As usual, Grant Snider gets it…right. (See what we did there?)
Originally posted HERE
Month: March 2015
Are This Season’s Diverse Shows Ushering in a New Era of Multicultural Television?
by Pilot Viruet
“Instead of people coming in and seeing a Chinese face and going, ‘Huh?’… They see a white face and say, ‘Oh, hello white friend! I am comfortable!’” — Fresh Off the Boat, “Pilot”
In the first episode of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, a new fish-out-of-water sitcom about a Taiwanese-American family that moves from DC to suburban Orlando, patriarch Louis Huang (Randall Park) floats the idea of hiring a white greeter for the steakhouse he owns so white people will feel comfortable when they walk in and spot a familiar face. It’s a clueless, optimistic line that is played for laughs, and Park’s delivery is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s also a line that works on multiple levels, because it speaks volumes about the current television landscape and its irritating approach to diversity: Networks cater to white audiences by always promoting white faces — or trying to universalize the nonwhite narratives that they do have in an attempt at mass appeal — rather than taking chances on stories whose characters don’t superficially resemble the majority of their viewers.
Fresh Off the Boat is the first Asian-American sitcom in 20 years, since Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl, which ran for just one season (also on ABC) in 1994. The show is doing great in terms of both ratings (Episode 5, which aired February 17, had more viewers than Parks and Recreation and New Girl combined) and criticalresponse — as are the other diverse freshman programs airing on major networks this season: ABC’s clever sitcoms Black-ish and Cristela, Fox’s infectious musical drama Empire, and The CW’s telenovela-inspired Jane the Virgin, which earned lead actress Gina Rodriguez a Golden Globe award.
Hank Isaac: Underfunded Overachievers – The Crafting of “Lilac” #6
by Hank Isaac
When our daughter was eight, she read Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. Yes, I said, “Read.” The film had not yet been made. Was this book aimed at an elementary school readership? I doubt it. Did she enjoy it? Yes, quite a bit.
My point is this: Writing to a specific demographic is stifling. Presuming a story must have certain elements and not have certain elements for a children’s audience, a teen audience, a male audience, a female audience… well, you get the idea… is foolish. There is no way of knowing for certain what it is about a character or story that will touch an audience. Filmed stories so often underestimate their audience that one begins to wonder if they’re written by accountants who’ve been stranded on a remote island most of their lives.
What’s important to me is to create the characters I want to create and then write their story. If I start worrying about whether I’m going to offend someone or scare someone, both my characters and their story risk being severely hobbled.
Writers Guild of America News for March
Not to be confused with their calendar of events and such. No, no, no….
Jorge c Perez: Not a Violent Man
by Jorge c Perez
Joan Didion once wrote “ Writing is an act of violence, a way to impose your will on a world.” I’ll use that as a framework to write about my (almost) military approach to landing a TV staff writing position, which is the goal of the NHMC TV Writing Program (and all of the TV writing programs). I’m hoping to commit acts of violence for 12-16 hours a day. For pay. Which would make me a writing mercenary;)
Since my last post during the November 2014 fellowship – sponsored by ABC/NBC – I’ve been hunkered in my bunker. I’ve procrastinat – uh, researched – by watching a lot of the sponsoring networks’ shows to prepare for staffing meetings.
I was hired to rewrite & polish a feature film script starring Michael Madsen entitled TWO CRANES. So I’ve officially gone pro as a writer. I submitted two original projects to the Sundance ShowRunner lab, and am preparing materials for the HBO TV Writing program.