Month: April 2018

Getting Started in Anime

And now a few words about opening the door to one of the most general audience cult favorite media you’ll ever find. In other words, anime is hot, gang, and the hunger for it must be fed. So why not by you?

How to Get into Anime
by Cecilia D’Anastasio

So you want to get into anime. Buckle in. From outside, it looks like a big, scary and potentially fatal undertaking. And that’s because it is.

Anime is a medium that contains all the dazzling peaks and deep, deep troughs of human imagination. When it’s good, it’s brain-bending sci-fi plots, mirthful belly laughs, involuntary squees and tears upon heartbreaking tears. And when it’s bad, you’ll find yourself head-in-hands, bemoaning the garbage race that is humanity. read article

RIP Steven Bochco

If you’re a TV writer, odds are that you know who Steven Bochco was and are aware of his death from leukemia April 1st. The New York Times, which in many ways might be regarded as the Supreme Obituary Publisher in the United States has the complete story HERE

Bochco’s importance as a television writer and producer cannot be exaggerated. In the words of TVWriter™’s Larry Brody, “He was the most innovative and successful overall TV storyteller of his lifetime.” The following write-up in The Guardian shows that his influence on the medium we love to hate is worldwide. We at TVWriter™ hope you’ll read it:

Steven Bochco obituary
by Michael Carlson

“Armed robbery in progress, see Surplus Store corner of People’s Drive and 124th street.” It is hard to overstate the excitement in viewers when those words opened each episode of Hill Street Blues. Its creator, Steven Bochco, who has died of cancer aged 73, was arguably the most influential producer of television drama of the past half-century. Hill Street Blues, his first major success, changed the very nature of cop shows. read article

Is There Really a ‘Cheers Conspiracy?’

Working writers in TV, especially showrunner-creators, often have to deal with people who watch their shows a couple of times, blink, gulp, and then take to the interwebs to announce, “They stole my series! That’s mine, I tell you! Mine!”

Although sometimes the complaint can be real, most of the time it’s what the biz calls “parallel development” caused by the temper of the times causing more than people to come up with similar notions. We here at TVWriter™ have no special knowledge about the situation described in the Boston Magazine article below but present it as an interesting case study now gaining some traction. Of course, if you know more about the situation than the article describes, we’d love to hear about it, so please let us know if you’re a believer in:

The Cheers Conspiracy
by Dan McCarthy

A few days after the official start of fall in 1982, the headlines were a bleak reflection of life in Ronald Reagan’s America. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were on the rise again, the nation’s economy was still dragging itself out of a recession, the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra” topped the Billboard Hot 100, and the top-rated TV programs included The A-Team and Falcon Crest. Few knew it yet, but a new show was about to debut at the end of September on NBC. In time, an adoring fan base (especially in Boston) would lionize it as a new classic—a hallowed place on Thursday nights where everyone knows your name. read article

Cartoon: ‘Perfect Reading Spots’

Grant Snider, our favorite cartoonist-dentist, understands both side of the writer-reader relationship. For example:

More of Grant Snider’s sensitive perception at Incidental Comics, HERE read article

WOMEN IN FILM SPOTLIGHT: BRI CASTELLINI

We’re a little late to the parade but are mighty glad that TVWriter™ frequent visitor Ella sent us this illuminating interview with one of our favorite indie auteurs, the inevitable (figure that one out) Bri Castellini!

by Claudia Hoffman

OR DIE TRYING’S CLAUDIA HOFFMAN CAUGHT UP WITH INDIE FILMMAKER BRI CASTELLINI TO DISCUSS HER EXPERIENCE IN THE FILM INDUSTRY AND HER AWARD-WINNING WEB SERIES, BRAINS. read article