Tag: People’s Pilot Contest

Troy DeVolld: Bride of TV-enstein: On My Obsession With Reality Television

by Troy DeVolld

Someone I know posted an entry on Facebook this morning along the lines of “Every time you watch a reality TV show, a book dies.”

Ironically, I died. Not completely, but just that little bit more inside.

Where other people have photos of their wives, husbands, and kids at home, I have framed title screen captures from every show I’ve ever worked on, show memorabilia and a wall of promotional content from Dancing With the Stars, Basketball Wives and Flipping Out, the latter of which still feels like some of the best work I’ve ever done.  My bathroom sports photos of everyone from Ted Mack to the cast of Basketball Wives LA, and there’s a signed photo of Allen Funt staring back at me from my desk right now. read article

A Spoonful of Cyanide: The Chilly, Borderline Nastiness of Saving Mr. Banks

LB’S NOTE: I was all set to write a review of SAVING MR. BANKS. Then I read this one, which says just about everything I would have in a way that’s probably better than I would have. Especially the last 2 sentences which I agree some up the real theme of this film. (No, I’m not giving them away. You have to read it.) So why duplicate near-perfection when I can take the time to, you know, feel bad about not writing instead?

saving-mr.-banksby Wesley Morris

In Saving Mr. Banks, Emma Thompson plays Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers. It’s the early 1960s, and Travers keeps her hair in a short, close perm. She wears body-hugging tweed suits and her face is frozen in a clench of exasperation. Everything about her is tight, which is meant to make her eventual emotional undoing seem psychological. Because Walt Disney really loves her book, Travers has been flown from London to Los Angeles to help turn it into a movie. He’s been trying for 20 years, and for 20 years, the answer has been “no.” But now she’s broke and blocked and doesn’t want to lose her house.

So she deigns to visit a city she finds hideous, negotiate with a man she finds smarmy, and work on a film she’s sure to detest. Travers’s mornings and afternoons are spent first condescending to her driver (Paul Giamatti) and then in a bungalow on the Disney lot with Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford), a veteran screenwriter, and Robert and Richard M. Sherman (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman, respectively), the legendary Disney songwriters. She might as well be at Alcatraz. But in her mind, these men work for her, not Disney. Travers wants the sessions recorded. She makes a withering comparison between Laurence Olivier and Dick Van Dyke and bemoans the songs that the Saving Mr. Banks audience already knows are classics. People are going to be tempted to say, “I didn’t know Cruella de Vil wrote children’s books.” read article

Deadline Ponders TV’s Biggest Business Problems

Nellie Andreeva gets down about the state of TV’s basic paradigms. Thanks, Nellie! (Yeah, we wanted to say, “Whoa, Nellie!” but managed to rein ourselves in.)

Year-End: Will Broadcast Pilot Season Paradigm Finally Be Broken & Other TV Industry Questions For 2014
by Nellie Andreeva

tvbizBroadcast executives for years have been preaching about switching to a year-round development cycle or adopting the cable model of producing fewer pilots with higher pilot-to-series ratio. They have been ordering occasional off-cycle pilots and have jumped on scripts with pilot orders in November and December but are yet to break the traditional pilot season paradigm.

This coming year, they may be forced to. In 2013, we had what was probably the first true continuous pilot season, with existing and new cable and digital players constantly handing out pilot and straight-to-series orders. Add to that the new push into limited/event series arena, and there were at least a dozen projects casting at any time of the year. That has kept casting directors and TV talent agents busy and has further depleted the acting talent pool. read article

Cara Winter: Downton Abbey Season 4 Premiere “review”

lady-sybilby Cara Winter

My husband hates Downton Abbey.

Actually, “Hate” may not be a strong enough word. Loathe? Abhor? It’s hard to say. The depths of the man’s hatred for something… well, make believe… is impressive.

We agree on many shows — most shows, in fact — from Homeland, to The Americans, to Pawn Stars (which is just Antiques Roadshow repackaged, with a little idiot-development on the side). But on this one, Warren and I are as far apart as…well, Downton Abbey, and, say, Sons of Anarchy. read article

An Unexpected Journey: Book Length vs. Movie Length in Adapted Franchises

Overthinking It strikes again, with a lesson for all of us who write for the visual media. (Um, you know, like not just films but also TV.) And wait’ll you see the neato graphs!

The-Hobbit-Movieby Mark Lee

I know I’m late to this party, but I finally got around to seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey after hearing much belly-aching over how the story of a single book is split into three separate movies: it seems like a blatant cash grab by the studios, a cynical move that put franchise movie economics ahead of things like storytelling and pacing.

After seeing the movie, I can definitely sympathize with these complaints. It felt slow at times, particularly during the multiple expository scenes in the first half and the interminably long action sequence in the second half. Most importantly, I felt like the story didn’t advance far enough to justify taking up an entire movie on its own, especially compared to the Lord of the Rings movies. read article