Category: Opinion

John Ostrander: Not Your Father’s Superman

 Batman-2nd-Amendment

by John Ostrander

My friend Paul Guinan put an interesting post up on his Facebook page recently. It sparked an equally interesting discussion, and, evidently, you can have discussions on Facebook that are not all salvos of rants.

Paul wrote: “I grew up with Superman being a character of pure good. Every once in a while something like Red Kryptonite would cause him to do some bad things – nothing too bad – and he would be forgiven and once again beloved. He wasn’t a morose, frowning, reluctant hero, he enjoyed his life and mission.

“Batman was a victim of gun violence. Bob Kane flirted with the idea of Batman carrying twin pistols for a very brief moment (a holdover from Batman’s inspiration, The Shadow), but seminal writers like Bill Finger solidified the code of Batman not carrying firearms. It made great thematic sense. Batman would sock a villain on the jaw, or throw his Batarang at a them – not beat them to a pulp and wind up with bloodied gloves. Batman is a scientist, detective, and martial arts expert. Such training develops character that’s in contradiction to being a rageaholic. read article

munchman sees A VERY MURRAY CHRISTMAS

Robert Mitchum's corpse gives us his best Bill Murray face...and fails
Robert Mitchum’s corpse gives us his best Bill Murray face…and fails

by munchman

Talk about a predicament!

On the one hand, Yer Friendly Neighborhood munchola has to confess here and now that he absolutely lurves Bill Murray. Many’s the night, in fact, that I’ve YouTubed myself to sleep listening to My Hero spend a magnificent 59 seconds doing his inimitable rendition of the STAR WARS theme. Nobody does it like Billy Baby, not even Ella Fitzgerald.

On the other hand, I Netflixed A VERY MURRAY CHRISTMAS the other night, and, well, let me put it this way: Why the hell was the fantastically unfunny – and D-E-A-D Robert Mitchum running around the Carlyle Hotel pretending to be the Murrayman in a Christmas special so unspecial that it made director Sofia Coppola’s snoozily inept LOST IN TRANSLATION (which starred the real Bill Murray) look like (no, not an Oscar winner – never!) a Golden Globe nominee? read article

What TV Shows Still Haven’t Learned About Writing Female Leads of Color

From our vantage point here at TVWriter™, it sometimes looks as though the more TV execs, producers, writers et al learn about their subjects and their viewers, the more they start needing to learn. Case in point:

by Princess Weekes

It started with Susie Carmichael.

Like most children of the ’90s, I was obsessed with Rugrats and dragged my mother to see both feature lengths films in theaters. Now, I wasn’t a huge fan of Susie; she was too perfect, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, too manufactured. I much preferred the volatile and antagonistic Angelica. However, I remember sitting in the theater wondering, “Why isn’t Susie in the movie?” read article

Hurtling Toward the TV Remake Apocalypse

sherlock

by Peter Bradshaw

This article was originally published in the UK, but the situation is dire here in the good ole USA as well. Pity the poor TV executives who are running “dangerously low” on beloved old media content to re-imagine, re-do, and de-fang. What will they do when they – shudder – run out?

An awful crisis is unfolding in the world of film and TV writing, a crisis that I learned about when I had coffee recently with a top British producer. We are reaching peak reboot. The number of out-of-copyright pop culture figures or mythic icons who can be reinvented and reimagined for a modern age, or sexed up in their original setting, is running dangerously low.

Sherlock has obviously been done. So has Merlin. King Arthur is being done again on the big screen. Dracula and Frankenstein are always being summoned from the grave, the cultural undead; and The Mummy’s being remade – again. read article

What is Your Script Really About?

steinbeckquote

by Lew Ritter

When I first started writing, I decided to concentrate on writing spec scripts for existing TV shows over feature films. I was a big fan of shows of 80’s shows such as Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice. The shows tended to be detective shows or police procedurals. This was the type of show that I felt most comfortable writing. I knew that sit-coms or heavy dramatic series were not my forte.

I had been part of a writers group in NYC for several years. Back in the early 90’s, my writing partner and I developed a treatment for an existing show called MANCUSO FBI. It starred Robert Loggia, as the stalwart FBI agent, defending the constitution against the bad guys. It intrigued us because the show dealt with important social issues. We developed a lengthy treatment and actually pitched it to a writer from a Canadian cop show called NIGHT HEAT. He liked the story and gave us valuable notes for improving the treatment.

I managed to contact a Production Assistant from the show. I was able to send him the treatment. As fate would have it, the writers liked the treatment, but the show was not renewed by NBC for a second season. read article