Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are=&0=& Regina Hicks & Karin Gist (nope, Yers Trooly has no idea who they are) are writing DRUMLINE: A NEW BEAT, a sequel to DRUMLINE (um, not the New Beat, it seems) as a TV movie for VH1. (And it’s going to star Nick Cannon again! Ooh! Well, better Nick than his diva wife whatsername anyway.)
Andre & Maria Jacquemetton (MAD MEN) are adapting the comic book DMZ into a drama series at Syfy. (Another hit in the making! After all, who can resist a future in which Manhattan is the demilitarized zone in a future post civil war – yeppers, a new one, not that business with Abe Lincoln and all – ? Still, ya gotta wonder. How much more chewy comic book goodness can TV audiences that aren’t as nutso as some of us take?)
Tag: TV CAREER TIPS
JOHN OSTRANDER: “SHERLOCK” SEASON THREE: IS THE GAME OFF?
by John Ostrander
Several years ago, when I first heard that the BBC was doing a version of the Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories re-set in the modern day, I was skeptical. I’ve long loved the Holmes stories. I believe I finished reading the Canon for the first time by the age of ten. For me, part of the charm was the fog/smog filled Victorian streets of London, with the hansom cabs, the gaslights, et al. For me, the era and setting were as much characters in the stories as Holmes and Watson. I might have given the series a pass except that the co-creator and frequent writer for the series was going to be Steven Moffat.
I knew Moffat from some remarkable work he had done on Doctor Who. He has penned what I felt were some of the best episodes I’d ever watched on the series, full of surprises but also deep feeling, moments that truly touched me. So I gave his new series, co-created with writer/actor Mark Gatiss, a look and was generally delighted. The modern setting worked surprisingly well and, while not faithful to the letter of the stories, kept to the spirit of Conan Doyle’s canon. The series benefited as well from a very strong Holmes and Watson in the persons of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman respectively.
Each season consists of just three ninety minute episodes and each has ended on something of a cliffhanger or at least we are left with questions to be answered. We’re introduced to their version of Holmes’s arch nemesis, James Moriarty, at the end of the first season as he puts Holmes and Watson into a death trap with no seeming escape. At the end of the second season, Moffat and Gatiss do their version of the last meeting of the two. In their version, it results with Moriarty blowing his own brains out and Holmes forced to jump to his apparent death. We know Holmes is not dead by the end of the episode but we don’t know how he managed it. That would have to wait for Season Three. In theory.
Did You Know There are Oscars for College Film Students?
by Team TVWriter™ Press Service
We didn’t either. (Oh, wait. Maybe we did. Seems to me we’ve written this opening before. Well, it isn’t something that sticks in our minds, probably cuz nobody here at TVWriter™ is eligible. Shazbot!)
Anyway, here’s the whole story for 2014:
Channing Tatum, The Academy, and Oscars Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron today announced the winners of the “Team Oscar” college search on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” along with this year’s Oscars host, Ellen DeGeneres. The winners will deliver Oscar statuettes to celebrity presenters at the Oscars on Sunday, March 2, 2014, live on ABC.
I Will Not Write Your F—ing Script
Yo, non-writers with “great ideas!” Ever wonder why writers you meet curl their lips, growl, and stomp away when you suggest that they should write your great script for you? Well, you stupid %$#!, here’s why:
by Sharon Soboil
A while ago I read Josh Olson’s article in the Village Voice blog, entitled “I Will Not Read Your F—ing Script.” After chuckling through his op-ed piece, I read each of the comments posted. Some understood his position, others thought he was arrogant and too high on himself. What it stirred up for me in reading it was not so much that I don’t want to read your f—ing script, but rather that I don’t want to write your f—ing script.
I have been a professional freelance writer in L.A. for years. I’ve traveled to France, England and India for projects. I have optioned, sold, done rewrites and ghost written on films and television scripts. I’m not saying I’m winning the Academy Award this year (not that it’s not a dream), but I’m a writer in the trenches.
munchman: Race and the Media
A kindly WGAW member we know has leaked this excellent – and dismaying – article from the “If You’re a Member” section of the WGAW’s website:
NPR TV critic Eric Deggans addresses the dilemma of people of color in television. Bigger numbers aren’t enough if the portrayals are stereotypes, he says.
The Cosby Show, which premiered in 1984 and ran for eight seasons, not only revived the beleaguered sitcom genre but in its genius showed America an image that had not been seen for the most part before on network television: the upper-middle class Huxtables, an African American family in which the mother was a lawyer and dad was a doctor. Until then, portrayals of African Americans on TV tended to lean towards characters that were gang members, drug addicts and poor inner city people.