old days before anyone thought to call “mainstream media” mainstream media,  back when I was just a show runner running shows, all I had to do was make sure that the show worked, was brought in on a budget, and that my executives felt satisfied or, at least, felt included in the creative process. Hardly a moment was spent thinking about what marketing mavens and the rest of the suits working with a corporate sales team were actually doing to fill their days. But after spending close to 18 months trying to get showbizzle off the ground, I know exactly what they do. They go to war - just like I seem to be doing these days now that I have become a full service “content publisher”.

Unfortunately, the digital entertainment war zone does not appear to adhere to any standards set by the Geneva Convention because torture seems to be permitted. Maybe even encouraged. How do I know this? Well, because I deal with a lot of foot soldiers and a few self-appointed generals, and trust me, all the landmines that existed over on the mainstream - the dashed expectations, the unreturned phone calls, the misrepresentations - take on a whole new dimension once you factor in flakey and attention deficit - not to mention a nasty and indiscriminate economy.

The digital battlefield took on a new casualty this week - Quarterlife, a content based social network built around an original “digital” series created and produced by Marshal Herskovitz of Bedford Falls  (”thirtysomething”) for NBC, sent out a letter to its community asking for donations to keep it afloat. Wonder what Marshall’s bunker looks like over there in Brentwood? Bet it has a flat screen.

Memo To Showrunners:

Yet another Reason to be Nice to Your Assistants

When Brooke, the talented young actress we cast on “South of Nowhere” (07) and showbizzle (08), asked if she could hire her young actress friend Brittany to help us promote our showbizzle college outreach this past winter, my attitude was - how soon can your friend start?

What Brooke and Brit were doing was cold calling university drama departments to let them know that showbizzle, the digital showcase and destination website I co-created with my daughter, Lindsey, was now offering 21 of our best contemporary monologues to be downloaded free of charge from our website for students to use for auditions or scene study class - with the hope that some of the more prestigious programs (BU, USC, Northwestern) would consider becoming ‘partner schools’ once they read that we would be paying their soon-to-graduate acting students real $$ to perform on our soon to be re-launched destination website as part of a national contest.

For six weeks in February and March, Brooke and Brittany would spend a few hours each day in my daughter Lindsey’s upstairs bedroom (for what my Community Manager scornfully called ‘Taco Bell wages’) munching on Subway sandwiches while trying to persuade flakey acting teachers or bitchy administrators that their students would benefit from what we were offering. B&B would then dutifully follow up with a personal e-mail and an attachment from me which explained why I created showbizzle as a digital showcase for emerging artists as an alternative to the always callous and now contracting TV and film industries…as well as a fun and creatively satisfying way for the next generation to keep their dreams and aspirations alive.

Even though it became painfully clear to all of us after a couple of weeks of indifference from the colleges that the bizzle’s good intentions and Brooke and Brittany’s attention to detail would not be rewarded in this lifetime, I didn’t immediately pull the plug because even at “Taco Bell wages” I assumed that these two struggling actresses would need all the support they could get during these fallow times.

My first inkling that Brittany wasn’t struggling quite as much as most of her Hollywood peer group was when she asked if she could take off early for an audition for the new Sandra Bullock movie. I was thrilled that she had somehow wrangled her way into seeing a big time casting director - and assumed she was chasing after a bit part. But then I found out that Brittany, who looks like she’s a spunky 14 year old from the middle of a ‘fly over’ state, recently had a recurring role as the ‘troubled neighbor girl”  on the sexy, provocative (and too short lived) CBS series “Swingtown” that debuted last summer.

And then, while I was putting together a list of pilots for my writing class at UCLA Extension, I saw a description of a show for the CW that starred someone named Brittany Robertson as a teenager who searches out her biological parents so she could become emancipated.  I immediately sent Brittany this e-mail.

Was reading the LA Times today about Lux. Is that you? If so, WAY TO GO! If not, how come someone has your name?

She sent back a sweet reply, copped to the fact that she indeed was the star of the show, and mentioned she was looking forward to finally be getting a chance to see the finished product sometime in early May.

 

Well, according to Deadline Hollywood, it appears Brittany will be too busy to help us with the relaunch of showbizzle this June. Here’s why:

“Parental Discretion Advised”, The lone midseason show The CW has picked up so far has kind of an indie-movie feel to it. It also looks like a fairly sweet and funny story about the fallout when a teenager (Brittany Robertson) seeking emancipation tracks down her birth parents (Shiri Appleby and Kristoffer Polaha), who haven’t been together since the night they conceived her. Robertson is very charming in the lead role.”

