Take Me To The Pilots ’12: NBC’s ‘Infamous’ – by Daniel Fienberg
The Pitch: It’s “Dirty Sexy Revenge”
Quick Response: No. Really. “Dirty Sexy Revenge.” What if “Dirty Sexy Money” had begun with the murder of Samaire Armstrong’s character? [No loss there.] And what if Peter Krause’s character were a cop instead of a lawyer and an African-American woman instead of a man? And what if that interloper returned to the family not to keep them out of trouble, but to get one of them in very deep trouble indeed? What you’d get would be “Infamous.” NBC’s attempt to get in on the Eat the Rich zeitgeist is derivative at every turn, but it’s also yet another midseason drama that introduces plot twists at an almost astounding pace, with characters reversing course and changing their colors two or three times in the opening 44 minutes. Hmm… I used a “but” there as if being twisty were a compensation for being derivative. This is the kind of show that you instantly find yourself distrusting every frame because you know that the truth is like a bet on a roulette wheel: You might get a dose of adrenaline each time your number comes around, but until the ball stops bouncing, *nothing* is going to be the truth, so there’s no point in investing.
LB: TVWRITER UNIVERSITY Update for September 2012
Time now to reach out to everyone about what’s happening with the TVWriter™ Online Workshops. No time to waste, so:
I’m hoping to hold the Basic Online TV and Film Writing Workshop in October, which, yep, is next month.
The 8-week long (one meeting a week) TVWriter.Com Basic Online Workshop covers just that, the basics of TV (and film!) writing, from how to present your idea via loglines and leavebehinds, to character creation and story structure, to the writing of the 1st draft and revisions. We do this via my book (here comes the pitch) Television Writing from the Inside Out,weekly writing exercises, and of course weekly video (and text if you don’t want to do video) chat meetings.
LB: Mary McDonnell Said the Truest, Wisest Thing in Showbiz on MAJOR CRIMES Last Night
There I was, watching a cutish episode of MAJOR CRIMES, containing the kind of humor I usually find cringeworthy, when suddenly Mary McDonnell’s character, Captain Raydor, came out with the most insightful line of dialog in the history of TV. Yes, I know that a writer wrote it, probably James Duff (but I’m not finding that info on the web so if you have it let me know), McDonnell’s understated and totally sincere delivery is what made it ring so true.
The situation wasn’t exactly unique. It was one of those times when the FBI invites itself in on a local, in this case LAPD investigation, with the agent in charge calmly telling Raydor all the things the Major Crimes Unit is going to be giving him and his guys. Raydor listens calmly. Then, without blinking (a sure sign that she’s a star, btw, as Michael Caine once told me), Raydor says these immortal five words:
Be Bold Dept: Take on New Things!
No kidding around here. This is the most inspiration video we’ve ever seen, especially if you’re all about being creative:
Don’t know who Paula Scher is, but she’s all about asking questions, going where you haven’t gone before, and the reinvigoration of your work, your life, and the lives of everybody and everything around you, just by taking the risk of being daring.
“The Fien Print” on ABC’s THE ZERO HOUR
Take Me To The Pilots ’12: ABC’s ‘The Zero Hour’ – by Daniel Fienberg
The Pitch: Horologists, Nazis, Rosicrucians and Goose… Oh my!
Quick Response: In previewing “Do No Harm” last week, I mentioned that it was one of “three or four audaciously weird, wacky and possibly terrible (but possibly terribly addictive) new dramas” premiering at midseason. ABC’s “The Zero Hour” is another. Creator Paul T. Scheuring (“Prison Break”) is no stranger to seemingly unsustainable premises that may have been better suited to a miniseries format and I guess you could *kinda* argue that “Prison Break” found ways to regularly reinvent itself frequently enough to justify airing for four seasons, rather than for eight episodes as a Limited Series Event. But “Zero Hour,” with its tenuous and sometimes foolhardy alternate history involving the secret religious orders and scientific exploration and the Holocaust, is possibly even less suited for a long run and even more suited for a strictly capped episode run. Some stories aren’t meant to run for 200 episodes and I get the feeling that with its Rosicrucians, demon babies, underground clockmakers and 12-centric numerology, “The Zero Hour” should maybe run 10 hours, deliver answers and get out while the getting’s good.