40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.
Remember when becoming a writer was all about wanting to write the next great novel?
You do? Sorry to hear that, friend, cuz in that case you might as well hang up your film or TV writing aspirations right now. You’re old, y’know?
No, wait! Looks like we could, um, be wrong. Turns out you can have your novel (and your age) and eat film/TV cake too:
Charlie Jane Anders shines her illuminating prose on this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs:
Right now, it’s pilot season — which means you’re going to be hearing about a lot of TV shows getting ordered. And then, nine months from now… most of those shows will not be on television. What is this mysterious crucible? Here’s our step-by-step guide to the process of pitching a brand new television show.
Right about now, we ought to be in the middle of watching the first season of Hieroglyph, a show about gods in ancient Egypt that was “ordered to series” by Fox. But Fox pulled the plug on Hieroglyph, even after ordering a full season in advance, and we never even got to see it. That’s just one extreme example of a more common phenomenon — to casual observers, it looks like things are getting ordered all the time, then never showing up.
…And we’re right there with him. Not just cuz he’s Kevin Spacey either. Cuz he’s smart – and right:
Um, anybody else notice how strange Kev looks when he smiles? Or is it just that we see him like that so seldom?
I was not always a big fan of Westerns. My knowledge/memory of them were largely drawn from TV shows of my childhood – and not always the best ones. They were dominated by The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry (although I was never a big Autry fan) and shows like them. Westerns dominated TV in those days in ways that I don’t think any genre dominates any more.
It was my late wife, Kimberly Yale, who really schooled me in movie Westerns and the difference between a John Ford Western, ones by Howard Hawks, and Budd Boetticher’s Westerns. I finally learned and grasped what powerful movies they were, Just a few years ago, I got to see John Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers on the big screen and it was only then that I really understood how powerful it was and why its star, John Wayne, was such an icon. In the close-ups, where Wayne’s face is two stories high, he seems like a figure off Mount Rushmore. And the famous final shot, where his character is framed by a closing door, is haunting. It’s also interesting to note that both here and in Howard Hawks’ Red River he plays something of a bastard.
It’s only been in recent years that I’ve returned to some of the Western TV shows and rediscovered them. What I discovered was some very good writing and acting, especially in the half hour shows.Have Gun, Will Travel, starring Richard Boone, featured him as a traveling gunslinger, Paladin, and a memorable and haunting title song. Wanted: Dead or Alive starred a young Steve McQueen right around the time that he broke out in films in The Magnificent Seven.
Cuz it’s looking more and more like he’s found the Secret of the Universe. The genu-wine article.
Well, the Secret of the TV Writing Universe anyway.
Don’t believe us? Ask Anita Singh, the Arts and Entertainment Editor of UK’s “The Telegraph:”