n o w p l a y i n g - s c r i p t b i n - f a n c l u b - s t u d i o

make love to the camera



Dec 13 2000 - 10:48 am

Adventures in the Small Screen Trade

I'm in a television frame of mind this morning, as I kill time until a man who might become a valuable contact for me arrives at his production office here in Chicago. He's probably driving in on the Kennedy right now, listening to whatever radio station he listens to, oblivious to the fact that he is only thirty minutes away from launching the career of a writer.

His name is Walter Barnett, and he's some big muckety-muck with The Joan Cusack Show, which is being produced in all of it's aspects here in the windy city, which is extremely rare. The story goes that Columbia Tri-Star approached her with an offer for her own show, which she was eager to do. "But I don't move. I live in Chicago," was Cusack's reply, according to Michael Lembeck, an experienced television director who was recently here to direct an episode. Lembeck is a muckety-muck himself, as he is set to direct next year's big Christmas Disney movie starring Tim Allen. This guy Lembeck, he ain't no small potatoes, I tells ya.

Regular readers rest assured (how's THAT for alliteration?) that Fade In is not becoming a Hollywood gossip column. Don't look here if you want the latest info on Cathrine Zeta-Jone's baby or Robert Downey Jr's latest escapades. Unless I happen to meet them. In which case I will dish unabashedly.

Anyway.

Since I do call this lil' page 'The Screenplay Of My Life' what say we get a little screenplay action in here? Or, more specifically, teleplay action. If you come here often, you probably know that I don't have any professional television experience yet. However, I have had the exciting opportunity at good old Columbia College to be in on the ground floor of conceptualizing an entirely new show. The cool thing about this school is that it offers students experience by allowing us to produce what we write.

For the past decade, roughly, the TV dept. here has been cranking out three episodes per semester of a student produced soap opera. When I was here as an acting student, it was called (don't ask me why) 'Glass Roots.' The show, for me, was characterized by one scene in which a woman starts beating on a man's chest in anger, and five seconds later ends up kissing him. Original, eh? I played 'Tony,' brother of 'Crystal,' and co-owner of the 'Hungry Bear Grill' (Yeah, I know. Look, I didn't come up with it). When I came back, a few years later, to write for the show, the title had changed to 'Hungry Hearts' (Yes, I KNOW...get off my back already, it wasn't my idea). Tony and Crystal, as well as the rest of the cast were still around. Apparently, a title change makes ALL the difference (see 'Two Guys and a Girl' and 'Normal, Ohio.' Oh, and here's a bit o' Hollywood lore, speaking of title changes: Did you know that the producers of 'Friends' originally wanted to call it 'Six of One'? "Hi, NBC? We've got a great idea for a show about six single people living in New York. Also, we smoke crack.").

So. When I started this entry, the point was to offer some insight into the process of conceptualizing and launching a new series, albeit at the college level. Relax. I'm getting there.

OK. So, last semester I was invited by an instructor to come write for the school's aforementioned cheesy show, which I was eager to do. And it was fun, too. We cut our teeth on hokey plot lines and overwrought dialogue. Made the actors do embarassing things. It was great, but I didn't originally intend to write for the show again. However, due to some drop-outs midway through this semester, I was asked to come back and lend my pen to the show once again. Fine. I joined the other remaining writers, and that made three of us. I had been on other classes with both of them before. One was a lesbian and the other was a big friendly weirdo with a mohawk (true story). For a few weeks, we dutifully wrote, wrote, wrote, guiding the characters in the show towards God knows what through a contrived series of events that led to this massive catharsis, namely, a rootin'-tootin' guns-a-blazing massacre at the Hungry Bear Grill.

We had had enough.

Each semester, each new group of writers jokes around about killing all the characters, starting an entirely new show, etc.

This time, though, we meant it.

We had originally planned to have the massacre kill off three, maybe four of the characters. We were charged with 'scaling down' the show and reducing the number of main characters, which at that point had swelled to an unwieldly twelve. I myself wrote the massacre scene. I made it into kind of a cliffhanger. In the scene, I had gathered every character in the series into the Grill. The scene ends with the antagonist entering, announcing her presence, and pulling out two pistols on the horrified crowd. We cut to slow motion as we see her fire one shot (in a close up, so we can't see who exactly she shoots) and then we abruptly cut to black as we hear two more shots. Cue ominous music, and that's a rap.