Well, of course, Robertson is “charming in the lead role.”  She’s charming in real life - much more South Carolina than Brentwood, much more soulful and instinctual than book smart. That’s why whenever anyone from one of those elitist drama schools (Yale, Brown) would be rude to her, I made a point of following up with a pointed e-mail.  Rejection I could take - but not nasty. And in both cases, to those schools’ credit, they wrote back to apologize.

Brittany originally told Brooke that she wanted to help get the word out about showbizzle because she loves the craft of acting and thought our goal of creating a community of emerging actors and performers away from the immediate pressures of the marketplace was/is worthwhile. Do I hope that Brittany still feels that way about us? Absolutely! How much would we benefit if the star of her own TV show would record a 30 second promo for us, or even perform an original monologue in the character of her choosing - or, better yet, mention to her showrunner that she knows of a wonderful young TV writer named Lindsey Rosin?

But even if Brittany is too busy and distracted to take an active part in our digital project again, I’m proud to be able to say “I knew her when”…and Brooke is still available, isn’t she?

Okay – When Exactly Did I Turn Into Trotsky?

During the writers’ strike the studios and the networks staked out a mostly disingenuous bargaining point when it came to “New Media” by arguing that webisodes were promotional in nature, and therefore not covered under union jurisdiction. The AMPTP’s take it or leave it stance galvanized an anxious and passionate membership into doing much more than showing up on the picket line before ducking out to lunch at Factors.  The Writer’s Strike of 2007 will be remembered as a watershed moment in Hollywood labor lore for the viral videos posted by activists from Strike TV who dramatized a world without professional writers, and the powerful blogging skills of Nikki Finke whose Deadline Hollywood became this town’s definitive news source.  No longer could the companies dominate news coverage by threatening to pull ads off The Los Angeles Times, or using Variety as a house organ.  The universe was clearly changing - even the strike was framed as being about fighting for a stake in the future profits for the next generation.  My big talking point back then was saying the stakes were about whether the future of entertainment would go through abc.com - which clearly seemed like a ludicrous proposition given how many disgruntled creative types like me were primed to start producing original digital entertainment and web series for the internet.More than a year and a half later, there still really isn’t much of a market for the handful of professionally produced scripted shows (or as they like to call it in digi world “premium content”) — and I’ve been asking why that is and as I scramble to bring showbizzle out of digital purgatory and onto some revenue streams.  Don’t major brands and the ad agencies see the viewing trends on ComScore where billions of new videos are consumed online each month? Aren’t they impressed by internet’s ability to tracks the metrics of its users or by the level of engagement alternate platforms often deliver?

Sadly, I’m afraid the answer is a resounding “sorry, the economy sucks we really don’t give a shit” as I prepare to bring showbizzle, our five hours of original scripted programming  broken down into 23 fifteen minute segments, to market next month.  But it was only this week, while attending the Star-power Online: Web Entertainment Looks Ahead panel at the On Hollywood Conference that I realized how vast the resistance to supporting professionally produced shows, even those produced at a substantially lower rate like showbizzle, really lies.  For 50 minutes the panel and audience mostly took turns bashing the networks, the global brands, and their change-resistant advertising agencies for being clueless when it comes to the changing economics of TV production and the opportunities that the new media represent…and then the smartest guy in the room, David Travers, a former analyst for NBC and now part on an LA venture capital group called Rustic Canyon Partners, felt compelled to have the last word. He pointed out that the networks are still making a huge amount of money in the traditional broadcast business - and will be able to mine this trough for the next three years.

 

Hmmm…I’ve already started defining Mainstream Media as a collection of top executives from networks, studios, top talent agencies, advertising agencies, publishing, and the top law firms whose prime goal is to their salaries and the salaries of their hottest clients artificially high. But it was only after Travers opened his yap that I realized that the way Mainstream Media will ultimately sustain their business model is to keep the value of digital entertainment artificially low. Why else would the indy producer of low budget reality shows for MTV, whose profit margin is getting squeezed from all sides, tell me that the Ad Sales guys at the network told him not to factor in the 17million hits that content received from a variety of digital platforms when making a case for his TV show with slightly less than a million broadcast viewers be removed?

Wonder what Trotsky would say? Or Nostradamus?  Or Peter Chernin for that matter?

Fullerton is a F*** of a long way from LA

Today was only the second time I’ve ever been to Fullerton.

The first time was when my friend Roseanne invited me to speak to her tv writing class. And this week I went out there because Roseanne invited me to speak to her writing class on the topic “TV: Then and Now: From Beverly Hills, 90210 to Showbizzle” - as part of the school’s COMM WEEK - and while everyone I met was pleasant - and the students much more engaged than the ones I spoke to in ‘07, what I am going to remember from this experience is that I got lost on the freeways.  I had directions - and I got lost. Printed directions and I got lost.  I’m a local boy and I got lost. I got lost going both ways. There and back. Both ways.  Yes, I’m aware that I am repeating myself. That’s how humiliating this all is for me. See, I’m the guy you call for directions, the guy who never needs a GPS system because I have memorized all the routes, not the schlub that misses the turnoff for the 105, the 605, the 91, the 22, and the 57.  That’s another thing about driving to Fullerton. There are lots of numbers involved.

Being late meant I didn’t get to hang in the modest hospitality suite for the other speakers - like Brian Lowry, the lead TV critic for the Variety who wrote kindly about the zip code back when he wrote for the LA Times. Good thing we probably didn’t talk because he might have asked ‘what the hell happened to you?’ - and instead of confiding in him about the vagaries of my career, or trying to network, or saying something on point, I would have concocted all sorts of specious reasons why I got stuck in the diamond lane on the 405! “Brian, do you have any idea what it is like to be boxed in on all sides by four-wheel vehicles pulling U-haul trucks?”

Anyway, I get ushered into the narrow room in the conference center that doubles as my class, and it becomes immediately apparent that I only will be speaking to the students from Roseanne’s class who have been assigned to be there because everyone else is in the main auditorium is listening to Brian Lowry. Truth is, if I were given the choice, I’d probably be listening to Brian Lowry rather than the sound of my voice - which I am getting thoroughly sick of hearing now that I’m teaching a 3-hour writing class over at UCLA Extension every week.

To make matters worse, as I’m taking my notes out of my briefcase I realize there are no notes in the briefcase…so I have no choice but to wing it.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, what I have to say about the alarming decline in network television business is something I can talk about for an hour without taking a breath.  But not everything was doom and gloom and nostalgia.  The future bodes well for low budget digital production - even if only as a creative outlet. The emerging artist needs to go through exclusive channels to be taken seriously, or gain experience.  How anyone makes money, of course, is still up for grabs, but these are transformational times — and it will be the risk takers and the shameless ones that will ultimately find a niche for themselves.

 

My talk culminated with a screening of the first weekly installment of Showbizzle, called “Welcome To My World” - and since our fifteen minute download wasn’t pre-loaded, it kept freezing up at first, but then it didn’t…and that’s when I started hearing the laughs…and realized that this was fast becoming a preview screening for a random focus group.  And when they got to the story twist at the end of Bryce’s profane rant about a wild night he spent at the ‘W’ Hotel, I heard the focus group howl…and then clap…

And it was the memory of the clapping and the laughter that was ringing in my ears on the conference call with some biz development and “creative content” types started explaining why this particular mainstream digital company won’t be helping me sell our 6 hours of programming without a brand attached.  What I didn’t say back to them was that after going to Fullerton and directly engaging with a random showbizzle demographic, I’m starting to feel that it is only a matter of time before we find a good fit…and when we do, chances are we won’t be calling these clowns back.

So thank you Fullerton for giving me the confidence that I need to sell our digital showcase… but, next time, do you think you can do something about those freeways?

Those Who Forget The Past…

Whew — barely survived crossing the Red Sea last week with all that matzah brie and those ridiculously heavy commandments – including the 11th Commandment which says, “Thou Shall Not Be Snarky – unless what you’re saying is F***ing True.”

This week, to honor our shared heritage, we will be revisiting/updating a few previous blogs, re-examining themes and topics that should be familiar to anyone who has been following this ‘ol Showrunner these past six months.

#1. Mainstream Media — a conspiracy to suppress virtually all info about digi world…

I referenced a new CBS show called Harpers Island, describing it as

“Sort of a Lost meets And Then There Were None scenario, revolving around a wedding on a secluded island where guests begin to be picked off one by one for 13-episodes” in “Mixed Signals” (posted 1/14/09) because it was being produced by CBS and EQAL, the smart digi guys behind “Lonely Girl 15”. What attracted my attention was that their show would be emphasizing “active online and mobile elements, with characters and narratives interwoven with the main show on an interactive hub being supervised by HarpersGlobe.com. I concluded the post by predicting that if “Harper’s Island” becomes a hit, “virtually no new show will be ordered for production by a broadcast network without a connecting digital presence in place.”