I remember sitting at the staff table, discussing the next episode (the inevitable boring aftermath) with the other writers and the instructor. Someone jokingly said that we should just end the series now. Suddenly, we realized something: We could end the series. Why not? The way I had written that last scene was very open ended. Conceivably, the shooter could have killed everyone. If ever there was a door open that lead out of the 'Hungry Hearts' world, this was it.

We pressured the instructor, who more and more was beginning to see things our way. She would discuss it with the chairman of the dept. and the executive producer of the show later that week and let us know. As we hastily plotted the next episode of Hungry Hearts, just in case we were denied, our minds were already racing, thinking of the possibilities for an entirely new series. Better yet, a series developed by us, not another season of Hungry Hearts to inherit. Ours. Our baby. We would break ground, we thought, if only the right people would approve.

They did.

At the next meeting, we brought our ideas for the new show. All we knew at this point was that it was going to be college-based with a humorous slant. We decided this because we wanted to go exactly against the mindset of the last show, which had college kids playing older adults and 'serious' drama. This is quite common in the televison and film business, apparently. When a new studio head or network executive is appointed, they have to destroy almost everything the last person in their position did. How else could they possibly justify the fact that they were hired? "Obviously the last person here was an idiot, and their ideas were bad, that's why I'm here now."

So, knowing only that we would have a show about kids in college, I thought about our concept all week. When we sat down to literally 'pitch' the idea to the chairman, there were real New York bagels. According to the dept. head and my instructor, this made it a real pitch meeting. Anyway, I, in my smartass way, opened with "It is the year 2713, and the world is a very different place." The chairman looked at me for a moment and said 'You're joking, right?" I was. Here's what I brought to the next staff meeting:

Two main characters, a guy and a girl who were 'highschool sweethearts', from a small midwestern town who move to Chicago to go to college. Once there, they break up, and begin to explore life and experiment on their own. They remain friends, and after each day of their new lives, they still have each other for comfort and support. The other characters in the series would be the friends and acquaintences they meet at school.

Well. So much for that idea.

But, all was not lost. In fact, the framework of my idea survived, despite losing it's original content. Once we determined the available sets, and the fact that it was an urban college rather than a rural or suburban one (we are literally here in downtown Chicago, after all), other ideas began to fall into place. After a few initial snags. Mohawk Boy, who, to his credit, prides himself on thinking differently, suggested that we put a spin on the series. He suggested that the main character be a "robot or something." With all due respect, a 'wacky' premise alone does not an original idea make. We all kind of sighed and fidgeted uncomfortably at this apparently serious suggestion, until my instructor wisely shot his ass down by saying that the special effects work would be too intensive and difficult on a regular basis. Thank God, Mohawk Boy relented.

We liked the idea of a guy and a girl being the main characters, but not necessarily the idea of making them ex's. So, we were left with a guy and a girl and an urban college. I'm a big fan of the dialectic (the synthesis of two seemingly opposite and different ideas to create one complex new one), so I piped up and said that since we have an urban college, one of the characters should be from the country. "This way," I said, "we have a country/city thing happening, which is classic storytelling anyway." And thus a series was born.

Now, I realize it may sound like I'm bragging, what with all the 'I said' and 'My idea.' And I'm not going to deny that I'm proud of the fact that most of my input ended up forming the basis for much of the show. I'm very proud of that; it's exactly what I want to do with my life. This is simply the way it happened.

Once we established our basic premise, we went dialectic crazy. Yes, we are writer dorks. We decided to make the girl a native of the city, streetwise, sassy and sophisticated. The guy, on the other hand, isn't unsophisticated. He's simply not hip to the ways of a large city like Chicago. Think innocence and naievete, not Cletus the slack-jawed yokel. Building on the idea of the 'opposites' element, we gave our two heroes a nemesis. Know that person you don't like because they couldn't think more differently than you, and you just can't fathom the reason for their existence? That's him. The 'ex' idea of mine survived in that we gave the girl an ex-boyfriend who basically followed her to the college. Against our better judgement, the chairman wanted a link, a bridge, to the Hungry Hearts universe, so we imported an older character from that show to become a professor at the school.

So, that's how the process worked for me. I'm sure it's much different out in the real world, but I found it extremely interesting to be in on the conception of a new group-effort piece of art. We're writing the pilot now, and trying to come up with a title. Eventually, the series will be streamed from a website, as well as broadcast on local cable.

And you can all say you 'knew me when...'

Oh, and to update on The Joan Cusack Show situation: I spoke to a producer who told me that her assistant is going to be calling me with all the information regarding the internship on the show.

You can bet I'm excited.

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