“Harper’s Island” debuted last week at #20 last week. This is how USA TODAY reported about it in its weekly round up of the television ratings.

“In head-to-head premieres, CBS murder mystery Harper’s Island edged NBC cop drama Southland Thursday (10.2 million vs. 9.9 million), but the latter finished nearly 20% higher among young adults favored by advertisers.”

Uh, you think maybe, just maybe that’s because all “Harper’s” young viewers were interacting on-line?  And btw, the reviewer in the LA Times wrote almost wrote two pages about the show’s “violent content” without mentioning it is being marketed to young men who play video games.

#2.  The Curse of Beverly Hills 90210

Before I became the showrunner of 90210 I was known as a working TV movie writer of social drama that mostly got produced…as well as a writer of lots of quirky and fairly well executed pilot scripts that were often the final project of those development seasons to be passed on. But after I produced the first 144 hours of 90210, I became the guy who only does mainstream melodrama about teenagers.  Ain’t success grand?

These days, however, my 90210 curse usually begins when a young fan (usually too young to have watched the show on Fox) finds out that I produced the first 144 hours of the show. What usually follows is a gushing/blushing e-mail like the one I got from Molly, a very funny and hip LA based video blogger from Boston, who I paid (actually overpaid) to do some social networking for my digital project, showbizzle last Fall.  Here’s what she wrote:

“Sir, I did not realize up until this very moment that you were responsible for writing one of my all time most favorite and universe altering shows. I mean, seriously. Not that I wasn’t already excited to be working for you, but apparently your work has been one of the biggest parts of my life between an early childhood obsession (when I hardly understood what was going on on screen) all the way up until this very day (the pilot episode of 90210 has been in my DVD player for over a month.).  I just needed you to know that I completely, COMPLETELY died upon finding out that fact and I am so so so so so super honored that we even spoke on the phone once. Biggest deal of my life. No joke.”

Well, the joke is on me because Molly promised do a few things on showbizzle’s behalf, didn’t follow through, and never followed up. She once wrote me and said, “I realize this looks unprofessional, but that’s not how I roll…”   I got news for you, babe, unfortunately that is exactly how you and so many others who grew up on Brandon and Brenda roll.  What a legacy! Go watch re-runs of Melrose Place why don’tcha?

#3.  The Bizzle that wouldn’t fizzle

Showbizzle, the digital website, I unsuccessfully launched this past Fall, started finding its voice back in December when I posted “Putting The Show Back In The Bizzle”.

What I like about producing original content for the digital world is that if it doesn’t work out you get to throw up your hands and insist that your website/start-up/show was in Beta mode the whole time — and then, with one click of a mouse, poof, all is forgiven, and you get to start over again.

And we did start over – with Lindsey re-voicing the character of Janey, our unseen blogger, on the 141 two-minute videos that get featured on our 23 week digital showcase Here is what she sounds like. It’s our title sequence.

http://meetshowbizzle.blip.tv/

The website will be up in Mid May…so there will be more bizzle news as we go along.

Let me know what’s up with you…

Candy and Tori : A glimpse of the real Beverly Hills, 90210

On my first visit to the Spelling “Manor”, one of the largest and most expensive homes ever built in Los Angeles County, I broke a chair.  The ‘Mister’ had just given me and a couple of programming executives from Fox a tour of the downstairs “public rooms”, including the bowling alley and his wife’s very own gift wrapping room, before we settled in a newly furnished den to figure out what the hell we were going to do now that Fox had ordered us to produce summer episodes.  For true fans of the zip code this was when the idea of “The Beverly Hills Beach Club” was first hatched, but for me it was the first time I realized who wore the pants in the family…because the moment the legs of the rickety wicker chair gave way under the weight of my fat ass, Aaron Spelling and his formidable, tough guy producing partner, Duke Vincent, spent the next ten minutes strategizing how to break the news to Candy so that she would still let her hubby have his little meetings with “the hired help” at the new digs.

The only other time I can recall being at “The Manor” was for the Spelling’s annual Christmas Eve celebration replete with Carolers in costumes, a massive Christmas tree in their massive rotunda, and lots of vodka and egg nog…not exactly what you would expect from Jewish people, but then the Spellings were always confounding expectation.  For instance, here they were having a warm, spare no expense gathering for family and friends, except I barely remember any family being there, and the only friend in attendance was a former cable TV executive about to serve time in prison for some kind of white collar crime (and who was rumored to be Candy’s secret squeeze)  Who was in the house was “the hired help” - the vp’s of production and post production, the head of business affairs,  the head of casting, Jonathan Littman from Fox, who was  the 90210 exec during the Rosin years, and a few writer/producer types from 90210 and Melrose Place.  No stars from any show were there that year. No Darren Star either. He was in Maui, or Paris, or Aspen, or wherever chic, showbiz LA went for the holidays that season.  See, that’s why we mere mortals made it onto the guest list that year.  Everyone who mattered was on a private jet, but since Aaron suffered from an acute case of fear of Flying, Candy was stuck with “the hired help.”

I actually remember Candy speaking to me that night because she and Aaron walked Karen and I to the door after we regrettably announced that we would have to be the first guests to leave so that we could relieve our wonderful Guatamalan nanny who agreed to stay with our three young kids until we got home. Moments before, a grinning, impish Mr. Spelling selected me to put on one of the caroler costumes and lead the group in a sing-a-long to “Rudolph, The Red Nose Reindeer”.  I think he expected me to freeze from embarrassment or warble off-key, but the fact is/was I can carry a tune and was a hambone long before I became a showrunner. And because I had little ones at home I knew to shout out those funny little asides that are always play best after a few shots of booze (”…you would almost say it glowed” LIKE A LIGHT BULB!).  Anyway, we got warm hugs and a promise to invite us to the party every year “no matter what happens” . The moment the door closed, Karen and I turned to each other and predicted we would never be invited over to The Manor again. And we never were.

This week, some fifteen years later,  Candy put the Manor up for sale for 150 million smackers and published her first memoir “Stories From Candyland”.  She also revealed in a recent newspaper interview that she no longer talks to her only daughter, and has never seen her newest grandchild.  Mrs. Spelling also told the interviewer that her new grandchild will appreciate her sometime in the future because she instructed the estate to set up a generous trust fund for him, cutting momma Tori out of the loop in the process. For her part Tori issued a statement saying she has “no comment”.  Oy vey.  Not only is their fractious relationship and petty public sniping vintage Spelling melodrama in the “Dynasty” tradition, but it is sadly predictable and, unfortunately, might be the real legacy of the imperious lifestyle and mercurial personality of the late Aaron Spelling.

Some of my favorite moments being the showrunner of 90210 were the private moments I got to spend in Aaron’s office when he would confide in me about his family’s travails and his deep concern for Tori’s future - not because he doubted that she had the instincts and acting chops (especially when it came to comedy) to have a legitimate and long lasting career, but because he questioned her judgment when it came to her personal life. Even today I remember the anguish of a doting father petrified that his impressionable daughter was getting serious with a spoiled son of an actor whom he suspected of smoking crack and influencing Tori in all the wrong ways…and I remember the way he teared up after I felt compelled to say that “it must be hard being a Spelling”…but a moment later we hopped on a conference call with the network and turned our attention back to showbusiness.

 

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.

 

Wish me Luck

Early October was a real bad time for showbizzle. We missed our launch by three weeks. The website sucked — full of bugs, terrible navigability. We were uploading four original videos a day that no one was watching. They were, like us, watching the Obama campaign and the meltdown on Wall Street, but those who did venture onto the website panned the quality of the videos,  not most of which were written and directed by my daughter, Lindsey.  Actually, they never panned the writing - just the production, the editing, you know, the things that I was primarily responsible for. That works wonders for the family dynamic, let me tell you.

Six months later, we sent this out to our showbizzle cast:

“Showbizzle Finds Its Voice”

Lindsey did two days of ADR work in January playing Janey.
159 videos have been re-voiced.
We have 23 weeks of programming.
We relaunch sometime in March.
It’s all good. A total upgrade.
We’re back from the dead. Here’s the opening.
http://showbizzle.blip.tv/#1797446

Anyway, back in bleak October, back when we were running for cover, I wrote a piece for potential backers called “The Origins of Showbizzle”. Here’s how it started.

When Disney announced in late 2005 that they were selling episodes of “Lost” on iTunes while the show was still in its initial network run — in other words, sold directly to consumers  prior to a traditional syndication deal being put in place — I realized that the television industry that I knew no longer had a workable business model. I concluded that ‘branded entertainment’ — where programming, in effect, is subsidized by one, identifiable sponsor as it had during television’s formative years in the 1950’s — might be a more feasible way to pay for entertainment programming.

This afternoon I have my first meeting with a national brand. Is this when it starts to get real?

Wish me luck. I’ll keep you posted.

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